Early last spring as we prepared for our move to the farm, we also began to consider a garden. My dad had been so disgusted with the amount of vegetables the deer had eaten the previous summer that he was ready to ditch the garden altogether. Daryl and I convinced him that we should try a fence to see if we had better results. In March, fence building commenced! The boys had a great time working with Daryl. And when they eventually tired of hammering, they turned to digging and making large construction sites in the dirt with their dump trucks and diggers. 🚜😊 Since we were not yet living at the farm, it took multiple weekend and evening trips, but finally, we had what we hoped would be a sturdy and high-enough fence to deter the wild things from consuming our veggies. 🦌
My dad helped us plan out the garden and figure out what should be planted, where and when. By the time the fence was done, our peas, radishes, lettuce, spinach, and green onions were poking out of the ground! When we moved to the farm the third week of April, the garden was looking so beautiful. Soon we were enjoying not only pulling weeds and picking potato bugs, but also eating some fresh veggies and raspberries. 🫛
The first week of June, we began to realize just how much food my parents had been providing for the deer. The first time we picked the hull peas, we got five 5-gallon buckets. 😯😆 Thankfully, there is a farm not too far from us that has an old-fashioned pea sheller, so we didn’t have to shell them all by hand. Over the next three weeks, my mom and I froze quarts and quarts of peas, and it seemed like the kids ate just as many raw. The snap peas were a hit, as well. The first week of July, it was time for green beans. So many green beans to can and freeze and give away! We wrapped those up just in time for sweet corn, which was perfect by the end of July. August was full of freezing corn and making salsa! Our tomatoes, peppers and onions were put to great use.
Throughout the summer we also had asparagus, raspberries, cucumbers, carrots and red beets. Just when we thought we had finished up gardening, we remembered in the end of September that we still needed to dig the potatoes. We stored some in the cellar and canned a bunch. By fall, we were exhausted, the freezers were full of veggies and the canning shelves were weighed down. We were delighted and grateful with such a wonderful harvest of food, and we decided that perhaps next year, we might be able to plant just a little bit less.
