100 Days of Growing Food Challenge: Days 44 and 45 Happy Father’s Day!

Happy Father’s day to all of the men out there taking part in raising little humans! We see you, we appreciate you, and you are doing an amazing job!

Declan and Stirling spent the morning (even before breakfast) painting and making glitter pages to give to Bryce for Father’s day. They both picked flowers from the garden (calendula flowers) for him.

They have good taste in flowers!

Back to Church

Today was the first day we have been able to return to our church service as normal. It was such a blessing to be back in service and in fellowship with other people.

Yes, there are many new regulations and precautions.

Yes, they had done a weekly live stream during quarantine.

But there is something about meeting with a group of people to worship that I missed, deep down.

There’s a peace about it, amid the craziness that’s going on in the world to join in with others to learn and grow together.

The Garden

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We did take some time today to notice how beautiful the flowers in the garden have become! Some are from a native wildflower mix, others were planted to add pops of color throughout the vegetable garden.

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Stirling and Declan are always close on my heels, now that the garden is producing. I’ve been walking them through certain edible plants, so they’re always waiting for another unexpected treat to taste.

The garden has been struggling this year. I’ve been struggling with feelings of failure and frustration at every turn. I had this idea in my head that year three would be *the year* for my Back to Eden garden where the ecosystem evens out and everything flourishes.

But I’ve completely forgotten that nature is not mine to control. Certainly, we can design aspects to suite our needs and improve productivity, but ultimately the best thing to do when struggling is to take a moment and listen to what it is trying to tell you.

My garden is not a failure. We’ve had an unseasonably hot and dry spring following a warm and mild winter. It is totally reasonable that this would be a difficult year for pests, and that ‘weeds’ that can flourish in extremely dry conditions would overtake the delicate vegetables.

It simply needs more maintenance at this point than I had anticipated. Watering, a concept I’ve never had to worry about since implementing BTE is a necessity at this point. Pest management is also getting added to the list of weekly maintenance. I’m looking into some other organic options and possibly adding some beneficial nematodes to the soil.

I purchased a bag of organic bone meal and fertilized the entire garden. The past two years, I’ve had good success only using the blood (diluted 1:10 with water) from harvesting chickens and rabbits twice throughout the season. I fertilized a few weeks ago when we harvested our first round of meat birds, but many of my vegetables are showing signs of nitrogen or phosphorus depletion.

Blood meal as a fertilizer is an amazing source of Nitrogen for your plants. It can have a slightly lower ph level (making your soil slightly more acidic). While bone meal has a higher concentration of phosphorous.

I chose to only supplement with the bone meal for now, as we will be butchering another round of meat chickens in a few weeks, and will use the ‘waste’ as a nitrogen source for the garden.

You can find bone meal and blood meal through these links! The blood meal is a good option if you don’t butcher your own animals. Both are also good sources for extra minerals for your plants that you won’t get from a synthetic fertilizer (that is generally comprised of only the nutrients: nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium. N-P-K)

Growing Food

I did have them harvest some borage and pansy flowers to top our pancakes.

The following night, we raided the herb garden to spice up a pasta dish. Almost the entire meal was made or harvested from home!

• Homemade garlic and herb bread (using our Sandwich Bread recipe) and made with our goat milk!
• Marinara meat sauce with pork we processed, tomatoes canned from last year’s garden, and fresh herbs.
• The raviolis weren’t homemade, but they did inspire the dish! They were stuffed with spinach, and every bit as delicious as I had hoped!
• To season the pork and the sauce, I used chives, sage, marjoram, thyme, and oregano.

How am I doing?

I’ve mentioned low energy and not feeling well a few times over the last few weeks in my blog posts. There have been a few readers that have reached out to check on me, which is so kind and touching! I appreciate everyone’s concern!

I am perfectly healthy! Nauseated, extra grumpy sometimes, and super tired – but I’m okay!

We will be welcoming another baby to our family in February of 2021!

Any other families of 5 out there? Tips and advice on transitioning from two to three children would be greatly appreciated!