Keep it Simple, Seedling!

I can't help but smirk when I hear the words "simple living" because the phrase and reality are as similar as black and white.  When the woodstove won't draw properly, the milk sours before there's time to make yogurt, the weather doesn't cooperate with drying the laundry, and "fast food" must be made from whole food ingredients that act more like Eeyore than Speedy Gonzalez, it can be really difficult to find the "simple" in the life we've chosen.  In some respects, there's very little that is actually simple about homesteading...which is why Weldon and I are finding it imperative to follow Simplicity as a guiding light.  My husband likes to call it "lazy", I prefer "efficient".  With each passing year in our farming and homesteading experience, it seems we aspire to be even "lazier" in our ventures ("more efficient", really).  All the while, we remain unwavering in our ideals. With so many worthwhile endeavors to engage in, it's not difficult to recognize the predicament and to concede that perhaps the lazy/efficient way of doing things is the most likely to yield fulfillment and balance in the bigger picture.  There's already an element of hard, why make it any harder?

And so, I'm only slightly hesitant to admit that Weldon and I are evolving into lazy (though passionate) gardeners.  Why till?  Why weed?  Why fertilize or spray?  Our gardening priorities have become whatever is low-maintenance, high output, and keeps the soil, microbes, plants, and us happy.  We both love to grow things, we just don't want to work overly hard at something Nature is pretty adept at doing already.  This year, we decided to turn part of our stubby, sandy anti-yard into a few raised beds for cultivating vegetables and herbs.  Along with our existing container gardening, we are trying our hand at year-round growing (a la Eliot Coleman's books) and using a methodology called square-foot-gardening (a la Mel Bartholomew's books).  Our previous seasons of experience with hay mulching and composting are leading us toward a system that will ideally keep weeds at bay, soil nutrients high, pests to a minimum, and good-eating to the max. Though the forecast this week says it's still winter, Weldon and I spent part of last week renewing our friendship with soil and seeds!

When I decided six years ago to get serious about vegetable gardening, I skipped the patio tomatoes and jumped into a whopping 70' x 70' plot hoping to grow all the vegetables (and then some) that my mother's bed & breakfast would need.  Talk about diving off a cliff!  When I married a few years later, I carved off a generous portion of our yard hoping to source our year's supply of produce for fresh-eating and preserving.  I learned copious amounts during those first few seasons, but one of the most precious lessons was the value of starting small and scaling up as needed -- neither of which I had done.  In an uncanny twist shortly after this revelation, Weldon and I moved to our shop building where the scrubby, wooded landscape and temporary timeline made an extensive garden plot appear foolhardy.  Meanwhile, our garden research had convinced us that tilling was disturbing nature's soil-building masters (worms and microbes) and that natural mulching would deter weeds while building nutrient-dense and loamy soils.  The pieces of the puzzle were beginning to come together.

Inspired by the small-scale, organized, intensive system of square-foot-gardening, Weldon determined we should start a kitchen garden with three 4' x 4' raised beds this season.  His parents' sizable plot a mile away and our continued commitment to garden there as an extended family would be the perfect safety net for our experiment and the natural answer for the few preservation-scale items our pantry requires (tomatoes, garlic, brassicas, etc.) With nothing to lose, this year's gardening paradigm shift seemed like a wise move as we continue to tailor plans and prepare for our future house and homestead.  We'll only be better equipped later if we hone our skills now. 

For some time, one question had been brewing for the two of us and we finally came out with it: Why not grow and eat fresh nearly year round instead of growing and putting up for the year in one concentrated season?  The concept of extending the growing season is far from novel, but Weldon and I have always shied away from the expense, maintenance, and learning curve of heated greenhouses.  Instead, we've kept a curious eye on unheated high- and low-tunnel growing.  To date, we've worked with neither.  It wasn't until recently, when we got our hands on a copy of Eliot Coleman's Four-Season Harvest, that the notion of extended seasons (and particularly winter gardening) seemed plausible or worthwhile.  From his beautiful farm in Maine, Coleman has become a gardening efficiency guru specializing in cold-season and year-round growing techniques.  We resolved to spread out the seasonal efforts of veggie-growing and give summer's bounty a slight downshift.  Consequently, we've also secured a number of Coleman's books for our reference library.  I really enjoy canning, fermenting, and freezing, but deep down I know that I always look forward to the end of the intensity that gardening and preserving entail each season.  If I had the choice to preserve produce in smaller or less frequent batches while maintaining a bounteous plethora of fresh, organic sustenance for a longer duration in the year, I'd take that option in a heartbeat! In our temperate growing zone, extended season and winter gardening seem like avenues well-worth exploring. So into the wild green yonder we go!

Enter the newest addition to our humble gardening regime -- the cold frame! With scrap lumber, screws, an old storm window, aged compost, and four square bales of hay, we put together this beauty in no time flat. It is exactly 8 square-feet of blissful seeding space and the perfect place for us to get a jump start on early spring crops.  It gives tender seedlings a warm boost and protection from wind.  We've got chard, kale, spinach, carrots, onions, radishes, and beets poking their green heads out of the soil after just a few days warmth. When the danger of frost is past and these leafy sentinels are standing tall, we'll remove the window altogether and use the bed for seeding other plants. Talk about simple!

Perpetuity is one of the things I love most about learning to grow plants.  The curriculum in this realm is limitless.  Good thing for me, I'm almost as excited about the growing as I am the eating.  (...emphasis on almost.)  With the start of each season, I can't help but feel as though I'm about to have my hair blown back.  There's just something magical and rewarding about facilitating a plant's growth!  Even the weeds convey lessons to be absorbed.  Despite the endless learning I associate with gardening, there's an element of calm in knowing that I've got a long road ahead of me.  I can soak it all in, fully invested in what I'm observing at this moment, in this specific season.  Making adjustments (usually, to simplify) is all part of the slow and beautiful process.

No matter how our homestead continues to evolve in the years to come, gardening will remain one of our favorite tenets. And you can pretty much bet the farm that the "simplest/laziest/most efficient" way will be our pick of how to go about it!  

The perennial joy of chives.