Eating the Good of the Land!

Yesterday was one of those days when we accomplished so much around here that it about makes me tired to think of it! So thankful for a nice day. We tried hard not to waste it. After getting several loads of laundry on the line, Rhiannon and I set to work in the veggie garden. She re-tilled a few rows and we planted two rows of early potatoes and a row and a half of onions.



Later we went out to the flower garden and finished digging out all the irises that had gotten too thick. We cleaned the grass out of them and replanted a few. We also transplanted rose bush starts. I removed the little rocks that surrounded the borders in several places, tilled up the grass that had grown up between them and replaced the rocks. She had gotten the tractor out and we combed the fencerows for boulders that we could use instead. The boulders are more than abundant on our property. Getting to them is the trick. They are usually in a place where the undergrowth is thick enough that the tractor can't get to them. I refuse to pry and lift on rocks that are too huge. We leave that for the guys. So we got a tractor bucket load of them and filled in a little more on the borders. Every little bit helps. The larger rocks work best because then we only have to trim the edges of the garden every few mowings instead of constantly. The little rocks had settled in with grass growing up around them so they rapidly got swallowed, creating a real mess.



While we worked in the vegetable garden one of the chickens insisted on "helping" us. She escaped from the pen and wandered over to join us. She scratched in the garden, delighted at this new, exciting food source. I was trying diligently to keep her from digging up what we'd just planted. I also was trying to keep her out of the rhubarb leaves. They are very toxic and I don't know if they will be a problem for a chicken or not and don't want to find out. Does anyone out ther know? Let me know if you have info on that. But otherwise her presence there was kind of a country delight. After all, a chicken scratching here and there is what the farm is all about. Plus her little "by-products" here and there in the garden are a plus to the soil! I finally got her back in the pen and Rhiannon found a place in the fence where she suspected they were escaping from and plugged it up. That should solve the issue temporarily.



The chickens helped us again yesterday in a number of ways. Besides the little garden incident, I am thrilled with the latest batch of compost I dug out of the pile the day before. I mean to tell you it is the richest, nicest, soft crumbly black "gold" you ever saw. I used some to put in the hole when I planted the snowball bush. This is the first I've taken from the pile this spring. I just push the shovel in to the lowest level of the pile and draw out the finished compost while the remaining unrotted portions remain on top. The compost is largely a chicken by-product--actually about half. The correct proportions are half and half of green and brown organic matter.

I am convinced that if I had a large operation and could produce this stuff rapidly I could get rich selling it. Big city gardeners pay mega-money for this stuff!



This time of year life on the farm--even a little farm seems like a lot of hard work. I sometimes dread it and sometimes wish for hired help. But I realized a few years ago that I was actually living out some Bible promises through all this. In Genesis 45:18 Joseph tells his family to come to Egypt where they shall be treated to the best of the land, the choicest produce the land has to offer. In several places in the first five books of the Bible, the Lord declares a similar principle that He desires for His people to live and enjoy abundant harvests in a blessed land.Well, as I was drenched with sweat in mid-July, covered with mosquito spray and trying to avoid scratching, thorny, vines while picking the abundance of wild black raspberries on our property, I realized that I was eating the good of the land. Those raspberries that are so hard to get to are really like gold. Just like compost and other natural country products, people would pay big $$$ for a quart of those and I have more than I can deal with. It's the same for the chicken eggs. Those fresh, pastured, brown eggs are highly sought after. Yes, there's some work involved, but I have not just eggs, I have high quality eggs! The same is true of the vegetables that I so loathe tending. Once some folks from Chicago were here with friends of ours. We invited them to look at the vegetable garden since they are gourmet cooks. They were only too glad to accept everything we offered them. And this was the end of the garden. These berries and veggies were the leftovers that just happened to remain after most of the good harvest was gone. They seemed thrilled with everything we gleaned out of there for them. Even the rocks are valuable! We actually had someone call us when we first owned this property offering to buy the huge boulders that are here!



It's all a matter of perspective, I guess. Lots of rocks are one man's problem, another's delight. Tangly raspberry vines are weeds to some and gourmet food to others. Chickens are pesky, dirty critters to some and wealth producers to others! But I'm glad to be eating the good of the land! Praise the Lord! Blessings, LORI