A Garden Amongst the Weeds: Becoming more Self Sufficient

Here in our Garden Amongst the Weeds, it's still too cold to play outside. A chilly 46 degrees with rain and snow on the way. As much as I'd like to protest, this is pretty typical for our climate. So for now we wait and plan. Luckily, I have some very good friends that understand and share my passion for good, home grown food, the exchange of knowledge, seed, the beauty and practicality of good quality hand made goods.


Thank you Sandy Merrill, for the beautiful hand made pot holders, the lovely fennel seed and the awesome magazines! I have been pouring over them and drinking in so many good ideas, sound homesteading practices and dreaming of the growing season!

Do you like to trade and barter? We have a little online gardening group that we spend a great deal of time on, sharing ideas, seeds, supporting each other, sharing pictures and stories of family and our gardening experiences and in general, just learning all we can from each other. We debate and talk over plans and work on ideas of ways to keep genetically modified seed out of our lives. This seems to be the biggest challenge.

We've been changing our diets and watching labels closely

Hunting everywhere for good, quality organic foods

Buying only pure, unadulterated foods.

GMO has become the new 4- letter word... Genetically Modified Organisms are in so much of our food supply it's sickening. In the name of greed, companies like Monsanto and Dow Chemical genetically modify seed to withstand high doses of toxic weed killers. This in turn contaminates our food supply, the water supply and the soil itself. None of this is government regulated, none has been tested and found to be safe and yet the USDA pushes it right on through and feeds it to a population of unwitting guinea pigs. (Us) I have a serious problem with that. All of this talk of poisoned, tainted seed is daunting but one thing you can do is buy and trade only heirloom seed. This can be harvested and stored year after year to plant your future gardens with.

I spend a lot of time with baskets like this one.

One for veggies and another for flowers

This year we plan on several gardens. Everywhere there have been flowerbeds in the past, will be filled with a variety of flowers and vegetables. Kind of my own take on companion planting.

We have so many seedlings in the kitchen that it's hard to find room to turn around. Come on spring! We are ready!!!

We also plan to have turkeys. And we have a due date! April 20th! We are really looking forward to this growing season!


Doesn't look like much, but this will be the 'nursery'. It turns out that turkey poults when scared or cold, huddle. This is deadly for the turkeys on the bottom and so, they recommend that you use a container with round sides, so they can't pile up in corners. We will be adding lights for heat and some type of hay or litter for the bottom.