April and May are always busy times here on the homestead. While others return rested from winter, we’re harvesting, processing, preparing garden beds, seeding, and planting. As usual, I scattered a mix of flower, herb, and vegetable seeds across the food forest floor, in February, creating a vibrant riot of colors and an unexpected variety of vegetables. I keep a mason jar for seeds—ones I’ve dried and saved, old seeds, free seeds, wildflowers, and plenty of herbs.
Currently, I can harvest daikon radishes, regular radishes, broccoli, cilantro, viola, borage, mustard, calendula, and lettuce by foraging in my front yard. It’s chaotic, beautiful, and requires very little work.
There are also plenty of work to do in the raised bed garden. We’ve harvested red cabbages, beets, and the first 7 pounds of garlic. The garlic beds yielded 6 pounds of garlic scapes as well.
Last year, we decided to stop curing alliums. We grew tired of onions and garlic spoiling before we could use them, and processing them immediately is much less work. The 7 pounds of garlic I harvested became 2½ pints of garlic powder. These were from plants I grew as bug deterrents among other vegetables. I still have two beds of garlic, two beds of leeks, and three beds of onions. The remaining garlic will be minced and frozen into small pucks. The onions will be frozen, either sliced or chopped, since I still have a quart of onion powder from last year. We also made borscht, which we freeze-dried, and pickled some red cabbages.
Our chickens and ducks are providing an abundance of eggs—between 20 and 30 per day. This will slow down in July when the hot season begins. By October, egg production usually picks up again until March. So far, I’ve preserved 340 eggs, nearly halfway to my goal of 800. That may sound like a lot, but we use eggs heavily, and our chickens stop laying twice a year due to the intense heat, despite our efforts to keep them cool. We bake most of our goods and often enjoy egg dishes for breakfast.
As busy as we are, we make time for breaks, so next weekend we are going to a fair. We all have our limits, so some tasks get delayed, but that’s okay. For example, bottling my homemade apple cider vinegar is still pending—the mother has grown so large it’ll be tricky to remove. However, I completed a project I’d been eager to finish: we added the rest of the deck, laid an outdoor rug, and decorated with pillows and my collection of small sculptures. It’s now a lovely spot for meditation and exercise, helping to keep stress at bay.
My May to-do list includes:
* Building a trellis for black pepper and long pepper, then planting tea beneath it.
* Creating a small hügelkultur bed for medicinal herbs in the forest garden.
* Painting the wishing well with sun-protective paint and filling it with strawberry plants.
* Harvesting and processing onions, leeks, and garlic.
* Harvesting sugar beets and attempting to make sugar.
* Preparing beds with mulch, rabbit manure, and mushroom spawn.
* Planting a bed with melons and direct-seeding corn, beans, peas, and sorghum.
* Weeding the asparagus and rhubarb bed, then adding mulch and fertilizer.
* Finishing all beds with a layer of straw.
* Making nomato sauce and Victorian rhubarb BBQ sauce.
It won’t all happen quickly, but with help from Peter and the kids, we’ll get it done eventually.
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