Year 3. This was to be the year of the garden.

We cleared more trees. I dug, cleaned out the old stuff, got the weeds contained. We hauled in top soil. I installed drip irrigation. All the tomatoes split from the heavy rains (too much water). The peppers just plain never came in. The beets started strong and whithered, the peas produced hardly anything. Lettuce and spinach did OK, but that's not enough. The blueberry bush is just starting, it will be a few years before that produces anything meaningful. The strawberries produced about 6 berries and that was it. Herbs are doing fair, fennel and oregano doing very well, rosemary and basil hanging on. We also lost 6 laying hens to predators (eagle, hawk, fox, weasel or mink and something else, not sure what). If it was up to me to feed the family, it would be a lean year. Our nut trees don't produce on even numbered years, so to the walnuts and hickory nuts, which are abundant on odd numbered years, are totally absent this year.

All together, I learned that the Community Supported Agriculture program (CSA) was the best thing I could do for planning my food allocation for the year. Yes it's a risk (with a CSA, you pay the farmer in advance, if the crops fail, that's the risk you're taking) and at the beginning I was really getting a little worn out from the kohlrabi, but later as the more "traditional" crops came in, things got better.

But I definitely have learned a bunch about where to situate a home if I were to do it all over again. In short - not here. Yes, we have a nice pond and we love the woods, but I'll never buy a property again where it's 90% shaded - no more than 50% woodland, a good open south exposure to full sun is a must. I like being up on a hill the way I am, but I can also see the advantages to being in flatter terrain.

We're not moving, and I'm not clearing any more trees...but I am working on better local sourcing of meat and other food.