What a growing season it has been so far! Very frustrating and challenging this year. I have been growing vegetables and flowers since I was little, with my mom and grandmother. When I was old enough, I had my own garden every year since. I can say with great certainty that the last two years have been the most challenging in the fields that I have ever had.
I have always had a great appreciation for farmers and the work they do, my grandpa was a farmer and always worked so hard every day. People that grow the very food we eat, work hard. Our society wants cheap food, low price over quality, that many people have lost the respect and appreciation of the work that goes into growing food. This need for cheap, low quality food has driven the rise of GMO (genetically modified food), food preservatives, high use of pesticides to get perfect looking food without insect damage. Our bodies are not designed to eat this junk! We can see it's effects already in our society.
I don't use pesticides, herbicides, GMOs, or other toxic chemicals and ingredients in my fields. Growing is more challenging because my crops are more hands on instead of just spraying a chemical to kill the insects and treat a fungus on the tomatoes or squash. I need to be more hands on and more in-tune with what my crops need. This is more and more challenging every year. Farmers are spraying more and more chemicals which in turn effects my fields due to insect immunity to these very chemicals they are spraying to combat the insects.
I had been hoping to have vegetables available to those who were interested. Due to the growing season which included a very late and wet spring, crops were late to get started. We have a relatively short growing season here in Wisconsin, so some crops were not even able to be planted. Some seeds that were planted rotted in the soil due to the wet weather. We all heard this on the news with large farms across our state and Midwest region.
Some of the crops did come up fine this year despite the late spring. Weeding the garden and tending the crops was going well. Then we started getting our nightly visits from our local deer population who decimated a lot of my crops. They could eat the lettuce, peas, and beans in one night! It was frustrating to see that in the morning. They even ate plants they never touched before such as kale and tops of tomato plants! Our gardens are large so fencing is a great expense.
With all that being said, I do not know what I will have available this year. I am hoping to have a few things available but I cannot guarantee! I will keep people posted on this blog and via email.
On a brighter note, my medicinal and culinary herbal gardens have largely gone untouched as deer do not eat those plants. This is the bulk of my business and I have been busy harvesting and drying the herbs for sale online. Being an herbalist and working toward becoming a Clinical Herbalist, I am excited to do my part in promoting more holistic and natural medicine.
Watch for herbal products for sale on my website; the website will be updated after the busy growing season! This part of my business is just beginning but I am excited for it and look forward to helping those who want a more natural lifestyle. In the future I will only be focusing on the herbal aspects of my gardens and only growing vegetables for family. The amount of work put in on the large vegetables gardens vs the profit is not worth the time I spend out there.
Please follow along on this blog and my website (linked below) for natural health information and ways that you can live a more natural lifestyle. Updates will be on a more regular basis! Also follow me on Instagram @fivegenerationshomestead
fivegenerationshomestead.com
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