I am going to start farming????

Right, so in my last post I was hinting at how much gardening has helped me recover from burn out. Now, I here is how I want to take this positive impact a bit further. A lot further, actually.

I want to try and feed our family with fresh, homegrown fruit and veg this season. And, if possible, try my hand at preserving a bit of the harvest.

Why is this such a big deal, the experienced allotment holder or gardener will ask? Well, I never tried to do so, let alone with a toddler to look after, a job and all that whilst recovering and re-integrating after burn out. Hmm, when I write it up like this it suddenly does not sound like such a good idea anymore. Let's try it from a different angle, shall we?

This new year's eve, as I was slowly starting to allow myself some rest and recover, I thought about my new year's resolutions. Getting back up on my feet, that was a no-brainer! But a bit too general for it to work. You see, I need more specific goals in order to even try and stick to them. So I thought again and discovered that I had lost all my passions and interests over the past couple of months. I had no idea what I liked to do, who I was and what made me happy. Yes, our little bundle of joy made me happy! He always does. But aside from being a mom, what was I all about? What were my interests? I had to search long and hard and found out that some of the things I used to like spending time on were not really for me anymore. But other's were still there, buried deep under a pile of tasks I had given myself. Responsibilities, to do lists, tasks, they all came first until there was no room for "me" anymore.

Well, the one thing I remembered vividly from last year was that shortly after we had moved into our beautiful new (old 1930s) home, I had to tackle the garden. It was an overgrown wilderness, planted without any knowledge and reason and I could not stand looking at it. IT HAD TO GO!!!!!!
So while we had a bazillion things to do inside, I actually managed to persuade the mister that the garden was more imported. And so we ripped everything out, installed new borders and a little lawn for our son to play on and planted 200 bulbs for nice blooms in spring. This whole thing was massively exhausting but it gave me so much joy.

And come spring, we had the most beautiful garden filled with crocus, followed by narcissus and just now the tulips are starting to come into bloom. I love opening the curtains every morning and just stare outside. Back to the topic, I am rambling.

So, gardening makes me happy. And that should come as no surprise, I was raised on a farm! I am used to having greens around me, I helped with growing and preserving, I ate the veg and fruit from our own garden. More on all this here.

But here is the thing. The days on the farm are almost *cough* 20 *cough* years ago, and after that I never really did a lot of gardening. Just tinkering around on our balcony almost three years ago. But somehow, this idea became to form in my mind that now that we have an actual garden, I wanted to see if I would be able to use it and feed us from it. And while I was thinking about growing our own food, the whole idea became much bigger. Much, much bigger.

I want to become more sustainable. I want to produce less waste. Yes, there will be loads of environmentally toxic diapers, there is no way around it. But if I could just compost our kitchen waste, maybe save water, compost meal scraps (more on that later) and recycle more instead of buying new things all the time. That should be do-able, right?

So join me, if you will, on our journey to becoming more passive. Trying to make less of an impact (the bad one, you know) on our planet. And all that, while we are also enjoying doing so! I think that sounds like a good new year's resolution.

Now, all my seeds have to grow and survive in order for this idea to work...