In my perennial garden, almost all the weeds that grow there are edible, have medicinal value, or are native flowering plants. The perennial garden is a place to sit and visit as it is an extension of our yard and is planted with meandering pathways and haphazard bed shapes with benches and pots, flowering shrubs, edible perennials, and flowering annuals. A few times during the summer I will pull back some of the growth away from the non-natives I am encouraging like my horseradish, comfrey, or peonies but in general the “weeds” are free to be themselves in that space. When I was in high school, my school showed us the short film “The Man Who Planted Trees” written by Jean Giono. This simple quote from the story has stuck with me through the years: “The new houses, freshly plastered, were surrounded by gardens where vegetables and flowers grew in orderly confusion, cabbages and roses, leeks and snapdragons, celery and anemones.” I love the visual imagery of small village homes encompassed by both food crops and flowers. While the scene does not include weeds, the feeling that image invoked is one I have tried to recreate in my own yard garden. Flowers and food crops. Weeds as medicine and food for native pollinators. An equal opportunity garden.

The vegetable garden, however, it is a totally different story. I come from a family that has a large percentage of engineers. Perhaps it is genetic then, this love of mine for straight rows and neat and orderly vegetables. I spend more time than I should measuring, dropping stakes, and pulling straight lines. I fought this desire for years and messily interplanted. I made triangle beds and curved beds. I tried to avoid straight rows and I was miserable! Sometimes you just have to accept who you are and for me that means clean, precise lines of vegetables. As the confusing messy growth of the perennial garden’s flowers and food crops feeds my soul, so too do the neatly marching row of peas and carrots. I embrace it now and it makes me happy even if it is not exactly following nature’s model.

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To prep my beds, each must be weeded and broad forked, raked and amendments added. Then the irrigation is hooked up and finally, planting. In my head it seems so easy and fast but each spring I am reminded of just long it takes one person to do it all. Of my 20 vegetable beds only 8 are completed as of June 1. I have to keep reminding myself to keeping working slow and steady and just do what I can with what I have. AND to avoid social media for a while with all the gorgeous photos of Alaskans already harvesting greens and turnips, cucumbers and cherry tomatoes. My garden is not an early garden. My greenhouse is full of garden starts till the end of May and does not have room to be planted till it is warm enough to keep those trays of plants outside. I just planted my tomatoes, cucumbers, and peppers in the greenhouse beds a few days ago. I do not have a high tunnel or even a stand-in poly tunnel (though believe me it has been on my wish list for 15 years!) which would give me the space and warmth to add an early spring harvest.

What I do have, in copious amounts this week, are weeds. Those unwanted weeds and I are engaged in battle, each with our own survival agenda. I want vegetables to feed my family. The willows and quaking aspen want to take back my clearing and reestablish the boreal forest. We are completely at odds. Long lines of 5 inch tall saplings stretch down my unplanted rows. I really regret not making time last September to pull them out from where they rooted along the drip irrigation. I thought I did not have time then but I really do not have time now! Each beautiful little tree requires a sharp metal tool to loosen the soil enabling the weeder (me) to pull out a hearty ball of roots. It is time consuming during a season when time is most precious. And I can hardly even think about the bindweed, pigweed, and horsetail. Chickens are my solutions to all garden guilt. Feel bad about killing grubs? Feel good about feeding protein rich grubs to the chickens. Feel bad about all the weed removal? Feel great about feeding my hens nutrient dense organically grown weeds. Ha! The laying flock loves the 5 gallon buckets of little plants dumped over the fence of their pen. And this week there are plenty of weed buckets to come. Thank goodness for my hens!

We have found and eaten a handful of morels, the nagoonberry bushes are blooming, and my daughter has been a great help in the garden getting the green bean tunnel ready.

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The tree weeds are almost all gone from the garden beds and only 4 vegetable beds remain to prep and plant. Progress, while agonizingly slow, has been made. The last few days have been clear and sunny mornings and then afternoons of building thunderhead clouds and strong wind squalls. A hail storm and strong slanting rain poured out of the sky last Monday. It did not permanently damage any of the seedlings but it could have. I feel so fortunate we escaped that storm intact. My extra starts have been shared with fellow gardeners and the big spring push is nearly over. Another week of extra coffee and aching muscles and then it will be slow and steady until harvest season (August). I sure am ready for a few hours in the kayak or in the hammock or playing with the kids on the dock!

Till next week!

Nothing quite says spring like a handful of adorable freshly hatched chicks. We are embracing spring in the house with a stock tank filled with 28 Australorp chicks hatched in the Kenny Lake Farm Bureau incubator from our own laying hens, 20 Freedom Ranger meat chicks purchased from Wenger’s Country Store (AND an additional impulse purchase of 2 easter egger layer chicks), and two Bourbon Red turkey poults hatched by and purchased from our local Copper Center vet, Dr. Kimi. As we are off grid and running a heat lamp would tax our battery system beyond capacity, we fired up the woodstove and have been spending a lot of time outside away from the 90 degree interior of the house! Luckily it is the time of year to spend all day outside anyway (though it is also the time of year that we get a steady stream of drop in visitors and each one gets a warning and apology for the heat and the odor.) 50 chicks and 2 poults make quite the olfactory impression even with frequent bedding changes! It will be an exciting day when they are big enough to move outdoors.

The kitten, Eve, has been amusing to watch as she thinks each little chick is a present just for her. We have been tossing her outside to chase squirrels (instead of the guinea pig and chicks) quite frequently only to run outside and catch her when an eagle, goshawk, owl or other raptor starts hunting the yard. The yard is so full of activity and life: the swallows are busy building nests and cruising for flying insects, robins are digging for grubs in the perennial garden, the eagles are hunting trout, ducks and loons cruise by on the lake, and a pair of Goldeneyes have parked themselves for over two weeks now on the end of the dock. While the male Goldeneye avidly defends his territory, I see no sign of nest building. Perhaps they are content to sleep away the spring in a safe location? There is much evidence of the cycle of life right outside our window: preparing for babies, hunting for food, and being hunted.

Progress in the vegetable garden has been slow for me due to a vicious spring cold and other commitments. The potatoes and peas are in the ground and my son and I put up the first of four mini caterpillar tunnels. I moved the garden starts from the greenhouse down to the garden into the tunnel so they can be hardened off to wind and chilly night temperatures. Fall planted garlic is up and most of the garlic plants are 4 to 6 inches high while a few are still just pushing through the soil surface. Carrot seeds are in and the peas are just poking through the soil. The may day tree is blooming and the currant and honey berry bushes are buzzing with bumble bees as their blossoms open. The white currant flowers are the most beautiful of the red, black, and white varieties in my humble opinion. That might be because I like the ripe white berries the best too and I am looking forward to eating them! The weeds are up and hearty and making bed prep take even longer, especially the baby willow trees that started growing last year. The kids have been earning screen time and a little spending money helping out in the garden. They are great weeders and compost screeners! With all the extra work this spring, I do not know what I would do without their help.

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My vegetable garden has been a work in progress for the last 5 years with gradual clearing and bed creation. Each year since 2014, I have grown a garden in whatever area was ready enough starting with 6 eighty foot long beds. This year the 18,000 square foot space, with 27 one hundred foot long beds and 5 perennial beds of various length, is finally finished being cleared and fenced in. But the vegetable beds experienced some serious frost heaving over the winter and I am spending more time than I would like with a wheelbarrow and shovel. I had thought that with all the bed building I did last year I would not have as much physical labor this year. Silly me! I am up at 7 and out all day. After dinner, I go back out to transplant and feed the mosquitos. The summer sun is too hard on new plants for daytime planting and once back out there, I do enjoy the late evening shift. It is a magical time to be outside in the early summer of the Boreal forest.

There are so many projects to do it is hard to prioritize. I ordered honey berry plants and they were delayed in the mail and then spent Memorial Day weekend in their box in the hot post office. They are pretty stressed but still alive and I am hoping to finish building their bed soon so they can get start getting established. But that will have to wait until the garden is all in and at the current pace that will be mid June. Sigh…

Soil has embedded itself under my fingernails and in every crack of skin. My back is tired and my wrists have a permanent ache. My muscles are sore. I have to wonder in the thick of it, why we don’t just take the credit card to Costco? Even with the 250 mile drive, surely it would be easier to just buy our food. It is hard to remember why when the garden is not producing anything yet, when it is all still an idea. My mind might be too tired today to remember why this life is worth it but I will keep faith and keep on working. When I am tired and covered in a fine layer of dusty soil and I have only a thin veneer of good attitude, it is hard to remain upbeat (especially when operating so far behind schedule in our short season.) It is hard to feel job satisfaction when there is so much more to be done. But I am trying. There will be successes and failures. The garden will grow and produce even if I won’t have a spring harvest. And I know that when the first sun gold cherry tomato ripens, when we eat a just picked salad, when we roll a sun warmed berry around in our mouth before chomping down, I will remember why. And it will be glorious!

Till next week 🙂