We are in hyper drive around here. Making soap, making laundry detergent, caring for the farm, working in garden… It’s crazy!!
We are preparing for Spring Bada-Bing and South of the James this week. If you’ve never been to one of the Craft Mafia Craft shows I am here to tell you that they are fantastic. The quality of vendors is outstanding and they always end up being really big days for us. Then of course there is South of the James, where we are every Saturday. The market is really picking up (not that it was ever really slow) because of the warmer weather. More vendors are coming and a lot more people are showing up! That market is full of life and the vendors are amazing. We plan to sell a lot of goat milk soap this weekend!
The garden is quickly coming together. We are having to prep beds in the big garden as we are transplanting. We have things that need to go in the ground already and 24 4’x25′ beds that needed to be prepped. Each bed takes around 2-3 hours to do as we break up dirt clumps, pull weeds and even out the dirt. Since this is a new area that has never been gardened before clearing out the weeds and grass is a big chunk of that time. There was just no way we were going to get all the beds prepped and done before the plants needed to go in. So we are going bed by bed, prepping then planting. So far we have a ton of cabbages, potatoes, and broccoli in the ground in the new big garden and potatoes, cabbages, swish chard, broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, beets, turnips, radishes, strawberries, peas, and spinach in the smaller raised bed garden that we have been planting in for years. We still have hundreds upon hundreds of plants that need to go into the big garden, many that are still in our friend’s green house that we are using. It’s hard not to feel incredibly fortunate as you are putting nourishing, healthy foods into the ground. It’s a wonderful feeling.