Learning Curve

I told you a while ago how excited I was for our garden, and I feel like I ought to follow up on that.  Don't worry, this isn't going to be one of those bragging posts where I make you feel like a loser because we're so awesome at doing something new (hopefully I don't ever do that-- that's really not what this blog is supposed to be about!).

The truth is, our poor garden REALLY struggled.  It started out so well, but we quickly realized we had planted it in a spot that didn't have NEARLY enough sunlight.  It turns out that everything is a lot shadier as soon as the trees grow leaves, something we hadn't really considered when we were planning all this in February.  So plenty of stuff grew, but that was kind of all it did.  It grew and grew and grew trying to find enough sunshine, but it never produced much.  That's not to say it was a complete failure-- the basil plants did great and I'm hoping to make pesto with them this week.  And I got quite a bit of cilantro until Baby #5 here decided she hated cilantro and I had to stop eating it.  (I just thought we were growing it wrong and it tasted funny-- perhaps it was already going to seed?  It took Craig buying some from the store to prove to me that this was my own unique food aversion, not a problem with our garden.)  And we got some lettuce and peas early on and a few tomatoes and zucchini recently.  But that last sentence alone-- a "few" zucchini???  Who only grows a few zucchini???-- should tell you something wasn't quite right.

Anyway, tonight we pulled up all the carrots and found to our amusement that the ones that grew the longest had been forced to grow crooked because of the weed cloth underneath our garden box.  Oops!  And we also found two of the smallest potatoes ever plucked out of the dirt, and one tiny onion.

Freshly picked

And scrubbed clean

But I'm an optimist, and I'm already dreaming about what we might be able to grow next year when we move it to a sunny spot!  I knew we wouldn't save any money gardening, but I hoped we would at least begin to learn how to grow our own food.  And we're certainly doing that, even if that means learning from our mistakes.

Watching Kendra happily scrubbing carrots (and wearing her apron that matches mine, both of which my friend Emma made for us), and then eating carrot sticks together as a family and agreeing that they were yummy was a wonderful thing to experience.  Worth every penny.


The garden isn't the only place where we're working on learning how to grow and make food.  Our little Emma (not named for my friend, but perhaps she should have been?) is finally laying actual eggs for us.  And finding a fresh, warm egg really is quite thrilling.  (I think I get more excited than the kids, actually).  So far she's laid four of them for us!

 They're very small, but so pretty!  We haven't eaten any yet, but we're planning on making omelets on Saturday!


And as if that wasn't enough, Craig and I have made cheese twice now!  Craig got me the basic cheese-making kit from this website for my birthday and we made mozzarella together, and he made ricotta on his own.  And I put it all into a lasagne and it was FABULOUS.  (Ironically, I used canned pasta sauce.  One of these days I need to make that from scratch, too!  USING ONLY PRODUCE THAT I'VE GROWN IN MY OWN GARDEN!!!!  Now that will be something to brag about!)  So here is a bit of freshly made mozzarella, with homegrown basil and tomato on a Ritz cracker.

We're so gourmet.

Again, it would have been more impressive if I'd made bread or something to put it on.  Or if I had ground my own wheat!  And grown the wheat myself!  But, you know, baby steps.  I can only try so many new things at a time!  And besides, I think as soon as I mentioned making our cheese, I started edging us towards this category:



Don't worry, we had chicken nuggets for dinner tonight.  And they weren't even made from our chickens.