My new hobby.

The subject of gardening was never really high on my radar growing up. First of all, I didn't much care for veggies and the ones I did like, well those could be purchased at the grocery store.  My husband on the other hand has always had an interest in gardening and when I was pregnant with our first child three years ago, he finally drug me over to the green side. I have to say at first, I didn't like it. Dirt, worms, bugs, weeding - it was kind of torture for me to be out there with him. That all changed when things started to grow and I was actually getting to eat some of the things we had planted. It was awesome getting to wander into the backyard and get my salad. (By the way, I still don't own a salad spinner.. I use a pillowcase and it works great).  We put so much work into gardening that first year and we had a freezer full of veggies all fall and winter to show for it, I was hooked.

When my daughter was about 7 months I started feeding her some of our garden veggies and to my surprise, she loved everything. This made gardening even more appealing to me, knowing that I could produce pretty much all of my baby food for a fraction of the cost of buying it in the store.  She is now almost three and I am proud to say she loves pretty much any vegetable you give her, I do attribute much of that to our garden. Our second child will start her solids right around the time our first seeds start to sprout this year, hope she likes her veggies as much as her sister does.

When I had my children I started to become really aware of where our food came from and what exactly it took to produce it. I had no idea what a typical egg laying chickens life was like, how long those said eggs sat on a shelf before someone purchased them or even what a GMO crop was. The more I learned about where our food came from and how it was produced, the more appealing gardening and raising chickens sounded to me.  I have learned so much in the past couple of years and it really feels like every day I learn more. I hope to share some of my learning experiences on this blog, and learn a from others as well.