Busy, Busy, Busy

I truly felt like a farmer this weekend, and I'm pretty sure I deserve a day off after this weekend (my dad does too!). We worked, weeded, harvested, planted, canned, and froze....all in about 48 hours!

I had the day off on Friday so I cleaned the house, did some laundry, did some yard work, and prepped for a cookout I had at my house that night.

Not giving myself any break, I got up early on Saturday morning and picked more blueberries. Yep, I still want more! This is either the fourth or fifth weekend I've gone to pick and I couldn't be happier! After blueberry heaven, me, dad, aunt Mary, mom, and my sister-in-law did some serious garden work. We picked all the early green beans and the first round of "late" green beans. We weeded the entire garden and picked squash, tomatoes, one banana pepper (our peppers are struggling this year!), and anything else we could fine. Then dad and I got seeds for our fall garden. We planted red lettuce, romaine lettuce, and cabbage in trays. We will transplant them into our raised garden later. We also planted onions, leeks, and multi-colored carrots in the raised garden. Finally, we took a much needed break and went swimming at our family's pond!

Sunday morning we were up and at it again, EARLY! We planted more of the fall garden. We did some fall crops last year but this year we're trying a lot of stuff! We tilled up the old potato and bean plants to make room (don't worry, we harvested it all first!). We planted sugar snap peas, more green beans :(, lima beans, corn, yellow squash, zucchini, acorn squash, and butternut squash. We're also hoping to try red potatoes but we need to find eyes to plant. Oh, and somewhere during all this my dad and I picked a bucket of black berries from the neighbor's bushes. Finally, we canned the green beans we picked the day before. We did 13 cans!

Not bad for a weekend's work! Unfortunately I was too busy working to take pictures. Just imagine tired, sweaty, dirty people running around like crazy...that's what the pictures would look like :)

Do you think gardening is only for farmers?

Okay, I meant to start this blog at the beginning of gardening season but between work, school, and creating a make-shift greenhouse (more on this later) I forgot! I live in Indianapolis, IN but I wish I lived in the middle of the country. I love to garden! Playing in the dirt, planting seeds, watching them grow, harvesting all the produce, EATING IT, canning it, freezing it...it's all heaven to me! Throughout this blog I will tell you about my garden, share ideas for growing your own food no matter your location, ask for suggestions from other gardeners, and share crazy stories about my crazy life.

So here's my story in a very small nut shell...I've lived in Indianapolis pretty much my whole life (except for a 6 year hiatus in Louisville, KY). My parents have a nice size yard for living in the city. It's about an acre. Since I was old enough to pull weeds, I have been helping in the garden. It was always our summer chore to pull weeds. Although I was smarter than my little brother and always volunteered to weed the corn...I hid in the shade the whole time :) As I got older I realized the value of growing your own food and I have come to find gardening as my passion and my stress reliever. I'll stop rambling for now. But I promise to post pictures and tell you more about our garden soon.