In the garden - and raising kids on the homestead

I wrote a story for "Free Range Child", which is part of a wonderful movement called "Overgrow the System". Their vision: "to create an effective and compelling platform that can empower and activate people across social spectrums, while also addressing the real issues and challenges that the world faces today. A platform that can inspire people to reclaim their freedom and their power from the cultural mechanisms of control and complacency in order to live more in balance with the cycles and systems of the natural world."

I love that vision, and I love that they recruited me to write for them. You can read my piece here.

It totally ties in with this blog post today: how the kids help us with everything on the homestead, and this week, we planted our garden. I'm so happy with how it looks.

In my article for "Free Range Child" I told a story about how my kids help us on the homestead, so I won't expand on it here.  Let me just say: these children know how to work!  They helped me dig the garden with a broad fork, plant potatoes and transplant brassicas.  

It warms my heart to see them work beside me.  They know where their food comes from, and they know it takes effort to plant and nurture it before they can eat it.

But by Golly, we shall have potatoes for hash browns, and this prospect alone will motivate my oldest son to sweat over digging the potato trench!

I'm especially impressed with Eva.  She's only six, but she's trailing me around in the garden.

"Can I help you, Mama?"

Why, yes, she certainly can.  She loves watering, of course (what child doesn't love playing with water?), but she also willingly hoes, weeds and transplants.  Here is some mighty happy lettuce, nurtured by her little hands.

We've been eating from the garden quite a bit lately: asparagus, overwintered kale, collards and leeks, chives, and bamboo shoots (I will write a how-to tutorial on how to prepare them later).

Kai is helping Steve build a new chicken tractor.  The old one has been around for a decade and is getting tired (I mean the chicken tractor, not Steve).

I gotta feed all these busy helpers, so I made some killer cornbread that disappeared in about two minutes.

I will leave you with photos of things that are blooming in our yard.  There's lots blooming, and the mason bees are happy.

What's blooming in your neck of the woods?