Looking back at Home Goals 2024

Posted on January 13, 2025 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

Last year was a “get back on track” year in terms of home projects, and I feel like I did pretty well. It wasn’t always easy. It wasn’t always fun. It wasn’t always the most “bloggable” content. But I feel like I made progress, which for me is very satisfying.

Also satisfying? This annual look back at how I did on home goals 2024.

Driveway

Paving the driveway was the final step in our garage/mudroom/patio makeover. It feels like a big accomplishment to have this project completely done. The south side of our house has had a huge transformation, and I love the result. Plus, clearing the snow this winter has been much easier.

Coop

The coop ended last year in pretty good shape (I have updates to share). It’s not done, but we’re closer and getting birds this spring seems possible. I’m very proud of how my plans are coming together and that I’ve done most of the work myself.

Vegetable garden

As you saw in my Home Goals 2024 mid-year report, I decided to let the vegetable garden go last year. It was the right choice for me at the time, and looking back I don’t regret crossing it off the list.

Clean-up inside

Last year I wrote that “anything will be progress.” So, on the goal of tweaking, organizing, purging our house, I can say that I made progress. Fully finishing Ellie’s room was a big step. There’s still a lot more to do, so I feel like I’m still in the middle of a game of dominoes. Fixing one space will fix another which will lead to the space after that (which will lead us to Home Goals 2025, so stay tuned).

Clean-up outside

Our chipper and rotary cutter were both in action last year, and I was able to maintain all of the areas I had cleaned up previously. I also cleaned up a few new areas around the coop, so we are mowing all the way around the barn for the first time since we moved to the farm. My other big clean up, both inside and out, was a large quantity of Matt’s stuff. This project fell into the not easy, not fun and not bloggable category. But now it also falls into the done category.

Personal goals

I also had some personal goals last year that were about some of the other things that are important in my life.

Walking: 469.5km (39km per month. The same as last year and a bit shy of this year’s goal of 42km per month–though I still don’t track on-farm field walks, which I do at least once a day with Cigo)
Monkey bars: I still do them every week.
Reading: 37 books (didn’t hit my goal of 50 books)
1,000 Hours Outside: 939.5 (close, but this is a challenge that even if you lose you win)
Family albums: I completed 2020 and 2024, so that leaves 2021 and 2022 to catch up on.
Rest: Still my hardest challenge. I’m more conscious of my need to rest and I feel like I’m doing a better job of listening to my body. Though I still need to go to bed earlier.

Looking back at 2024, I’m proud of what I accomplished. Everything I did set us up for what I want to do this year, and I’m really excited for what’s ahead for 2025. Stay tuned for Home Goals 2025 coming up.

Did you have any home goals last year? How did you do on projects around your house? What was your big accomplishment for the year?

Home Goals 2024 mid-year report

Posted on July 8, 2024 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

We are halfway through the year, and it’s time to check in on how I’m doing with this year’s home goals. At the start of the year, I said that I needed a reset, and I planned my projects with that in mind. As I review the list, I feel like I’m doing pretty good. I’ve made progress in most areas. It’s nice to feel like I’m more organized and getting through things.

I also feel like this update might be a bit premature as I have two reveal posts coming soon.

Read on to see how I’ve done so far.

Driveway

Guess what? I can finally say that the garage and mudroom renovation (begun in 2021) is done. Yup. We have a paved driveway. All the details and photos coming soon.

Coop

A new wall being framed for the exterior of a barn

Slowly but surely the coop is moving forward. We’ve had a new foundation wall built and I’ve started framing the exterior wall. I’ve also been working on clearing some of the “yard” around the coop. This long-awaited project is happening.

Vegetable garden

The vegetable garden has been crossed off the list for 2024. I’m a bit disappointed, but I know it was the right decision. We are working off and on in the other gardens, and I’m seeing progress there which feels really good. And despite our neglect, we have had some good harvests. One and a half pounds of asparagus–our best ever–and raspberries, which are starting now.

Clean-up inside

Woman statue lamp and silver box sitting on a dresser in front of a framed photo and mirror

I made a few tweaks to my bedroom, added a craft shelf to Ellie’s soon-to-be playroom, cleaned out a few other spaces and finished off the final details for Ellie’s bedroom (another reveal that is coming soon). I still have a lot to work through, but we’ve made some progress and I can see the future.

Clean-up outside

I’ve chipped, I’ve mowed, I’ve pruned, trimmed, picked up rocks, tarped. Our new chipper has been a great addition. I’ve already started rebuilding brush piles, but they’re more contained, and I know I can clean them up again before they become gargantuan. I’ve run the rotary cutter over the septic bed and along the edge of the front field, and I’m confident I can continue to maintain these areas. I’ve “groomed” a few new sections of the property, and getting each of them cleaned up feels like a good accomplishment. I also had a milestone last week when the first big load of Matt’s stuff left the barn.

Personal goals

Earlier this year I also shared some personal goals. Here’s how I’m doing on them:

Walking: 290km (48km per month–ahead of my goal of 42km per month)
Monkey bars: I still do them every week and whenever Ellie and I visit a playground. I haven’t mastered a chin-up yet, but I’m working on it. I definitely feel that my grip strength has improved.
Reading: 19 books (not quite on track for my goal of 50 books this year)
1,000 Hours Outside: 644 (in pretty good shape to hit our goal, I hope)
Family albums: I’ve completed 2020 and am hoping to finish 2021 as well. That would leave me with just 2022 to catch up on (and ’24, of course).
Rest: Still my hardest challenge. I’m more conscious of my need to rest and I feel like I’m doing a better job of listening to my body. Though I still need to go to bed earlier.

These personal goals are less about making big changes (aside from rest) and more about maintaining a balance for myself. They’re a good reminder of some of the other things that are important to me.

Overall, I feel like I’m making good progress, and that feels good. This mid-year review makes me proud of what we’ve accomplished so far and gives me motivation to keep going.

How have you been doing on your projects so far this year? Is anyone else doing a reset? What are your big goals for 2024 (home or otherwise)?

Pick and choose

Posted on June 3, 2024 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

When it comes to work on the farm, I often use the phrases “pick and choose” and “cut my losses.” I can’t do everything. This is a reality of life, whether you have a farm or not.

When I picked the barn cleanout as my priority for this spring, I knew the timing would coincide with garden prep season. The result is that the gardens have had very little attention.

I managed to pretty much prune the raspberries (something I usually do in the fall). I weeded a little bit around the rhubarb, asparagus and raspberries. And when mowing season started I pushed the mower into the vegetable garden. I have also spent a bit of time in every flower garden, but haven’t made it completely through any of them.

It is time to pull out another phrase and cut my losses. So I’m crossing the vegetable garden off my list for this year. We had a beautiful asparagus harvest–our best yet. I’m hoping for good raspberry and grape harvests again. But that’s it. I’m not going to plant the garden this year.

I will mow as much as I can to avoid it being completely overrun. I will try to weed the raspberries every so often so that we can get to them to pick. But I don’t feel up to doing more right now.

This is where picking and choosing come in. I’ve picked my priority. I can’t choose everything. So in making my choice, I let other things go–cut my losses.

When I want to put my hands in the dirt and make some progress outside, I have plenty of flower gardens that can use the attention. And Matt’s Dad has stepped up and offered Ellie some space in his garden. She loves growing things, but she’s not into the work of a garden yet, so help from Matt’s Dad means a lot.

I’m a bit disappointed. Every year I hope that I will make some headway on the garden and get it to a point where it’s more manageable and productive. To miss another year pushes that goal farther out again. But a garden takes time, and this year I don’t have that time. So rather than keeping it on my list and letting it take up space in my brain, I’m crossing it off. As I do that, I’m also a bit relieved.

Someday we will have a beautiful, productive garden and the time to care for it. But not this year.

Are you doing a vegetable garden this year? How are your gardens growing so far? Is anyone else taking things off their to-do lists? Or perhaps adding something new?

Home Goals 2024

Posted on January 15, 2024 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

Looking ahead to projects for 2024, I feel like I need a bit of a reset. So this year’s home goals list is pretty modest. There are some familiars (vegetable garden), some get back on track (coop), some finish it off (driveway) and some regroup (clean up).

Read on for more details about what I’m hoping to accomplish this year.

Driveway

In 2020 we built the garage and mudroom. In 2023 we built the patio. The last thing to finish off the south side of the house is to pave the driveway. I’m not paving the whole lane, but I would like to have one section with a solid surface. It makes for easier plowing and maintenance. It will also give our girl a smooth spot for biking and scootering, rather than riding circles inside the garage (or testing the limits of training wheels in the snow).

Coop

The coop returns for another year. First up, framing a new wall to close up the side of the barn. This has been on my to-do list for more than a year, and I haven’t done it. I met with one of the contractors who built our garage last week to see how much it will cost to have him build the wall. I expect it will be out of my budget, but talking through the plan with him has made me feel like maybe it is DIYable. And then I can save my budget for other things like eavestrough, electrical and fences.

Vegetable garden

As you saw in my Home Goals 2023 wrap up, the vegetable garden was a bit of a disappointment last year. I’m hoping we can get back on track and make some more progress this year.

Clean-up inside

This goal is probably my biggest reset. I’m currently feeling like every single space in our house needs tweaking, organizing, purging. I’m honestly not sure where to start as I also feel like I’m in the middle of a stack of dominoes. I need to move the old king-size headboard out of my room, but I need a space to put it, which means reorganizing the cold cellar (or stashing it in the barn). Reorganizing the cold cellar means building better lumber storage in the garage. (And I can play this game for pretty much every room in our house.) This goal is a good example of why it’s helpful to “just start,” because anything will be progress.

Clean-up outside

There is always an area to clean up outside. This year I’m focusing on two big brush piles, continuing to maintain the septic bed, and working my way further along the “junk pile.” With 129 acres, narrowing my focus is essential, but I feel like I made good progress on the clean up category last year, and hopefully this year I can build on that.

I’m looking forward to getting back on track, making progress, and crossing some things off my list this year. Stay tuned.

Do you have any home goals for this year? Anyone else feel like they need a reset?

Looking back at Home Goals 2023

Posted on January 8, 2024 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

Last year was a different kind of year. I started a new job as a college instructor. We took a big trip to Ireland and had other getaways and day trips. This meant that there wasn’t as much time for working on the farm.

As we start 2024, I feel like I left a lot undone last year. But as I look back at the goals I set for 2023, I feel like maybe I didn’t do too bad.

Here’s a review of some of what we did and last year’s home goals.

Coop

My plan was to have the coop completely finished by the end of the year so that we’re ready to bring home some chicks this spring. That did not happen. Our landscapers cleared the old foundation, Matt’s Dad helped tear apart the roof sections and burned a lot of the old wood. I piled more lumber that I hope to reuse and cleaned up the area inside the barn where I want to build. But we still have a big hole in the side of the barn and no pens inside. I’m not giving up, though. The coop will return this year along with other barn upgrades, like eavestrough, exterior lighting and probably some more electrical.

Patio

The driveway patio was the biggest success of last year. Our contractors were great and the result is fabulous. With a comfortable dedicated dining spot, we ate breakfast outside every day and many other meals as well. The herb garden surprised me with how well it did and we were still clipping herbs into December. The new border of rocks around the garden adds so much to the front of the house. The patio is a small area, but it’s added so much to the house and how we live. I am thrilled with how this project worked out.

Swing set

The swing set was another success–and something I accomplished (mostly) on my own. The swing set is big enough for our girl and strong enough for underdoggies. I think it will also grow with her as she learns to swing more on her own and uses the hanging bar and rings more. I also made a few other playground upgrades at the same time, spreading mulch, attaching a ladder to Ellie’s climbing tree, and adding a flag to her treehouse. It’s become a great play zone for her that will last for years.

Vegetable garden

The vegetable garden ties with the coop for my biggest failure. I started 2023 feeling optimistic and even ambitious, so I think that makes it harder that by fall the garden just… fizzled. The timing of my new job and our trip coincided with clean-up season, and eventually I closed the gate and walked away. The raspberries have not been pruned and dead plants have not been pulled. Never mind new mulch, compost, pathways, or growing beds. The garden is another project that will return though.

Turnaround garden

The turnaround garden saw some progress last year, though it’s still pretty haphazard. We added more transplants from a friend, some garden decor with my Dad’s bike and a memorial for Matt’s Mom with a strawberry hydrangea tree. Every garden is a work in progress and an ongoing project. The turnaround feels all that even more. We will keep working at it.

Ellie’s bedroom

A year ago, I wasn’t sure I could convince Ellie to switch rooms. But once we started the makeover, she was all in and eventually set a deadline for me to finish the project because she was so excited to move in. “Finish” is slightly conditional as there are a few details that I still want to do, but she is fully settled and has added lots of details to make it her own. And we’re both sleeping better with a little more space between us.

Like every year, 2023 was a mix. There is no shortage of work on a farm and a fixer-upper house. Just mowing the grass regularly felt like an accomplishment (and thank goodness my cousin came every other week to help me with that). But we did more than that too.

I used the rotary cutter more than I ever have before and did it on my own. Our septic bed and the upper edge of our front field are now in “maintenance mode,” which is big progress. We also did lots of clean-up: picking up litter, clearing overgrown areas, and cutting trees (Matt’s Dad gets credit for this).

Despite feeling a bit discouraged on the project front, I am proud of the balance we found last year. We did so many things, both on and off the farm, and the year was full of fun, love and joy. For us, that’s what life is about. It’s not what the house looks like or whether the property is perfectly groomed. What matters is the people who are here and the things we do together. Projects are part of that, but there’s a lot more too, and that guided our time in 2023.

Did you do any projects–big or small–at your house last year? Did anything disrupt your plans?

Fall to-do list

Posted on October 2, 2023 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

I’m feeling slightly whelmed right now. Between work, fall at the farm and the rest of my life, I have a lot to do. Fall always comes with a long to-do list… and a looming deadline of the weather. This year the pressure feels a bit more intense.

I am going back to my word of the year, and I am choosing what I focus on (another word of the year for you) right now. That means I have not cleaned the bathroom, but I am afloat with work and gearing up on some other projects and deadlines. (And my cousin is coming this afternoon to help mow the grass.)

I always work best when I break tasks down and give myself a deadline. So I’m putting my most critical fall tasks here for the record. If I can accomplish these three things before the end of the year, I will be happy.

Close out the vegetable garden

The garden did pretty well this year. But spending some time to put it to bed properly will help it do even better next year. Tops on the list are pruning the raspberries, weeding the asparagus, and tidying up our growing beds. If I can get a couple more growing beds set up that would be icing.

Close up the barn wall

The side of the barn where the old coop was is still a large hole covered with paper house wrap. I want to build a new coop inside this corner of the barn. But first I have to build a new exterior wall. I don’t want to spend another winter with the barn open, so this is a high priority task.

Clean out the barn

Matt has a lot of stuff stored in the barn. I started clearing out one section last year, and I’d really like to finish it. This is a big task that would bring me a lot of peace to complete.

There are a bunch of other small things–turning off the water, taking off the window screens, bringing some plants inside, putting away patio furniture–but those will squeeze in where they can. These bigger projects will take a bit more effort (and likely some help), but hopefully I can accomplish them by winter.

How are you doing right now? Anyone else feeling whelmed? What’s on your to-do list? Is fall a busy season for you?

Vegetable garden update

Posted on July 17, 2023 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

The vegetable garden is a mix of highs and lows right now. A nice change, since the last few years have been all lows all the time.

I’m not quite as high as I was last fall, when the garden was cleaned out for the season and I had grand visions for the possibilities that awaited us. But I’m not in the doldrums either.

I’m working at it.

We are using about half the garden this year. One quadrant has mulched pathways and beds that I established last fall. My mission there has been filling the beds (mixed success) and maintaining the paths (mixed success there as well).

The highest of our highs is a surprise. Three potato plants that appeared at the edge of one of the mulched pathways. I am pretty sure the last time we planted potatoes was 2018, so these have been lurking in the weeds for some time. Potatoes are always Matt’s, so these three plants feel like a gift from him. We’re calling them Daddy’s potatoes, and we’ve pledged to always leave some surprise potatoes in the garden.

The next high is our raspberries. We have so many canes and they are loaded with fruit. One of the highlights of working in the garden this spring was hearing hundreds of bees pollinating the berries. This is also our first year harvesting from plants I transplanted from Matt’s Dad, and the berries are beautiful.

The lowest of our lows is of course the weeds, which are still thriving. I’m reminding myself that they are very well established. It’s going to take effort to knock them back. Thistles and milkweed are our major invaders. (I know milkweed is important for monarchs. We have lots all around the farm and have transplanted many plants this year. I’ve decided they don’t get the vegetable garden too.)

Then we have the plants that I want to grow in the garden. These are not as well established as the weeds. We were a bit late in planting this spring, so they’re all still a little small. We also used our old seed stash, so we’ve had some spotty germination. The old seeds worked great for the tomatoes and watermelon, but the zucchini, carrots, and lettuce didn’t come up at all and the beans and peas are sparse. I bought fresh cucumber, spinach and beet seeds, but the beets didn’t sprout either. (Though I did have a spinach salad for lunch yesterday.)

But speaking of tomatoes, our bumper crop of seedlings led me to open another quadrant of the garden. This one had been tarped, so it was fairly weed free, but there were no rows or paths or beds. I stuck 70 tomato plants in the ground and figured I’d deal with the infrastructure later. But of course as soon as the soil was exposed to the light, the weeds sprouted. The tomatoes are not placed how I want the beds to be, so I can’t work around them to put in my paths and beds. But I’m going to try to lay down some cardboard in between the rows to try to fight the weeds a little bit.

I planted the herb spiral at roughly the same time as the tomatoes, and I mulched the spiral with wood chips. We have had barely a handful of weeds from that whole bed, so contrasting the herbs with the tomatoes has been a great lesson in the power of mulch.

I’m so committed to my no dig and mulch and cardboard and paths and beds that seeing and walking on the exposed soil in the tomato section felt weird. The areas where I spread cardboard and mulch last year are definitely less weedy than anywhere else in the garden. They’re not weed free. I didn’t have enough cardboard to do the whole quadrant, and the cardboard I did have has now decomposed. So the weeds have broken through in spots, but there are not as many and they are much easier to deal with than the bare soil.

I think I entered no dig expecting truly no dig. The weeds would succumb with one application of cardboard. The worms and bugs and plants would thrive. My garden would be lush and beautiful and low maintenance.

The more I’ve studied, the more I realize that it’s a process. Battling the weeds takes time. Finding my balance of mulch, compost, interplanting, succession planting and just plain planting takes time. I believe that no dig is best for the soil, animals, bugs and plants. I also believe we can get there to a lush and beautiful (but not necessarily low maintenance) garden. I’m working at it.

How is your garden growing? What are you growing at your house? Are you a mulcher? Anyone else experimenting with different growing methods?

Home Goals 2023 mid-year report

Posted on July 3, 2023 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

We’re halfway through 2023. (Yeah, I know. How did that happen?)

We’ve made progress on all of the home goals I set for this year (yay!) and I’m excited about how far we’ll get over the rest of the year.

Are you excited to check in with me? Here’s how we’re doing so far.

Coop

Black dog standing on dirt beside a barn. A hole in the barn wall is covered in a tarp.

The last trace of the 100-year-old coop disappeared last month when the crumbling foundation became part of our (now massive) rockpile behind the barn. It was a huge job, and I was grateful that our landscapers were able to handle it while they were here for our patio construction. Next up, the building phase, starting with a new wall for the (still massive) gaping hole in the side of the barn.

Patio

The patio is almost done and it’s fabulous. All the details are coming soon.

Swing set

The swing set fittings and lumber that I bought last year are still stacked in the garage. I sold Ellie’s too-small playset, so we have a spot for her new swings. Then I took delivery of a big pile of mulch, which was dumped in the swing set site (say that six times fast). As soon as I spread the mulch underneath her treehouse, I can build her bigger swing set. In the meantime, our girl has mastered the firepole on her own. She’s so proud of herself, and I am too.

Vegetable garden

I’m still trying to be cautious in the garden. Some days I’m quite optimistic. Others I feel like it’s close to being overrun with weeds (as has happened in years past). We have mostly cleared and planted about half the garden. We have 70 tomatoes, 6 watermelons, plus beans, beets, spinach, carrots, lettuce, zucchini, peas, cucumber, grapes and about a trillion raspberries on their way. I feel like we are getting closer to a no-dig, not too weedy, productive garden. But it takes constant vigilance right now.

Turnaround garden

Pearson Pennant flag flying over a flower garden

Most of the plants Ellie and I moved to the turnaround last fall survived. We’ve added some more, made a path to the flagpole and spread some mulch. There’s lots more to go yet, but we’re getting closer to my original vision to fill the whole turnaround with plants.

Ellie’s bedroom

Ellie loves her new room. She has been sleeping in there for several months (although this weekend she started sleeping on the floor). I still have a few things I’m hoping to do to fully finish off the space, along with convincing her to move back into her bed.

I’m really proud of everything we’ve accomplished so far. Every item on my home goals list has had some attention. At the start of the year, I felt like we weren’t just playing catch up anymore or fixing things that were broken. We are finally making progress. Reviewing these goals makes me feel like we’re making lots of progress. I hope the momentum continues.

What’s your big accomplishment so far this year? How are you doing on projects this year at your house? Do you have any home goals?

Landscaping… revisiting the long list

Posted on June 19, 2023 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

As I was writing about our patio project and the herb spiral around the well, I took a journey through the blog archives. I came across this post that I wrote just over 10 years ago about the plans I had for outdoor projects and another about some of the progress we’d made.

I marveled at what I accomplished in one weekend and then laughed at myself for all of the landscaping I thought I would accomplish in one year. We’ve completed most of the projects, but they definitely took more than one year. In fact, some of them are still in progress.

The post also included my long term plan, which, I said, “will take who knows how long.”

Funnily enough, we haven’t done too bad on that long term plan. What I enjoyed most, though, was seeing how little my plans have changed over the past 10 years. Some of the projects are done. Some are not. But I still want to do them.

Come take a look back (and ahead) with me.

Here’s our (extremely ambitious) list from 2013.

I’m still working on the turnaround garden (though we were in pretty good shape by 2015). We eliminated most of the flowerbeds around the house, but the ones we kept need ongoing attention (welcome to gardening). I’m continuing to ignore the rubble and rock piles, though they’ve been very helpful for the fireplace and sunroom demo and every rock pick-up we’ve done for the past 11 years. We kept the longe ring and put the vegetable garden there (also in 2015). The pond shore was a saga for many years, but we finally cleared it and built our firepit (in 2020–just 7 years late).

Here’s the long term plan.

The garage and the driveway trees and lights are done. The bridge over the creek, the tree line clean up and the coop are in progress (some farther along than others). I still want to level the dirt pile behind the barn (now known as Grassy Hilltop courtesy of Ellie), although it’s come in handy over the past few weeks when our contractors needed topsoil (and Ellie does not like the idea of Grassy Level Ground). I still imagine how nice it would be to have a dock down at the pond, and I still want to shift the laneway to the back field slightly westward.

Overall, I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished. And I’m learning that landscaping is a process–and usually takes longer than I planned. Each thing I do builds on something I did before. And there’s always more to come. Thanks for following along.

Do you have a long list for projects at your house? Do you find what you want changes over time? Who else is ambitious about how much you can accomplish?

Planting a spiral herb garden

Posted on June 12, 2023 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

As part of the patio project, the garden around our well was completely ripped out. It hurt a little, as this garden was our most established flowerbed, and the plants were huge. But Ellie and I did a lot of transplanting last fall, and despite our rushed, late season, haphazard technique, the plants survived. Our contractors were also very obliging and moved some of the larger shrubs for us.

Faced with a blank slate, I started to re-evaluate the well garden, and I decided to try an herb garden. Herbs can be lovely and decorative, and also of course functional. This garden is very close to the kitchen, so it’s a convenient location for herbs. Plus it receives a lot of sun, which most herbs like.

I decided to try a different planting pattern: a spiral. (Hint: a garden hose is helpful to plan out the curves.)

I came across this idea on Pinterest. Spirals are an established technique for planting herbs. Usually people use some kind of edging (bricks, rocks, wood) and build a twisting bed that gets higher toward the centre. The spiral creates different growing conditions based on where you are on the curve, and herbs are planted in specific locations based on how much sun or water they prefer.

The well garden is round, so it’s a perfect shape for a spiral. I didn’t make ours rise very much, as I don’t love the “tower” visual, but I think the design and principles will still work. We have lots of rocks, so I used those to lay out the spiral, and we even had a start on the herbs.

My Mom gave me a big planter of herbs for Mother’s Day, so I used that. Matt’s parents gave Ellie a lemon balm plant, which she loves. Another friend gave me some echinacea. We also have chamomile growing wild around the farm, mint behind the house, and chives that I transplanted from my parents years ago. Ellie and I bought one lavender bush, a plant which I’ve wanted to add to the farm for a while. I also took a broad interpretation of beneficial plants and added some milkweed too.

It took us just a couple of hours to lay it out and put all the plants in the ground. Everything is small and a bit droopy right now, but I’m looking forward to seeing them grow.