The year is turning toward spring with all the hope and promise that comes with it. I have not been overly involved with the garden over the years, but this winter I started reading about urban homesteading. It is intrigueing to me that a little bit of the farm can be brought to the city. Arco is far from being a city, but there are little farms springing up even in big cities like Santa Barbara and other big cities across the country. How cool is that? So now I'm looking at the little garden plot that mom has been struggling with ever since we moved here (with only sporadic help from me), and suddenly, it holds a lot of interest for me. And hope. The hope of connecting in a real way to my farming roots. Hope of doing something meaningful and wholesome with at least part of my life.
So this morning I started cleaning up the raspberries in back of the house, got about half of them done. This is the first year I've really looked at the garden. It's a real mess: last falls long grass and weeds, old flower stocks and plants that were not cut down and raked up last fall; the starts of this years weeds. The yard is also a mucky field of a place right now, with the winter refuse of the birds and dogs and leaves that didn't get raked up. Lots to do, but this year I am looking forward to the work. If I can get the garden cleaned up and planted, and if God is willing, there will be green beans to can and raspberries to sell, and cherries to make surrup out of to sell. It will be farming again--really farming, not just thinking and dreaming about it.