Gardening:
Our garden is very important to us because we eat from its bounty all year. We raise tomatoes, green beans, summer and winter squashes, cabbage, peas, peppers, lettuces, and shallots in our main garden area; and we cultivate harvests from our many fruit trees and vines, as well. We can or freeze the excess to enjoy year-round.
We compost according to the principles in Let it Rot by Stu Campbell, and we never, ever till our soil ... our chickens do that. In addition to those principles, we keep a small flock of guineas and raise praying mantids for natural bug control. Our results each year from our little plot of earth have been impressive.
Pole beans and tomatoes (left photo) and butternut squash (right photo), late June of 2012.
.
.