Planning for a Garden

One of the best parts about having a farm is almost here! Growing Season! Being the Virgo that I am (as my bosses would say) means that I'm almost as excited about the PLANNING of the garden as I am about the actual production of our own food.

We've narrowed down the sites where we want to plant, have begun prepping the areas (aka- weed whack the heck out of it), and starting choosing what we want to grow. My mother in law gave me very sound advice- focus on a couple of things and learn to grow them well before expanding and trying new things. She obviously knows how enthusiastic I can get about things, and while her attempts to reign me in were valiant, she failed. Gwen, I give you permission to say "I told you so" later this autumn.

Plethora is a kind word to use when describing the number of seed packets I have acquired so far this spring. To be exact, I now have 44 bags of seeds (only 4 of which were given to me by someone local), totaling $125. I consider it an investment in my future. I just couldn't help myself. I started by purchasing seeds from some small companies close to our region in hopes that they would do well here. I couldn't find a local seed producer (I have found one since then, but even I have my seed purchasing limits) so I chose a few online. I got the majority of the seeds from Kenyon Organics in Utah, a few from Box Garden Organics in Idaho, and some lavender from Paula Jeans Garden down in Missoula, MT. After that I rounded out our collection with some seeds from Irish Eyes Garden Seeds from Washington that I picked up at the local hardware store. I tried to focus on organic and heirloom breeds, but it got to the point where every time we went to a feed store or hardware store I got a case of the "Ooooohhhh, that looks good!" and I just couldn't resist.

The Seed Collection

In the end (I hope it's the end) we have 3 different kinds of sunflowers, regional and bee attracting wildflowers, some herbs, paste and eating tomatoes, hot and sweet peppers, carrots, winter squash, cucumbers, beans, and a few other varieties. Some of them, like the hot peppers, are dependent on our ability to set up the greenhouse. At the moment I'm not sure that's going to happen this year because we have so many other projects going on, but we're going to try. We may try to start some of the seeds early in the shop with a grow light we got from a friend, but really I'll just be happy if we can get the ground tilled and ready by the last frost in early June.

To prepare myself between now and then for this adventure I have torn apart every gardening magazine I own (mostly Mother Earth News) and organized the articles into categories for fruits, vegetables, other food (like grains), soil health, pest control, seasonal gardening tips, and general gardening tips, to make them easier to navigate. This way I can also add in my own notes about each thing from the books I plan to read about gardening. First up will be Organic Gardening in Cold Climates and The Montana Gardener's Companion. I also plan to start reading Zone 4, a magazine just for Rocky Mountain gardeners.

The Garden Site, Pre-Weed Whack

The Name Game

I've always been excited to name our farm. Even if we ended up in a house on 0.25 acres, I probably would have named it. I think it comes from growing up in California, in Pebble Beach and Monterey, where so many of the houses had names; some funny, some mysterious and some romantic. My favorite was always "Three Gables" because it reminded me of my favorite book series as a child, Anne of Green Gables.

Naming our farm has turned out to be a bigger challenge than I expected. The first challenge is that I have another person to consider, Brian, and he really isn't a fan of the cutesy names I come up with (like "Pitter Patter Farm" after the animals we will have, and the fact that the farm used to be owned by the Patterson Dairy). The other factor we have to consider, the WORST factor, is that just about every farm name under the sun has been taken by another farm. The reason that matters is because I plan to have sheep that I use for my business, and I can definitely see us producing to much produce, eggs, and honey and needing an outlet to sell it, like at the farmers market.

I have a list of over 20 names, almost all crossed out because the names exist already. I've tried to use all sorts of descriptive words that describe us, the farm, what we want, where we live, etc but we haven't come up with the winner yet.

I started by thinking about what we are and what we want to be. Dictionary.com helped us here. Are we a Ranch, "an establishment maintained for raising livestock under range conditions."? I don't think so. Are we a Farm, "a tract of land, usually with a house, barn, silo, etc., on which crops and often livestock are raised for livelihood."? Quite possibly. How about a Farmstead, "a farm together with its buildings."? Yes. I think that works. Or would Homestead fit better, "any dwelling with its land and buildings where a family makes its home."? I think that fits too. From there there are other descriptions such as plantation, estate, hobby farm, acres, etc. I think for us Farm or Farmstead would work best.

From there, there are descriptive words about the area we live in; Mission Mountains, Flathead Valley, and Big Sky. There are words to describe our land and what we have here; 2 canals (or creeks), Willow, Cottonwood, and Maple trees, owls and feathers, menagerie, meadow, windy, sunny. We could describe us; we're both B Wilson.

From there I have come up with (names that have all been taken by another farm) Twin Brooks Farm, Big Sky Meadows, Hidden Acres, Flathead Acres, Eli Acres, Featherwood Farm, Willowbrook farm, Super B Farm, BnB Farm, Peace B Farm, Breezy B Farm, Featherwind Farm, Feather Brook Farm, and a host of others. The one's that aren't taken but we aren't super excited about are Peaking Mountain Farm, Sloping Meadow Farm, Pitter Patter Farm, Feather Meadow Farm, and Feather Run Farm.

I know there's the perfect name out there. I just need to learn to be patient. Any ideas?

The Beginning of a New Adventure

If you would have asked me 5 years ago where I thought I would be now, Polson, MT would have been the furthest thing from my mind. 5 years ago I was graduating college, I had just married my husband Brian, and we were living in Chico, CA to be close to my family. I had always imagined that I would end up in a large city, like San Francisco, and done who knows what for a living. I've never really had a sense of direction in the career department.

Instead of settling down in the big city we somehow ended up in the relatively small college town Corvallis, OR, population 54,520. I think this is really where we started shaping our values. I had developed a love of fiber arts (knitting and spinning) and we both have always loved learning how to do things for ourselves. We learned more about self sufficiency, the "home arts" of canning and cooking from scratch, and developed a desire to learn more and do more. Corvallis was definitely the place for that. I really thought we would be there forever.

When a job opportunity became available for my husband in November 2011 in Polson, MT it was exciting and scary. It was a great career move for him (from Physical Therapist to Physical Therapy Department Supervisor) and we would be closer to my father whom I've never really lived near, and closer to my birth place that I knew very little about. There was just one problem: Polson has a population of about 5,231 people in the winter, and closer to 15,000 in the summer. We were going in the wrong direction! I didn't want smaller, I wanted bigger!

Polson is a beautiful place. It's at the base of Flathead Lake, has incredible views of the Mission Mountains, and is less than 2 hours drive from Glacier National Park. As nervous as I was, it really didn't take that much convincing. I'm pretty much willing to live anywhere because I know if we hate it, we can leave.

Well, that all changed in June, 2012. We bought our first house. And not just any house. We bought a small farm on 5 acres. That's where this blog comes in. As much as I wanted to live in a big city, the thought of having my own small farm is so exciting I can hardly stand it! I planned on writing about it immediately but this past month has been so busy, exciting, eventful, and all around crazy that I am just now getting around to getting some thoughts down, as I stand in my living room, about to paint it.

I think a lot of my entries in the first months are going to be memories of this past month. I suffer from instant gratification syndrome and it kills me that we weren't able to work fast enough to get a garden going and get bees and chickens. But we've done so much more, things that I am very proud of, and I hope you enjoy reading about our journey as much as I enjoy telling about it.

For now I will leave you with a teaser photo of our back porch on the day we moved in: