Hello Bloggisphere!

Hello out there in the bloggisphere! It is a rainy November day here in New England and I have officially started our Garden Expansion Project! (Which also motivated me to start this blog I have been thinking about.)

Some background of what we are working with: We live in a 2 family victorian right on the main street of our little village, but we only have a front yard. And up until this morning, most of it was used for parking (another thing we don't have much of). This past summer my husband, Marc and I worked on a small garden which consisted of our rooftop patio and some containers on our 2nd floor porch. It produced enough to get us hooked on the idea that we could possibly completely sustain ourselves on what WE grow! Then came the realization that we were going to have to be creative to make it work where we were.

Along those lines, we don't want to move for more land because of our goal to lessen our impact on the earth. In our current location we are able to walk to the bank, grocery store, local co-op, library and farmers market. It is pretty ideal!

Now back to the GEP: I am making 1/2 of our front yard into raised garden beds...to the annoyance of our downstairs tenants. The goal is to have our produce needs met for 4 months out of the year by what we grow ourselves. Our goal is small right now, but hopefully we can do it!

Here is the 1/2 of our yard to be veggified (dimensions roughly 28'x55'):

And here is the same 1/2 of yard with the raised beds mapped out.

It is going to be a slow process over the next week or two, but we have to get the beds in and the soil tilled with manure before snow. The dirt in our yard is more like cement! Hopefully we can get some goodness in there before it snows and it will have all winter to ferment into amazing, plant growing beds.

More to come once I start hand tilling the "cement" and go and pick up some local llama manure! - Kate