For my first blog, let’s dive right in, shall we?

Let’s start with my mistakes.

I will be the first to admit that I want my fingers in everything. I want to do it all. I want to learn, I want to grow, I want to produce, I want to create, I want to be in the business of everything. Life is so short, and there’s so much to do! And I want to do it all!

However, this tends to mean that I am doing too many things at once.

We have herd of Nubian show goats. Nubians are large dairy goats with long floppy ears and Roman noses (their noses are convex, or slopped outward, instead of concave). They have the second highest butterfat content (second only to Nigerian Dwarves), which should make their milk the second sweetest of all goat milk, but we find it to be the sweetest. Probably because we think of their sweet faces and personalities when we drink it. Having a show herd means constantly thinking about genetics, body conformation, udders, where do you want your herd to be in the next five years, breeding schedules, how can you get the lineage and characteristics into your herd that you want without breaking the bank. It means finding out when the next show is, clipping and grooming, and feeding high-quality foods so that your goats develop to their full potential. It’s so fun, but it’s a lot.

We also have chickens, just layers at this point. But we’re looking into getting more layers and meat chickens. We want to learn to process our own meat chickens.

We bake sourdoughs, and we are so blessed that they are well-received by our community. We currently have five different types of sourdough we make, plus sourdough chocolate chip cookies. This means I bake all day Wednesday and all day Friday, and Tuesday and Thursday nights are spent preparing doughs to prove overnight for the next day.

We also grow microgreens, which is an indoor crop. Microgreens are a little longer than sprouts, and while they’re not difficult, they require consistency and attention.

We homeschool our child, and keep up with play dates, club activities, and make sure to find time to spend with him, especially since he’s coming upon his teenage years.

And then of course, we do our garden.

We just finished our fall shows for the goats, and honestly, I had been holding it all together well. I had been making my sourdough orders on time, I had been keeping up with my microgreens, I was happy with my goats placements in their classes at the shows, and Nottie (one of our goats) even got a reserve champion at the National Georgia Fair in Perry, Georgia, in early October. I had planted pumpkins and butternut squash right at the end of August, just making the cut off for their planting season to harvest in November in December. We had some trouble with them. First, the plants were overwatered, which was my fault. I was trying to care for them properly, and it turns out, I was over-caring for them. Then, they were attacked by caterpillars. We responded late, but ended up going om by hand, squishing the bugs and spraying the plants with neem oil. Then came the white flies. Again, we responded a bit later than I wanted to, but we did a round of insecticidal soap. I had been trying to fertilize with straight goat poop (since it's supposed to be immediately bioavailable to the soil), but a few days ago, I realized that it wasn’t breaking down fast enough to give these heavy feeders the nutrients they need. Yesterday, I went and bought a bag of organic fertilizer, and irrigation materials for the new section of our garden that has the leafy greens and root vegetables. I was feeling pretty good about my work.

And then we had a freeze.

And I didn’t cover my plants.

Why you might ask? Well, I have found that winter crops are typically okay down to 28°, and last night, it was only going to get down to 33°. But I guess I’m still learning the microclimate of my particular property. It is windier here, which I already knew, and when I woke up this morning, there was a fairly thick layer of frost all over the ground.

Did I worry yet? No! The Weather Channel had said it was only gonna get down to 33°! Therefore, I was in the clear! I marched out to my garden, so proud that I finally bought the irrigation materials that I’ve needed. I bent down to anchor the first sprinkler into the ground, my hoses in disarray all around me but ready to be connected, and that’s when I looked over at my pumpkin and butternut squash plants.

Dead. All dead.

Making Mistakes

Dead from the frost.

Three days ago, there were beautiful yellow flowers all along the plants, and while there weren't many fruiting, there was new leafy growth on every plant, untainted by caterpillars, sprouting from the nodes coming off the main stems.

And today. Gone.

So, what do you do in situations like this?

Well, I’m not gonna lie to you. First, you sit down and cry for a few minutes. I should’ve just covered the plants.

But then, you stand back up. You thank God that your income and your nutrition is not entirely dependent on your garden. You thank Jesus for the lesson that your microclimate is colder and windier than what the Weather Channel tells you, so you better start covering your plans at 34°. You remind yourself of the lessons that these pumpkin and butternut squash plants already taught you, like how to take care of caterpillars, and how to take care of white flies, and that squash plants don’t like too much water.

And then you stand up, turn around, and put your irrigation together for your leafy greens and your root vegetables.

Guys. Gardening is hard. Farming is hard. If it wasn’t, everyone would do it. But just because you fail, and then fail again, and then fail again, doesn’t mean you’re bad at it. It just means you have more to learn.

Welcome to Half Acre Wood. Come learn with me.