Snow Flurries here at Herbhome ! Happy Dance !

Something  magical about snow , it always creates a overwhelming happpy feeling in me…

Haven’t posted in a while … seems like I have been spinning my wheels on the highway for months now. It is nice to stop a moment and reflect.

I am not much for resolutions. I tend to blow them off, but Carrie and I decided that 2018 will be “The Year of the Mom”. We both are caretakers .. nourishing thoses we love is very central to who we are. Sometimes our own health and well-being  tends to slip off the roadside.

An important thing to remember  is that you can’t care for others very well, if you don’t take care of yourself first. For those of us dealing with illness, aging issues, or busy work and family lives, it can be hard to break the habit of putting everyone else in front of ourselves. So we made a pinky swear to work on it, together. Go find a partner and  make a pact! Bet it will help you to keep your resolutions better.

What things would you like to change for the New Year? How about what you’d like to keep doing ? Today is a good day to review your past year.

One of my goals is to learn to be stronger spiritually.

I want to be kinder to those I love. I need to to work hard at not saying things I can’t take back. They can’t be unsaid and often cause extreme pain. I believe it is very imporatnt to thank those around you- those close to you are deserving of courtesy and gratitude.  Express your love daily!

Another is to gain physical skill in my martial arts. It has done so much for me spiritually , but also has kept me moving. (My body is starting to show the wear and tear of many years of working.) I love the precision and intense focus required in my practice.

I want to get more work done on the house, making it more comfortable.

Farm-wise , I hope to expand our garden, increasing it’s productivity. I want to add a large deep freeze to our arsenal of food storage.  We need a hay barn  still and hope to add a library. One of the disasters for us of our house fire in 2001 was the loss of our library. Between us , we had a huge research library and wonderful reading selection. miss it .

I’d like to do more crafting- work on my herbal- and finish my novel.

Our world on the Homestead is very seasonal, I’d like to develop an seasonal almanac to track what we “normally ” do .. .

For instance, January is when I get the green house ready for new seeds. I have baby spinach in outside beds to harvest now and some cilantro… it’s time to turn those beds and fertilize them … I am brosing seed catalogs, making selections of heirlooms to try – I usually introduce one new variety each season, Our actual garden space is fairly small, so for protection of their genetic heritage. I only use one new variety each year.

February  usually has a warm spell toward the end of the month.. I try to have ground turned , ready to plant by then .. That’s when I plant early greens- and sometimes will throw in a small patch of corn. If you get the timing right it won’t be up until the next warm spell .. of course there are times when it is a goof, LOL!But that little extra effort will make a good early corn crop if it is sucessful.

March is usually for planting my root crop. The season is different here in the Hollow- I am gradually adjusting the varites I grow to meet this… it has been a learning curve, beieve me- I have almost exclusively lived high up in open areas for garden. We are now deep in a hollow, and with much less sun. So I have had to keep good records and change varieities to meet those differences. I sow my annual flowers like zinnias and coreopsis.

April tends be really wet here- sometimes to the point where root things will rot- so we occasionally have to replant.

May- this is the big garden time- planting all the summer harvest things.

Ah, well… loads to dream about!

Havea specail New Year. May all good things come your way in 2018. !