I was talking to my boss Donna the other day, about how I wished that Matthew and I owned some land, so we could garden, and be more self sufficient. She mentioned that she had a garden area that she doesn't use because she is getting older and its hard enough to keep up with all the horses. She said if we wanted to do the work to get it ready, and give her a small share, she would let us use the space. WHOOOHOOOO!! So on Monday we packed up the kids and went over there to begin working...not knowing exactly what we were in for. See, she has this huge area, part of it has about 6 fruit trees, then a big patch in the middle, then a row of blueberries, a couple empty rows that are set up for vining plants, and then a row of grapes. The big patch in the middle was were she used to garden, and thats what we needed to get ready. Which would have been easy peasy, if the weeds and grass hadn't been growing unchecked for TWO YEARS!! Not only that, but when she realized that she wasn't going to be using the garden anymore, she covered it with black plastic to keep the weeds out. Hahaha. They just grew right up through it, and covered about 75% of our future garden area. To make it all that much better, her week whacker was broken. So we set to work hand weeding our plot, which isn't exactly tiny. Its about 60x25 feet!!! It took 4 HOURS to get the weeds pulled, the weeds moved, the bushes growing nearby whacked down, the rotten logs hauled away, the t posts that were on top of the plastic moved to the barn, the plastic pulled up and FOLDED neatly (this killed me...its going to the dump anyways, why oh why did I have to spend 45 minutes folding it all?!!?) and everything put away. It was hard, back breaking work, made worse by the sun and two small children who wanted to be anywhere but there. But...I secretly loved it. I feel so good getting out and working the land, hard farm labor gives me thrills! I could TOTALLY see myself as a farmer, Matthew could go to work all day, and I could farm all day. It would be total bliss. And I would be totally buff! I should have taken a before picture, but we forgot the camera. I will try to get some tomorrow though, so you can see where our bountiful garden will be planted. We are hoping to get everything planted next week. I am really hoping that Donna will get it tilled with the tractor, instead of me having to go this weekend and hand till it all. Say a little prayer for that with me, okay? I know its late in the season, so I don't know how much of anything we will actually get, but I am dizzy with excitement of growing our own corn, broccoli, cauliflower, peppers, tomatoes, beans, peas, pumpkins for Halloween.....the list goes on and on. I actually cant wait till next year, when we can have more time to clear out more, and grow twice as much!! Maybe I can convince Donna to let us use the very back field for chickens...and maybe a pig too. The possibilities are endless :)