Ripping up the yard in the rain - to live off the land...

Like most families, we dedicate the weekend to tidy up the house and do outside work. Yesterday I decided to dig up the east side of the backyard to plant a vegetable garden.

I am somewhat excited to have a vegetable garden, I always wanted to do gardening. There is just something about “living off the land” that brings satisfaction. Maybe it is the work itself; plowing the land, watering the crop, finding ways to remove nearby rodents etc, that brings satisfaction.

The plan sounded easy enough; pull the tall grass, then the bush. I was ambitious to get started because it had rained earlier in the day. I knew it would be easier to remove dirt and roots, hoping to make some real progress in a few short hours.

As I was getting all the tools together it began raining. It was just a few sprinkles, so I went on. By time a trench was dug around the bush, I looked up and sky the sprinkles turned to a nice steady rain fall. I thought to myself, “How often do I get to work in the rain?”, I decided to keep going.

I must admit, it was fun, wearing my steel toe boots and sliding all around in the muddy patched. I was surprised how much muscle is needed, rain or no rain, to dig up tall grass. The digging wasn’t really that bad but removing the loose dirt from the roots required the use of muscles, something I am not used too. (hehe)   While lifting the roots and all above my head I wondered if this is what it felt like to body slam someone!

So the tall grass was removed and the bush has a nice trench around it. I will need to rent a tree puller to pull that baby out. I hope the roots come with it. I will also need to rent a tiller, to till in more top soil and peat moss, as our land has a lot of clay. Supposedly the peat moss will change the clay to a more useful soil for the roots.

We plan to put a blueberry bush in its place and the vegetable garden will go where the tall grass was. This year we only plan to tend 6 types of vegetables. Start small then maybe next year we can rip up the rest of the yard for more crop. : ) Just for fun, I plan on uploading weekly photos of the garden – to share with the world our little garden success / failure. (hehe)