Homegrown: How To's

We have not always had a desire to know where our food was coming from. Like many people, that desire started when we discovered a bit of information we had been unaware of before. Our eye-opening moment is like many, it starts with health.

After getting very sick in 2016, I was hospitalized. The doctors couldn’t tell me what was wrong, all I knew was I was neutropenic and things weren’t looking good. Praise God my health began to come back to me after a few days and countless rounds of medication. Upon leaving the hospital, I was given prescriptions meant to continue healing me from the inside out.

Well, it wasn’t long before I was sick again, but this time we knew the culprit. The medication I was given, the pharmaceuticals meant to help. It was at this moment that I began to have questions.

And that is where the dream of homesteading first made it’s appearance in my mind and heart. Below I will share picture I have found of our gardens over the years. This is meant to be an encouragement to you! Start right where you are! Our dream started in a neighborhood with very little sunlight and a small yard. That did not stop me from learning to cook from scratch, researching for the future, and learning to DIY anything I could.

This picture is our very first ‘true’ garden. We aren’t going to count the time I tried to grow 12 strawberry plants from seed in a 12 inch pot, ok? We will start here.

This is the summer of 2017. We are in Louisiana and didn’t even till our garden until May. It was sweltering and sweet Justin used a walk behind tiller to try and bring some life and aeration to clay so red it was meant to be under the foundation of a home. The result was a very long, but narrow tilled garden. Many don’t know this, but yes- we have tilled before! We spent too much money on plant starts and before we knew it, the garden was overtaken with weeds. We got some produce and we ate it fresh. I canned for the first time this year. Banana peppers were my first project. I was so scared they wouldn’t seal properly, I processed them entirely too long and the turned to mush in your mouth.

Fast forward to 2019 and a different house. This one was in a small neighborhood. We purchased a very outdated home and flipped it. I put together some raised beds with lumber my Dad had spare. I planted tomatoes, squash, herbs, and planted peas from seed for the first time. We later filled the other two raised beds up. I used one for asparagus and the other for sweet potatoes. In my ignorance, I tried to plant sweet potatoes just like irish potatoes! That was a failure for sure! I really began learned to cook with the freshest ingredients in this home as well as making all of my own bread. The smaller garden was a perfect opportunity to flex my kitchen skills and learn many new things.

This picture is from fall of 2020. This is the start of the Baker Hill Farm garden! My older daughter (not pictured, that’s the youngest) and I mucked out an old barn that was full of horse manure and old hay. We laid cardboard down and put all of the muck on top. After that, we covered the entire area with unsprayed hay. We put compost on the ground in a separate area and immediately planted garlic in it. Garlic was the first crop we planted on Baker Hill Farm!

We have been gardening this way since then! We add cardboard where we want to expand, put compost in the rows and woodchips in the pathways. This has been working for us since 2020. We mulch heavy with dry grass clippings or hay from our property for weed control. I crop rotate every year and try to companion plant wherever possible. We do not till or use anything that is not certified organic, and even then we use things sparingly!

I hope this encourages you to just start! Start right now where ever you are. Start with cooking with whole ingredients, like those you can grow. Move on to herbs in the windowsill and a little patch of garlic started in the fall.

For more encouragement, how-to’s, and recipes follow @bakerhillfarm on IG and YT!