RJ Homestead

It has been a busy spring and early summer here, and our garden has grown in such a big way this season. After sharing about our first wood chip delivery, we ended up receiving three ChipDrop deliveries in total, and now we are finally down to the last half of the final pile.

What started as a simple plan to mulch and tidy things up quickly turned into a full garden expansion. This year, we added three more raised beds, moved the fence line out farther, and expanded the growing space all along the outside perimeter of the vegetable garden to make room for new berry plants. We also mulched the raised bed area, the new expansion space, and our smaller orchard area with wood chips, and we are more than a little hopeful that all that mulch will help keep the weeds at bay this year.

We did not stop there.

This spring, we also expanded our fruit tree plantings down to the bottom of the yard and added 11 more trees to that space. It has been one of those seasons where every week seemed to bring a new project, a new planting, or another wheelbarrow full of mulch to spread. There is a lot of work in building a garden like this, but there is also something deeply satisfying about watching the space slowly become more established, more abundant, and more in rhythm with the life we are trying to grow here.

One of our biggest goals is to grow the majority of the food we eat, and this year’s additions brought a lot of exciting new variety into the garden. We planted hardy kiwi, goji berries, hawthorn, nanking cherry, honeyberry, beautyberry, cranberry, gooseberry, jostaberry, serviceberry, golden raspberry, and more blueberries as well. For the trees, we added more peaches, persimmons, hazelnuts, and a sweetgum tree for its medicinal value. I am sure there are one or two more tucked in somewhere, but at this point I am drawing a blank.

It has been a full season already, but one of the sweetest parts of it has been doing this work together as a family. Even Eva helped spread wood chips and get plants in the ground, and there is something really special about building this kind of life side by side, one tree, one bed, and one mulch pile at a time.

Already, the space feels so much better with everything mulched. It looks more finished, more cared for, and much more manageable going into the heart of the growing season. We are grateful for the improvement now, and even more excited for what is coming later as these new berries and trees begin to mature and produce.

As the new additions start giving back, we will be sharing more about what we are harvesting, how we are preserving it, and what this season of expansion begins to bring into our kitchen and apothecary.

Also, please stop by our facebook page and give us a “like” there. We post some additional content there, and we’re always happy to respond and answer any questions you may have! You can also find me on GAB, https://gab.com/jungerer!