Well, it has been a long, cold winter, but we stayed cozy and busy in the warm farmhouse and are very grateful for the beauty of spring!  Thought we'd share some with y'all!

Herb, Burdock, breaking through the warm earth.

                                       Yarrow, just beginning. A wonderful homestead herb.

 These make the first fragrant bouquet of the year.

                                                  "Black Gold" from our worm bin.

Worm castings make great amendment for lettuce.

 Sprinkle around the plant.

 Straw or hay mulch helps keep the moisture in.

 Spinach LOVES water!

So water, water, water in well drained soil.

Bluebell about to bloom. We found these in the woods near the river.

Dandelion's yellow petals can be sprinkled on your salads- colorful and nutricious! 

"Johnny Jump-Up's" are everywhere in our garden. These too can be sprinkled on your spring salad. Hope you will take the time this spring to stop and smell {and eat} the beautiful and edible flowers!

Hello, Everyone. Thank you all for the wonderful comments. 
We are very excited about this video and hope you are too!  The garlic seed, the clove, can be planted now in most areas-but try to get it in before Thanksgiving so you can have nice garlic to harvest by June or July.  Garlic is a blessing and can be used as a food and a seasoning-but it's also the world's best natural infection fighter.  Garlic can also deter insects so it makes a great border for your garden.

Many Homestead Blessings,
Vicky

P.S.  Tips:
-When grown together, garlic and tomatoes benefit each other!
-Plant garlic where no member of the cabbage family grew the year before.
For recipes using garlic check out our Herbs DVD and homestead blessings cook book.

Howdy Y'all!!
   It has been a while since we have blogged  because summertime on the farm brings very busy times!:) Our garden looks more like a jungle now and feels like one too with humidity and all, but somewhere in that jungle we find broccoli, cabbage, onions, peas. Today we canned a few quarts of cream of broccoli soup. That will be so wonderful in the winter when broccoli is scarce.
    Our cherry tree is giving us some cherries now and Hannah baked a most delicious cherry cobbler last Sunday for dinner. Yum!  We also have lots of beautiful tall weeds that we like to pull up and throw back onto the compost pile. It is wonderful "green food" for the garden. We planted cotton for the first time and it is coming up so well!! We are excited. Hope to use for pillow and quilts this winter. Speaking of quilts, we are blessed to announce that the 10th in the Homestead Blessings series, "The Art of Quilting" is now available on our website!
We are also, for the month of June, giving away  our CD, "Farther Along" with every order of the 3 pack, 6 pack or 9 pack of the Homestead Blessings series, but only at www.homestead-blessings.com.
These pictures are from a couple weeks ago and things are already starting  look different now. We hope to talk to y'all again soon. Thank you for all the kind words of encouragement! Enjoy your gardening and homesteading wherever you may be!!!
                                                                    Blessings,
                                                                        The West Ladies

Mama gathering from the garden.

Simple springtime beauties.

View from the back porch.

Out of railroad ties and old pots, life springs forth!

Calendula and Kohlrabi.

Broccoli harvest.

Calendula flower.

Onion bed.

Our little friend makes fresh mint tea.

Squeeze the juice from the leaves...

 And pour it up!

To see more on how to make fresh delicious mint tea go Here and check out "The Art of Herbs" in the Homestead Blessings DVD series.

Hey Everyone!
  We are having beautiful sunny days which means we have been busy in the garden!!! Yeah! This last weekend we had a family of 15 come from Alabama for a few days and they helped us out on the farm. It was great food, fun and fellowship. They helped us with wood, tin roof on an old shed, tilling the garden, general cleaning up and hauling hay, manure and leaves for mulch. The children loved the worm bin (where Mama grows Red Whiggler Worms for compost) and the creek where they proceeded to "fish" with cane poles and cotton string.
   Then at the beginning of the week we had a family of 10 came to visit as they were making their way back home to Vermont. Once again we had wonderful fellowship and shared a meal with them. We were blessed by their music that they shared with us.

We have been transplanting starts in the little green house and in the garden. We are planting, and moving herbs around and mulching alot too. We have planted around 600 onion plants and about 75 pounds of potatoes, hopefully we will be planting 75 more soon. We are finding all kinds of woodland herbs popping up in the woods surrounding our home. Mama has been having fun taking pictures of them.
  We are also trying in the meantime to work on the next upcoming DVD on the basics of homestead quilting. We are sewing blocks and patches and making little quilts- and weeding, mulching and planting the garden is kind of like making a big patch work quilt out side!
  Well, I've got a lot of pictures to show y'all- so I better get on to that and then back to  sewing, seeding, weeding and quilting!!  We might get around to eating some supper tonight, but who knows!! :) We could always just munch on the lettuce that is out in the garden. Ha, Ha!
                                                              Blessings to y'all and your Homesteads,
                                                                            Vicki and Cecilia

Robins are every where and the daffodils are blooming, spring is on it's way!

We have planted lettuce, broccoli, cabbage, snow peas and onions so far and still have lots more to do, but we are so happy that spring is here. The garden has just been plowed (yeah!) and  soon we'll be planting green beans, purple hull peas, tomatoes, peppers and lots more veggies when the weather is right.