Full circle organic gardening

Welcome to my blog. My mother has been telling for years to write a book about the funny farm we live on. So this is me following her advice, in blog form! My husband and I and our two Kids live on a 60 acre ranch in Northern California. No where near the "California" that made the zip code 90210 famous in the 90's. On the contrary, we live in the sticks! We are just far enough our here that we have to drive to town and plan out groceries in advance to avoid disasters like no onions on Fajita night!

This area was historically covered in wild grape vines. For which parts still are. This is where the full circle idea started. Our ideal for our little niche is to create an atmosphere that is definitely country and ALL GREEN! We currently house chickens for eggs and meat, goats weed mowers and Lots of plants! We are surrounded by cattle fields which make for very interesting stories from time to time! We would like to bring all full circle and create an area where biodiversity reins supreme!

So, my plan for this blog is to journal the best and the worst times, the silly and the CRAZY and all the ups and downs of trying to breathe new life into an old cattle ranch. I hope to include recipes from the past and present and any helpful hints about gardening that I can! Please contact me for any garden help, if i don't know the answer I will find it!

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3 keys to my organic garden

When I first started gardening organically I was armed only with books and magazines that swore it was not only possible but beneficial to garden with out chemicals and pesticides. As a gardener for many years using what it thought were the conveniences of chemicals it was hard to convince even myself that this was even remotely possible. However, now that I have been hard at it for the last 6 years I feel like I have a pretty good handle on what I believe to be the 3 keys to organic gardening. Attracting beneficials: I have found this to be my favorite thing about organic gardening because it give me a perfectly legitimate excuse to justify buying flowers that don't produce veggies that we can consume. The right ones, however, do attract the "good" bugs that an organic garden SO needs. It is common knowledge that lady bugs are good for the garden but the why of it is not always clear to everyone. Lady bugs are very effective "bad" bug predators. Aphids are th...

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle! (Repurpose!)

Reduce! Reuse! Recycle! (Repurpose!) Three words that speak volumes. Around the farm, these concepts have been applied for decades. My husband, Eric, has an impressive local family history. According to the land deeds recovered while organizing paperwork from the other house on the property, his ancestors purchased this particular plot in the 1930’s. The family was in the area for quite some time before that, however, and are rumored to have been numbered in the Stevens Party who came over via none other than the Stevens Trail. Frances Lenninger, a local Vina historian and author wrote in her book, Vina’s History in Photos and Stories, that Eric’s great-great-great-great grandmother, Matilda Foster, came over the trail from Iowa in 1848. This photo (Left) of Sam Henry Stephens, Eric’s great-great grandfather was taken in front of the Vina Hotel circa 1910. As locals during the time period prior to the great depression of the 1...

The art of listening (and reading)

A friend of mine just submitted a post to her blog http://mealsandsteals.blogspot.com that made me think. actually, it made me listen and think. So in response to her prose, I write this….LISTEN. It really does go a long way. My husband tells me I don’t listen sometimes and he is SO right. There are so many beautiful sounds in this world that get muffled with the high paced life we live. I many have, from time to time, given the impression that living it the country on this farm is all peaches and cream. Which would be wonderful, but, it is incorrect. However, if I listen to Lindsey, the above mentioned blog author, I could change some of that chaos in to calm if I practiced listening in the moment. In my garden I have found that there is a peace that exists. I get a sense of calm and relaxation from simply visiting it. I find a bed and observe what is happening there whether it be the tips of potato vines just peeking through the soil, or new baby plants and flowers emergin...

FullCircle Florals Gardening

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