Our bishop has been encouraging everyone in our ward to become more self sufficient and to make sure we have food storage on hand. I know this is nothing new. And we have been trying to work on our food storage with my couponing, but I have been slacking in that area lately. Anyway, the Elder's Quorum offered to till gardens for anyone who was interested. Layne's parents offered to let us till up a corner of their field for a garden. So we decided to do that so that we could harvest, and possibly store some food. I say possibly because I am a little sceptical about how it will turn out. I figure it will pretty much be a project for Layne and me. The boy's are past the point of having time to do any of that. I am mostly scared of the weeding. So here is a picture of our weed free, and seed free garden. In the beginning...

This is my first garden since I was a teenager. My parents and I tried to do a garden, but it failed miserably. We did it back in our pasture and it just got fried. Anyway the closest we had to a garden other than that was a few strawberry plants, and some carrots in the flower beds.

Layne, however has done many gardens and he is excited to get one growing. His dad has to chuck about it though. He remembers Layne pulling weeds in their garden when he was young and grumbling, "There has got to be more to life than pulling weeds!"
Karlee is eager to help. We will see how long that lasts! Layne planted six strawberry plants, and about twenty more strawberry starts. I am getting the feeling he wants some freezer jam. Speaking of which, Zak had a temper tantrum about that the other day. He let me know that it really ticked him off that I never by jam. I am not a fan of store bought jam so I just never get it. I prefer honey. But he let me know that he loved it and it really bugged him that we never had any. Well, I had no idea! So I immediately put that on my grocery list. Anything to make the last few months at home bearable and memorable!

It sure has been expensive getting started, buying all the seeds, hose, sprinklers, etc. We went a little crazy on the seeds. We ran out of room in our garden. Luckily our back door neighbors, the Breinholdt's have a huge garden spot they inherited when they bought their parents house. It is more than they planned on using. So they let us "sublet" part of it. So we are really diving in full force to this garden thing! Wish us luck...