My best friend Asparagus, has been back again for this bountiful spring season. It’s such a joy to enjoy food from our gardens! But my garden grows more than just food; it grows food for thought.

I have always enjoyed playing in the dirt. Perhaps when I was young, when I was playing in the woods of West Virginia, forever fighting poison ivy, I felt more at ease with myself, prancing in the dirt. Now here I am, living on my own two hundred acres in western PA, working in the dirt. All those years of shepherding, we always maintained a vegetable garden, my treasured asparagus bed plus random plots of herbs and flowers to attract the bees and butterflies. Now that we have retired the sheep, our focus is on the gardens and how to keep the varmints away! Over the years, I would uphold that I planted enough for us and the rabbits, too. However, last year, despite having a fence in place, I never harvested a bean after three plantings. The rabbits won that battle. This season, we put in a better, sturdier fence that will hopefully “keep the varmints” away! So far so good! My first planting of beans, under a cover of mulch for protection, is now two inches tall, so hopefully we have won this battle.

Speaking of mulch, this spring I found my old copy of “How to Have a Green Thumb without an Aching Back” written by Ruth Stoudt, published in 1955. I have the 1973 edition, which is well-used but has been forgotten until now. I have always been a fan of mulch gardening and dislike how the weeds take over when the ground is bare. Now, I am following Ruth’s age-old advice to the letter! I mulched every inch of my garden with layers of mulch hay before planting seeds, using mulch hay from a neighboring farmer. Whether hay or straw, mulch is a welcome addition and beneficial to the soil. When I started our potato patch earlier this spring, I covered it with hay a few weeks before planting. When the planting time came, I pushed the mulch aside in rows just wide enough to plant the potato wedges. Now, the potatoes are in full bloom, a foot high, weed-free, and ready for picking in a few weeks! I hope for the same success with the main vegetable garden. The biggest hurdle is laying the mulch, but now that it is in place, it does all the work, keeping the weeds away and ensuring the soil remains moist under the mulch, retaining moisture even on the driest days!

So, back to my love of dirt: When we were young and foolish, we never expected to live lives as farmers. We were city kids who fell in love with an old stone house on sixty-five acres, then traded in our minivan for a pickup truck! Our love of the country, good food and cooking led us to our farming adventure into the culinary world. We experienced the best of both worlds when we, as farmers, raised lamb for some of the best chefs in the country. We met wonderful people and enjoyed some incredible meals in fabulous restaurants, feasting on dishes created by the gifted hands of master chefs, who inspired us to strive to produce the best lamb for them. You can read about some of our wild adventures in our book, Coyotes in the Pastures and Wolves at the Door, or you can visit us at the farm and hear John tell some wonderful tales!