The title of this post means different things to different people. In our case it simply means taking advantage of where we are now to homestead as much as we can until we are living on our own little piece of homestead paradise.

We are chomping at the bit to get started and since we had a nice 40 degree day here in Central IL, we headed outside and got to work. 

We can’t have goats and chickens where we are currently planted, but we can have a garden so we began cleaning a section of our property that we’ll use as garden space.  We measured a small, but decent size section of space and will use somewhere between 700 – 750 sq ft for our garden.  We have enough space to easily double the space and with even more work can triple the space if we so choose.  It’s not as much space as we would eventually like to have, but it’s a good starting point.

After cleaning up the area a bit, we began raking leaves to our future garden space.  These leaves had been sitting in a pile against our fence since this fall and there was some really nice black soil under these leaves.  While I wish we would have had a lot more leaves, I’m glad we were able to use what we have to get moving forward.

Now that we have our space measured, we can begin planning the layout of our garden.  Laying everything out ahead of time will also help us determine if we have measured out a large enough space. Our plan is to grow a nice variety of tomatoes, peppers, onions, green beans, cucumbers, zucchini, yellow squash, garlic, herbs, carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, cantaloupe and watermelon.  I know I’ve forgotten some things, but the thought of  eating fresh organic produce all summer makes my mouth water and what we don’t eat, we’ll can and freeze – tomatoes,  green beans, carrots, broccoli, cauliflower and cantaloupe.  We’ll make pickles, salsa, spaghetti sauce, ketchup. The hard work we put into our garden this spring and summer will help feed us throughout the fall and winter.

Our gardening adventure is going to benefit us in many ways and will only help to prepare us for the homesteading lifestyle we will one day be living.  So come on spring!!!! I can’t wait to start planting!!!!

Oh wait!! Guess I should get the seeds ordered first.  And get some plants started indoors.  First we have to order our seeds and get some plants started indoors.  Then we need to finish cleaning up our garden spot.  Tilling will be necessary before planting.  And I’m sure we’ll have grass and weeds to clean out of the soil.

Boy do we have a lot of work to do!!!!  Still can’t wait to get started.

In the meantime, here is a little view of what we were able to get done yesterday and the space we have available for our garden.