Permaculture and a simple life

It has been a long time since I have blogged anything about our little homestead, We are still here and moving closer to a more sustainable and simpler life. We have been very successful with the gardens this year, we took a big leap and completely changed the way we traditionally grew our gardens and tried permaculture methods, I have to say I am convinced this is a much better way to garden, we produced more food with less work and almost no weeding by adopting permaculture techniques...who wouldn't like that? We even survived the drought with out the chore of watering and this was just our first year!

here is just one area with green beans, broccoli, cucumber, jalopenos, green peppers, two different varieties of tomatoes, marigolds, nasturtiums, borage and calendula!

Here is another area which was planted closer to the house with lettuce, kale, carrots, zinnias, sorrel, lemon balm and toothache plant.

After the initial work in the spring to create the growing mounds and mulched pathways, the work to maintain the gardens was minimal, the hardest part was keeping up with the harvest! We created this over an acre of ground. The gardens this year really felt special and almost paradise like, we had people wanting to come tour our gardens and we heard comments all the time about how this felt like the garden of Eden! It was a very special place this year!

Normally by fall I am ready for the garden to go to sleep for winter but, this year, I am sad to see the season come to an end!

However, for now in zone 5b we are still harvesting tomatoes,peas, peppers, jalopenos, green beans, lettuce, beet greens and herbs, I have canned or dehydrated most of our garden surplus and we were so blessed with such a great harvest that we were able to donate food to a local charity, share with friends and neighbors and even sell a little!

We have also made changes to our life style, We no longer have television and we are home schooling. We are continuing to make changes to our lives that, although can be a lot of work, these changes have made us closer as a family and more content with our life, We are not as reliant on corporations as we once were and I can not describe the empowering feeling you get when walking through a grocery store and passing by almost every isle, We no longer buy bread, milk, eggs, cereal or produce anymore, we don't shop just to shop! in fact, we have spent time this summer minimizing and de-cluttering, we held several yard sales, which gave some extra cash to accomplish some projects around the house. We are still evaluating other areas to down size, eliminate and make life a little more calm and simple. I hope to blog more about our process and I hope you will join us on our journey as we learn to live a more sustainable life away from the rat race that once seemed normal!