Boy was all excited when I told him we could harvest some asparagus from our garden this year. 


Don't get too full, Boy.

Really though, I'm not complaining, and I should get to harvest a few more spears over the next week or so.  And no matter what, nothing is better than getting stuff to eat from right outside your door, especially when it's that first something of the Spring.  Asparagus is one of those things you may tell yourself you don't have the patience for because it takes a couple of years before the plants, or "crowns" are established enough to be able to give up any of their shoots to eating, but impatient me is here to tell you that wait passes in the blink of an eye and will have you kicking yourself for not planting a whole beds' worth of crowns.  Buy and plant many.  I promise you, they won't disappoint. 

Here's where we're at with other gardening:


 Thats lots of tomatoes and peppers and a few interesting-seeming annuals that I figured I'd have a go at. 
Greens, beets and dill could have gone directly in already, but I need to make a compost and manure run to set my six beds to rights for the season.
I'm also planning to add an additional four beds to the garden for a total of ten, the better to comply with that wish for a whole beds' worth of asparagus, and lots of other goodies.

And then non-edible but maybe still interesting, did I ever tell you about our facade greening undertaking? I'm happy to report the hops rhizomes we planted on our west wall and enjoyed nursing to hugeness last summer are back in full force.  They don't look like much today, but they grow like INSANITY.  We're under the gun to get their climbing ropes in place because these pathetic looking little shoots of today will be four feet tall by the end of the week. Really.



Have you gotten yourselves signed up for a CSA share for this season?  As usual, I'll recommend localharvest.org as the go-to resource for CSA's and all things edible and local.  I've gotten on the books for a fruit share this season as well, which will be new to us, so definitely stay tuned for the full report on that experience!

Anyway, as much as I adore the weekly CSA fridge-cram and can't bear the thought of leaving off from our farm and farmer of five years, I'm hoping I'll have this whole gardening thing dialed in enough within another couple of years that I can be self sufficient.  For us that means a good variety of everything to completely cover day to day eating plus my usual 40 or 50lbs. of tomatoes canned and frozen plus other assorted frozen greens and veg AND enough storage and root veg crops to get us well into the depths of winter if not beyond. 
Yikes...where is my root cellar, again?