Kathi and I have been on a quest to find the Eclectic Inn and Sanctuary. We’ve been looking at properties as south as Virginia and as north as upstate NY. At the start of this journey, we knew we wanted a wooded lot on as many acres as we could afford with a home containing at least three bedrooms and two baths. We’ve narrowed it down to the river towns from Lambertville and north.

Along the way we started to think about what we could do with actual, farmable land. Kathi has always loved lavender and dreams of an open field of it. There’s already the Mad Lavender farm up there, and we don’t want to look like copycats, so we thought, “what about herbs?”

Herbs make a lot of sense for us, being Eclectic Well-Being. We’re big on healthy eating, but also that healthy food should taste good, too. I can definitely picture a future me having hand-grown herbs for sale, regaling customers with recipes, and which herbs mix well in what dishes after sampling the spoils of my craft. So now in addition to the Eclectic Inn and Sanctuary, the property upon which it sits will contain the Eclectic Happy Herb Farm.

The Quest

We’ve found a couple of places that would be great for this. One went under contract already, contingent upon the buyer selling their home. The other one we’re starting to think about pretty seriously. One of the things I really like about this property is the street view. You see three big, red barns, and it kind of makes you want to smile a little.

The picture here really doesn’t do it justice, because you can’t grasp how tall these buildings appear from street level. When you’re pulling up the drive, it gives you that feeling you get when you’re witnessing something that was built pre-1900s and is still standing in good condition. You want to see it closer. There’s just a little bit of awe to it. It draws you in. That’s what I like about it.

It’s not a lot of acreage though. The one that went under contract already was sixteen acres, with a rather smooth grade down towards the wood line. Most of the land was covered in forest, with a good five acres left to farm. All of it is much more level than the property with the barns pictured above.

This one looks cool from the road but is only six acres in total. On the plus side though, the trees behind it are connected to a landlocked area of county-preserved land. We haven’t tried to calculate it, but it seems like a hundred acres thereabouts of woods. Of those six acres, there’s a workable field in the rear that runs the width of the lot. It would be perfect to get our farm set up and running one little section at a time.

What will we farm?

We need something farm-related to sell to keep the farm status for taxes, so we’re thinking we’ll start with chickens. We did some quick math and calculated that twenty-five chickens can lay enough eggs over the course of a year to more than cover the minimum threshold in farm sales required to maintain farm use status. My first reaction to hearing that was, “that’s a lot of chickens!” But hey, it’s a farm. It should have animals, right?

I’m not sure about livestock though. Kathi asked me about sheep and goats, and although there are livestock pens in the barn already, I told her she’s on her own. Maybe once I get used to the chickens, I’ll be willing to take on larger beasts. For now, I’m sold on the idea of farming herbs.

We’ll probably need greenhouses as opposed to open fields. We’ll sell herbs already in pots that people can grow at home rather than cut herbs that go bad a week later when you forget to use them. I can also see us offering some pre-made pesto and other herb-based sauces and spreads. Probably dried herb blends too.

And since we’ll have greenhouses, we might as well sell flowers too. We won’t have the land to do pick-your-own, but we can certainly have potted flowers too. I’d also want to sell things that are local to the area. Maybe not exclusively, but I like planting local flora. I’m sure there are other people around here that feel the same.

We may not get this property either, but one way or another, the Eclectic Happy Herb Farm sitting on the lot of the Eclectic Inn and Sanctuary is coming soon to a rural area near you! I look forward to the adventure.

The post The Eclectic Happy Herb Farm appeared first on Eclectic Well-Being.

When I was growing up as a kid, the healthiest I remember our family was the summer my mother planted her garden.

Age-wise I was in single-digits at the time, so it seemed HUGE to me. In reality it was probably 20’ x 20’. (Although, I swear it got bigger every year…)

My mom squeezed everything she could into that space. Carrots, tomatoes, lettuce, squash, zucchini, radishes, brussels sprouts, potatoes, eggplant, snow peas, green beans, if it can grow in NJ, she tried it.

This was the 1970’s, so there were no big-box stores or garden centers. Everything she grew started from seeds.

Naturally, I learned a lot from watching and helping.

The first thing I learned is that if you want anything to grow, you need to start with good soil.

Natural soil where we lived was clay. If you’ve ever tried to grow anything in clay, you’re probably already aware it’s awful.

Having a high clay content in your soil traps water so it doesn’t drain well. At first you might be inclined to think that’s a good thing for plants, being as they need water to live, but most plants don’t like to have their roots constantly wet.

Mom’s solution was to get my father to help with a process known as “amending the soil.” Much to the chagrin of my father, the method they chose was to double-dig the soil.

Double-digging is a lot of work. Basically, you remove a row of soil about 10” deep. Then you dig another 10” down from there. Instead of removing the soil though, you mix in organic material, like compost, filling the trench and making a mounded row out of it. Continue that process for as many rows as you have in your garden.

That leads me to the second thing I learned. If you want great veggies, you need great fertilizer. And the king of fertilizers is organic compost.

My mother used to have a ring of chicken wire in the back for making compost. It was basically a 4’ high. 3’ round open container that we’d throw all of the veggie scraps and eggshells into. She’d use a pitchfork to turn it every now and then to ensure everything turned into rich, black, Gardener’s Gold.

Of course, when I moved out and got my own place, I wanted to put in a garden. I found a nice, sunny area out back and got to work.

I cheated though. I had a load of topsoil delivered, then I rented a small tractor from Home Depot to dig 24” down into my garbage clay soil, remove it, and replace it with the topsoil.

I also have a raised spinning barrel composter to make more compost faster than you can make with the open-pit compost method my mother used to use. (It’s getting old and starting to fall apart at this point, but there are new ones on the market now that are even better!)

The advantage of the barrel-style composters is you can wheel them over top of your beds and dump the compost right in. Then I use a tiller to really work it well into the soil.

We’ve found that tomatoes, peppers, and squash grow really well around here. We haven’t had much luck with carrots, but the kale came out good last year.

This year we’ve decided to start some things from seeds. Of course, last year we forgot to label the seeds before placing them into jars, so we have no idea what we’re growing! But that’s part of the fun of it 😊

If you like fresh veggies, you won’t get fresher than your own backyard. A fresh summer tomato right out of your own organic garden? It just doesn’t get better than that. (You might even become bit of a tomato snob, scoffing at the white, unripened center of store-bought tomatoes…)

I definitely recommend starting your own organic garden. It takes some work to get it set up initially, and a bit more work each year to get and keep it going, but the rewards are so worth it!

If you don’t have the time / space / or energy to plant a full garden, you can always grow in containers!

Generally speaking, the taller the plant, the deeper the roots, so if you do opt for containers, you might need some big ones and some smaller ones, depending on what you like to eat.

Containers work especially well for herbs, and I absolutely recommend growing your own herbs. Most of the time you’ll only be clipping off a sprig of rosemary, thyme, or what have you, so the rest of the plant will keep growing. You can even bring them inside in winter for year-round fresh herbs.

Right now is the best time to start thinking about planting veggies. Whether you’re going to get them from a big-box store, a garden center, or start your own seeds.

Do you plan to start a garden this year? Drop a comment below to let me know!

Happy Gardening!

The post The Best Produce You’ve Ever Tasted Comes from Only One Place appeared first on Eclectic Well-Being.