Independence Days Challenge, The full blush of Spring

I've been tempting fate this past week or so. I have started planting the garden already. The temps have been above normal by just a bit. The last few days and the next few to come are supposed to be very warm. So soil temps are high enough to try some seed in the soil. This morning I found some spinach sprouts poking out of the ground.  These first few weeks of gardening season seem to be a bit of a scurry. Gotta try to get as much in the ground that the weather will allow. Clean barns, amend beds. Blackfly season will be upon us soon and even though the spring chores will still beckon no one really wants to be outside when they begin to hatch. With this warm weather it will be here sooner than most years.

So just gonna keep truckin',

Plant: brussel sprouts, kale, shallots, spinach, peas. Transplanted bunching onions, paper whites. Today I will beet it!

Harvest: Parsnips. Oh do I love this vegetable. You plant it in the spring and it is patiently waiting for you to harvest it the following spring. Alas this year when I went out into the garden with my handy trowel I found a pot full of parsnips for dinner one night. But when I went back out to find just a few more for our plate, there were few to be found. I planted a 5'x2' bed last spring. As Evan would say,"Apparently" the deer ate them. Gotta finish putting up the fence. I am grateful they at least left us enough for one dinner.

Preserve: Maple Mead

Local foods: local milk, local ice cream

Eat the food: I am making lots of herbal teas from wild herbs I collected last year. Strawberry leaf, dandelion leaf and red clover flower. A good woman's tea.

Waste not: Just trying to keep a good routine of tidying the house. Once spring comes it seems that the inside of the house gets  neglected. 

Want not:We are chicken hunting. We have not had  layer chickens for a couple of years now.  But we would really like to ramp up our food production now that we have settled into our home. We will be ordering meat birds from a local chicken farm one town over in May.