Growing in the City

I am happiest when I have dirt under my manicured nails and sweat is running down the small of my back...I thrill when I am able to pick heavily ripe tomatoes from their vine, burgeoning shiny purple eggplant and perfectly shaped deep green peppers for the eggplant parmesan I'm making for dinner...and I rejoice when I'm watching the dogs run full tilt from one end of the pasture to the other, just being dogs.

For as long as I remember, I've wanted to live on a farm...well, I've always wanted to have lots of animals and a garden that sustained my family. This blog is the record of my adventure into being an urban farmer...

About 18 months ago my wonderful, non-farmer, husband purchased 4 acres of land inside the city of Atlanta for us to build a new home on and for me to, finally, have that big vegetable garden I've lusted for. It is just enough land for the dogs, horses and my some-day chickens to thrive.

With the help of my equally frustrated farmer, father-in-law, Tom, we planted the vegetable garden this past Spring in raised beds I built myself surrounded by an 8 foot high wood and wire fence I had installed to keep out the deer. My family couldn't wait for me to transfer the hundreds of heirloom seedlings I'd been nurturing under grow lights in our family room since February to the "farmette". And, although Tom and I had absolutely no success with the root crops and one corn crop was flattened by an extremely heavy downpour late one night in June, we've harvested lots of incredible heirloom tomatoes, jalapeno and poblano peppers, harticort vert green beans, eggplant, pea pods, okra and blueberries. There are a dozen each of acorn and butternut squashes, tomatillos, tons of paste tomatoes and more green beans and eggplant ready to pick and consume on the horizon.

I am hopeful that my little farm in the city, my "farmette", will remind me every day that all each of us really needs in this crazy, busy life, is a little sunshine, some water, a good foundation and a little love to grow to our full potential.