GROW

My last couple posts here have been short. We’ve been building up the garden & getting the chicken coop finished, I’ve been filling orders and conjuring up my next round of products, all while working full time jobs. We’re busy bodies, if you couldn’t tell. But things are slowing down for the time being, and we’re taking the opportunity to relax a little. This is the season of rebirth & growth, a couple things I’ve learned a lot about in the last year. 

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Today is Mother’s Day. 

I have not always has a steady relationship with my mother. I have often assumed that my desire to remain child free was largely based on my relationship with her. I have many friends who are mothers, and some who are becoming new mothers in the near future. I have friends who hope to welcome children eventually, and others like myself who until recently had not even considered the idea of having them. The wolf and I have both experienced a strained relationship with our mothers. As we grow together, we’ve started on the healing process with them together as well. Every parental relationship is different, and how you choose to navigate them can make the difference needed when deciding how to raise your own young. We have discussed the possibility of creating life in the future, and how we would help them grow. For now we’re happy with just the two of us, but knowing that some day we might be growing more than a garden has ignited a fire in me I didn’t know existed. I’m taking better care of myself than I have in the past. We’re mindful of what we allow into our bodies, and we talk openly about our hopes and dreams for our future together. Whatever we end up doing, I rest easy knowing that it will be done with more love than I have ever known. 

It’s been cooler than this time last year. We were already hitting river spots and soaking up sun last May. This year we’re trying to do a little more planning before the heat hits, and decided to get to work on our homestead. We got ourselves 10 chicks 5 weeks ago, they’ve been growing up in the old rabbit hutch the wolfs dad built in the 90’s. Last weekend we moved them into their permanent coop, not before I managed to get a few good pictures of them before they hit their “awkward teenager phase”. Their feathers are filling out, & and they’re having a damn good time in their new digs. 

Needless to say I’m spending a lot of time on Pinterest these days looking up fun things for them to do now that they have some outdoor space to grow into. They’re just learning to love herbs and chickweed, and spending most of their time chasing bugs and kicking up the wood chips. We’ve decided that it’s so much better than watching tv, and we keep finding ourselves sitting around staring at them for a lot longer than we planned on. 

The wolf put together a perfect coop, and utilized the old one his dad also built back he and his sister were kids. We have hop plants intertwined with grapes that grow along our back porch, so we dug some up and stuck them in the water garden to root, once they’re hardy enough we’re going to plant them around the outdoor part of the coop for a natural deer and chicken resistant shade cover. We won’t have eggs until sometime around Fall, but at this point we’re just really enjoying watching our flock grow and develop personalities. 

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The days are getting longer, we’re able to start and end them together in the garden, or taking wildflower walks around the neighborhood. Summer is usually my favorite season, but this spring has been an absolute dream. Our home apothecary is filling up with tinctures and teas. The medicinal flower seeds we planted weeks ago are growing tall and the vegetables are right behind them. I’ve never been so thankful to have a partner to build something like this with. The amount of hard work he puts into our home does not go unnoticed. Every Sunday we make brunch together after our morning routine of coffee and staring at the chickens. Soon we’ll be making most of our meals with ingredients from our own garden, and I cannot wait. 

May has been good to us so far. We’re building this life, sowing the seeds we need to sustain ourselves, and watching it all come to fruition. I’m hoping to share nothing but garden and growth pictures here in the coming months. Obviously I’ve got products in the works as well, but you can easily find them on my Instagram. This space is mostly just for real life updates at this point. 

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Happy Spring folks, I’ll be back next month with more news from the compound. Until then, make sure you’ve got post notifications turned on for me, so you don’t miss any drops. 

-Marie