This is Part Two of our series where we are giving thanks for starting a garden two years ago. Throughout the month of November with the help of my husband, Adam, we will be telling the story of “How we got here,” “Where we are,” and “Where we are going” from each of our perspectives.

Today Adam explains where we are:

Well, it’s a crazy weekend in the Trost house.

Saturday we hosted a co-ed baby shower for four of my fraternity pledge brothers and their wives. We have reached that point in our lives that the wedding season is shorter and the kids are showing up in droves.

We had nearly 30 people in our house on Saturday which made for a very loud and fun baby shower. We ate, drank, laughed, told stories and genuinely had a fantastic time catching up with great friends.
Now it’s off to the Sunday night Colts game in Indianapolis. I think I will need a weekend to recover from my weekend.

I started thinking about all the great celebrations we take part in and what is so common with each. Almost every event Claire and I host I feel like it all revolves around the food. Now any great host knows that the meal doesn’t mean anything unless the guests you are sharing it with are 5 star.

I had one great friend turn to me and say “You always know you’re going to have a great meal when you come to the Trost’s.”

That made me feel great.

I enjoy cooking great food as much as others enjoy eating it. One thing I enjoy even more is growing great food.

I love to serve people spectacular meals made with the food I have grown and taken care of. There is a feeling completely different than anything I have ever felt when I can transform a garden treasure into a meal that someone genuinely enjoys. It is my passion.

This brings us to “Where We Are.”

We are just on the edge of discovery and refinement.

Claire and I have progressed through growing our food rather quickly. Our first year was trial. (And we tried a lot of things.) Gardening, having egg layers, raising 50 meat chickens, trying to figure out composting, and many others.

Our second year has become more of a discovery and refinement season. We still have the egg layers (a big topic of conversation at the baby shower), we raised meat birds again this year to fill our freezer, our garden went from 8 garden beds to 24, and our compost actually looks like compost.

Currently I am trying to figure out how to grow the most possible food in the smallest possible area. We are discovering how different crops planted in very specific areas and timing can produce massive amount of food.

For example, when tomato plants are young, plant radishes in between the plants. By the time the tomato plants get large enough to shade out the ground the radishes are harvested and you just produced 20 more pounds of food in the same bed. We also use plants that grow tall, like peas and cucumbers on trellis to shade our lettuce. This allows us to grow lettuce all through the summer without bolting. We are also planting cover crops like buckwheat in the bed when another crop will not be planted there for at least two weeks. This keeps the soil active, shaded to reduce weed pressure, and adds organic material to the soil.

One of the best tools I have discovered is not a special shovel or some magic garden tiller. It has been Mother Earth News Garden Planner. It is an online garden planner that keeps track of what you plant in each bed every year. This is key to having healthy soil, reduce insects and disease problems and grow plants more efficiently. Every time you plant a bed the garden planner will keep track of it and let you know that in 2013 tomatoes were in bed 4. It will then light up in red, letting you know not to plant them there again. Aside from YouTube, it is the tool I rely on most.

Now that winter seems to have shown up early, and our garden is all but dead (carrots, beets and kale are holding strong), I am in the reflection phase of our season. We had an incredibly successful year growing food, produced much more than we could eat and were able to share that with others.

I just took my pastured grown chickens to the butcher and my first thought was “I have a really big yard, I wonder how many pastured chickens I could grow on my lawn.” Now that I have used that grass to grow food, it seems worthless to fertilize, water and mow it constantly.

You should see how green my grass is where the chickens had been for only a day. Each day I moved the chickens to a new spot and now have 50 days of area fertilized. What if everyone did this? We are worried about growing enough food to feed the world when we don’t fully utilize what is right under our nose.

I am currently reading two books on starting a successful farming enterprise and the other on raising salad bar beef and am incredibly inspired.

The field around our house has been farmed for so long that nearly all of the quality top soil has washed into the creek. It is a gently rolling field that channels all of the water to one corner. Every year we have a big rain and it floods, washing through a culvert under the road through another field and into the creek. Each time, the water carries more soil with it. So much so that every few years the farmers have to fix the culvert, repair the washouts and watch the ditches get deeper and deeper.

Are we really fixing the problem?

What if we turned the field into, pasture, wood lines, natural habitat and ponds? Pastures could raise beef, pork, poultry, and sheep. The grass would hold the soil in place and help retain the water. Most of the corn grown in the field is being used to feed those animals anyway. Wood lines and natural habitat will attract birds who will spread the manure while searching for bugs. Ponds will retain the water and be used for livestock, especially in drought years.

So that’s where we are.

We don’t have it all figured out but, we have been very successful on our small scale. So much so that we want to continue to grow and produce food for others. You’ll have to stop in next Sunday to discover “Where we are going.”