From Chopping Logs to Chopping Veggies...or, Midnight in the Garden of Jalapenos...

Written by
Alissa
World Champion LumberJill
​Founder & Owner of the Axe Women Loggers of Maine

Apparently, we are growing a "Victory Garden" this summer...
What is a Victory Garden??
According to Wikipedia: "Victory gardens, also called war gardens or food gardens for defense, were vegetable, fruit, and herb gardens planted at private residences and public parks in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia…during World War I and World War II. "

Back during WWI and WWII the "Victory Garden Movement" urged people to start growing their own food wherever and however they could... backyards, side yards, fire escapes, empty lots, balconies and even on roof tops to help promote self-sufficiency!
 
According to a story published by the New York Times in March of this year, written by Tejal Rao, "...at one point (During WWII) it's estimated that home, school and community gardens produced close to 40 percent of the country's fresh vegetables, from about 20 million gardens."  Southern Living also published a helpful story by Steve Bender in March, titled "Plant a Victory Garden". It states, "Now we're engaged in a very different war. We can't see the enemy, but it's affecting us all." This story gives some useful tips and ideas about what, when and where to plant!
 Countries around the world seem to be seeing somewhat of a return of these gardens this year with the outbreak of COVID 19. That is definitely the case in our yard as well...

​Back in March, right after we were notified of our first AxeWomen show cancellation, we came home, and I started a few seeds in our kitchen window.... The usual things we plant most years... Jalapeno peppers, spinach, and a few herbs... All things that can easily be grown in pots and raised beds and are pretty hardy for when we are gone, traveling to shows and competitions all summer.

As we watched the pandemic spread across the country and watched more and more of our shows and events get postponed to 2021, Mike and I decided to start a few more seeds. It was looking like we would be home for at least most of the summer to water, weed and enjoy some of our fruits and veggies! 

So, since our windowsill was already full, we started a mini greenhouse beside our kitchen table in which we had tomato seedlings, cucumber seedlings and cilantro! The more time we spent at home, the more seeds I planted... Eventually we had pots lining the kitchen wall, in the sun from our doorway with more tomato seedlings, pumpkins, chives, onions, basil and celery!
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Most spring mornings at our house consisted of shuffling several pots and flats of seedlings outside to the porch, patio, and picnic table... And most evenings consisted of moving them all back into our kitchen! 
As the days got warmer and spring started turning into summer, we started transplanting all of our not-so-little-anymore seedlings into large outdoor pots on our deck and into our raised beds in the yard. We quickly realized that I had started way more seeds than we had room to actually grow!! Mike ordered more lumber and put together more raised beds... which were very quickly filled up with tomato plants, beans, onions, corn, and radishes! 

Still... not everything had been put in the ground!! We still had flats of pumpkin seedlings on our deck! So, we grabbed the pole-saw and chainsaw... cut enough branches to let some afternoon sunlight in, and dug a pumpkin patch on what, at one time, had been an old driveway looping around the backside of our property! 
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Now, here we are in mid-July... Our tomato plants are nearly 5 feet tall and covered in green tomatoes! Our pepper plants are loaded with little jalapenos! Our cucumber and pumpkin vines are creeping everywhere! Our radishes... well... they are very tall and leafy... It turns out I planted way too many radish seeds, and way too close together. Once I realized what I had done and researched how to fix it (by pulling out at least every other one - if not more), I just couldn't bring myself to pull them up... So, I let them all live and grow. Not sure we'll have any radishes... But the leaves are green and beautiful!! And probably the occasional passing-through wood chuck, rabbit or deer will get to enjoy a few tasty mouthfuls before they get barked at by Peter PlottHound and disappear back into the woods...

We've been eating from our garden most days already!! Spinach, arugula and cilantro on pizzas, burgers, and sandwiches! I cut and dried enough thyme to last us all year! I even made pesto with our basil and garlic!! 

We are definitely not the only ones getting a little more gardening time in this year! We tried to pick up a sprinkler in town to water two of our raised beds with. There were no sprinklers to be found!! The hardware store had completely sold out of hoses and sprinklers! 
After seeing photos (I may have been bragging on Facebook...) of our new raised beds, Mike was asked to build them for friends - and friends of friends! And even some in our city garden!!
 
With all of the sadness, frustration and craziness happening in the world right now this is something pretty cool to see. I love seeing the new gardens popping up around our town! I love seeing the proud smiles in social media posts of friends picking their own vegetables for the first time!
 
It's incredibly sad that all of this is mostly due to a pandemic and job losses and insecurities... But I hope that once this passes people will have learned that it's important to spend a little more time at home, learn how to grow some of their own food and realize that it's not a bad thing to be self-sufficient.
I've already decided that if anything like this happens again and we are unable to travel for shows, events and competitions that I want to adopt a bunch of goats... make goat cheeses with my herbs and peppers... and have a farmyard of baby goats running everywhere!! Maybe we somehow combine logging sports, log rolling, goat cheese manufacturing and goat yoga...!!! Who knows?! (Don’t tell Mike!!)