10 New Year’s Resolutions

Someone once sent us a cartoon eluding to a gardener’s dreams being bigger…way bigger…than what reality will be. It’s impossible to argue with that! Right around the start of the new year, our minds shift from the holidays to visions of plentiful fruit trees, bumper tomato crops, and perfect transitions from spring crops to fall ones. The magnificent garden dreams that plod through our heads might be unrealistic at times, but they keep us fresh.

With that said, we are trying to create realistic, doable resolutions for homesteading in 2012. They include:
1. Keeping up on daily gardening chores: more consistent weeding and watering and more timely replanting (if applicable).
2. Eating and preserving all of the greens we grow and get in our CSA box, including items such as carrot tops.
3. Constructing 4-5 new garden beds to replace our original garden in time for spring planting.
4. Planting strawberries, honeyberries, blueberries, and blackberries (finances pending).
5. Keeping up with fruit tree chores on a daily basis: spraying (organically, of course) when needed and watering.
6. Constructing a trellis for the kiwi berries. The trellis will also serve as the post for a bat house.
7. Getting bees.
8. Planting 3x more dry beans (get a minimum of 9 quarts at harvest time) and 2x more cabbage.
9. Figuring out what keeps eating the corn!
…and, of course…
10. Growing the biggest bumper crop of tomatoes known to man.

I think we can do it. What are your homesteading resolutions for 2012?