April At Healing Homestead Is Full Of Wildflowers and Bees

Tennessee Wildflowers

We’ve been having a great time exploring our land at Healing Homestead and enjoying all of the wildflowers in bloom. The weather has been warm and perfect for hiking. We’ve been in Tennessee a year and half and we’re still finding new areas to explore our property. I love foraging plants while we are hiking. There are so many edible, wild foods. This month we tried Pokeweed. It has to be cooked… a lot, and it is similar to spinach. We also found a lot of pretty wildflowers. I think my favorite wildflower is this tiny Wild Iris that grows along the forest’s edge.

There are actually many native wildflowers that can grow in the forest. We found Trillium, Jack In The Pulpit, Fire Pinks, Paper Whites, and more. These are weeds to some but I thought they made a pretty homestead bouquet.

Honey Bees

We are getting a lot of hands on experience with honey bees. We went to an offsite hands on bee course with our Lawrence and Wayne County Bee Club. I attribute our success of overwintering four of our beehives to all of the great bee mentors that are in this club! Have you ever seen soo many beekeepers in one spot? I just like knowing that the bees are around and pollinating the homestead. I guess that make me a bee-haver versus a beekeeper so I planted ten pounds of wildflower seeds near the beehives.

Get Read To Garden

We are prepping the hoop house for a very large vegetable garden. We get a lot of rain. We decided on a hoop house not only to extend our growing season but to keep the rain off of the vegetable plants. Last fall we planted a cover crop and potatoes. This season we are rototilling rows, picking out rocks, and adding beautiful composted soil. On the exterior of the hoop house, I planted wildflowers like Yarrow, Daisies, and Black Eyed Susans.

Before we add any plants, we let the homestead birds play and fertilize the soil! We are in the process of adding a giant fence around the entire hoop house and garden space. I remember one year that I had to replant the garden five times because the chickens kept getting in and scratching up the seedlings. Healing Homestead will be selling at the Downtown Lawrenceburg Farmer’s Market opening this June!

With Love Indi

Saying goodbye is hard. Especially, to a dog that we had for over 15 years. Indi was a rescue dog and her estimated age was two at the time when we got her. I’ve never had a dog live to 17.5 years. Soooo many great memories with her. Rest in peace, Sweet Indi.