The Garden: From Overgrown to Growing Again
Exhausted with a newborn on my hip, I watched our garden disappear beneath weeds.
The Early Attempts
The land we built our garden on was rugged, unkempt, and wild. The area was completely overrun by blackberry bushes towering more than ten feet high. Even today, the forest edge still looks much the same.
Between heavy deer pressure, relentless weeds, limited watering infrastructure, and my inexperience using geese in the garden, we fought hard to keep that first garden struggling along. Then, after two years, my daughter was born. With no energy left to give, we watched the garden disappear under the weeds.
When winter 2024 rolled in, something changed. I felt the urge to start over — to reclaim the land, rebuild the garden, and try again. That winter, we started laying down heavy cardboard anywhere we wanted future garden paths, pressing it right over the top of the weeds — a simple sheet-mulching method common in regenerative gardening. That one small act ended up being the very best thing we could have done to restart our PNW garden from scratch.
The patch of Daisies and Foxglove towering over where our tomato bed should be.
Hard Lessons: Fencing and Protection
Deer were a huge factor in the previous failure of our food garden, and unfortunately have continued to be a constant problem every year since. This last spring, I had over 100 beautiful plant starts. I watched the weather reports daily for night temperatures, and when the time was right we spent one day carefully planting them. It had been a long day, and light was fading, so we opted to put the deer cover over all the plants the following morning. With the garden just being planted, we figured the deer would need more than one night to find our plants. But they didn’t. We came out the next morning to rows and rows of devastated crops. Of all our plants, we were down to only four plants left. Months of careful, indoor tending, tedious hardening off, and a full day of planting all came crashing down.
I really, truly, hold a belief system that the deer are just doing what they do — it isn’t their fault that they are destructive to my plans; they are just trying to eat. Since then, I have been incredibly meticulous about keeping everything covered at all times, even if that means working past the end of the fading daylight.
But the difference in our resolve is so profound. It was still devastating that our garden was destroyed, but rather than throwing in a towel, we started planning for our fall garden and implementing tighter deer-prevention strategies. Losing our garden to deer again leaves me feeling like I have not only regained the confidence to learn and grow from these moments. I now meet challenges with determination and increased motivation to succeed.
Emotional Reset
Gardening for me has always been this mental image of perfect, weed free rows of plants, in pinterest-ready gardens. But as I continue to re-discover what homesteading means for our family on our farm, I am letting go of perfectionism. We are shifting to chaos gardening and implementing polyculture in each bed. We are going to do what works for our farm, even if it isn’t always aesthetically pleasing, and we are ready to just keep going.
Reclaimed garden bed - featuring a clover cover crop and celery plants.
Closing
We have already placed the 2026 seed order from Baker’s Creek - our go-to for heirloom, quality seeds. We have an incredible lineup of beautiful plants that I absolutely cannot wait to start - watch for a “What’s Growing - Spring 2026” update to know just what we are cooking up this year.
As I reflect on the lessons from the garden - the wins, the losses, and the lessons — I invite you to share your own “second attempt” stories. Only through showcasing the voice of what growing your own food actually looks can we shift the narrative for everyone that growing our own food is attainable with a little time and a lot of practice.