Gardening has brought some unexpected challenges but most importantly some unexpected memories. I have a 7 year old, 5 year old, and 3 year old and they keep me on my toes! In the hustle and bustle of life, working, homeschooling, homemaking, and frankly surviving the...
Last year as a first time gardener was probably the most exciting thing ever. To grow things with my own work was amazing. The knowledge provided me by the ARCD was excellent, they were able to teach me to grow things. Mind you I had killed cactus plants before....
The outdoors and gardening has always been essential to my life. Like several in this area, I grew up on a farm. With my grandparents, we would plant a huge garden every year. Most of our fresh produce came from the results of that garden and I have very few...
We are a military family who retired from a duty station in upstate NY. It took us a couple of years toresearch our forever home leading to us moving to eastern Tennessee. Once we got here, we noticedimmediately there were some stark differences between what we were...
Black Thumb? No More! I suppose I can’t say I have a black thumb anymore! Hello out there! I’m Emily and I have a moderate sized garden in my backyard, inside the Johnson City limits. I’m a long time organic farmer’s market shopper and before this experience, I...
Gardening For Our Family, Community, and Our Sanity We have been growing food for a lot of years now. We garden to feed our family with nutritious foods, create healthy natural ecosystems, build healthy soil, and build community in our surrounding areas. Each year we...
Before we started the Build it Up program, we had taken a few stabs at having our own gardens, with very little guidance, very little yield and a whole bunch of frustration. We could never figure out why our zucchinis rotted, our cucumbers died and we got very few...
Our family is happy to be a part of the Build It Up program and the opportunity to create abundance for our home. It was our first year gardening and we were excited to experiment and learn. The experience came with many high points and some low points that allowed...
This is our first year having a garden. This is also our first summer in our first house. We’ve had tomatoes and basil plants on the porch of rentals, but we’ve never had SPACE the way we do this year. The hardest part was deciding what to plant! We poured...
I am a city girl. I’ve lived in apartments almost all of my life and I had never considered growing a garden. I was not a fan of the outdoors, sweating, dealing with bugs...nope it was not for me. In 2020 we got locked down and my daughter was BORED. I was trying to...