On putting the garden to bed.

What my first year in the garden taught me about patience, progress, and starting from scratch... again.

This was my first year gardening, and I can confirm: it’s not just planting seeds and waiting for salad. It’s dirt under your nails, earthworms so big that they end up in your nightmares, weeds that straight-up mock you, and more emotional investment in fruit and vegetables than I ever thought possible. But somehow, between the chaos and the harvest, I fell in love with it.

After a decade of staring at a computer screen, getting my hands in the dirt has been exactly what my soul needed.

There’s something deeply satisfying about doing physical work. Planting seeds and watching them grow. Feeling the weight of the soil, the sun on your back, and proof of progress to share with friends and family.

Now that the season is wrapping up, I’m learning one last lesson: how to put the garden to bed.

If you’re new to gardening like me, “putting the garden to bed” means pulling out what’s done, feeding the soil with compost, and covering everything with straw or leaves so it can rest and rebuild. It’s the quiet, necessary part of the process.

The reset before everything starts again.

I didn’t realize the hardest part of gardening would be knowing when to stop.

Last week, I reluctantly pulled out the tomato plants. They’d been hanging on, still covered in big green fruit. I filled a basket, assuming most would end up in the compost. But to my surprise, about half have ripened while sitting in the garage. I’m still eating tomatoes in November. November! The growing season stretched longer than I ever dreamed of.

I pulled the turnips yesterday, all plump and purple-topped. The carrots and pak choi, though, are staying put for now. They’re hardy and perfectly fine in the cold, so I can harvest them as needed through the next few weeks. It’s the lazy gardener’s secret weapon: the ground as a fridge.

The strawberries easily won “fan favourite” in our garden this year. Every ripe berry felt like a small miracle and a family event. I picked the last few on October 25 and covered the plants with straw yesterday to keep them cozy for winter. After how much joy they brought us, tucking them in for a long winter’s nap felt like the least I could do.

Here’s where things got humbling.

My goal this year was to fill the root cellar with produce for winter. Spoiler: we’re nowhere close. I laugh every time I look at the sad crate of squash and apples I’ve collected in there. Lesson learned. Next year, the plan is to double the garden, finally figure out the orchard, and tackle a few fun projects around the property.

This first year of gardening taught me that you don’t have to know what you’re doing to fall in love with the process. Funny enough, that’s exactly how it was when we started our company. I had no idea what I was doing then either. I just kept showing up, learning as I went, and somewhere along the way, it became the thing that shaped me most.

Turns out, the garden isn’t so different.

I’m still debating whether to keep writing about all this or quietly fade into my next season of experiments and mistakes. If you’ve liked reading along or want more stories from life at the farmhouse, leave a comment and tell me. It might be the nudge I need to keep going.