After being in French Gulch for 8 years, I can say that my gardening has been on a very minor scale. The first few years were spent getting the water system in the ground and developing a spring.  My husband made an attempt at a very small garden consisting mostly of squash.  I filed for divorce that year and the deer came and ate his garden all up.  I was faced with a huge tax bill to pay off plus the expense of the divorce and having to pay spousal support.  It seemed pointless to try to have a garden if the deer were going to come and kill it.  I did have a protected area for strawberries and fenced area where I planted Jerusalem artichokes.  The whole garden had to be moved due to it being over the septic tank which had to be properly done in order to be permitted.  In 2018, I had a friend telling me to plant a garden, but with full-time work, it didn’t seem like I had the time to do it.  That July, the Carr Fire came and I was kept from home for 17 days, so the garden would have died.  My strawberries looked very sad.  For 2019, I broke my little toe and that put me out of commission.  

This year as I moved forward to launch my blog on homesteading, I realized that I have to be self-sufficient and can’t make any more excuses.  God also had a plan to give me more time.  I was laid off from work due to the Corona Virus.  Now I had plenty of time to launch my blog and start a garden.  

I had to decide where to make the garden site.  Once I decided on the location, I had to begin the work of moving lots of rocks and leveling a berm of soil that I had piled there.  I used my dolly or hand truck to move large rocks and then the tractor came in handy for digging up more rocks and leveling the ground.  It was an attempt to level the ground, but it really isn’t all that level yet.  You can see the results of my work in the next two videos.