Winter Solstice, a time to celebrate the Light

Posted on Dec 21, 2008 by Susie Collins in Blog, Organic Gardening, Susie Collins, Susie's Secret Garden

building the veggie gardenToday is Winter Solstice, the first day of winter, and following the longest night of the year, the time to celebrate coming back into the Light.

We like to do a garden project on Winter Solstice, and this year we are building a new veggie garden! We have to fence it in so the chickens don’t make trouble, and this time around we are going to make raised beds to weather any flooding.

So, we started with the fence posts around the perimeter, and Friday we got some eucalyptus planks for the beds (a gift from a friend!). We worked until dark to make the first borders as you can see from the last photo.

raised bedsToday we’ll level and set the borders, and if we have time, put up the fence. Then we’ll fill up the beds with media from the mulch pile, and start building up the soil inside the beds so they are ready for spring planting.

Come spring we should be harvesting a lot more of our own food!

Be well, dear flock, star warm and safe wherever you are on this Winter Solstice. xoxo

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5 Responses to “Winter Solstice, a time to celebrate the Light”

  1. Ruth

    21. Dec, 2008

    This reminded me so much of my own gardens….hope to have something like this again one day, only raised quite a bit, to save the back-bending part!
    This also brings to mind that I need to really live in the moment and savor everything I’m doing at the time….it is gone too quickly…..same with people we love. I wish you and your husband many, many happy moments working in these little gems, growing your own food!!! I love it when you share your life in photos like this, Susie. Thanks!

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  2. Mokihana

    21. Dec, 2008

    Nice garden Susie. What a terrific way to celebrate the Solstice. Aloha, Mokihana

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  3. Susie Collins

    21. Dec, 2008

    We are just getting ready to go out and work until dark. I’ll take some photos. It’s really exciting, b/c although we have grown veggies before, we’ve never had a designated vegetable garden with raised beds. We’re getting serious about this!

    Oh, also I wanted to tell you that we always try to use local resources, preferably free resources, for our projects. The planks for the beds were a gift from friend at a local mill (that’s locally grown timber), and the posts were brought from Molokai several years ago for the fence around the whole property, and these posts are the leftovers from that project. We’re going to try to use some leftover fence as well, but the horse fence that we used might be overkill for a veggie garden and we are talking about just buying some cheap chicken wire.

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  4. carys

    27. Nov, 2009

    what a splendid idea! down in the sf bay area of calif (zone 9) i often had some late roses for solstice, but here in oregon they’re already long gone! just one zone difference, too!

    but i’m going to see if i can think of a way to celebratet he coming of the light as relates to the garden, even if it’s too frozen to do something in it the actual day.

    thank you for a lovely new idea!

    xoxo

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  5. Susie Collins

    27. Nov, 2009

    Aloha Carys, we are so lucky in Hawaii being able to garden year round. Maybe you could do something in a container, start a tree or something you could grow out and plant in the spring.

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