What is soil health, anyway, and what does it have to do with the food you eat? Soil is made up of five different things - minerals, organic matter, living organisms, gas, and water. And for a soil to be healthy, all of these things must exist in the right balance.

Okra is a well-known vegetable in the deep south, where it's a staple in cuisine such as gumbo, but here in the Midwest, it's not so widespread. Many who are familiar with it know it only as a strange, somewhat slimy-textured green vegetable that someone convinced them to try. Once.

What are we going to grow this year?  That was the question that I had to answer when planning out our first year's garden at the new acreage.  And like many overly-excited new gardeners, I may have gone a little over the deep end.  From plotting out my exact garden plan in Excel, to charting out my seed-starting dates, transplanting dates, and likely first harvest dates, I was all-in.

When I was young, I can remember poring over the seed catalogs that showed up at our house each spring, dreaming of all the vegetables and flowers I would one day grow.