When we moved to Salt Spring we left behind an extensive garden.  Layers of perennials and yards and yard (and yards) of healthy, nutrient rich soil.

When we needed an annual top up, we would head to the local soil yard and pick some up. It wasn’t a big deal.

In the new house we feel grateful to have walked into a beautiful garden again.  New plants, and some old favourites, and our creativity is running on how to extend the gardens and create more beauty (and food) for the family.

Only one problem though:

Soil.

They call Salt Spring “the rock” and it is for good reason.  I went to “turn over a garden bed’ in the hopes of “popping some new plants” in the ground one afternoon. . .  wearing flip flops, and a straw hat.

And a sundress.

I was prepared for “city gardening”

What I ended up with was full day construction and hard labour.

Quite quickly the flip flops were tossed and my workbooks donned.  The shovel was put aside for a pick axe.

And I picked, and picked and picked.  And then hubby came home and picked and picked and picked.

And apparently “bed rock” is pretty darn close to the surface . . .

We got the ground prepped after a day of work, and even still the soil was sandy, rocky and dry.  Not a worm was disturbed as we worked the soil . . . and that had me worried.

You forget about healthy soil when you always have it. Just like we forget where our food comes from when we never need to source it beyond the supermarket shelves.  Hubby and I had a mission: Replace the lost soil, and revitalize it.

We are composting, and thanking the chickens for every gooey scoop we remove from the coop.  The bunnies “box” is put to good use, especially since bunny poop doesn’t need to ‘age’ and can be added to the garden right away.

And we went on a mission to find soil.

A day trip off island with the kids and the trailer, and we found ourselves 2.5 yards of rich, black soil. As we were sitting on the ferry coming home with our mound of steaming black gold we were stopped again and again by islanders admiring our bounty.

In fact, I started to get a little worried we wouldn’t MAKE it home with our catch . . . visions of soil pirates coming to mind.

Good soil is hard to come by, and we feel blessed to have the means to get it.  It is being cherished and spread around sparingly, since these 2.5yards aren’t going to reach far on our 3 acres.

and it just makes this whole farm to table concept more REAL. More obvious and more urgent.