What does 2012 hold?

Last year I did a bunch of very concrete goals, with numbers and dates and all that jazz. Typically those are the best kind of goals at least for me, in order for me to complete things. I like to cross things off my list. Well a few things happened last year that slowed me down a bit.
1) We were blessed with a beautiful son. I was pregnant in January and had him in September so I was very nice and pregnant all throughout the summer and early fall when most of the harvest and canning is happening. With 2 other young children in the house I'll be the first to admit that this pregnancy wore on me more than the other two. I just didn't feel like working as much as I normally do, and being 8 months pregnant in the height of summer probably contributed to that.
2) We just had an awful crop this year. It was un normally hot for such a long time that it literally scorched our tomato and pepper plants. No amount of watering helped. We had plenty of veggies that come off later in the summer an into fall like cabbage, greens, squash etc. But the tomatoes and peppers suffered..... It was very sad.

I did manage to put up strawberries, muscadines, peaches, figs, pickles, okra and such, but my lofty goal of putting up tons of tomatoes, pasta sauce, salsa etc. just didn't happen.

We are planning on staggering our planting this year a bit more and are hoping for a milder summer. I can almost taste the sweet tomatoes right now... It won't be (too) much longer..

Here's to a happy, healthy homestead in 2012!