After several months of planning, accompanied by lots of backbreaking labor (although luckily Sean has done most of it!), today was the day to begin planting the vegetable garden. I planted the first of the cool season vegetables today – broccoli, bok choy, and swiss chard, all of which I started from seed and then hardened off for a week in a cold frame. If the good weather continues, I’ll be making weekend trips out to the farm to continue planting over the next several weeks. Next up will be lettuce, onions, and leeks. I also want to do a bed of strawberries and asparagus since I’ve read they are good companion crops, but the weather has been so rainy that we did not get the raised beds ready in time and I think it’s a bit late now. Oh well, I may still transplant the few strawberry plants that I managed to rescue from the beaks and scratching talons of the girls of 5R Farm last summer! We still need to build the deer fence, so for now we’ve got temporary deer protection measures in place consisting of chicken wire and hardware cloth. Let’s hope they do the trick for the short term, as we have been seeing deer pretty regularly the last few weeks.