Garden Pests

We seem to have an infestation of insects in our garden all of a sudden. There are stink bugs on the tomatoes, and something is eating the green bean foliage. Definitely not what I want to see while parusing through the garden. Organic gardening is the only way I go so I am going to make a mixture of something, I'm not sure what yet, and spray. Does anyone know what will take care of the stink bugs? I am going to research to see what I can find out and will share with the rest of you gardeners. Gardening is such as experiment and I love it because there is always something new to do. Whether it's making the soil better, using new organic spray, new varieties of veggies to plant, making it colorful with flowers, or just whatever, it's just plain exciting to me!
Of course I've already planned certain things I want to do for next time. And one of those is to make it quite a bit larger than it is now. My kids were a little perplexed at this idea.....I informed them of this as we were weeding. :) And I will make sure that nothing eats our corn and green bean seeds. We were supposed to have two full rows of corn and one of green beans. I noticed that the chickens were scoping things out as we were planting. Little did I know, and should have thought of it, they were planning on when to strike and get the seeds. They managed to get almost all of the two rows we planted. Well, I will be on guard more next time.

I guess I should back up a little and tell you a little about our life. We, my three kids and I, have six cats, one dog, and twenty-one chickens. We want to get some goats and of course a horse or two. My son is dying for a horse.....and I am too. Hopefully that is in our near future. A cow or two would be nice too. Our baby chicks arrived in Feb. 2010 and we just love them. They are a lot of fun and are very comical to watch. They are all hens and we are waiting for eggs any day now. They are organic, of course, and we'll sell the extra eggs. They're supposed to each lay one egg a day so we will have an abundance of eggs! That's where the profit comes in. We have one acre and I am determined to get as much on this acre as we possibly can. My parents live next to us with seventeen acres so we have access to some of that too. One of the best books I have is called "The Backyard Homestead". It's an absolutely wonderful book. It talks about all you can actually do with one acre. It has a lot of gardening advice, canning, raising animals, and just about anything you might want to know, definitely a MUST HAVE.
I homeschool my three kids and it's quite an adventure! I use the Classical Education method of teaching and it's just amazing to watch this method work. For those of you not familiar with Classical Education, in a nutshell, it's how they were taught years ago, you know, when people were really smart. It's Biblically sound material, both rigorous and exciting all at the same time. We, as a society, definitely underestimate what kids can learn and do. It's an exciting time and I'm starting to pick out their books for this coming year. The summer goes by soooooo fast! I think I need a little longer!

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