This year in my 11th year of gardening, my garden will look different than it ever has.

If you've listened to the podcast or watched some of my YouTube videos from the spring of last year,

then you know I suffered from a herniated disc in my back, which made gardening all but impossible during the busiest months of the year.

Thankfully, I had already made my garden plan and thankfully my family pitched in to help,

but that experience opened my eyes to just how much I had let my garden and life get out of

hand. I kept adding more and more each year without regard to

my capacity to be able to maintain it. I was forced to slow down in more ways than one. I spent a lot

of time in contemplation and prayer and as I did that, I began to feel strongly that 2024 needed to be a year of

pairing down significantly. I made the decision that, with few exceptions, I would take a year off

from preserving and instead focus on growing a fresh food garden for 2024.

Make no mistake, this will be a huge change for me.

My entire 10 years of gardening have been built on production for preservation.

Thankfully, though, over the past few years, I've started learning how to plan and

grow food for fresh use for longer in the season. But 2024 will be the year where I'm forced

to make use of every season so I don't miss out on as much when it comes to what we normally would have preserved.

I'm actually really excited about this.

Not only do I look forward to what this load off my plate will offer me, but I'm excited

for the challenge.

I'm excited to be forced to put into practice more than ever what I teach in my online garden planning course

Dream to Garden, which by the way, opens on Tuesday, February 6th. I'm excited to be forced to work

as much food into a small space like many of you do. So as I've been planning my garden, I'm going to

share with you today what practices

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