Three acres, one table.

Three Acre Table is a working kitchen garden in Hunterdon County, New Jersey — USDA zone 6b, mostly clay soil, mostly optimism. A little over three acres, a handful of raised beds, chickens, geese, two goldendoodles who consider the paths their personal territory, and one gardener figuring it out one row at a time.

I’m a mom of three grown kids. I’ve worked in corporate for twenty-five years and I’m also a life coach. Three Acre Table is what I do with the hours in between — and it’s where I’m figuring out what the next chapter is going to look like.

How it started.

We moved into this house in 2013 and I went all in. I converted an existing dog run into a fenced-in garden and started sowing seeds indoors in February. Tomatoes, potatoes, carrots, beans, peas, squash, pumpkins, radishes, lettuce — if it grew from a packet, I planted it. The garden was healthy. I loved every minute of the setup. What I hadn’t planned for was harvest season.

Working full time meant I was at the office all day while the beds needed weeding, watering, watching for pests, and — most of all — harvesting. Zucchini turned into baseball bats. Tomatoes split on the vine. I gave enormous amounts of produce away because I wasn’t set up to can. I froze what I could, but it wasn’t enough. By the end of the season I was so overwhelmed I didn’t plant a garden the next year. Or the year after that. That break lasted thirteen years.

How it started again.

My daughter graduated with her Master’s in Biological Sciences Research and began her career as an ecologist and entomologist. She asked if we could put in a native plant garden — New Jersey natives, for New Jersey pollinators. I couldn’t say no. That was the crack in the door. I’m walking back in.

This time, on purpose.

The thing I got wrong the first time was thinking gardening was the planting. It isn’t. The planting is the fun part. The garden is the whole calendar — what you’re doing in January to be ready for July, what you can put by now that you couldn’t then, what fails if you don’t show up on Tuesday. This time I’m planning it out. Succession sowing so the harvests don’t all land in the same week. A canning kitchen ready before the tomatoes are. A month-by-month almanac that tells me what I should be doing right now, not what I should have done last week.

What this site is.

It’s a documentary of my way back into gardening — the plans, the successes, the small disasters. It’s also the beginning of a canning and homesteading practice I’m learning as I go. And it’s a lot of researched information — botanical families, pollinator hosts, planting windows for Zone 6b — that I gathered for myself and figured I might as well share.

If you look at some of the gardens out there and think it’s too sophisticated for you: it isn’t. If I can do this, you can do this. I make mistakes constantly. So does everyone who ever grew anything. The mistakes are how the beds get better. Don’t shoot for perfection — shoot for fun, and go into it curious. What happens if I do this? Then write down what happened.

Why it matters.

I’m starting small on purpose. My goal is to grow and preserve enough that my three adult kids never go hungry in this economy. I want this place to feel like their community garden — the one they can come home to. If they live in a small apartment far away, I’ll ship them a box. If they want to grow their own, I’ll teach them from what I’ve figured out here.

Three Acre Table is built for the love of family, the love of food, and the love of experiences.

If you like what you read, subscribe to the newsletter — a monthly-ish letter of what’s growing, what’s on the stove, and what’s in the vase. Otherwise, the almanac and recipe box are always here to browse.