Skip to main content

Mistakes are already being made. Putting in the garden in and thinking about....nothing and everything

 To be honest I don't consider myself a homesteader or even a gardener. To be blunt about it I could have easily spent the rest of my life in Florida with a small container garden on our back porch.  I would have been happy to have had a few beers at my favorite bar, enjoyed good food at my favorite restaurant and fade into the background as the fat and happy hedonist I am.

The One with glasses does look like me

Life had other things in store for me.   Now I find myself; perhaps not in the proverbial boondocks but with enough distance and space to force the "City Mouse" into considering how to do things differently...and not really having a clue about how to do it.

Living in the country does change your viewpoint and your habits.  It's very easy to fall into cliche's and all cliche's have a kernel of truth to them...but country life does change you.

Don't misunderstand me, I'm always had an interest in things like permaculture and self sufficient living.   However in the 57 years of life that I've lived, I've largely been in the middle to upper class economically, a city dweller and a privileged one at that.  It's one thing to know about something intellectually...and another to actually try to live it.

As someone pointed out (rightfully) to me in another forum regarding my last post.  (I'm) intellectually disorganized and over-engineering simultaneously.

It occurs to me that yes, I don't know what in the H - E - double hockey sticks I'm doing.

I'm okay with that.  It is part of the fun and adventure.

Now I do have this vague goal in the back of my head that I have roughly 30 years to generate a food forest.  In the simplest sense that basically means planting some native trees, some bushes and other perennial plants that will support each other naturally and that some future forager will find.  

Perhaps I've read way to much dystopian fiction, but those few apples and grapes, nuts and berries can sustain them for a few days more.  

This is my legacy. 

 

Yes, I would love to reduce my carbon footprint to zero and do X, Y and Z to live closer to nature.  

Sue and I are already moving that way by making our house super insulated; another on going project, and reducing our carbon footprint.

I'm not sure how to get there...so for now I bumble along from project to project and hope for the best.  Some ideas get filed away to be started later or to be further researched.  At the end of the day...I'll leave something for someone.  

It's not that I'm losing hope for mankind, I've actually had my hope for humanity restored by the actions of various young people and groups, but I'm also a realist.  Things will get bad before they get better.  I'm hoping to bypass some of those problems now by being prepared for them.  I would rather make those mistakes now than make them later when the consequences of bad choices will be that much more epic.

It does seem that Sue and I are not on the same page at times and this is something we will need to discuss more in depth.   For example, she went out and bought these planting boxes that I'm not sure are going to meet our needs.  However they are going to save our knees and backs in the long haul.

I also know that due to my wonderful cats all our seeds that we started indoors found themselves on the floor and then decided to dig into the dirt and damage destroy a large portion of what I had planned to grow.

Happy?  No.  

But we will save what we can and start the planting next week.  We hare having a bit of cold front pass through in the next few days.  I feel that the last frost will be this week, I'm itching to plant, to start...to grow something.

I'm not happy about losing a few weeks of work and having to go out and buy already started plants.   I'm reminded of a book I read entitled the $64 Tomato and I fear that we may be going down an expensive path.

No matters what happens however we are on a path that we can't change.   Their is simply no other direction we can go other than forward.

Sure, mistakes will be made.  We will learn from them and tomorrow's garden will be bigger and better than it is today.  I'll add to the edible lawn here and there and even though it's not going to be great...it's going to be okay.

Sometimes that's all you can hope for. 


Labels:
Location: Stoneboro, PA 16153, USA

Comments

Post a Comment

What all the cool kids are reading.

The Home Improvement Blues

      When I sit down to write something, I do so for two reasons; the first is that yes, I want to remember my thoughts and feeling about a particular moment in time, so in some ways this blog serves as my journal.  The second reason is that I hope to impart some knowledge or information on.  In the hope that you, gentle reader, might learn something new or, more likely, avoid the mistakes I make.        I leave that decision up to you.       Thus, in some ways you can blame our youngest cat, Bobble, for our upcoming spending a lot of money on window's and other home improvements.       Our first winter in Western Pennsylvania was not really that bad.  This year it seemed we had weeks of sub zero temperatures and several feet of snow.  Our house was physically colder.   Now if your wondering why I'm blaming the cat then please read on dear reader.   ...
Post a Comment
Read more

A taste of the secret Amish Kitchens

     I don't know what attracts me to "Amish Cheese's."  I came across a few recipes while putting about on the interwebs and was taken by them.  They do seem rather simple to make and they require little in actual work but they do require time.  While not exactly a "set it and forget it" cheese, these cheeses often used milk that has spoiled naturally over time or "Clabbered."       Which, considering the Amish lifestyle, makes perfect sense.  The Amish are not a wasteful people.        One cheese that caught my eye is called Amish Cup Cheese.   It is a soft spread where you heated the milk to room temperature first (about 72 F) then let it cool, letting the curds seperate from the whey.    Then you add a bit ingredients and again...you "rested" the cheese for 12 hours before moving on to the next step.  Then, again add some more ingredients then rest for 5 hours before moving on.  It's...
Post a Comment
Read more

Climate change denialism and what two old farmers taught me.

  I am not that creative of a person.  Yes, I write and have written some fiction and such but I have more of an analytic mind.  I like to deal with facts, numbers and hard data.  The conclusions that I've reached are driven by columns of pluses and minuses. I'm not going to lie, much of my belief system and philosophical views are based on rational and scientific thinking.   Most, if not all of the the work that I've done all my life was driven by data and information.  When you understand what the data tells you, it affects your world view in a lot of different ways. For example, data from the FBI and other sources state that the most violent city in America is not Chicago or New York; but the tiny city of Bessemer, Alabama.  For a city of only 26,000 people, the chance of you being a victim of a violent crime is 1 in 30.    In a place like New York city, the chances of you being a victim of a violent crime is only 1 in 192. ...
Post a Comment
Read more