Monday, April 5, 2010

Go Big or Go Homestead

Sam and I don't have any land. Heck, we barely have enough money to pay our rent, never mind go shopping for real estate! But we're disillusioned with the state of our world, and don't want to wait until it's too late to get out from under a system that is crushing us.

The frustrating thing is this: if you want to eat healthy, organic food; if you want to have your own self-sustaining farm; if you want to get away from all the things that cost too much money but are "required" for comfortable living, you have to succumb to the ultimate irony: having enough money in order to afford the release from that bondage.We'd love to not worry about money, but more important to us is doing what we love; unfortunately, in our situation, teaching and raising kids doesn't pay well! That leaves us in a bind. Can't afford to jump into a homestead all ready to go, can't afford not to. Hmmm.

So why not start small? Why not borrow land that is not being used (thanks, Sam's Mom and Dad!) to start an organic garden? Sure, we'll have to drive there, which wastes gas and time. But what if that garden is big enough to feed us through the winter? And what if we're shrewd enough to learn to save our seeds? Better yet, what if we use this as an opportunity to learn how to create a garden that will feed us through the winter AND save our seeds, thereby saving the cost of that much food toward our future, and gaining the know-how in the process?

Phew, I exhaust myself. Let's just get on with it.

And so, armed with Sam's love of research and my lifetime of mom- and grandma-taught skills with gardening, food preservation, and raising animals, off we embark. Last week we tilled an enormous garden at Sam's parents' house. We ordered nearly 60 packets of heirloom seeds from Seed Savers Exchange. We put in a small kitchen garden at our apartment for immediate meal usage, which I hope to plant this today. And we started this blog to catalog our successes (we hope for lots) and our catastrophes (but will more likely get lots of these), so that we can do it better next year, and the year after that, and so on. So that somewhere down the line, our two children will find it 100% normal that their home provides their food for them, not their supermarket.

4 comments:

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  2. This is amazing, Erin! Very exciting.

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  3. Very cool, Erin!! I'll be following along with envy from my pebble-covered and scorched NM yard.

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