how can we all be free?

You sit there in your heated house in shorts while it is cold outside while others are cold and wet with no shelter at all; with your twentieth pair of fashionable shoes while a child puts cardboard in his for soles; you vacation repeatedly when a grandmother can't even get to the grocery store; the work you do that produces nothing other than your profit (or that of the corporation) while refusing to pay the person harvesting and serving you your food. 

You imagine that living smaller is doing without. You imagine that living smaller means you'll have less, be less, do less. But let me tell you what living smaller is really like. Living smaller is about realizing and sinking into what is really important. It is spending time doing what makes your heart sing. It is connecting with family and friends and the earth; even connecting with future generations because living smaller saves the earth for our children.

Is it radical? It seems radical because it does not serve profit, and profit is the real God of this culture.  Let us radically change this culture to one of inclusion, of love, of cooperation. For it is in working together that great things are accomplished: in loving each other, in listening, in hearing, in loving . . .

Some years ago, I attended a writing workshop put on by Appalachian Peace Education Center for Martin Luther King Day, and I think it was led by someone named Carolyn Kesters (at least that's what I wrote down). We examined Dr. King's Letter from Birmingham Jail and the assignment was something akin to, "What would you write?" and then given like 15 minutes in which to write. We didn't read what we wrote to each other. I don't have many notes after this piece; at least none that make any sense to me.

I had always thought that I'd come back to it and rewrite it, but it just sat there in a folder on a legal pad for four years and yesterday was the first time I'd even re-read it. And I like it just fine.

 

anti-fascist manifesto

While another canner of beans works itself, I wanted to write another manifesto of sorts. An anti-fascist manifesto of sorts.

I am not young, and I've been through a lot of iterations. Lifetimes, I call them. I grew up largely the kind of Democrat I am now: Henry Howell was and is my political hero. No doubt, I'm one of the very few who remember him. But then I worked in the non-profit sector, and I saw the "charity industrial complex" in full grifting bloom, and Bill Clinton being a Republican. And libertarianism was worth looking into, but they were straight up insane, both personally and philosophically. And then it was Peak Oil time, which I still think is relevant; it's just that so many other things are layered over it. But I was Peak Oil enough that a person who I had thought was a good friend divorced me because she said peak oil made me crazy. My explanation of that would be more toward the side that her hypocrisy made me *look* crazy, but that's me. I just have trouble when you say one thing but live a different way, and I still do, with everyone, myself included. But I *did* think we (the US, the world) might collapse to the point of having people go to "feeding centers," and I very strongly told her not to go if that happened, and so maybe I was a little crazed. But look at what's happening in Gaza. It can't look that way here because we are too spread out, but how WILL it look here exactly?

So then there's Obama being much better than I expected him to be, and eventually getting healthcare, which, if you haven't lived a good part of your life without healthcare, well, it's a whole thing. And getting it was a whole thing. And then living through Deborah Wasserman Schultz stealing the nomination from Bernie and simply not liking Hillary because she's SUCH a corporatist. And waking up the morning that the mango menace was elected by a minority of the voting public.

Appalled, I was. So I ordered seeds to be planted in winter. And my daughters and I went to the WMW. And that year, I went to my Congressional Representative every month to express my displeasure and offer suggestions, which was exactly like beating my head against a stone wall. So I got involved in the campaign to unseat him. And thus the local Democratic Party. I didn't get involved for a love of Democrats but because it was a far more effective way to counter the bullshit that was going on than anything else available to me. And that is still why I'm involved.

It makes me laugh to hear a new person think it was falling apart when they joined because when I got active, it was like the most depressing thing you can imagine. Anything brought up was, "We can't do that," or "There's no use doing that," or something else entirely defeatist. So we changed it. We got active. We did shit. We didn't know what was effective so we threw shit against the walls to see.

And we did grow. And we did piss some people off. It was a time of "see what needs doing and do it." And now we've grown and matured enough to have a strategic plan and hopefully develop committees that do their work. Fingers crossed.

And here we are, with the felon in chief mango menace as president again, and troops in our cities, and political prosecutions in our courts, and inflation already hitting and promising to explode.

So what does anti-fascist mean to me now?

Back a long time ago, I imagined being "self-sufficient". Then I learned that wasn't really a thing. You can't really do EVERYTHING. But you can do a lot. There is almost nothing that you buy that isn't supporting the oligarchy. So consume radically less. The planet is burning up, which translates into stay home and don't buy shit. So much is about values, so don't value *things*; don't value *consumption*; laugh at rich people.

There's a lot NOT to do, but what to do? Skills. Get skills, value skills. Practical skills. Fix things. Make things. Grow things. Preserve things. Cook. Work. Cooperate.

And if you haven't read this essay from a few months ago, do.

why mulch?

There are SO MANY reasons to mulch that you know I won't think of all of them.

But here is the beginning of our sweet potatoes this year, before 

and after mulching.

If I looked really hard through my photos, I could find cabbages before and after, and how happy they were, and how big they grew right after being mulched.

Why mulch? First to feed the soil. Never farm plants; always farm soil. If you have soil, you can grow anything. Bonus, this is "capturing carbon".

Mulching slows or smothers weed growth, and what still grows, it makes them easier to pull up (and pulled up weeds, put into compost, are just more carbon).

It holds moisture for the plants if there are a few days without rain, and it also cools the soil so baby transplants don't get cooked when you first put them out.

A covering over the soil prevents erosion. You might not think erosion is a big deal in your garden, but watch a video on the dynamics of a raindrop hitting bare soil vs soil that has any protection.

If you've worked much in living soil, you know all the critters it shelters. Mulch provides food and shelter for all these critters and for the microbes and mycelium and who knows what all else.

You can use most any organic material for mulch. Right now, we are using primarily grass clippings. We have a small push mower that bags, and we mow a little along (it is not easy mowing because it is TALL, and sometimes bumpy). We get a bucket of clippings for the rabbits and then mulch *something*. We like the grass clippings because *we have them* and they are quick to incorporate into the soil. We have used sawdust (because we had access to an insane amount of it) and wood chips (the Asplundh guys came around one year), and we've probably used stuff that I'm forgetting right now.

Mostly, the mulch is to help things get started. The cabbage that I mentioned above? You can't see the dirt on the bed it's growing in now because the cabbages all touch each other. Occasionally, a tall weed will make its way through, but then it's easy to pull it up. Those sweet potatoes? I'll need to pull a few morning glories out of there, and some burdock is likely to rear its head, but before long, the sweet potatoes will be laughing at any upstart weeds, and mulching then isn't necessary.

When we don't have baby plants to mulch, what do we do with the clippings? Well, we might just not mow anymore.  Or keeping the orchard and right around the garden mowed, we will turn that mulch to the trees and blueberries. They might have liked the mulch earlier, but you have to have priorities.

I get excited seeing how the mulch really perks things up. I hope you do too, and that your garden beds become so rich that they grow all sorts of weeds and welcome all sorts of bugs.

on awareness

We worked in the garden today. We work in the garden most days, although some days I opt out. We worked in the garden today in the heat because rain was supposed to be coming, although it has yet to. The big job was planting the hard white corn and the blue potatoes. Although the husband thinks we are late, we are not really late getting it done.

I mowed. Right now everything is ahead of us. The grass is waist high in places so it's hard going. But it all needs to get done. I used the clippings to mulch some red cabbages after we'd filled a bucket for the rabbits. That'll cool their dirt a bit and hold some moisture in for them. He did a great job making baby cabbages this year, so there are a lot of them. The bottom of the rectangle garden got another tilling. It has a nest of wild rabbits in it that we are avoiding! They won't be there long before they are grown.

It was hot. The garden water jug was empty. People were so done. I went to my chair in the shade, so glad to have it, feeling like I would never have the wherewithal to walk the distance uphill to the house. The others began their walk one at a time. When the husband passed me after checking the mail, he was moving slow and said, "You may catch me on your way up." I said, "I doubt I'll even start before you are there."

And there I sat, uncomfortably hot but grateful for the breeze that was blowing. At first, it just seemed quiet without the mower and the talking (although the five of us don't talk much while working). Then my ears tuned in to the birds, faint and far away. And there I sat, noticing a tent caterpillar climbing up my boot. I flicked him away and he lay motionless on the ground and I felt slightly bad.

And still I sat there, still sweating, still feeling like I might never feel like walking home. And the birds got louder and closer, at the back of the garden and up in the woods. I pulled out my Merlin app to see what was there. To my surprise, no Carolina wrens which last year I seemed to have every day. Maybe the season is early for them. But the red-eyed vireos were about as common last year. I don't know that I've ever seen one. The tent caterpillar started crawling, and I saw another near him in the grass. They like the wild cherry tree that is blooming to my left.

And there I still sat, less sweaty now but still not close to walking. The birds got louder and I again turned on my app to see who it was this time. I don't know that I've marked a white-throated sparrow before, but it was there with one of my favorites, indigo buntings. The buntings sounded like maybe they were making a nest on the wild side of the rectangle garden as well as down in the bottom where we first saw their nest. One of the tent caterpillars suddenly touched my leg and I wasn't sure if it was a sting or just a shock from his bristles touching me. I brushed him off and he lay motionless in the grass. Did I hurt him with the suddenness of my movement?

Not that I care for tent caterpillars. If I could reach their tent, I would tear it apart so the birds could get them, but at the same time, these guys were just going about their business, not bothering anybody. Maybe they just have an opossum kind of reaction, a fainting goat kind of thing, because the next time I looked, he was wandering up a stalk of clover.

By now I was just about recovered in my chair and the birds were talking all around me. A Swainson's warbler, the app said, at just about the same time as my phone picked up a signal and my notification sound of a turkey gobble fooled the app. It made me laugh. And laughing, I knew I was ready to walk.

And walking I noticed the differences in the ash and the beech leaves, and marveled at how grown up the spot that last week had hosted the morels, but I forgot to notice if my prickly pears were growing yet.

well, what have you done with your life?

 

If I had anything to say, it would be this: Grow Food. Grow some fucking food.

I've never heard a real reason not to. You eat? Grow some of it.

It doesn't have to be a lot. I always say, an upside down tomato and a basil plant counts. I have every reason to believe that if you did that, you'd do more. Or you'd find something you WANT to grow and grow that instead. Lettuce and radishes are easy. Grow some potatoes in a bucket and discover what potatoes CAN taste like!

In fact, that taste bit, that's a HUGE reason to grow some of your own food. A tomato that was ripened on the vine and still warm from the sun? Corn that is not 15 minutes from the stalk to the butter? A chicken that lived it's life free eating bugs and weeds and and wasn't bred to fall over dead at 12 weeks old and yes, takes a tooth to chew just a little and has some color in his muscles?

Another bit is all the stuff you get to learn. pH is suddenly relevant and comprehensible. An annual, biennial, or perennial? Determinate or indeterminate? Perfect flowered, self fertile, or needs cross pollination? Why do flea beetles want to eat my eggplants and is there some other plant they'd prefer?

And that's just the biology and chemistry sorts of things. There's also patience. And perseverance. And delight.

There's discovery. I didn't know I loved poke greens. I really had no clue that propagating native plants was something that somehow makes my heart sing just a little. Not as much as horse breath but still. Honestly at my age it's a lot better than falling off a horse.

Physically it's just good for you. We just don't move enough to begin with, so a little aerobic activity, a little harder muscle work, a little yoga bending and stooping and getting up again. Sure, eventually, there's an end to it, but a whole lot of it ending is due to non-use. Use it or lose it.

It's good for the mind, meditatively as well as intellectually.

And it SHOULD be good for the earth. Anything that you eat that isn't produced by industrial farming is better for the earth. And I don't care how “organic” you eat – have you BEEN or an “organic” farm and SEEN how much plastic they use? But you have the opportunity every day to fix some carbon. Sure, it's a tiny amount, but you fixed some AND you caused some other to not be released so that's doubled already. And that's true for all of this. You can help pollinators AND NOT cause them to be poisoned by someone else because you aren't supporting that little bit of it. Surely your nitrogen isn't going to be derived from the Haber-Bosch process but from composting some waste and some weeds, which is ALSO going to lessen your waste stream AND help some animals and bacteria. Perhaps you are taking some of that wasteland we call lawns out of production to use it to grow some food, so that's good too.

So many things. So.many.things. And we haven't even gotten to all the parts about processing what you grow. But it's all that stuff all over again. I personally believe in good health effects from food that is grown wholesomely and nearby. And if you haven't ever tasted hominy you made from corn you grew, or mozzarella from milk you milked, or learned the secret of keeping eggs fresh for a year, well, what have you done with your life?

What's more, what are you going to do with it? Is it really meaningful to slog to work and slog back home? Does it make a difference to anyone's life? To your own? What is the cost of hitting the gym instead of the garden? Of traveling for amusement instead of finding amusement at home? Is not the garden and the kitchen and time spent with others a better use?

Pray before I am misconstrued, this isn't all one does. One can still work, travel, eat at a (hopefully mom & pop) restaurant. I do not mean to tie men to the wood chopping block and women to the wood burning stove. I mean to open things up, not close them down. I mean to make things that matter more matter more, and things that matter less matter less. Provide some perspective.

There is nothing more interesting than a person who is really, honestly interested in something. And since we have to eat, food might as well be one of the things we are passionate about.

the hay guy

Mack was my hay guy (and so much more) since 2011, but then he died in '20. In '22 I found George serendipitously-- I called another hay guy and he gave me George's name and number. I called George and arranged round bales for that year. 

 I can't tell you how nervous I was. It's silly, I know, but a good hay relationship means so much and here I live in ruby red Tennessee and I have "smash the Patriarchy" kinds of bumper stickers on what would otherwise be a "good ole boy" manual transmission old full size single cab truck. So I want that phone impression to emphasize the "good ole boy" part of who I am.

George has been my hay guy for 3 hay years. That means I've seen him about 24 times total, give or take. You don't do business of any sort here without some talking. At least, you don't do business politely without some sort of talking, and this hay relationship really bears out why that's a good thing.

See, I assumed George was as red as most of our neighbors, and I still don't know that he isn't. But his wife was the principal of the little 3 room elementary school our kids would have gone to if they'd gone to school. I didn't know that until the next to last hay run this year. When new folks were running to be the county commissioner from our district, I asked his opinion on the folks, and he knew who was running so he pays attention to low level politics. Eventually we've talked about all sorts of things, from making maple syrup to latigos breaking while riding horses to what's in the garden. He knows every trail on this mountain I think, and I sure would love to get him to map them out for me - the steps, the rock house, and all. At the very end of last year I found out he loves hominy and I promised him some at first hay this year. I didn't forget either. And no one in our family forgot at last hay of the year the other day either because they make sure that I took him some more hominy.

"So you think 16 bales next year too?" Yes, unless I get a big horse again and then it will be more. I cannot tell you how much relationships like this mean to me. Or how top quality his hay is.

******************

Do you want to make your own hominy? Grow some hard corn. This is not as hard as it might seem, and doesn't take as big a patch as you might think. Or buy some -- if it ain't gonna poison a horse, it ain't gonna poison you. Dump a gallon bag of it into a big stock pot, fill that pot with water, add a couple spoonfuls of pickling lime, bring to a boil, cover and let sit until tomorrow. Tomorrow, wash the hulls off, then dry it (best to have a good sized dehydrator to dry this much). You can grind it wet then dry it for grits. For masa we usually grind it as for grits, then dry it, then grind it again (dry) to get the right consistency.

And always take good care of your hay guy once you've found a good 'un.

solstice letter

 

I loved getting Christmas cards with Christmas letters! You mostly weren't in close contact with these folks but you'd at least loved them once. And the letters were filled with what they thought was important, so you got news and insight into character.

Truthfully, you still get those insights with what people choose to post on social media, but it is so broad, the forum so open, that it is more guarded and curated. I would love to still get those letters, and I thought I'd also like to write my own.

What a year 2024 has been! Filled with hope, and then the knowledge that so many people are either so dumb or so mean as to elect Trump. So if you are one of those people, honestly, I want nothing to do with you. I'm quite sure that this will affect the years to come: people will die and we will try our best to help those who didn't help bring this on themselves. I'm already familiar with the farce that the legal system is: it has slithered further away from any semblance of impartiality and its resurrection toward any real justice will be a long time coming. We may well have lost our entire democracy.

But 2024 held much more than that for us. I turned 63, which is how old my uncle and hero Talmadge was when he died. I've been "out of" horses for a couple of years and know I will not likely seriously ride again . It is painful to say that, but it's true. And I'm not sure but I think it's ok, or will be. I really do need to be able to pursue something though, and hopefully I'll get the space to do that (whether that is headspace or physical space). (And honestly, in the most recent soakie bath, I was contemplating a possible pathway that would include riding)

The kids are all both great and worrisome. First, all four, plus the three bonus, are good folks. Our kids have interests and passions that they pursue. I always somewhat worry that we "ruined their lives" because we have lived so differently -- except for drivers tests, they have never taken a test, for example.  They have not grown up with toxic Christianity, or the expectation of grades or rewards. So they are pretty different. I think that is a good thing, but being your own measure is also not an easy thing in a culture that expects to be your measure.

The garden and farm are good. It is mostly what we envisioned way back when. It is harder than we imagined it would be, from building the house to keeping the road passable to managing the animals to growing food. But the kids make it possible too. The things I have personally been playing with include propagating pawpaw trees, growing sweet potatoes, growing saffron crocus, and fermenting all sorts of things.

And then there are the ideals. They still exist. Produce more than you consume. Support things worth supporting. Live smaller. Closer. Practice not shopping, not wanting. Don't be tempted by buy a life, and don't value lives that are bought. Learn stuff and develop more skills.

I hope that you and yours are doing well. I'd love to read your Solstice Letter!

on the edge

Yes, I am on the edge of the destruction that has visited the Southern Appalachian Mountains this week. We have escaped with very little damage but Damascus just a little to the north, Boone to the east, Newport to the west, and the whole Asheville area to the south. Oh, and Erwin, my lawd. I mean, you expect a landslide on I40 west of Asheville -- it happens like every other year -- but for an interstate bridge to collapse, both lanes, in Erwin? For a hospital to be evacuated from the roof? For a factory to have the workers told they can't leave until the water is to their waists? (the supervisors left) (some workers are now dead because of this criminal act)

I took some time out of time last week, and one of the things I realized was how much we've done. You know, eating grits with folks you didn't know yesterday and "We make our own grits" comes out. Yes, that's after we grow the corn. No small feat.

Circumstances changed radically and suddenly this year and yet to "not change priorities" becomes the challenge. More possibilities equals more thoughtfulness required.

Last year's new venture was pawpaw trees. I don't think I've written about that. The fall two years before I gathered pawpaws and processed them and saved the seeds through the winter (do NOT dry them out but put them in the fridge in acidified sawdust), planted them in cups, waited for them to sprout, was shocked at how many did sprout, kept them through the winter, and lo and behold they leafed back out. I sold some, I planted some out, I repotted some in bigger pots.

And I sprouted more seeds, despite thinking I'd ruined them. Not acidified enough and they molded. I tried presprouting some (maybe there's a name for that?) and let them dry out too much. I was sure I'd have zero germination. I found some previous year's seed in the fridge and forgot them on a shelf. When I found them, they were all sprouty. I planted them all, moldy dry and sprouty all. And again, way more than I expected grew. With the money from the seedlings I'd sold I bought a small hot house just to protect them from birds more than anything, an obviously it will be handy for starting all sorts of seeds.

And this year's new venture has been/is fermentation. There's more kraut, slightly better versions than before, in the fridge. There's beet kvass as a supplement for the girls. There's turnip kvass for us old folks. There's sour beets and sour turnips to experiment with. Garlic in honey. The idea of a ginger bug. Haven't gotten to the kimchi yet, or the larger fermenting vessels yet.

More to come. It's a pursuit.

Appalachia doesn't need your thoughts and prayers: we need infrastructure and good policy. Hundreds of miles inland, thousands of feet in elevation, destroyed by a hurricane. This is climate change and it will visit us again, and it will visit you too.

another year

 Hi there. I was thinking about this blog tonight as I walked to the garden at sunset to spray the blossoms on the peach trees with water hoping to protect them from the frost (although really, it isn't going to be that cold until almost dawn and will the water stay on there that long? I don't know, but intentions are out there in the universe). I still haven't completely finished re-reading _One Straw Revolution_. We've made a lot of hominy and grits and masa this year to go along with the corn meal. We are eating a lot of chickens and goats. I made the first cheese of this milking season yesterday. I bought these towels months ago thinking they'd be good cheese draining clothes and . . . they are!

I have several projects, mostly continuing from last year (sweet potatoes and pawpaws). We have lettuce about ready to be transplanted, and the seed potatoes are waiting in the basement as we finish up eating the last of last year's potatoes. I keep a thermometer in the sweet potato slip slightly warmer than the outside frame:

Yeah, it got wet and part of the LCDs don't work, but it works good enough.

And healing goes on, from everything and everyone, eh? You can't love without knowing you could be betrayed, eh? Will be betrayed even. Most times I think we don't mean to and yet, eh?

There's been a lot of wind this year. Spirit moves on breath/wind.We've had at least four big trees (well, one was half a tree) come down, most bringing a couple more down with them. So plenty of firewood and fortunate on all other aspects.

There are huge shifts going on. I hope you are weathering them well. And voting like your rights and the world depends on it, because it does. *uck tRump.

all weeds, no hope

Well, it's July. The end of July even. And if you make it to Soltice in June with hope, you are doing well. By now it is obviously the time of all weeds and no hope. Which is just the juxtaposition to that time early in the year when things are cleaned off and beginning to be planted and growing and you can stay ahead of the weeds and we call that time "all hope and no weeds". And if you are a *real* farmer/gardener and you have "farmed" the soil and not the plants or the harvest or the profit, then the weeds are going to grow as enthusiastically (or more so) than the intentional plants.

And that is not a bad thing, all in all. It's all carbon: sequester it. It's all pulling nutrients up out of the subsoil: they are helping you to "farm" your soil. Weeds can tell you a lot about your soil: is it wet, nitrogen deficient, acidic?

But it's not all a good thing either. Weeds can smother out your intentional plants, out-competing them for sunlight, water, and nutrients. Weeds can make it so you don't want to even go in your garden.

There is a middle path, tho, between my grandfather's weedless rows and an old friend's three carrots lost in the weeds. And that is, doing the best you can.

One, plant things close and they'll shade out a lot of weeds. Cabbage is the poster child for this strategy. Realize that sometimes things fail, or get too far out of hand, and it's ok to abandon them (and sometimes later you'll find three surprise carrots like our friend did). But the biggest thing, really, is to give the plants that you mean to grow a little advantage and forgive yourself for the rest.

 

That's a kale patch with some black palm kale and ragged jack kale and I took that photo after I'd weeded the right half and before I went to weed the other side of that bed. It's had some cabbage moth damage, and probably some snail damage from being deep in the weeds, but it's plenty healthy really. It probably had a pretty good start before the weeds got so thick (meaning we probably weeded it pretty well when it was still little), and now it will probably have a pretty good "finish". We'll spray a little Bt on it and be glad for a mix of sun and rain to encourage it to flourish. I foresee big batches of kale salad and maybe some frozen for winter greens.

 

Here's what else: It may nearly be August but it's still time to plant stuff! This patch is either October or Jacob's Cattle beans -- beans that should mature about the time of frost. Soup beans are another thing to grow if you are serious about feeding yourself.

Let me tell you about one year! It was the early '90s. One infant and us in a tiny trailer. All weeds and no hope had hit in early June and there wasn't much for it with town jobs and everything else going on, but during it, the husband had taken a not yet developed section of the circle garden and mounded up some beds and planted some October beans. October beans are the soup beans of choice in our culture (what momma always fixed), and the thing about beans is what you eat is also what you plant so you just go to the store, buy a pound of beans, and plant them!

So he planted these beans, not a very big patch. And October came and things died back and there were ALL THESE BEANS! We had a 3/4 ton Ford as a farm truck at that time so the husband took that down, pulled those bean vines, and filled the bed of that truck up. Literally. You could not see out the back window for the piled-up bean vines. He drove it up and parked it near our little old unheated, uncooled, 5-gallon water heater trailer and we'd bring in an armload of vines and strip the pods off (feeding the haulms to the rabbits) then shell out the green October beans and can them. There is nothing better than a green (matured but not dried), home-canned October bean!

A few years later he worked with someone whose family lived in Maine and was given a pound of a Maine staple, Jacob's Cattle Beans. We grew some of those, canned them, and gave the giver a few jars. She asked for the recipe: beans, water, salt. That's all. So that's how we got started growing Jacob's Cattle beans.

It's time to start seeds for fall cabbages, and get a lettuce bed started in a shady area, and process something every day.

calories and condiments

As I weed things like leeks, that most people would think a luxury or novelty, not a staple, I have thoughts.

If you start out wanting to grow your own food, that desire can be daunting. How in the world do you grow that much food? Which is why I implore folks to just get an upside down tomato and a basil plant. Because a little success there and the ideas will grow as well as the produce.

But what most folks are growing is entertainment and condiments. And I don't mean that in any sort of belittling way. I always say our garden "budget" comes out of our entertainment budget. Of course, we don't actually have an entertainment budget and if we did, servicing the vehicle's transmission and my dental needs would have wiped that out for the next, oh, decade. But picking up a sweet potato or three doesn't strain the budget. Going to see my friend on her horse farm and picking up pawpaws doesn't strain the budget. Saving toilet paper rolls. . . you get the idea.

Here's the thing: your calories are potatoes and grain and beans, all of which you can buy bulk if you don't grow it. We don't grow rice, but we eat a good bit of it.  We do grow hard corn, so we've learned more different ways to incorporate it into our lives, including tonight's hominy soup.

The rest of the stuff is condiments. Onions, for example.  Onions make darn near everything better. Ditto garlic. You almost couldn't grow too much of that (include shallots and leeks and the like in with that) -- IF you can figure out how to preserve it in a way that you will utilize it. Because nothing is more disheartening that growing and preserving something and then NOT eating it. It happens all the time. We've certainly done it. And that has led to several mantras, like "don't save it -- eat it now". Because if you eat it now, you will also eat it when you preserve it.

For reasons I don't understand, I have always gotten a kick out of wildcrafted things -- picking the wild blackberries, finding all the poke, making locust blossom fritters. And none of that is going to feed you long term but it just might make life worth living. This year my amusement has been pawpaw trees and sweet potatoes. There's the whole permaculture thing of making guilds. It doesn't take a big space to grow a lot of lettuce, and if it's shady in the summer, all the better (in the south anyway). All this to say two things: no matter where you are, you can grow something; and it can be a great amusement to do it too.

 

a small thing

By early May we were eating our own salad; wonderful tender leaf lettuce, with some random chard, kale, and arugula thrown in. And green onions. And we had a chicken stock based soup with all the green in it green onions. And we still had green onions.

We had the dehydrator going for some masa we'd made, so we added a few trays of green onions to it. And it seems like such a small thing, three trays of dried green onions. About three cups dried.And we haven't used dried green onions before and that's half the battle in preserving food -- knowing how and then remembering to use it. And we could easily use that up in just a couple of meals. And these days people don't much use onions as a vegetable staple but as a flavor or condiment.

It seems like a small thing, these dried onions. It seems like a small thing, having a few cups of strawberries to put in the freezer or to make into jam. A few raspberries at a time, a few blueberries at a time, a few gooseberries at a time.

Sure, maybe once every couple of years we'll go to the u-pick and put several gallons of blueberries into the freezer to draw from. You never know from year to year what is going to make plenty and what is not, but with those few berries, we have plenty to top cereal both hot and cold, and it is such a treat!

It might seem like a small thing to put up those onions. It might seem like a small thing to make two batches of cheese off this season's milking. And it was a lot less cheese than I've made in the past. But it will top lots of gyros probably, that will be made with sheep and goats that also seems like small things to put by, especially compared to a cow but we can't process a cow and we can a goat, and then we can keep the skin and learn to process that too.

It might seems like a small thing to take that little bit of sweet corn we grew and freeze a couple bags of it, but it was truly the best sweet corn I've had in a long while. Those few winter squash this year also seemed small, but a year or two ago we had hundreds of pounds of squash to eat on through the winter.

From year to year you never know. You never know what will succeed and what will fail, and something will always fail but something will always succeed too. Hard corn and potatoes are staples. If you have overwintered a cabbage to go with it before the first greens of spring are up, or if you've made kraut, that is no longer a small thing. The onions, even just as a condiment, are no longer a small thing but a treat, a joy, a luxury.