This vegetable gardening stuff is harder than I thought. It doesn’t help that I’m such a newbie I didn’t even know how to plant garlic. But as I go along I’m finding that there is a lot involved here that many more experienced gardeners probably take for granted.

First and foremost, organization appears to be key. Problem is, it’s hard to plan when you really don’t know what you are doing. This, my first year, is my experiment year and I’m hoping I’ll learn enough to plan it right next year. For example, yesterday I went to the garden centre. I bought pole beans, bush beans, zucchini, two kinds of winter squash, and corn. Back at home I discovered that zucchini requires a 3′x3′ section of my 4′x4′ Square Foot Gardening box - basically almost a whole box! I didn’t have that kind of space. The squashes required 2 plots each so I only had room to plant the buttercup squash. I can’t plant the corn yet because the soil needs a few days to warm up, but as I was reading the instructions on the packet about needing to plant a whole bunch and making sure they get pollinated my head started spinning. You mean I can’t just plant 4 in a plot and see what happens? And since when did I have to concern myself with pollination? I’ve ended up with a garden shed full of seeds and onion starters, more than I’ve planted in my gardens. I hope I can use them next year - and I’m definitely going to need more garden plots!

And this brings me to my second gripe - and perhaps I’m still raw because I don’t spend much money anymore and when I do it hurts - but this SFG method is not as cheap as I thought it was going to be. It has already cost me about $100 to make enough soil for two boxes. Then yesterday I bought the materials to make the trellises. Three 10-foot 1/2″ steel electrical conduit pipes (which I had to cut myself with a hacksaw - so much for service at the hardware store); fine, they were about 5 bucks each. Rebar was also cheap at $2.50 apiece. But the elbow joints were $7.50 apiece - I paid $60 for the frames for two trellises!

Then there was the netting. Mel says to use “tomato trellis netting” which is made of nylon that won’t cut into the plants, is strong enough to hold up squashes, and has large 7″ holes. I phoned every garden store in town and nobody had anything other than “sweet pea and bean mesh”. Nobody even knew what I was talking about. I ended up going back to the hardware store to get some - its 5″ squares were the largest I’d found anywhere and it was apparently made of nylon (it looks like fishing line). But I’m finding it hard to believe this stuff is going to hold up heavy produce…still, I had no choice. My sugar snap peas were desperately in need of something to climb and had wound around each other and were threatening to wrap around my onions!

Back at the garden centre I was hoping to find seedlings to plant (especially tomatoes). They had lots of tomato plants but I wanted to know where they came from and how they were grown. There were no organic starters and the guy in the veggie section actually looked at me like that was the strangest question he’d ever heard. Now THAT was a bizarre feeling, living as I do in the crunchy capital of Canada! Looking at the labels on the plants got me nowhere. Oh sure, they listed the fancy names of the varieties. Some did say “hybrid” and others said “heirloom”. None said “open pollinated” and not a one of them said whether fertilizers or pesticides had been used to grow these little seedlings. Most of the tags said to use fertilizer at various times during the growth period. What, nobody can raise seedlings without fertilizers? Am I missing something here? So I came away with no plants and am hoping that I will see Albert at this weekend’s Farmers Market and that he will have some tomato plants (having already supplied me with chard, broccoli, and gai lan).

I wish I could find a good organic gardening book for total beginners (if any of you dear readers know of one, please tell me!). Every book I read is intimidating, except for SFG, but that book simply doesn’t have enough room to describe the needs of every plant in detail. There’s just too much information out there and I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed by it all. I guess it’s a good thing that I’m not expecting much from my garden this year. I just hope I can figure it out before it is time to start planning next year’s garden!

But so as not to sound whiny, I will end on a positive note. I’ve harvested a few salads now (and learned that I could eat even more; note: plant more greens next year!) and some more radishes, green onions, and herbs from my Aerogarden (which I transplanted into a container filled with leftover Mel’s Mix). It’s a pretty cool feeling to get ready to start dinner by grabbing a bowl and some scissors and heading out into the garden.

A while back, during an online discussion, someone mentioned that they had issues with sustainable living because of its apparent elitism; i.e. only the wealthy can afford organic and local, only the wealthy can afford eco-friendly alternatives like hybrids and solar retrofits, etc. At the time I didn’t address her point but I’ve been thinking about it ever since and I’ve decided that yes, in a way she was right. However, it’s not that Simple Living is a luxury that one can only afford when one is wealthy. Instead, I see Simple Living as the responsibility of the wealthy. Because it is the wealthy who consume at an unsustainable level. And I define “wealthy” as including most people in the Developed World, many of whom might argue at being included in that group.

It is undeniable that there are desperately poor people living right here in North America. People who spend every day in a state of stress, wondering where their next meal will come from, whether they’ll be able to pay the rent, and - in America - fearful of the possibility of falling ill. Poverty is not the same thing as frugality; Voluntary Simplicity must be just that, voluntary. When one is occupied every day with the basics of survival, there is no room for adjusting attitudes toward a view of Simplicity.

But then there’s the rest of us. Some have lots of money, some have little, but we all have some sense of security - nobody in our family is going hungry and we will always have a dry, safe place to live, however small. We have enough of an education to inquire about the world around us, and we have time to contemplate matters of importance. Some are struggling with the burden of debt due to poor consumer choices and a lack of basic financial skills; there are solutions for this group. We are the consumers, and it is our lifestyle - rapidly being exported to developing nations - that is the cause of so many of the world’s problems.

The lifestyle looks something like this: we work hard to afford the things we think we need - a big house in a nice neighbourhood, private schools, cars (usually more than one), sculptured lawns, the latest electronic gizmo…We take on debt to acquire these things, then we have to work harder to pay off that debt. At the end of the day we’ve spent precious time away from our families that can never be recovered, and have a heap of possessions that have lost their monetary value and require the aid of a “decluttering expert” to deal with.

Advocates of Simple Living have learned that it is a very effective way to achieve real happiness, perhaps not in the spiritual sense of the word (though that’s up for debate), but certainly in the sense of being content with what we’ve got. So much of our unhappiness these days seems to lie with what we want but do not have. So while Simple Living as a key to happiness and prosperity (redefined) may seem to be a “privilege” that only the wealthy are free to consider, I believe we are precisely the group who should be considering it.

And not just for our own sake, either. If all people on the planet consumed at the level we do, we’d need five Earths to sustain us all (see The Story of Stuff). Changing our lifestyle has ramifications for the poor, those without choices who suffer to provide us with the food and consumer goods we use up at such an alarming rate.

So go ahead and think about it. You’re not being elitist, you are taking responsibility and being part of the solution. A while back I defined the Seven Aspects of Simple Living. Consider how your lifestyle relates to each of these topics. Ask yourself what changes you think you could make. Start slowly, one step at a time. Look to others for ideas and inspiration (see Blogroll at right). If you can afford to make changes that reduce your ecological footprint, do so without the guilt of privilege. You’ll probably find it to be the most satisfying and rewarding way to make a better life…for you and for everybody else.

edited to add: apparently there is now a name for those of us moving down this path, we’re APLS! Thanks to Arduous for rallying the community together!

A couple of weeks ago Husband said he’d found an old Airstream trailer for sale (no, it’s not the one in the photo). It had been gutted for renovation and then left that way. The price was an amount we were comfortable parting with (i.e. it wouldn’t make much of dent in our savings), and we thought that even if all we did was put in a floor, a space heater, and a toilet we’d have a warm, dry place to sleep and a reason to avoid pit-toilets. Turns out the trailer was leaky so we didn’t proceed any further. But it started a discussion about trailers.

I love camping. We’ve been doing it for two years now as a family and everybody enjoys it. We do car-camping (where you drive up to your site and pitch a tent) and have all the supplies for cooking, sleeping, etc. But it does mean waiting until the weather is warm enough to sleep outdoors, which around here is usually in June or sometimes late June/early July. And I’ll confess that, as I get older, sleeping on a thin mattress on the ground is not the most comfortable environment for me. I’ve been itching to go camping for weeks now, and if we had a trailer we could have already gone on several trips to our local, beautiful parks and campgrounds. Getting away from the city and out into nature is so refreshing for my soul, and such a wonderful opportunity for the children to play free and explore. Yes, I would really love to have a trailer.

It would be easy as pie for Husband and I to go out and buy a brand new trailer on credit. We even have the cash right now to pay for a used trailer. But we’re not going to do that. Why? We want land. We want our dream acreage and we have a plan. Buying a trailer, even an older one, would take several thousand dollars away from our farm fund and either prolong the time until we can buy, or reduce what we’ll be able to buy. So we asked ourselves, what do we want more? The answer was clear: we want that acreage more than we want a trailer. So for now, no trailer.

Do I feel deprived? Surprisingly, not in the least. There is something very satisfying and rewarding about identifying our spending priorities and making decisions based on that. Besides, when we are living every day on a few acres, surrounded by woods and fields, perhaps I won’t feel this driving urge to leave the city every possible weekend and head out into Nature. So perhaps by next year I won’t want a trailer anymore. But if I do, we will save for it, and prioritize it with our other goals.

I recently accepted a client contract that has me heading out on a 1.5 hr bus commute (each way) twice a week to our local university (you can see why I’m getting so much reading done these days). Husband already had every other Friday off, and used excess vacation time to book off the other Fridays. On the other day we use an on-call nanny service. I didn’t think two out of seven days away from the kids would be too much. And of course the money is very good.

The other reason I decided to take this contract is that while I have been living the dream of the Slow Life for some time now, Husband has not. He works long hours at a job he doesn’t really enjoy, while I’m already living the life I want. And while we’ve been working toward the goal of getting him off the full-time work hamster-wheel, it’s going to take some time. Accepting this job was my way of sharing the load with him a bit.

Well, I’ve been doing this job for a few weeks now and I’ve grown to really hate it.

My children beg me not to go to work and Son has become quite clingy. And oh how I miss my kids!

Fortunately this contract won’t last too much longer. So I’m considering this a learning experience: even two days a week away from my children is too much for me. The money is nice, but I’m quite willing to give it up and would do so today if I hadn’t made a commitment to see this job through.

So actually, this experience has been one of affirmation and validation. It has made me appreciate even more the value of a Slow life, of Living Simply and having that precious, precious time that is more valuable than any paycheck. It has made me appreciate what I’ve got, and more determined than ever to keep it. I guess sometimes you have to take a step backwards to appreciate how far you’ve come.

I was chatting with a friend the other day about the food industry, and all I’ve learned about it in the last few months. Trying to fit all those factoids into a short telephone conversation was not easy, and I worried that it sounded so overwhelming when piling it all on at once that my friend might end up just too overwhelmed to consider pursuing the matter any further. With all we’re bombarded with in the media these days: climate change, species extinction, shrinking biodiversity, oceanic plastic waste zones, industrial waste, food shortages…it’s easy to become paralyzed by the sheer magnitude of the problem.

It’s easy to say “what good can one person do?” but the more people do something the more the word spreads, the more it catches on…until the tipping point is reached and it suddenly becomes mainstream. This is how many social behavioural changes are made. Whether it is shopping organic, bringing reusable grocery bags to the store, or patronizing fair-trade coffee shops, when enough people start doing it that it becomes noticeable there is the power to make real changes for the better. And, while I am generally moving towards a stance of disgust towards the pervasive consumerism in our society, there are times when consumers can use that Dark Power for Good and prompt real changes in the way things are done.

I myself started on the path of Simple Living as a way to attain better financial health and move closer to our Dream of owning a small acreage. What I found was a way to live a richer and more rewarding life that included a heavy emphasis on living sustainably and developing a relationship with my food and my community. By joining the blog community and finding other inspiring writers who were following similar paths, I began to feel a part of something. But then I would venture out into the Real World and hear stories that make me despair and wonder if things will ever truly change for the better.

Lately, however, I’m finding reasons to feel more optimistic. First, there was this article from a well-respected online independant newspaper. It seems that more and more people are starting to grow their own vegetables at home and developing an interest in local eating. Perhaps the rising cost of food and reports of global food shortages, not to mention the increasing cost of fuel, are causing people to rethink the way they do things. Then there was this inspiring post from Green Bean and the article it referred to naming a new generation out of those who are slowing down and using money more wisely.

This and other things I’m hearing and seeing around me are all bringing focus to the positive change around me, change I’m seeing right now. Around here the CSA’s (community supported agriculture groups) are sold to full capacity. We are, after all, the home of the 100 Mile Diet. Our municipality has recently outlawed throwing any recyclables into the garbage stream; instead of just encouraging people to recycle, they are now mandating it. I’m seeing a significant number of shoppers bringing bags to the store, and most retailers actually ask me if I’d like a bag or not.

So while reading book after book telling me how much we’ve screwed up the planet, I can still look around me and take notice of all the folks doing their little bit toward making things better. And I’m not the only one noticing that word seems to be spreading…It feels good to be a part of that, however small.

On Sunday I ventured into my garden and plucked the very first fruit of my labour from the soil…in case you missed the sneak preview in my last post, here it is in all its vegetable glory:

It was one of a few that were poking up from the soil a bit. After I picked this one I dug around gently and found more that seemed ready to pick:

Then I decided that I would harvest the whole plot so I could replant something else in there. Turns out some of them were a bit…well, stunted:

I’m not sure if this is just seed variability or what…Anyways, here is the whole gang of 16; 11 were of edible size:

I couldn’t resist having a taste right there in the garden, so I plucked off the top and bottom of my first picked radish, rinsed it in a bucket of water I’d poured for watering, and ate it. It was….well, it tasted like a radish!

Seriously though, having read so much about how amazing home-grown food is, how much brighter and bolder the taste is compared to grocery-store fare, I suppose I was expecting something big. In fact, if anything I’d say the radish tasted a bit mild and watery, though with the characteristic “kick” at the end. Later I read that the faster the radish grows, the sweeter and more flavourful it is. With our late, cold spring these guys were in the ground twice as long as they should have been. So I planted a new plot of radishes. I didn’t put them in the same plot as the one I’d just harvested - the idea with SFG is to rotate crops - instead I planted them in the old garlic plot (which I saw had not been growing at all after my attempts at salvaging them).

I also plucked my very first and only weed thus far:

Seems Mel was right about SFG requiring very little weeding!

On to the onions…I admit I didn’t search too long on the ‘Net because dinner was in the works, but I wanted to harvest a green onion and I tried to find out how. See, the Internet said that you just pluck the whole thing from the ground, but that’s assuming you’ve got little spring onion bulbs in there. I don’t. I have “multiplier onions”. My bunches of scallions all appear to be attached to the same big onion bulb (I dug around gently to check). So I decided to just wing it - I took a pair of sharp scissors and cut off one at the stem. Unfortunately I don’t have a photo, but it just looked like your basic green onion and I have to say I did enjoy the flavour. I’m curious to see what will happen with the cut part - will it grow back? Will the remaining stalks have to feed the growing onion bulb themselves? (in which case I’d better be careful not to harvest too many from any one bulb) And I’m still not clear on how I’m going to get more than one onion from the one bulb I planted in each spot. So far underneath the lush green tops all I’m seeing is a single bulb.

I have a feeling there’s going to be a lot more learning to come!

On Sunday I went to pick up my latest and greatest thrift find. A friend’s mother is moving into an independent living facility and thus majorly downsizing. I scored myself this baby, and I’ve named her Martha:

If you are wondering why the background is crooked it’s because the table into which the sewing machine is built has a broken leg on one side. I managed to find a temporary solution later on. The machine itself is marked with the Woodwards brand, a department store that was very popular when I was a kid but went bankrupt in the 80’s. I’m guessing this machine is at least 30 years old. But it does seem to work! Great for a beginner like me to learn on, right?

And to go with my newfound friend I scored this find at the thrift store the week before:

It was $5.99. Woo Hoo!

So now I’m going to learn how to sew. First I need to sit down and read the Owner’s Manual. Yes, it was in one of the drawers. Then I’ll have to have my Mum give me a quick lesson while I learn to do some straight stitches. I did learn how to sew in Home Ec class, back in Grade 10. That was about 25 years ago, so I’m a bit rusty. I don’t even know what I’m planning on making just yet, although Daughter has some pajama pants that are about 6 inches too long in the legs, so perhaps I’ll hem something. She also has some pants with holes in the crotch seams. I’d like to sew those up. And then, of course, I’m going to make some pads to send to Goods4girls!

Oh, and the something new? A preview into my next Veggie Tales post:

My very first ever harvest, my very first ever homegrown vegetable. I picked it (and ate it) not long after the sewing machine arrived. Never thought I could get so excited about a radish!

In my last installment of Veggie Tales I described some of the learning I was being forced to take in with regards to my garlic, for example. Now it’s time to move into a new learning phase. I’ve got the stuff planted, it’s growing….so now what do I do?

The other day I added two new residents to my veggie garden, purchased from the farmer’s market and grown locally:

That’s Gai Lan on the left and broccoli on the right. While checking on the other residents I noticed that some earth had been brushed aside from one of my radish plants and there was a bright, round, radish-red THING in the soil! And my multiplier onions are looking like….like scallions! Here they are:

And it made me wonder….how do I know when these things are ready? The radish leaves are still rather small, and they don’t look anything like the radishes I buy in the store with their long leaves and big bunches….And my salad isn’t ready to harvest quite yet, so what am I going to do with all these radishes? It was yet another example of how ignorant a city-girl can be when it comes to her food. I had to consult a book to figure out how to proceed here.

According to my Square Foot Gardening book (full of great information for us beginners!), radishes are ready for harvest about 4 weeks after planting. I planted my first batch of radishes on February 28. It has been fairly cold up until recently, but even so that was nine weeks ago. So I guess it’s no surpise that my first batch may be ready. It also suggests you plant them every few weeks to get a continuous harvest. Swiss chard and lettuce are also harvestable only 4 weeks after planting. Already it’s starting to look like salad in there, so that’s encouraging!

Carrots take much longer, about 10 weeks, so that explains why I’m only just now seeing tiny shoots coming up.

With regard to my onions, they are “multiplier onions” which means I’m supposed to get both scallions (green onions) from them AND onions. This website says that scallions can be harvested when they look ready. Well, mine look ready! And those I don’t harvest will apparently continue to grow into onions.

So, this afternoon I am going to dig up one radish plant and one spring onion plant! This is going to be a momentous occasion and I will definitely take lots of pictures. Stay tuned!!

Lately on the news (I get mine almost exclusively from our public radio station) I’ve been hearing alot about the growing food crisis. People in poor countries are committing violence in order to obtain food for their families. There are huge lineups for basic staple such as rice. It feels like we’re seeing only the start of something that hasn’t yet reached its full effect.

I was shocked to hear that some are advocating for relaxing of standards with regards to GMO foods. They claim that we can’t afford to be “picky” when people are starving, and that we should take advantage of the “high yields” that GMOs can produce in order to feed all the poor starving people.

This infuriates me. The reason people are starving is not because there isn’t enough food. It’s because we are choosing to use vast amounts of corn to produce “biofuels”; we’d rather feed our cars and watch other people starve. And because our system of food, growing it and distributing it and marketing it, has robbed people of the ability to provide for themselves. We’re killing them at both ends.

GMO crops surely contribute to farmer poverty (felt worst in the developing world). First, they price out local farmers by offering artificially cheap (i.e. heavily subsidized) products with high growth yields. These farmers then convert to GMO food production, for which they have to buy seeds every year (since the inventors of the seed decided to make them sterile, a great trick if you are the sole supplier) AND they have to buy the pesticides that the crops are modified to resist (which not only pollute the environment but destroy the soil in which the crops are grown), which they have to buy more of each year due to the development of resistance. Then they have to buy fertilizers because their soil didn’t evolve to support this particular kind of food, and growing the food in big monoculture plots without the benefits of fallowing (can’t afford to let land sit empty) drains the soil of nutrients. Finally, they have to buy tractors and harvesters and other big machines. All these costs put farmers in debt, crushing them until they can no longer feed their own families.

In the old days farmers grew the crops that were best suited to their region, and selected those crops for taste which GMO producers do not (ability to withstand long distance travel is high up on their list; taste is not even on the list). They rotated their crops, fallowed their fields, nourished them with organic matter. They saved a small amount of seed each harvest for next year. It was basically free food (labour notwithstanding). Most people today believe that these traditional farmers were simply unable to supply food for the growing populations of their countries, but I think Joel Salatin would have something to say about that. Then there’s the fact that humans existed in most regions on Earth for hundreds, if not thousands, of years before industrial farming techniques came along. They were able to sustain themselves with what was available in their region. Due to conventional farming techniques we’ve lost that knowledge in just a generation or two. People are starving because we destroyed their food-production (or reduced it to a monoculture crop they can’t survive on - coffee for example) and then destroyed all cultural knowledge about how to live off the earth in their region.

The suggestion that somehow we can turn to GMO foods to solve this crisis is ludicrous. Michael Pollan, in an article written 1.5 years ago, summed up the situation perfectly:

“This has always been the genius of industrial capitalism–to take its failings and turn them into exciting new business opportunities.”

I think what really bothers me is the ignorance of people regarding this issue. I should know, because about six months ago I was ignorant myself. I thought the only concerns people had about GMO foods were that they might be unhealthy for humans. I couldn’t quite figure that out; since DNA is fully digestible, surely eating a GMO apple isn’t going to pose an acute health risk. Now I understand what people were talking about: the nutritional value of GMO foods is far below that of the same foods produced 50 years ago. And the effects of these practices on the environment are unhealthy for all living organisms. I used to hear the argument that GMO foods are just supersized versions of the hybrids man has been coaxing out of plant species via artificial selection for centuries. Yes, in a way one could argue that splicing a gene into a tomato plant is not much different than crossing two different tomato varieties, but it’s the way GMO crops are planted, nourished, harvested, and distributed that is the bigger problem. The issue with the new genes has to do with creating a dependence on buying seeds, pesticides and fertilizers.

I’m not sure what to do about all this. Perhaps I should take some inspiration from Theresa at Pondering the Myriad Things and write a letter to my federal representative (different topic, same motivation). Perhaps I should join my local farmers market society. And while starting my first vegetable garden makes me feel less dependent on the global food system, two facts stand out: 1) the amount of food I’m providing is very small relative to what we eat - though I hope to improve with each year, and 2) my family, living in this rich part of the world, will not go hungry due to higher food prices. Meanwhile, I hear about people fighting over food, and I shake my head at our nation’s folly.

So yesterday marked the end of April and the end of Crunchy Chicken’s Buy Nothing Challenge. How did I do? Well, here is a list of all non-food, non-educational, non-necessity purchases made in the past month:

$24.81 at Lush in New York (hubby’s gift for me after a business trip to NYC, though technically he didn’t sign up for the challenge so it may be exempt)

$31 kids haircuts (I could have just waited until May, but that didn’t really seem in keeping with the challenge)

$45 birthday present for a friend (it’s not like you can put that off when there’s a party!)

And here is the big baddy: I had to fork out $70 for a parking ticket I got months ago and forgot to pay!

The challenge was pretty easy for me because I don’t do “shopping as a hobby” and I rarely buy things for myself that aren’t necessary. I’ve been living frugally for four months now (and in past years I’ve had to do so not by choice but by circumstance) so it’s getting to be habit to look for alternatives to buying (libraries, thrift stores, etc). On the other hand, since my kids are homeschooled alot of our purchases get written off as educational. We visited Science World and had to pay for parking there, saw a movie there that was extra admission, bought a cool history book, etc. But even though it wasn’t so “challenging” for me, I wholeheartedly support the Challenge as a way of bringing attention to how much unnecessary spending we do as a society, and how consumer-based our collective values are. Hopefully there are some people who signed up for the challenge who have discovered the simple joys of not spending. And it was a nice reaffirmation for others like myself. Thanks, Crunchy!