A Gardeners New Normal~Seedlings and Covid-19

Life as we know it has changed.
Now, I don’t mean to sound alarmist and pessimistic with that statement, but it’s true.
Our ‘normal’ has changed. Only time will tell if it reverts back to what there was before.
But whining about it does no one any good. What we have to do is remain calm and adapt.

How do we adapt if we have no idea how long this new global emergency will take to play out?

Look to the past.

Many people’s ‘normal’ was upended during WW2. They had to learn how to bake with less flour as factories were mandated to make less of their ‘normal’ product and help make MRE’s for the soldiers. People had to learn to mend, patch, darn and make clothing from sources they might not have previously thought of otherwise. Like flour sackcloth. Now, I don’t think the supply of clothing is going to be a big concern, but someone brought another issue to my attention yesterday.


Much of our food is not made in our own countries. Here in Canada, quite a lot of it is imported, including fruit and vegetables. Our food supply chains are going to be impacted as borders close to all but freight, as panic shopping reveals empty meat, bread, pasta and produce sections. This has already happened. How do we adapt?

Learn to make, and enjoy more meatless meals. Learn to make our own bread, buns, rolls and the like. Those who already know how to make their own pasta are one step ahead of the rest of us. Grow our own lettuce and potatoes. But consider this for a moment…

If people are self-isolating by the thousands now, who will start the seeds and man the greenhouses? Who will care for the seedlings until they are big enough to ship out to landscape centers and grocery stores in the spring, where gardeners have been known to cart home flats and flats of the little seedlings?

As the count of confirmed Coronavirus cases rise, as more and more people fall ill (and hopefully eventually recover), as more people self-isolate and work from home or do not go to work at all...how many seedlings do you think will be a priority as spring approaches?

I’ll give you a minute to ponder that…

Yes, even a gardener’s hobby will be touched by Covid-19. There will be fewer seedlings to run our palms over, to study the growing tips and roots, to spend time choosing the very best there is. So how do we adapt to this?

We grow our own.


We sit down and honestly look at why we garden. Perhaps the hobbyist who has always grown roses should consider planting things that can be used in a salad, thereby improving their diet, their immune system and their overall health. This simple change will also result in fewer things needed at the now-overtaxed grocery store.

Now is the time to honestly assess if our occasional treat of sweet corn is worth the big plot of garden that would be better used for a staple like potatoes. Perhaps you’re sick and tired of mowing the lawn and would love more tomatoes in your diet. Learn what you need to do to convert the lawn to a food garden. (Even if your neighbours object now, they won’t when you share some of your bounty of sweet, juicy tomatoes with them at harvest)

So, my advice for you today...your “homework” if you will, is to sit and honestly asses what you want out of a garden. How can you modify your current situation and adapt to an ever-changing food landscape? Feel free to share your thoughts or concerns in the comment section. We’re all in this together!

What Next After People?

I have just finished reading a novel that focuses on surviving in a future ripped apart by war. It's never made explicitly clear how long after the war, but I got the idea that it was a couple of generations at least. It was an entertaining book, and there were a couple of parts that nearly made me put the book down. I was impressed with the level of editing the book had received, only finding one mistake in a novel these days is pretty remarkable. My copy of Harry Potter has more than one typo! Anyway, I stuck with the book until the end and only have one niggling little quibble with it. 
The setting is New York City, specifically a greatly expanded Central Park. Now, even 25 years after a population-altering event, the underground pumps would have stopped working, and New York would be very, very wet. New York is actually already very wet. A team of men and 753 pumps struggle every day to keep the underground river from rising, and their efforts become even more focused and determined when it rains hard. Even as little as 2".

According to Alan Weisman, a man long considered an expert in what might happen to our world without us, 650 gallons of water rush not too far below ground in Brooklyn.  One supervisor of Hydraulics Emergency Response has been quoted as saying that without electricity those pumps would shut off and stay off. In a half hour, the subway tunnels would become so flooded, trains could no longer run. Within 20 years, Lexington Avenue would be a river.
Trees change faces too. The Chinese ailanthus tree would take over, as would weeds and native greenery. Seeds of weeds would blow in from various parks and take root. With no one to maintain the weeds and grasses, New York would not remain a sterile, concrete world. There would be more than just herds of zebra, bears and wolves for any remaining humans to deal with.

So while I recognize that the novel I finished yesterday is only fiction, and meant to be entertaining, I do wonder if the setting might have been better researched.

Regardless, all of this got me thinking while I couldn't sleep at 2 A.M.

Let's say for the sake of conversation that something horrible happened and mankind was not completely wiped out, but our numbers were dramatically reduced. Life has become day-to-day survival. Due to that same reduced population, there is no more power grid, no one to keep the internet running, not enough people to man the oil refineries, or make steel, or cigarettes or music, or any of the other dozens of things we've become accustomed to living with. Because I live in Northern Ontario, I, of course, turned my pre-dawn thoughts to how such a scenario would play out up here.

The closest city to me, an hour away by vehicle, would be taken over by the woods that surround it. The city was originally carved from the bush (as we Canadians call it), and a substantial wood-lot still resides at its heart today for educational purposes. (It is owned by a local college) It isn't unusual to see bears in town, or fox, cougars have been known to come calling, coyotes and even a lynx has been spotted. So the local wildlife isn't waiting around for human-kind to relinquish our grasp on the city. They're already staking their claim. There is already a rat problem, and while some theorize that without our trash, the rats would die off due to an altered diet and hungrier predators...I'm not so sure.

I think the city would quickly become wild and while there is a river on one side, there's not a lot of farms. Some, yes, but even if we had a well-established agricultural presence, those farms need people to till and plant and water and harvest. With a reduced population, farming would become subsistence-driven. Every survivor for themselves, as it were. For the sake of this mental exercise, I imagined I would survive (somehow), and then further tried to imagine exactly how I'd live.

Day-to-day existence would become a constant search for water, food, shelter, and safety. No more coffee, no more bananas or avocado. Once the trucks had ceased bringing food in, there would be no more shipments to the grocery stores and quite likely no one to run the stores anyway. After a while, there would be no more need of town and I would quite likely attempt to establish a refuge in the woods north of the city.

****

What comes next?

What do you think would happen with a drastically reduced population? Let us know in the comments!

Assess, Plan and Learn

Before I moved out to the bush (as we up here call it), in many ways I had a "country attitude". Often, I did my laundry by hand, even though my friends couldn't understand why. I walked, even when I didn't need to. Buses were plentiful and friends would often offer a ride. But I chose to walk. Even the winter that I abandoned the warm, stuck bus to walk home over 3 miles away. I would explain these choices by saying I wanted control over what I could in my life. I couldn't control when I worked, or much of the world around me, so I controlled what I could.
I still feel the same way.
As I write, there is a jar of sprouts quietly growing on a shelf, full of nutrients that the grocery store produce just doesn't have any more.
There is a butane stove, complete with bottles of fuel, out in the shed. We have a brand new propane stove here in the house (thanks to the folks!) with lots of propane outside; but still, it's good to have a back-up. Many of you know I like to have back-ups. The trick is to assess, plan and utilize.

Assess what we have for cooking, food production, hygiene, water, heating, entertainment; whatever we'd need to survive being stuck inside for a week or more. Up here, that could mean a big snow storm or a road being flooded out. I recommend that you assess your own areas for the most likely emergency that might keep you stuck at home. The more prepared you are, the less impact the situation will have on your life.

There's a part of my town's history that applies here. Many years ago, a main road washed out in the spring break-up. It just so happened that a few towns-women were expecting and wouldn't you know it, a couple of them went into labour. According to the local story, those that went into labour had to be air-lifted to town, where the hospitals and doctors were. While this is a bit of an extreme example, it does underline the need to be prepared to not get to town. Childbirth is a unique situation, and different for everyone, but think about your family or your situation for a moment. How would you fare if you could not get to a grocery store or a bank for a week. What about two weeks? Three?

I like to play a little "game" with myself, "what if".
What would we do if the well ran dry for a month? (Which isn't unheard of out here the way our summers are going) I need to come up with a water plan. Rainwater harvesting, collection and storage then becomes something I need to learn about. We don't have gutters or very many rain barrels, so as I see it, that's where I need to start. Get gutters installed, which means, for me, buy them and learn how to install them. Did you know that each 1mm of rain = 1 Litre (L) of water per square metre (m2) of roof area? So a three bedroom home has the potential of redirecting quite a lot of water! So I think rainwater collection is pretty important. This then involves making sure we have rain barrels. So far, we only have two good ones, so clearly a priority this spring is to get a couple more large ones. Developing the spring down the back is a good idea too. I think having a couple of back-ups when it comes to water is prudent.
Some of you might remember we had pump issues this past summer, and we were very lucky to have the saved water we did. Water took on a whole new importance for me. So, I've assessed what we have for water, seen a need, and am now working on a plan to improve our water situation.

So what if we can't get to a grocery store for over a month?
Again, not unheard of up here.
So, we've assessed what we eat that can be grown, and we have a plan to grow what we can, and how to best preserve what we grow. I've made connections with local hunters that are willing to share some of what they hunt, and I've done the research so that I might get my fishing license this spring. Wild fish is not my first choice when I'm hungry, but I know it's not terrible either. No one in our large family is a vegetarian, we all enjoy meat. Local fish is easy to obtain and can be pressure canned for preservation. For us, this makes sense. At least while I work on a plan to raise a pig for meat.

Everyone's situation is different. Our needs may all be slightly different. But I am a firm believer in the simple fact that no matter where we live, country or the city, no matter what country you call home, we all need to make sure that if our "normal" lives are disrupted that we try to minimize the upset to our families. People that are prepared come through crisis better than those who wait for someone else to do something.
Play "what if" with yourself. Imagine there is no one else to help you coming for at least a week. Assess what you have, and how you can improve upon that. Make lists if you need to, write it all out. But keep a level head  during it all. Panic and fear never helped anyone who wasn't a cave dwelling two-legged.

Be realistic, but honest.
Failure to prepare is preparing to fail.

Catch Up and News!

I love autumn.
There's things to do that just can't be done any other time of year, the air smells different and there's an urgency that doesn't feel the same at any other time. The to-do lists are different, the days get shorter and you really need to watch your step on the back steps!
Here, our leaves have passed peak, we've had a couple of snows and more than a few frosts. We've harvested tomatoes, one of us ate peas fresh from the pod frequently, beets and we're pretty pleased with the showing of pumpkins. (We got 2!)We've made plans for crop rotation for next year, I've dug two more garden beds with hopes to get a couple more in yet, and we planted one bed with red clover as a green manure crop. I had plans to have 7 new garden beds dug, but a money making opportunity and weather worked against my plans. Oh well, modify and adapt, as Betty says. My to-do list has changed. Now is the time to weather-proof windows and doors. So the big picture window in the living room is on the agenda for today I think. Maybe even a couple of the basement windows. Next time we go to town I have to have measurements for two doors  and the windows in the craft room that need heavy plastic, since they'll be covered outside. Also on today's list is to start cleaning and organizing the pump room. Cleaning out the mud room comes after there is room in the pump room. This coming spring we'll be taking down the old mud room and building a newer, bigger, brighter and better one.

That money making venture I talked about? Picking hemlock. Quite a few people up here pick it and sell it to a neighbor, in turn, he sells it to a medical lab. Eastern hemlock is being used by many to treat cancer. So we were doing that whenever we could, and then the weather turned nasty. Which is why I didn't get more garden beds dug.

As if all that isn't enough, two days ago we got a new puppy!

His name is Harley and he is of "mixed heritage" Kind of sounds like a questionable tomato one has found in the garden, lol.
So, now you know why I've not been around much. With the cold and damp settled in though, and Harley, at least I'll be closer to home.
Are you getting ready for winter?

Modify and Adapt

It's hard to watch, or read, the news these days and not accept the fact that our world is changing. Politically, environmentally, economically and socially. The price of food is rising while the quality slides into uselessness and mega-companies take over more and more control over what we eat, shop for and how it's produced. Wages are either locked, clawed back or stagnating, depending on where you live. There are very few benefits for anyone who works hard, and many days it seems as if it's every man, woman and child for themselves. Indeed, we're seeing a rise of the 'latch-key-kid' again as parents work two and sometimes three jobs to avoid drowning in debt.
My partner has a saying that I've adopted and work to the death.
"Modify and adapt"

We do. I've written here before about making do for ourselves. The way we do laundry has changed, the way we cook, what we cook, how we shop, how we cool our apartment, and on and on. I've written too about doing more for ourselves so that we are not reliant on others, and I've given examples of how we walk the talk, so to speak.
So I was stunned to learn that in some places it's illegal to stockpile, or grow your own food or even keep a few chickens!
Holy Habaneros!
There's a woman in the States, Texas I think, that was sued for replacing her lawn with a vegetable garden. In the end, she won her case, but still...I cannot imagine living in a neighborhood that would presume to tell me how I can live! (One good thing about living in Ontario) Although the region we live in is still trying to decide if they want to allow folks to keep chickens... At least I have the option to grow my own vegetables, herbs and fruit! I don't get enough sun to do that...but I have the option.
So how do we survive these ever changing times? Well, keep our heads down as much as possible. If you stockpile and you're worried that your government or your neighbors are going to knock on your door with either guns or hands out...don't publicize it. I watch a lot of YouTube videos in which this prepper or that will talk about OpSec (operational security) and then make themselves easy to find with a business website found by Google in 3 seconds! If you are concerned about a diminishing market for local beef, then buy your beef locally. Ask at your "local" health food store if they know of any beef producers that are looking for customers. I'm sure you'll be pleasantly surprised. If you worry that Monsanto will come knocking on your door inquiring about your large field of corn, don't advertise that you save your own seed. keep your heads down.

If the price of bread irritates you to no end, as it does me, learn to make your own, either by bread machine or the old way. If the presence of chemicals in your jam worries you, visit your local farmer's market and learn how to preserve the bounty. Tired of paying good money for two Big Macs? Learn how to make burgers at home. You'll save money and might even discover that a burger can have taste. (I'll refrain from going on about growth hormones, antibiotics and other surprises in our meat here, and save that for another post)
We can do more to change our daily lives than what you think, but it does require thought, creativity and commitment.
Change what you do, how you think about the world around you, vote responsibly and pay attention to the news.
Because if we don't pay attention, modify and adapt, we'll wake up one morning to find life as we know it very, very different.