Go And Grow Something

I stumbled across some pretty intense wisdom tonight. So much of it makes sense, I wonder why I didn't think of this all myself. Maybe on some level, I did, I just wasn't listening to the right voices, I was letting the static of everyday blather get in the way.

At any rate, give the following passages a read, won't you? Listen with your heart and soul.

Then go and grow something. Then go and feed someone.

Thank you.

"Grow comfrey. With four times more Nitrogen & Potassium than barnyard manure, Comfrey mines nutrients from deep in the subsoil, tapping into reserves that would not usually be available to plants. The leaves lack fibre so quickly break down with no Nitrogen robbery as the C:N ratio of the leaves is lower than that of well-rotted compost."

"Blame ourselves not the SOIL --
If you have cold sniveling soil, won’t you look in it for some good. If you insist on blaming it for any shortcoming of growth, consider that it might be you who perhaps invested yourself in a lesser art than soil maintenance. To be rewarded at harvest you should have woven richness in the previous year. Moreover, generous ends can only be met with hard-worked beginnings."

"Gardening is about growing something more than food. It is about growing community.
...Anyone who has ever grown Zucchini and then wondered what the heck to do with them all knows this.
We’ve devalued the occupation of farming --
But also we’ve devalued food. You trading your daylight hours for money so that you can trade that money for carrots. This will inherently make you eventually steer towards compromises (cheaper carrots, or maybe fewer carrots, or maybe no carrots at all). Whereas trading your time directly for carrots draws you to wanting quality carrots and quality time.
Talking about eating local is not that same as eating local --
Identifying as a Locavore without really growing any of your own food makes it easier to compromise at the grocery store when they have only garlic from China -- shrugging and saying “oh I tried” while still identifying as a local food eater does not help.
We each CONTRIBUTE differently to our community -- but we can’t wait for a local food system to be established -- each one of use must act to feed ourselves."

"Just quietly walk away from the grocery store and grow as much food as you can. The peace is in the seeds that you plant and tend -- and it'll spread to every plant, every field, every farm, and every family fed. Our roads will become narrow and slow because they'll be parading for peace down every shoulder. The long honoured acts of good agricultural practice are stuck in the ground for us to find, in furrows only as deep as your hoe will go."

Found on the Soggy Creek Seed Company website, pay them a visit today!

Accomplishments and Goals

This past weekend was a holiday for us here in Ontario (Canada), but there was no resting here! We had a bit of a crisis at the high school that needed to be dealt with right away, and then there's been work. In short, no de-cluttering was done, no advances made on the home-front. I wouldn't say I lazed around, but I'm not happy with what I did not accomplish. On the Independence Days front, there's not a lot to report.
In the "Plant Something" category: Nothing got planted this past week.
"Harvest Something": Nothing here either
"Preserve Something": Sigh. Nothing.
"Waste Not": I did divert another 2L pop bottle from the recycling bin. Washed it out, sanitized it and fill it with water after dating the bottle. For those new to the blog, I do this so that when the power goes out, or the city shuts off our water so they can flush the lines, we'll still have water with which to cook or drink.
"Eat the Food": We've been researching ways to utilize more dried and stored foods, as well as trying out a couple of new-to-us recipes. This isn't always easy with a picky eater in the house. We've found two this week that were a success.
"Skill Up": We've talked this week about what skills the wife and I would like to learn or build on. I added to my list, and re-visited the idea of growing wheat up north.

On a positive note, the pea shoots are still doing great. No sign of the damping off disease that's plagued us before. The plants range from 2" to 4". I'm also thrilled to report that our chives have come back!

Goals this week: For me, I need to get back into the bedrooms and get back to de-cluttering. This should be easier since I'll be on the closing shift at work. Much easier to de-clutter without kids underfoot. I also want to make bread every day this week and freeze what we don't eat right away. I'd love to share the bread with the Food Bank, but I need to take care of us first. I'm thinking about next week's menu with thoughts to making meals ahead and freezing them, but that's still under development. I have some more worn out clothes that need to be cut into cloth, to be added to the rag-rug bin.
Wife says she wants to attack the table again and regain control over the chaos there. To that end, she's hunting Rubbermaid bins to organize and store.

So that's it for us today. What goals have you set for yourselves this week?

Independence Days Challenge

Independence is many things to many people.
To me, it is a powerful feeling to be independent. The New Oxford dictionary has a few different definitions. Here's the one that speaks to me the most:


not depending on another for livelihood or subsistence : I wanted to remain independent in old age.
• capable of thinking or acting for oneself : advice for independent travelers.
• (of income or resources) making it unnecessary to earn one's living : a woman of independent means.

I have always said it's more challenging to be independent in a small apartment, as many others know. Sometimes I lose sight of how to get to the end goal, even though I know in my heart that I shouldn't sweat it. Every now and then though, it's good to get a bit of encouragement. This morning, I got that bit of encouragement from a woman who's blog I've always enjoyed, but had slipped my mind. Sharon Astyk is an intelligent writer that has written on a variety of topics like the preservation of home, agriculture, food preservation, climate change, changing weather instability, peak oil, and the rejuvenation of family. Her blog, The Chatelaine's Keys is never boring and always gets me thinking. On February 1 of this year, she brought back a challenge she's done in the past that she called Independence Days

She challenges us to  not lose sight of the goal, not to get overwhelmed by the myriad of things we need to do to be independent. Here is an excerpt of that post:
"The whole idea is to get the positive sense of your accomplishments – it is easy to think we haven’t done anything to move forward, but in fact, we all do, almost every day.  We just think of accomplishment as a big thing – a whole day spent putting up applesauce or a hundred tomato plants.  The Independence Day project makes us count our little accomplishments and see that we are moving forward.  So for each week, tell us what you have done in the following categories:


Plant something: A lot of us were trained to think of planting as done once a year, but if you start seeds, do season extension and succession plant, you’ll get much, much more out of your garden, so I try and plant something every day from February into September.


Harvest something: Everything counts – from the milk and eggs you get from your animals to the first dandelions from your yard to 50 bushels of tomatoes – it all counts.


Preserve something: Again, I find preserving is most productive if I try and do a little every day that there is anything, from the first dried raspberry leaves and jarred rhubarb to the last squashes at the end of the season.


Waste not: Reducing food waste, composting everything or feeding it to animals, reducing your use of disposables and creation of garbage, reusing things that would otherwise go to waste, making sure your preserved and stored foods are kept in good shape – all of these count.


Want Not: Adding to your food storage or stash of goods for emergencies, building up resources that will be useful in the long term.


Eat the Food: Making full and good use of what you have, making sure that you are getting everything you can from your food, trying new recipes and new cooking ideas, eating out of your storage!


Build community food systems: What have you done to help other people have better food access or to make your local food system more resilient?


And a new one: Skill up:  What did you learn this week that will help you in the future – could be as simple as fixing the faucet or as hard as building a shed, as simple as a new way of keeping records or as complicated as making shoes.  Whatever you are learning, you get a merit badge for it – this is important stuff."


Sharon invites her readers to join up, write about their own accomplishments and chime in, and many do. I'm sure that even here, in our small apartment, there is a way I could work towards these goals while working nights and trying to de-clutter our lives. I'm sure we could all do something. Even if you aren't necessarily working toward increasing independence, it's not a bad thing.
I'm not sure I'll have something to report  on the above  "catagories" every week, but I'm going to work toward doing something. I'm going to try to have something to report every Friday.

What about you? Are you interested in increasing your independence? Is there some small way you could waste not, want not? Or is there a way you could plant something, or perhaps harvest something as the season progresses> If we all work together, it won't seem so overwhelming.
Stay tuned for tomorrow's check in!