On Gift Giving

Our family often touts homesteading as a way to experience an authentic life, one filled with real food and real work. We like to spend our time making and doing, not accumulating. But this time of year, the winter holiday season, we struggle the most with balancing thriftiness with giftiness, like so many people. Even though we don't subscribe to cable TV, newspapers, or magazines, we feel inundated with the advertising message to 'buy, buy, buy'. Lil, who only knows TV shows on Netflix and PBS, can still somehow sing a dozen current advertising jingles at any moment.

Consumer Counter Culture

Alex and I see through the commercials that equate stuff to happiness and we help Lil investigate ads. We talk with her about how a house filled with stuff is not necessarily a house of fulfilled people. We evaluate our own desires carefully - do we want new clothes because everyone else has them or because there's something ill-fitting or worn with our current clothes? Do we need a particular item or do we just want it because we heard about it somewhere?

Choosing to surround ourselves with good folks who share our anti-consumer ideals is the biggest threat to the Consume More Monster. We exchange, borrow, and barter with friends who do more with less. We frequently allow our kids to hear about what we're saving for and our tirades about inappropriate and ineffective advertising.

Gift Giving Alternatives

We could opt out of gift giving entirely, but that's not our family's way. We cherish the opportunity to think about what a person would really love. So how do we build our gift giving list?  We focus on what a gift recipient might use and appreciate in their day to day life. According to a recent survey by Kenmore,  '79% of Americans prefer a practical gift that they could use in their home over a trendy novelty gift'.

Most of our gifts this year are homemade and will be eaten, drunk, or otherwise used until they disappear in a few weeks or months. Does that mean the recipient will forget about our appreciation of them? We hope just the opposite - they will think of us every time they use spice rub or cocoa mix until the jar is empty. If all goes according to plan, we'll reconnect over a meal to exchange the empty jar for a full one, a true 'gift that keeps on giving'. Handmade gifts say "I thought about you while making this."

Another focus of our gift giving is experiential gifts - paper promises, games, trips to a special place, and memberships. The Kenmore survey also found that '85% of Americans have avoided making a certain food because of the cleanup associated with it' - maybe a gift certificate for party cleanup would fit someone on your list? Experiential gifts communicate "I want to spend time with you, not spend money on you".

Last Minute Gift Ideas

There are still ten days until Christmas during which you could can some apple butter or craft a handmade stainless steel straw or even make a quick liqueur. But  holiday gatherings and work projects to wrap up can limit gift-making time. Instead of shopping for stuff, consider one of these experiential gifts, local to Columbus though your area may have similar options:

• Columbus Brew Adventures or Columbus Food Adventures tour - I still need to write about our Granville area beer tour in detail but in short it was crazy good times and I have fond memories of the several Columbus Food Adventures tours I've attended.
• Green BEAN delivery gift certificate - Weekly deliveries of organic produce are a true boon for people who have trouble getting out, a couple who car share, or anyone who appreciates cooking whole food. I wrote about our experience with Green BEAN a couple years ago.
• Cooking or Gardening Class - I love teaching friends or couples who come to my The Seasoned Farmhouse and City Folk's Farm Shop classes. I hear them murmuring plans to practice together the skills I introduce, a true gift of partnership.

How do you handle gift giving in our highly commercialized consumer culture? 

2013 Regular Season Gardening Annual Review

The funny thing about year-round growing, which we're attempting, is that the gardening season doesn't ever really end. I'm still watering plants in the hoop house and covering and uncovering cabbages and broccoli's to earn a harvest during the holidays. But I'll address our fall plantings in a different post. Today's is about the regular season, the April to October produce.

Garden Overview

We have five types of gardens: about 150 row feet of 30-inch wide outdoor beds (one raised with wooden sides, the rest raised by land shaping), two 20-foot hugelkultur piles (which I'll review in a separate post), three large beds (one of which is Lil's) totaling about 1000 square feet, three 20-foot 18-inch rows in the hoop house, and 30 trees of various edible types including pear, plum, apple, peach, cherry, and nut. All together that is...a lot of growing space. You can do the math if you want.

I was certain that this year was going to be a total failure because I expected excessive deer pressure and was uncertain about the quality of the soil and water drainage. As it turned out, my pessimism was unwarranted and the garden yielded hundreds of meals of produce.

We had a general plan for the beds but when the time came to plant, we defaulted to our standard 'plant what's available', which means all the strong seedlings I grew plus leftover seedlings from Swainway Urban Farm plus whatever else looked interesting. We intentionally interspersed varieties in different locations to maximize production if one bed or another failed for some reason.

What Worked

We planted seeds for peas, kale, mustard, lettuce, cilantro, beets, radishes and swiss chard in the hoophouse in late March. The greens all gave us many cuttings until late May when days became too hot and greens bolted. We enjoyed solid harvests of beets and radishes through June.

My sister, mother and I planted 20 feet of organic seed potatoes and 20 feet of sprouted organic grocery store potatoes in a slightly shady location. They thrived and we began harvesting them in mid-June. All varieties (the seed and the grocery store) produced at least ten big potatoes from each plant. They provided all our potato needs from June through September, feeding friends and family many times.

I scattered tomato, pepper, and eggplant seedlings all over the garden. While this became a staking nightmare, wherever I kept the plants off the ground, they produced very well.

We tucked sweet potato slips in under some tomatoes and rhubarb. They gave us one huge tuber and a couple little ones per plant, which isn't bad for an afterthought of an under crop.

Carrots thrived in many locations. As they're Lil's favorite vegetable and have almost no pests, carrots became one of my favorite crops this year.

My little kitchen herb garden of perennials is well established now at the end of the season. They are tucked into a sunny South-facing spot alongside the garage, so hopefully many of them will last through the winter.

We were able to harvest about 3 bushels of apples from our ancient apple tree in the back. I love free food and can't wait until the rest of the orchard matures.

Flowers, flowers, flowers. This was the year that I embraced the beauty of flowers, for which I mostly thank Lil. She grew a dozen varieties in her garden and I tucked blooms into corners of rows too. We made a big patch of sunflowers and zinnias too.

Straw mulching rows and walk paths worked beautifully to keep down weeds. More on this another time.

What Didn't Work

We planted onion sets at the outside of a bed containing beets. They didn't form big bulbs in that space of neglect, leading me to think we need to dedicate an entire bed to them next year.

Cabbages and collards were a wash. We did harvest about ten heads of cabbage but it was very buggy because I couldn't stay on top of the cabbage moth caterpillars. I wish there were a way to grow cabbage in the chicken run because the hens LOVE cabbage moths caterpillars...but they also love cabbage greens.

The broccoli and cauliflower I grew from seed never thrived and produced big heads. Plus, they were yet another breeding ground for cabbage moths. One idea for next year is to grow these under a light row cover so the cabbage moths can't lay eggs on them. Or maybe attract some predators?

Though the hoop house produced beautiful early greens and peas, the heat in there stopped growing before the time that outdoor greens are sweet. But because I didn't plant any outside, I didn't have greens in late spring when I wanted them. Next year, I'm planting them outside three weeks after the hoop house.

Alex tilled and I hand-hoed a big bed in the front of the yard to plant grains and squashes. The idea was to plant seeds and forget about them, which we did. Unfortunately, the tilling and hoeing only stirred up weed seeds and the plot was overrun with weeds that hid the squash bugs too. The squashes were a near total loss and the sweet corn never was super sweet. We ended up harvesting those dry for corn meal. We did harvest fifty volunteer butternut-ish squash from another bed.

Conclusions

We're left with the following ideas:

• plant more potatoes and sweet potatoes
• put the tomatoes and peppers in rows so they can be staked with florida weave style
• plant more carrots, especially under the tomatoes
• pay attention to where the onions go
• figure out a way to conquer the cabbage moths
• follow up hoop house plantings with outdoor plantings of spring greens and veggies
• keep up with straw mulching
• take more pictures - it was a struggle to find these!

How did your garden grow this year?

PS. This is the first post in November, a month in which I'll attempt to write every day. Prepare your RSS readers and throw me topic ideas if you have any!

Seasonal Snaps {Autumn Equinox 2013}

  This big oak may look like nothing much has changed since the Winter Solstice, Spring Equinox, and Summer Solstice snaps, but it did have an exciting moment. During a thunderstorm in July, lightning arched off the ground and struck her trunk, sizzling a family of squirrels and leaving a scar across the bark.

Joseph of Swainway Urban Farm grew six rows of vegetables in the tree's shadow which unfortunately were flooded during the same storm. Their growth remained stunted through the summer and yielded primarily produce for our two families.

Sorghum is the last remnant of a failed squash and grain garden in the front. Squash bugs and weeds decimated the squash plant; we're making do with an alternate harvest of corn.  

Plantings close to the house include Lil's flower garden, the apothecary with plants like the Toothache plant, and several fig trees. The blueberries that flank the walk suffered from lack of water in the spring but hopefully will make it through to next year.

The orchard trees are looking a little bigger than before. Comfrey and brambles are filling out in between the rows. Alex and Lil are sizing up the existing apple tree in this picture.  

Finally, the view where most of the action is - you can see tall sunflowers and rows of vegetables (albeit gone-by plants) that were just barely planted in the summer.  

Inside the hoop house, we're hanging on to a couple tomato plants that are still yielding ripe fruit for fresh eating. Ever-bearing strawberries are remarkably still producing fruit, a couple a day. The rest is planted with fall root and leafy green vegetables.

We will write a wrap-up of the season's successes and failures in the garden and the hoop house soon.

How is your garden looking this first day of fall?

Seasonal Snaps: Summer Solstice 2013

Welcome summer! Things are green around here. In the front yard, we have a squash and grains patch and the Swainway Urban Farm annex, six long rows of organic tomatoes, peppers, beets, and celery root.

Out back, the baby orchard is coming along. We're collecting no fruit from these trees, but are eating mulberries from a wild tree and looking forward to harvest from an existing apple and pear tree.

We've taken down trees, built a new coop, and started many gardens near the house. The natural playground balance beam, steps, and swinging rope lie between the orchard and near gardens.

Chicks are growing too. Lil and I allowed this Buff Brahma to explore the hoop house recently. We've eaten peas, greens, strawberries, radishes and beets from the hoop house this spring; the beds now contain tomatoes and peppers.

We couldn't be more pleased with the progress from winter solstice 2012 to spring equinox 2013 to now. We're not stopping yet - we have plans for a big harvest, mud room, and maybe even a renovated indoor kitchen before the next season change.

What's happening in your neck of the woods?

2013 Goals & Giveaway

Last year was a busy one, as always, for our family. We some of our 2012 goals by traveling to San Salvador Island, Bahamas and the Big Island of Hawaii with extended family and we finally moved to a new homestead-to-be. The stress of moving, an injury, a major summer storm, and some minor illnesses kept us from being as healthy as we would have liked. In my individual pursuits, I joyfully provided freelance web services for Watershed Distillery and City Folk's Farm Shop and represented Swainway Urban Farm at farmers' markets. The American Dairy Association Mideast and Pork Checkoff provided me with tours of farms and facroties to learn more about food production. I reached hundreds of people through classes at Franklin Park Conservatory and City Folk's Farm Shop and programs with Granville Homesteading group, Clintonville Farmers' Market, and the Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association. I love this work because it provides me chances to exercise my educator muscles and interact with creative, smart, supportive people.

Alex, Lil and I are excited to turn over a new leaf (or, in more appropriate seasonal terms, shovel a new path) in 2013. We want to fulfill the potential of our new homestead and continue to grow strong bodies and minds. In 2013, we hope for and will work towards:

-a garden and hoophouse full of produce -a pantry full of preserved goods -eating meat we raise and slaughter on our property -collecting more eggs from more chickens -a way to offer unusual but important workshops on demystifying guns and meat animal slaughter -a more energy-efficient home -better health through lower stress and homestead exercise -travel to new places within our city and beyond -an updated name and website to more accurately reflect our new activities beyond the kitchen

City Folk's Farm Shop gave me three beautiful Igloo Letterpress 2013 wall calendar posters to ring in the new year for some lucky readers.

Enter to win by sharing one goal you have for 2013 in the comments. Be sure to leave an email address so that we may contact you if random.org picks you as a winner. The contest will be open until January 12, 2013. We will pay shipping to anywhere in the world, so enter away foreign friends.

From our homestead to yours, here's to a fulfilling new year!