A Better Way of Gardening?

Does anyone know the real reason people garden? Why do you want to garden and grow vegetables? Most surveys show that the majority of people who garden say they want that special homegrown flavor and the satisfaction of growing their own vegetables.

Others grow their own food to save money, and still other people garden just to have a nice hobby that provides pleasure and pride. The pleasures of gardening are many - getting outdoors, exercising, putting your hands in the soil, growing things, and the special pride of accomplishment that comes with the harvest. Many gardeners want to experience the feeling of being self-sufficient or at least partly so.

Also, they want to have some control over what they eat - particularly to have fresh wholesome food that doesn't contain additives or preservatives, that isn't contaminated by pesticide residues, and that hasn't been grown from genetically engineered seed. All of these are good reasons for gardening. It is truly one of America's most popular leisure activities. Of course, for homesteaders and other people who garden on a large scale, it's a way of life and a means of subsistence.

Square Foot Gardening: A New Way to Garden in Less Space with Less Work

Cherry Season

It's nice to enjoy food in season, simple, fresh foods that make a day special in remembrance. Here's a recipe that will make a simple moment one of fond food memories for years to come.

Cleveland Heights Cherry Pie

12 ounce flour
8 ounces butter
4 ounces ice water

5 cups sour cherries, pits removed

1-1/4 cup sugar
1/3 cup corn starch

Cut the butter into the flour, mix in the water just till a dough forms (don't over work it). Chill the dough. Roll out three quarters of the dough to fill a pie dish, save the rest for the lattice crust.

Combine the cherries, sugar and cornstarch and toss. Pour the mixture into your pie shell, lay your lattice over this and pinch the edges to form an appealing rim. Bake at 400 degrees for 15 minutes then reduce the temperature to 350 and continue baking for another hour or until the filling is thick and bubbling.

This will make fans out of people who didn't even like cherry pie before tasting this simple pie.

Days Like Theses.....

It all starts with an itch......, and one begins to scratch, but you can't quite reach it, for a time you remain asleep. After all sleeps good, and when you've not slept good for months, sleep means everything. Then you wake.


"Cultivate the habit of early rising. It is unwise to keep the head long on a level with the feet."



For my own purpose, I have remained asleep, as a form of hibernation. Bears do it, and well. Yet, they do wake, to explore the dawn and see the landscape forlorn and with distant wonder wake to see a day without the dawn, but twilight and a night come long.



Rome is burning, but for how long?

Passings

Children should be given the chance to play instruments, to sing.

Luciano Pavarotti

Pavarotti was born in Modena, Italy. His father was a baker and his mother worked in a cigar factory. As a young man, Pavarotti sold insurance to pay for voice lessons. Listen Here.

The great singer was also known as an equestrian expert, organizing one of the international show jumping circuit's most important competitions, the Pavarotti International, in Modena. Coinciding with that event, Pavarotti also staged an annual charity concert, Pavarotti and Friends. A gifted singer who shared his voice with the world, Farewell.

Passings

When Alfred Peet opened his shop in Berkeley in April, 1966 he started a coffee revolution. Nobody had ever seen top-quality coffee like this roasted in this unique style in America. The corner of Walnut and Vine quickly became a gathering place for UC Berkeley grads, undergrads, and faculty as well as local intellectuals, radicals, writers, musicians, artisans and any number of the colorful people who still make up Berkeley today. Mr. Peet was born in Alkmaar, Holland on March 10, 1920 and died in Ashland, Oregon on August 29, 2007.

Mr. Peet was the originator behind the idea of a company many may be familiar with Starbucks. In fact he sold them their first year of coffee and taught the original owners what he knew about coffee.

He scoured the West Coast from Vancouver to Palo Alto looking for a suitable location for a high-quality coffee roastery before a friend told him that she knew the right place for him, right across the Bay in Berkeley. He installed a small roaster in the shop’s back room, and the revolution began.

As Peet’s in Berkeley flourished, Mr. Peet opened additional stores in Menlo Park (1971), on Piedmont Avenue in Oakland (1978), and another in Berkeley across from the Claremont Hotel (1980). By the time he retired in 1983, Peet’s had a cult following from coast to coast, and many of his devoted fans continue to insist on Peet’s.

In his own words, when asked to recount his life’s story, Alfred Peet responded simply,

“The coffee tells my story.”

I like that quote, his passion for his product reflected in his life & culture and it worked for him. The labor of love became his life story and in so doing he affected, taught and inspired those around him.

Cow Pot

No we're not suggesting anything illegal here on the Agrarian Plowshare. This product comes from Freund's Farm an idea that much like Herrick's invention of the granola bar makes me say "Why did I think of that!". Now before you ask the myriad of questions - no they don't stink, yes you can handle them - and yes they do from a strictly non scientific testing perspective seem to work quite well. Having acquired one of these over the weekend at my fathers house, I gave it the perfunctory sniff & feel, sorry if you want to know how they taste you'll have to get your own and try.

As to their effectiveness, judging from the thick high stalks of several robust tomato plants grown side by side with tomato plants not rooted in the pots the difference is visual and obvious. Now it doesn't surprise me (and should not you) that things grown in good aged manure will grow well, that's a given. Kind of like saying a bottle of water quenches your thirst. The containment of the root base to the source of nutrients may have a more positive effect in concentrating the nutrients, uneducated application to thought here but seems plausible.

I don't think I'd be planting an entire row of these things, as the input factor would be tremendous, but for the small gardener it just might supply a backyard bonanza for next summer's harvest. Something to consider. I am going to give my own independent test here at home with the one acquired from my dad and give it a grow light application next to several test plants to see how it performs. Until next time..................Regards.

Market Economics

Aside from the dot-com bubble of the 1990s, I can think of no great boom in American history built more on enthusiasm, and less on profit. ~Tom Phillpott


While listening to a song over at Log Cabin Homestead I couldn't help but think of this article which looks at the economics of local farmers markets and the current state of small scale farming:


"The overall income picture for small commercial farms is dismal. Key USDA stat: Farms with annual revenues between $10,000 and $99,000 -- which describes the vast majority of farmers' market vendors -- have an average operating profit margin of negative 24.5 percent.

Simply put, small farms lose money, and their losses are financed by the off-farm incomes of the families that run them. From this angle, so-called sustainable farming looks like a precarious enterprise.

Why, then, do farmers' markets and CSAs continue to grow and multiply? Why do people still farm? The local-food revival, it seems to me, runs on passion: people's desire for connection to the seasons, to the soil that feeds them, to powerful flavors that can't be manufactured with chemicals or preserved over 1,300-mile delivery hauls. Aside from the dot-com bubble of the 1990s, I can think of no great boom in American history built more on enthusiasm, and less on profit.

Yet passion has practical limits (as investors in, say, Pets.com learned in 2000). For local farms to supply significantly more than 2 percent of the nation's produce (or meat, dairy, and eggs, for that matter), small-scale farming will have to become an economically viable activity.

Some optimists argue that market forces are already quietly working to achieve that goal. The argument goes like this: surging consumer demand for local food -- coupled with rising energy costs -- has convinced the large supermarket companies to rethink their far-flung supply chains and seek out small-scale producers near individual retail outlets. These corporate buyers will pump cash into local farm economies across the nation, reviving the fortunes of small-scale farmers.

Certainly, evidence for this scenario abounds. The phrase "local is the new organic" has become commonplace. Having turned organic food into another consumer fetish drained of much of its original meaning, the big corporate retailers are setting their sights on "local" cache. Shoppers entering Whole Foods outlets can hardly grab a basket without reading "buy local" propaganda."


I think much of what the writer states and then glosses over is summed up well in these words:

People's desire for connection to the seasons, to the soil that feeds them, to powerful flavors that can't be manufactured with chemicals or preserved over 1,300-mile delivery hauls.

Now apart from economics of mammon there is the dynamics of home economics which can be found in Wendell Berry's works, a collection of fourteen essays, which can be found here: Home Economics at Cumberland Books, a great source for literature and writing. Where the root of economics is stewardship through proper household management. This being the greater good, if you will or the driving "Why" behind what has become an agrarian push to the shove of modern societies "madness of the masses". To know what benefit it is to live with ones own, spend time in common tasks and instill value to the soul of sons and daughters so that they to may live to do likewise from generation to generation. Until next time..............

To live is not to pass time, but to spend time.