Faith as small as a mustard seed

I'm not a naturally patient person. I try. I put forth the effort. Sometimes it involves clenching my teeth, putting on a far too large smile and faking it. But I tend to get impatient.

So when the seeds I had planted and set in the window hadn't come up after two weeks I was, shall we say, concerned. I checked out my trusty friend Google and confirmed that I had somehow screwed something up and all my seeds were dead.

And it was possible. I had kept all my seeds together in a single envelope and during a cleaning frenzy they had been placed in my large kitchen window. While perfect for seed starting the window can get very hot and given the strangely warm weather it was completely conceivable that I had fried my seeds.

I grieved. I wept. I moped.

You see, I'm a seed snob. Sure, I could buy the plants from the store but in terms of saving money there is no cheaper way to do it than by planting seeds. PLUS I have the luxury of having heirloom, non-GMO seeds growing things I just can't buy at the nursery. The nursery doesn't carry carrot plants at all but if they did they wouldn't be the sweet Chantenay Red Core kind. And while they have plenty of pepper and tomato plants they don't carry my Sweet Yellow Stuff Peppers or my Fox Cherry Tomatoes.

Too late to place another seed order, I stopped by the nursery on my way home from work one night and picked up another round of green bean and cucumber seeds and resigned myself to buying tomatoes plants in a few weeks when the weather was right.

Imagine then my surprise when I came home to find 2 possible squash/pumpkin plants growing in my front yard. And then in the raised beds I spied 3 sugar snap peas finally poking their heads out.

I could have cried.

Until that point I was pretty sure the only thing I was going to manage for the year was garlic and weeds.

Now, a few weeks later I have 5 -6 squash or pumpkin plants in my front yard (they look the same and I possibly planted both close together), 12 pea plants coming up and at least 3 cucumber plants poking their heads out of the ground. Additionally I have a melon seedling of some kind hanging out with the garlic (thanks 2 year old son) and my potatoes are finally starting to poke their eyes above the dirt.

I suppose it just goes to show. I needed only the faith in the mustard seed. Or was that faith like the mustard seed?

I'm a seed hoarder

I had actually meant to start a few seeds inside in March but it seemed that time kept getting away from me. Today, with only a few weeks to go before when I should be transplanting I took some time, pulled out my seeds, and began to plant.

I love the smell and feel of the potting soil. The colors on the seed packets are always vibrant and make me long for the sweet smell of wet earth and fresh carrots.

I realized though, when I pulled out my seed packets, that I perhaps have a problem.


Hi. My name is Lacy and I'm a seed hoarder.

Every year I buy my seeds and instead of throwing out what I don't need or better yet, passing them on to others, I put them in Zip Lock baggies, label them and put them in the garden shed.

I was surprised that packets of the same kinds of seeds seemed to purchased year after year for now three years in a row. (I'm looking at your Green Beans) Frankly, it was a little embarrassing.

I also noticed that my gardening know how and ability seem to have increased.

When I first started I just grabbed whatever seeds in the garden store looked interesting. Not sure what I was thinking when I bought jalapeno seeds. I don't even LIKE jalapenos!

Now I only purchase heirloom seeds and I think long and hard about how I want to eat what I grow. I wont plant lettuce again since my family are not big salad eaters. We love cucumbers though and I think we need a few more plants around here of those.

This year I'm trying a couple of new things. I'm going to try and grow watermelon and another kind of melon. I've added garlic.

And I threw out the old seeds. Anything from 2010 just had to go. A couple of the 2011's went too.

And I planted tomatoes. Amish Paste and Fox Cherry. I also planted mini yellow peppers. Just for fun. (And because my girls will eat them.)

I find when I do my gardening outreach it's always good to have something people can pop in their mouths right then and I hope those peppers do it for them.

Viva la Tomato!

Too much space?

This spring my husband and I, with the help of our 7 year old and 2 year old have been tackling the back yard. I've lived in this house for 7 years now and the backyard has always been just a pit of despair. 2 years ago I introduced some containers of vegetables into it. Last year I added some raised beds.

This year we are cleaning the whole thing out and landscaping it while also adding TEOTWAWKI/homesteading items to it.

Last weekend we cleaned the side of the house which I've always avoided because it was scary and strewn with trash. I was certain if I had snakes in my yard they were in the side yard.

Turns out no snakes that we saw and now that it's been raked and cleaned out it seems like it could be a pretty useful space.

The question is, of course, useful for what.

My husband indulges my SHTF worries and allows me a certain amount of leeway with gardening and food storage but at the end of the day, we are still going to have grass in the back yard and not an orchard or raised beds as far as the eye can see.

That said, when I started talking about putting in some raspberry bushes I could see he wasn't entirely on board with the idea.

So take a look and tell me what YOU think I could do with the space.

It's 8 feet wide and roughly 15 feet long. The sunlight in the picture is at 12:30pm MST today, March 24. Yes, there is a tree behind me making a shadow over the space.

My mother in law suggested using it as storage. My husband has shrugged his shoulders (but assures me there aren't going to be raspberry bushes.

Hater.

So do I make it a small garden? A play area of the kids? Nothing? I want it to add value to my property and add value to my preps without being obvious, if that's possible. I'd prefer not to put a tree there since it's kinda close to the house.

Thoughts? Ideas? Help?

We have had a very mild winter which may or may not be a good thing. This weekend while Micah and I were cleaning the backyard of the dog "presents" and old leaves it dawned on my to check my garlic.

There's something I never thought I'd say. Check my garlic. Almost sounds like code for something else coming from me doesn't it?

Anyways, last fall, probably in October, I decided to expand my gardening horizons and picked up three varieties of garlic and then promptly forgot which kinds I had picked up.

In any case I planted them in my half whiskey barrels and walked away. Leaves collected in the barrel and I thought nothing of it really until Sunday.

Sunday I looked in the barrel and initially saw nothing. Which good because it's early March and the chance for snow here is pretty high. I learned that at the end of April 2 years ago when a large snow storm hit after I had transplanted all my peas and tomatoes.

Then, upon closer examination I started to notice a little green.





I've tried to cover them with some leaves but they refuse to be denied sunlight. I truly feel sick to my stomach that they are growing in so early but can hardly blame them. Today we hit 70 degrees at a time when the average temperature is around 54 degrees. So it makes sense that the garlic bulbs think they have hit the jackpot and are sprouting early.

After all, they aren't alone. I found this stowaway in my larger raised beds. This must have been a pea that dropped and hid at some point and has now decided to sprout WAY ahead of schedule.


My yard work assistants were pretty intrigued with all the green. Wilbur offered to help "pick" while Lizzie Lou just wanted to hear what all could be eaten with garlic.



I hope our lovely weather continues because I'd really like for all my plants to live. I really hope that groundhog was a liar and there is no more winter.

Just in case I think I'll pick this weed...

Already December

I wish I had far more interesting things to write about but I simply don't. My two oldest girls are spending Christmas with their father and that has left me pretty emotional this holiday season. My youngest child, my son, is 2 and has graduated from nice boy to tornado on feet. I feel like I spend a large portion of my day running after him and so find my computer time even more limited. While I personally enjoy winter I can tell he does not and we hope spring comes early, if only for his sake.

This year for our Canned Family I feel a little short. I managed to make the Cherry Amaretto, Blueberry Butter, Blueberry Grand Marnier, Plum Chutney and White Peach Sauce but that was about it.

I'm already plotting for next year though and have had 3 co-workers beg for a class on canning so hopefully I'll be able to get that going next year. I find canning to be so worthwhile I hope I can pass on that excitement to others. I know they see it differently than I do. I see it as something that may have to feed my family because there are no other options while they can not fathom a world where there may not be jam on the grocery store shelves someday.

Aside from that I spend most of my time paging through seed catalogs these days. I make a plan for the raised beds and then find myself changing it within a week. But all the planning and plotting is in good fun and I haven't even spent a dime yet!

I've been stocking up on the freeze dried and dehydrated food but still feel like it's not enough, mainly because I know that should things go downhill rapidly our family will need assistance and we have already agreed we wont be able to turn them away. Although I know I don't even have 3 months for our own 5 person family when I take into account the rest of the people who may need assistance I worry that we don't even have two weeks of food. It's something we keep working towards though, just keep plugging along, otherwise I begin to feel incredibly anxious.

So that's my update, not much and yet lots of anxiety going around. Hope about you?

Clean up

This weekend we cleaned up the garden and the backyard in general. I was a little sad that I never got my tree but I'll just have that much more to look forward to next year.

Overall my little garden did okay. My tomatoes didn't get nearly as prolific as I had hoped until of course this last couple of weeks. My peas, which I had thought were pretty much dead still gave me a large handful of peas for snack and my carrots ruled the middle square.

I have gotten so many compliments on the taste of my carrots I'm pretty proud. They were Chatenay Red Core and certainly aren't your grocery store carrots. They are short, fat and sweet. In a word they are amazing. I've shared them with friends and family alike and am bringing in this last little bit to work tomorrow to share. I will be getting those again next year for sure.

This year was a good test of what I have patience for and what is just a waste. It also helped me figure out spaced and location for items which is helpful.

Lesson I am most taking with me? While lettuce is incredibly easy to grow we just don't eat it, no matter how healthy I wish we were. With that in mind I don't think we'll be planting that again.

Spinach on the other hand.....I may give that go.

We are due for snow this week but the weather report says it should melt by the weekend. I'm debating if it's too late for fall garlic. What say you my readers?

Holy Cow

Oh my. Apparently my last post was in AUGUST! How the time slips away....

It's rainy and wet here today, our first real indication that fall is upon us. I need to harvest my remaining items tomorrow and I think just clean out the garden and ready it for my garlic planting.

Lessons from this year ....

Tomatoes-

I need a lot more plants. I grew about 6 different plants, 1 beefsteak type, 1 cherry tomato type and 4 roma's. The space they occupied needed to larger, or they needed to be farther away from each other and I should have secured them in cages MUCH earlier. Overall I didn't get nearly as many cherry tomatoes as last year and while I got a decent amount of romas they tended to come in 2's and 3's and I never had the patience to freeze them and save them up to make sauce.

Carrots -

Did awesome. I planted two rows and have eaten several lovely orange babies already and need to harvest probably 10 more tomorrow. Overall I was pleased with the type and will buy those again next year.

Peas -

These were my struggle. Initially they experienced some pea wilt and I thought they were a goner for the year. They managed to come back and did pretty well in production, both the Sugar Snap and the Alaska Pea but overall just not in a quanity that would feed my family for even a meal. Next year I'll raise the height of the fence they grow on.

Cucumbers -

I got a few pickling cucumbers but overall just didn't pay as much attention to them as I should have. I already have a space for them picked out for next year.

Lettuce -

We don't eat lettuce. It grew but I never picked it so it was a waste. Lesson learned.

Pumpkins -

The vine has done well but while I had plenty of blossoms I still have no pumpkins. Not sure where I went wrong on that one but I think I'll attempt this again.

Zucchini -

I didn't even GROW these and I have two huge ones in my kitchen. I have no idea how to even shred the darn things nor do I have equipment to do so. Any ideas? I'd like to do something like a zucchini banana bread but the frankly pornographic size of these things is throwing me off my game.

Blueberries -

One plant died, the other has grown but produced no berries. No surprise there though as this was only it's second year.

I STILL have no gotten my cherry tree (I've decided to plant cherry instead of apple for now). My mother in law is coming to our house tomorrow I think I may try and convince her to go with me and get it. It's October for crying out loud, it's TIME.

Aside from that I'm trying to think of things to do with apples. Any ideas for canning aside from applesauce or applebutter that will expand my food know prep knowledge?

Getting it all in

At the beginning of this weekend I had begun to despair.

Only the tomatoes I had raised from seed seemed to be doing anything in their new home and thriving would be an exaggeration. The carrots, lettuce and peas just weren't making a showing at all. I knew it was all the rainy weather.

I despaired.

Yesterday when I came out to the garden to check on the tomatoes I noticed a few slivers of green. I looked closer and behold! Carrots making a slight showing. And what's that? Peas? Both Alaskan and Sugar Snap? My word! And finally the spinach and lettuce have green plants peeking out of the soil!

And then the watering system my husband so lovingly installed failed.

If we leave it running for too long it begins to flood. The only way to fix it would be to dig up the entire bed and either rip it out or replace it.

I just want to cry.

I've decided to not rip it out just yet. It's already late in the season for some of these poor little plants to get started and I certainly don't want to waste a year because of bad plumbing.

I'll just hand water them until the season ends. Then we can dig it up and move on.

But it sure was an ugly fight getting to that conclusion.

Those carrots better be delicious.

In the front yard the herb garden simply gets better and better. I lost one of my Echinacea's so I replaced it with lemon balm. I also added Chamomile and lemon verbena (in a pot) to the mix and lavender paired with semi-prostrate rosemary.

In the window boxes I have herbs such as peppermint, chocolate mint, parsley, thyme, rosemary, sage, oregano, and tarragon.

I have a pot of lavender and rosemary as well. Basically the front yard smells wonderful.

It's shaping up to be a really great year I'm thinkin.

It's spreading

It's hard to know if it's me, them or the world around me. 3 years ago I was an avowed "black thumb". There would be no gardening for me, it wasn't interesting and held no appeal.

1 year ago I thought I might grow a little blueberry bush in a small container. Before the blueberry plant had even arrived I had begun to sprout other small things in containers in my window and then eventually along the back of my house.

This year I have a raised bed with more space than I can comprehend.

It's been a relatively short road.

But what blows me away is how many OTHERS I meet who are thinking the same way. My mother in law I've mentioned but I have 2 co-workers who are doing small container and suburban backyard gardening.

What is MORE interesting to me is both of these co-workers are single people in their late 20's or early 30's. One is a man.

We talk about cucumbers, tomatoes and what else they are growing. We all share a love for tomatoes and cucumbers and peas but they are more adventurous, growing peppers and pumpkin and squash while I remain undecided or even a little timid in my gardening choices.

This week we've lamented the rainy weather which kept us from fully planting our gardens. And I am even more amazed that I'm having this conversation instead of talking about sports, pop culture or the latest whatchamahoozit. Instead we are comparing types of plants and nursery vs. seed growing etc.

Bizarre. But so glad I'm seeing it.

Starting to see the changes

When we started gardening and changing to a more productive backyard last year I accidentally insulted my mother in law.

She was suggesting some plant for my front yard and I said, "Yes I know it'll look nice but I want my yard to actually DO something."

She kinda snapped back at me "My yard DOES something you know."

Her yards, both front and back, are indeed beautiful and she has spent YEARS perfecting them. We eloped in her backyard because it was so beautiful. They do something. They just do something DIFFERENT than what I want mine to do. They don't produce food.

Throughout this year though when we've been working on my yard or visiting and touring her backyard I've made little comments here and there and it seems like they MIGHT be finally starting to make sense.

It started when the vining clematis on her shed died. She was wondering what else to plant and I offhandedly suggested vining fruits of vegetables. I believe I suggested cucumbers. She informed me last week they've decided to take my advice but are going with peas because it's a cooler area of the yard. I smiled and offered to give her some of my seeds.

After putting in my planters a couple of weeks ago my father in law decided he wanted planters in HIS yard. They spent the entire day today getting rock and wood to build their raised beds. To be sure, theirs will be far fancier than mine; they have plans for a walking path through them, a sitting area near them and according to my father in law he printed a companion gardening plan for his beds.

My mother in law informed me that they bought heirloom seeds and plants for the beds as well today. She talked about non-GMO plants and seeds etc.

I smiled.

No need to be pushy, sometimes it's just the little suggestion and seeds in fertile soil that changes hearts.

Raised beds part 1

Within my family my ability to kill anything resembling plant life has been legendary. It was always sort of a shame I carried. My mother, of course, possessed a ridiculous ability to garden and could make anything grow where ever she wanted. Her daughter, me, on the other hand......not so much.

I think, frankly, most people were amazed I managed to keep my children alive based on how poor my gardening performance was.

So last year when I decided that I wanted to begin producing more of the stuff my family eats I felt the weight of a thousand dead plants on my shoulders. The fact is though, I believe we are headed toward a future where growing what we eat may become more than a "hobby", it may become the difference between eating and starving. So I knew I needed to learn at least how to grow it before the time to "play" with gardening had passed.

To be fair I love many, many aspects of gardening but I don't know that I could say I actively enjoy it. This "hobby" is my prep work to feeding my family. I love seeing something I planted from seed become something I can consume and know that I did all the work for it. But love it? Not so sure.

Anyways....last year I experimented growing food in containers and was surprised at my successes and learned a lot from both success and failure. This year we decided to step it up a little bit.

Having an actual garden in my suburban back yard has many challenges but the biggest ones are my dogs. They dig. And destroy. I don't have grass in most of my back yard because of them. So having a raised bed seemed like a better choice for me.

My father in law is an artist when it comes to construction and he agreed to build me some raised beds. My mother in law had a great idea about having a break in the middle and the actual design because she loves landscaping.

Yesterday we broke ground, as it were, on my raised beds.

That's the view from my kitchen door facing into my backyard. That's my husband working on a tree stump that was refusing to rot like it should and was impeding my raised bed progress.


That's my son and my mother in law supervising the construction in the relative safety of the gazebo.

That's the finished product. You'll notice two raised beds separated by a mini-pergola in between. We will be adding chicken wire to the outside as protection from the dogs getting into the beds and putting stone under the beams to create a pathway. You can also seen one of my dogs and my lack of grass. It's sad.

Raised beds measure 12 ft long by 3 feet wide by 18 inches high. Plenty of space for tomatoes, cucumbers, green beans, peas etc. I'm pretty excited to get those beds filled and get started planting but that's probably another 2 weeks off or so.

I'll show you part 2 once I've got everything in.

I feel like this is working towards the big time and while I know not even a garden this size could ever really provide everything my family needed it terms of sustenance I feel like it's a great start.

Starting to sweat

I'm not going to lie, I have put off posting because I was afraid I was going to only have bad news. The tomatoes I had planted were not sprouting and I wasn't sure what to do.

Last year you see, I started my seeds indoors in February because I was so excited by the idea of gardening. I just plopped whatever I found in some peat pots and soil I had lying around and boom, I had all sorts of things sprouting within days. I had peas, tomatoes, jalapenos....it was great. A little too great I think. My peas never did really handle the transition outdoors in May.

But this year it feels as though it's taken FOREVER for any sign of green. Finally, about few days ago I got a tentative sprout. And then another, and then ANOTHER. Right now I have 6 Amish Paste Tomato plant sprouts. I'm still a little anxious but am feeling like I can ALMOST start breathing again.

I've been asked why I don't just buy the starters at the nursery. I don't think there is anything wrong with starters and in fact if my raised beds end up being as big as I suspect I may just end up having to supplement with some because I don't know that I planted enough seeds.

I do like seeing something I've started reach fruition, which is one of my favorite parts of gardening. And parenting. Sure, I could just adopt a 13 year old but what fun would that be? I like to see them (both plants and children) start small, almost from nothing, and grow into something amazing.

The difference of course is that I plant to eat the fruits of my labor with tomato. Not so much with children. Hopefully. Although there are days.........

In a powered down world I'm not sure that we will have such a steady supply of starter tomatoes at the local nursery. If we can get there the cost of a food crop might just be exorbitant if we are living in a world where growing our own food is the main source of our sustenance. Heck, being able to grow and sell starters for food crops might even be a home based business for those with particularly good green thumbs.

So having some practice on the whole plant life cycle as a gardener is probably a good idea. Right now if I kill all these plants tomorrow, I can do to the nursery and try again next year. In the future...maybe not so much.

Happy St. Patricks Day!

As my gift for St. Patricks day one of the tomatoes I planted last week has sprouted. YAY tomatoes! There is hope!

I was starting to get worried because the seed starting soil they are in seems REALLY packed on top no matter how often I try to break it apart. I'm kinda not pleased with that.

But I was pretty thrilled to see a "bit o' the green" today.

My family came from Ireland 5 or 6 generations ago. I joke that they did so to escape having to eat boiled cabbage. Certainly that is not a novelty food for me, that's for sure.

I hope you all are having a lovely week and a even more lovely St. Patricks Day. I'll write more later about my house of sickness.

What's that? Snow on the ground? Temperature is below freezing? Bah! It's spring if I ever felt it! So you know what that means right?

It's time for your FAVORITE annual series, Lacy's Vegetablepalooza!

This year I've toned down my excitement and am eagerly awaiting my raised beds, hopefully going in at the end of the month. *fingers crossed* That means that this year I have honed my focus and know what I want to grow instead of just haphazardly planting whatever I felt like.

Since a lot of my later season plans for canning involve tomatoes it only made sense to try and grow them. To that end today I planted 6 Amish Paste tomatoes, 1 cherry tomato, 1 plain old eating tomato and a pea plant. Just for funzies.

One of the good things about my house is the southern facing garden window in the kitchen. While my own green thumb is pretty small, this window makes it seem like I'm a LOT better at gardening or growing things than I really am. Thank you ex-husband for selecting this house. At least that window.


Hopefully in the next 2 weeks I'll have some sprouts. Then I'll be on my way to tomato sauce BABY!

It's a gorgeous day outside today, has been all week. My chives that I abandoned last fall have made a recovery and are doing some massive sprouting. My strawberry runners are showing green growth and at least for right now my outside feels like spring.

It's supposed to snow in the next week. Of course.

My backyard is where most of my food production happens or is going to happen since it gets a ridiculous amount of sunlight. My front yard, as you've seen before, is destined for kitchen and medical herb use. While I have the actual ground part mostly figured out I'm not trying to decide what I want to put in the window boxes.


So I'm looking for suggestions. As you can see they are shallow, maybe 4 inches deep but long, about 2.5 feet. Width is also in the 4 inch range. These boxes get around 3-4 hours of direct sunlight in the morning and then the rest of the day they tend to be in shade.

So what would you suggest?

I could certainly plant other items besides herbs as well since I would like to be able to entire bees and butterflies to my area with flowers etc.

Coveting

This weekend my family drove 6+ hours to visit my closest relatives in Wyoming. I hadn't seen them in almost a year and it was a good visit. My own mother passed away over 5 years ago so it's nice for my Aunt to play Grandma to my kids.

My Aunt lives outside of a small town called Buffalo. Population is around 3900. She grows her own garden and my uncle hunts so that they are able to provide a large majority of their own food every year. She bakes her own bread. All of it.

She has a large wood fireplace that heats the whole house (which is three levels if you include the basement) and a cold room that I covet.

She isn't "prepping". She isn't preparing for a coming Apocalypse. She's just providing for her family and friends. I spent a good hour just lingering in her cold room, admiring her shelves, her work.

It's large enough to have a spot for her husband to make his own ammo. She has potatoes and large bags of flour. She has MASSIVE shelves that I can only dream of.

It was the food on these shelves that I admired too though. All of it is her own canned items. Hers and a few gifts she's received. She had apple butter. Applesauce. Peach jams. Raspberry jam. Pickles both small and sliced. She had beets. She had peppers. Tomato sauce. Green chili sauce (I think).

She also had dried herbs. Thyme, basil, oregano. And dried orange peel and lemon zest. It was impressive. I found myself with massive cold room envy. House envy even since her home is built in such a way (it's a backsplit I think) that not very much wood energy is required to heat it, even with 3 floors. She has a large southern facing window and it's well insulated. She has a pump that supplies the majority of their water. Did I mention the envy?

It certainly gives me something to strive for though. I like seeing it being done and having goals.

Planning for next year

I know that often this seems like a garden blog more a survival or preparedness blog but it's really not.

It's just that in my mind self sufficiency is the path towards survival. Sure, I buy #10 cans of food. Not often. But I save up and do occasionally buy it. I do that though with the idea in mind that if a total economic/social/energy/EMP/whatever collapse were to happen I would have that stuff for TODAY because I am new to preparedness and I am, well, not totally prepared. I would like, in the future, to someday produce enough food from my small suburban lot to at least feel like I had a handle on survival if I had to. At least in the short term until I could get to somewhere bigger.

So I garden. I plan on fruit trees and bushes. I hide herbs both kitchen and medicinal into my landscape. I am slowly growing a preparedness library and constantly testing myself to see "can I do that without electricity?"

My family is not on board. Well. They are on board with the small containers of tomatoes, of pretty flowers in the front yard (can you say chamomile?) and the canning of local produce. But they are not yet into the bigger picture of powering down, of doing by hand, of going without or making due. Not yet.

Everything is a process. Just like learning to garden, can, cook from scratch is a process. And I'm getting there.

Next year will see big changes to my back yard. Right now it's large and has some very old tall trees (I think elm but I could be making that up). It's mostly grass or dirt with some trees and bushes around the perimeter. There are lilacs, that I love and other stuff, that I don't care about.

Next year though will see actual garden beds put in with a work table and an arch to a new path. My mother in law has it all planned out. I think she knows about the survival/preparedness stuff but has never asked about it. She has, however, seen my under stairs cold storage closet and I've talked at length about how I want to produce from my land but make it beautiful (to be deceptive). There will be more tomatoes next year, more beans, more cucumbers. She has promised there will be apple trees.

So I've already started looking at seed catalogs and researching heirlooms. I've started saving money for the materials. I've started planning meals.

I'm excited to plan, that's actually my favorite part of preparedness. The planning. I like to have a list, a plan, an idea.

This winter will find me focused on cooking from scratch and local. I'll be working on my library and working on my kids, trying to power down, trying to increase their attention spans.

It's exciting for me because I feel like I'm finally making progress.

And I'm ready for green beans straight off the vine.

Front yard

Alternative title: My mother in law is Super Woman.

My husband had oral surgery on Tuesday and is home recovering. Because I have no more time off my mother in law has come over every day to help him and me with the kids.

Yesterday he was napping, I was at work and the kids were all doing daycare like activities so she had a little extra time on her hands.

We had been talking about what I wanted for the front yard and she encouraged me to get some supplies and if she had time she would work on it for me. I told her I wanted something visually appealing but that also was functional. Specifically I was wanting a kitchen herb/butterfly garden.

We bought some shrubs for the rear of the area that were 40% off and then bought some cone flowers. Those are in the middle area. In the front we bought some mums (for color this year for fall) and some lovely kale.

I came home to find my front yard transformed from this (plus some overgrowth that had happened since this picture was taken):

to

I know it's hard to see (other than being able to tell it looks AMAZING) but my wonderful mother in law trimmed the massive stump in the front that was threatening to regrow multiple trees, dug up the edging bricks we had (in the decorative scallop shape), amended soil and filled in the baby pool sized hole we had in the middle, laid fabric, reapplied the bricks, dug at LEAST 9 holes with a PICK AXE because the soil up there is so crummy, planted my plants, laid mulch and moved heavy rocks and a planter as well as some decorative frogs.

While Micah was napping.

I feel awful because some days it's a miracle for me to fold a basket of laundry. Okay, most days laundry folding is a miracle and my mother in law accomplished all of that in the span of 8 hours or less and in 50 degree weather.

If you recall at the beginning of spring it looked like this:

So really, that is QUITE a transformation.

I feel better already about my little suburban homestead.

Putting together the "book"

My outlook on the whole "TEOTWAWKI/SHTF/ZOMBIESOMG" thing is mutlifaceted. And generally I don't actually include zombies in my planning. Those guys are RELENTLESS.

On the one hand I worry that I have started "too late" meaning that when everything happens, whatever 'everything' is, I wont have done "enough" to prepare. Part of that is just knowing me as a person. Follow through is sometimes a struggle for me and I tend to lose focus sometimes.

On the other hand I know that whatever happens it will be long term and things may never get back to "normal", at least not in my lifetime.

I sit down and think about what I believe is most LIKELY to happen in the near future and I try and prepare for the short term and the long term.

I suspect that peak oil/high energy cost are most likely going to be what sets our society off. I believe we have been experiencing the slow buildup to this but that at somepoint we are going to experience more rolling black outs, more energy distruptions, possibly rationing or astronomical pricing.

On top of this I see food cost continuing to rise. Climate change is causing zones to change and the US is not exactly diversifing it's crops. As it subsidizes corn and soy beans to add into processed food and allows GMO to be the norm we will begin to see the cost of other food, especially fruits and vegetables rise. Couple that with the way we continue to treat animals as "protein product" and assembly line raise them with little actual attention paid to conditions or safety and we will see health continue to decline for our population.

What I'm saying is, I don't think I'm going to wake up one morning and nothing will work ala One Second After or Dies the Fire. I think it's gradual decline like putting a frog in water on a stove and gradually turning up the heat.

I do still wanna have a back up plan for the stuff not working thing though too.

So my plan is two fold. On the one hand is the storing of food, especially food that I'm not sure I'll be able to grow or get easily as food costs rise. So I gradually store some of that and have a chart and a plan as to what I want/need to aquire and in what priortiy.

On the other hand I am working on sourcing our food locally when possible, learning to grow and garden our food as well as incorporate wild edibles when possible. It's a slow process right now.

I worry though that the time may come where I wont have access to the internet and so things that I need to know wont be available to me and I wont have it in a book.

Things like recipes for a dutch oven or using dehydrated foods. Medicinal plants, wild edibles and when to plant things are also on the top of my list. I have some canning information but would love more.

So I'm working at putting together a binder with some of that information. At least to have it on hand until I have estabilished a library or learned how to do things from memory.

So. That's my winter project.

If it were you, what things would you want to have on hand in case you didn't have access to the internet? What information would you need? What information would you want a beginner to have? What books would you want in your library?

Carrot Season

Last Thursday I FINALLY got around to harvesting my carrots. I had been waiting and waiting to pull them trying to give them every last day possible for growing. Which is really just for my selfish pleasure because I like straight out of the garden, barely cleaned from the dirt carrots.

I had WAY more carrots than I realized. Apparently all summer the jalapeno plant and the rosemary did a great job disguising my carrots so that when I went to pull them I was surprised with several more than I had planned for.

Now granted, these are short and stubby. The car keys are in the picture to give you an idea of size.

But I'm still pretty pleased with them. I grew these babies from seed and I believe they turned out great!