The Future is Insight

The title of this blog works on many levels- it plays off of my belief in hybrids being a critical step towards our future, the fact that introspection and mindful planning are critical to our future, and that the future is literally in sight for those that are willing to see it. Here I chronicle my attempt to Be the Change I wish to see in the world-and to help make that Future a Reality.

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Dead Zone

So last year I began experimenting with sheet mulching and had very high hopes. Now, 6 months later I am reporting back. Unfortunately it is with mixed results. The partial success is that the sod is, in fact, dead. The partial failure lies in the fact that the mulch material is not decomposed-or at best only partially. That was last week and I found it frustrating, but it got sidetracked as I began Orchard Prep in full force.

But tonight I spent the final hours before sundown after work preparing about 100 sq feet of soil that I had pulled the sod off this weekend. For some reason that fact that I hadn't seen a single worm finally sunk in. Let me say that again-in turning 100 sq ft of lawn-organic lawn-to a depth of about 8" I did not turn over a single worm. My conclusion, based solely on anecdotal evidence without soil tests, is that my soils are as dead as I had once feared. This is why the sheet mulch is just sitting there-one needs decomposers to decompose coffee grounds and cardboard. This lawn has been there for almost 3 years now, but our subdivison, like most, had its soil stripped off and sold, and then post construction had hundreds of yards of backfill trucked back in-in our case it was quarry waste: a stable and cheap mix of sand, clay, and stones. That backfill came from a subsoil or lower level in the soil strata-a strata dead to the soil ecosystem.

Into that layer-with a thin veneer of topsoil (2-3") crushed to oblivion by my spreading it with a skid steer- I am trying to create my Eden. I recently wrote about inoculating the soil with benifical fungus, but this goes deeper. I need to literally rebuild the entire soil ecosystem. Luckily I am not treading on virgin soil as it were-my trusty texts on Edible Forest Gardening speak of technique to do just that. The long and short of it is that I will be taking some 5 gallon buckets to nearby woods-as old growth as I can find-and scoop out some soil to mix into my orchard plantings. This is a broad base inoculation that will hopefully start to cover the gamut of bacteria, fungus, nematodes, and critters that I need to balance (or in this case create) my soil ecosystem. There is an abandoned farm about a mile from here with standing timber-I plan on making a foray next week to make some very significant progress on righting the wrongs of my site.

Be the Change!

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Tuesday, June 12, 2007

HOA Permaculture

If you haven't picked up on the recurring theme of the past several months, I am planning a small scale forest garden something bigger than a permaculture fruit tree guild but certainly less elaborate than the ones Robert Hart created almost 30 years ago that have received some coverage of late. I guess I am thinking of linking about 6-8 tree guilds into a mini ecosystem. Perhaps Orchard Gardening is a better term, but I won't belabor the point.
I have a few goals in this experiment:
Tidiness Alright I may be accused of snobbishness here, but I am trying to "bioneer" a system that is replicable in suburban homes across the US, and if it looks like the weed fest that Mr. Hart grew no one is going to be on boarding anytime soon. I know his Forest Garden was brilliant in many ways: self sustaining, productive, and groundbreaking, but I am looking for something that will pass the HOA police. To that end it needs to be structured, functional, and well tidy. That means I will need to add more inputs in weeding and mulch rather than letting succession do the work for me, and I want it to ramp up fast so it will entail alot more prep work instead of waiting for nutrient accumulators and legumes to enrich the soil for me. I figure my garden club attending Mother will be a decent measurable here-if she approves I have passed.
Natives Right, so this may have already nixed my goal of readily identifiable species, but I want to make these guilds decidedly Upper Midwest in Character by including natives to fill niches when possible. This goal is rough to begin with-apples are imported, peaches shouldn't grow in WI, etc but I want to give it a go. So at least in the understory I will be incorporating natives as I go. For every niche if I can find a native to do the job I will be giving it a try. This will only be a partial win as productivity suffers without hybrids and "domesticated" plants but I will be giving it a shot.
Enjoyable, not just Edible This goes back to Mia's euphemism that "just because you can eat something, doesn't mean you should..." So I will be sticking with "normal" edibles as much as possible. Peaches, pears, apples (okay and Paw-Paw but its native) will be the anchor trees in the guilds. Strawberries will be a ground cover of choice, raspberries, kiwis, chives, sorrel, and other familiar plants will be in attendance. I want to be able to serve produce from these guilds without explanation to guests-and then spend the explanation time on the beauty of a (mostly)self sustaining garden instead of driving home that, yes, indeed, that dish is edible.
Some wins to date:
New Jersey Tea I first noticed this plant in the Prairie Nursery's catalog as one of the few native shrubs, and then started seeing it virtually every where I turned in my winter reading: Noah's Ecology, Edible Forest Gardens, Gaia's Garden. Mostly it is mentioned for one of two reasons. 1) The cute anecdote that the colonists used the leaves of NJT as a Tea substitute post Boston Tea Party... planting this shrub is Patriotic! 2) Hummingbirds apparently can't pass it by-they capture some of the pollinators to feed their young. Cool. So it was going into the guilds already for its nativeness, tea-ness, and beneficial attracting-ness, but then came the coup de grĂ¢ce... this bugger is a nitrogen fixer!
This plant just rocketed to my Top 5 along with Russian Comfrey, Goumi, Sunchokes, and Black Locust Trees. I bought 9.
Nodding Pink Onion I have a few of these in my perennial beds, and I knew they were a native allium, but it took Edible Forest Garden's freaky useful appendices to dial home that this native was a great onion substitute (can you call it a substitute if it is still an onion?) They might not bulb up like a Walla Walla, but they are perennial, can be divided annually, attract beneficials and emit enough chemical odors that they can mask more susceptible plants from pest pressure. I'm in for a half a flat.
Misc Natives some others that will be included: New England Aster for a late season benifical attractant, Bergamot (beneficals and more good tea), Leadplant (N-Fixer), Alpine Strawberries (edible ground cover), Indigo (N-Fixer), and about a dozen other native perennials will be about 8' away in a 500 sq ft prairie transplant bed as a beneficial insect haven to try to keep the Curculios off my apples.

Other plants that will be in attendance in force will be Russian Comfrey and Chives (both great nutrient accumulators). French Sorrel (great snacking green), some Dill, Miner's Lettuce, hardy kiwi, edible mushrooms breaking down the mulch, some clumping native grasses like Prairie Dropseed, and I plan on tucking in traditional annual veggies like peppers, tomatoes, etc to harness some of the wicked good soil.

I know I have given this alot of press lately, but I have eaten my nails down to nubs waiting for Edible landscaping to get me my trees and kiwi (3 week delay!!) and I have to burn the energy off somewhere: Mia is about ready to burn the Edible Forest books if I mention edible fungus or nitrogen fixers more than once an hour.
This week's task will be finding a source for 5 yards of compost (I actually ran out and used all the City's...oops this will probably come on a truck), tearing up the sod, finishing the irrigation swales, and sourcing 3 yards of wood chips. Like I said-I am going uber input to get it up and running!
-Beo




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Sunday, June 10, 2007

Sunny Fuel and Chickens

This morning Mia and I were searching for some alternative starch sources for an acquaintance with an allergy to potatoes, and I jumped to Wikipedia to verify that Sunchokes were Asteraceae (yes) and there have been some updates to the entry. One of them was espousing the virtues of Sunchokes as an ethanol crop. The entry claimed that one acre of Sunchokes can be converted to 1200 gallons of 99.5% Ethanol. That claim seemed ridiculous so I let it go and went on to other things.

Right so I can't just let this go, but you all knew that already. Ethanol from my favorite perennial food crop? So I went back to track it and it turns out the reference on Wikipedia came from one of my all time favorite sites: Journey to Forever, again confirming my growing suspicion that it does, in fact, contain the answers to literally everything.

The JTF reference has about 30+ pages of text on ethanol production of which I read about 2, but it is basically just making strong beer-ok that is an over simplification but it ain't hard. So if I can seriously make 1000 gallons of fuel on an acre (v. 200 for corn) the 20 acre farmstead just became alot cooler. That is enough fuel to drive about 23,000 miles if we could convert our Subaru to E-100 (28 mpg * 85% efficiency) or just buy an E-85 car and cut our own ethanol with regular gas. The process looks easier than making bio-deisel, but that is only at first blush.
Regardless this sounds alot better than corn (6x the production/acre) while not having the no till advantages of switchgrass. I hope that it gets some real time in the debate at least.

Surround the whole thing with another of the coolest things I have read about this week: the chicken moat or even a hog moat, to keep the acre of sunchokes from taking over the entire site. As much as I love pushing the limits of the HOA...I need land for all these ideas!

I came across the Chicken Moat idea in David Jacke's Edible Forest Gardens. For those of you getting frustrated by my continual references to it, bear with me- there are still 625 pages to go...

So I had heard of Chicken Tractors, and like their utility and simplicity. I also really enjoyed the chicken coops in Mollison's Intro to Permaculture where the coop is adjacent to several gardens that are each separated by a fence-and each section also has a door to the coop. The chickens can then be released to "till" in a section of garden, remove most insect pests, and fertilize the heck out of the garden. The Chicken Moat combines the two ideas to some extent while adding alot of utility to the traditional garden fence. The picture above is very ambitious. The runs would house dozens and dozens of chickens.


A smaller version, say 30' on a side, would effectively run the perimeter of my 7 beds. The gardens that Jacke demonstrates with are absolutely dripping with function stacking. On the outside the chicken fence is buried 18" to stop burrowing varmints, and the planted thick with Comfrey and other mulch crops. These are planted fairly tight to the fence allowing them to be grazed, but not killed, by the chickens while also giving them some protection from sun and wind. The run is about 6' tall and fenced the entire height with chicken wire, and then there is a larger opening arbor on top with serves as protection from hawks and climbing predators, but also holds grapes, hardy kiwis, and a variety of other edible vines. The model shown had openings on the garden side for the gardener to chuck weeds in through. If you put down a sawdust/chip mulch in the runs you would have all the compost you could ever need. Loves it.

I can see something like this, but much stronger and with hogs, running the perimeter of the Sunchoke Acreage. Any errant tuber would be gladly eaten by the hogs rooting through the soil. Maybe I need hogs to stop my quack grass problems!

-Beo

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Wednesday, June 06, 2007

Garden Detail

So I wanted to break down my gardens in a little more detail. When I describe everything I am growing in my yard a common first question is "do you have any lawn left?" I do-alot. While the lawn as an expanse is dwindling annually, it will always be there for the dogs and our children. Plus I like bocce ball and while playing in a forest garden would be challenging, the buzzkill from squashing a sorrel plant would ruin it for me right quick. So here is a short rundown of gardens in the ground followed by a short blurb on plans for June:

Right now I have 3 main areas: Small Fruit, Veggies, and Sunchokes with some intermixing.

Small Fruit

This started in yr 1 of our home (even before the lawn) with 125 strawberry plants from Nourse farms. Not organic or sustainable, but dirt cheap. I split the 125 into roughly equal parts early season (earliglow) and midseason (sparkle) for their dependability and resistance. Each type is in a bed to themselves. The first year I debudded them all (while shedding tears) and got a healthy harvest in yr 2. Peak during the overlap week was about 1-2 Quarts a day. This was enough to put a little by-but only because my daughter eats small fruit voraciously. These beds take up about 80 sq ft each and I leave them to their own devices only trimming runners when they escape the beds which anchor two ends of a mixed prairie/perennial bed that also houses 2 comfrey plants (for compost) and my sole Apple Tree. Nearby are our 2 Currant bushes. These are just coming into production and are used for pectin for making jams.

Veggies
We currently have 5 vegetable beds each approx 5x20'.
#1 contains: 24 potato plants on a staggered 2' spacing, along with a grape trellis and 5 raspberry plants on the north side. Tucked in some gaps are also 3 lettuce plants and some mache I had left over.
#2 contains my heavy feeders: 24 tomato plants on 2' spacings to be trellised to 7' bamboo teepees for height. In the other 2' of this bed on the North side are about 16 peppers. This bed is also underplanted with about 1/4 ounce of white dutch clover seed for a living mulch ala Fukuoaka.
#3 is the spring bed and has a 20' double row of peas on trellis (using jute twine so I can compost the whole lot) on the south side and then 3' deep bocks of lettuce (8'), beets (4') carrots (2') and radishes(2') with about 3' set aside last year for this season's garlic (about 20 bulbs). This bed will be continuously replanted as harvest continues to stay in production (with coldframes) until Thanksgiving.
#4 is about 7' wide as 3' of it houses 12 more raspberry brambles. The other 4' contains 4 more tomatoes (1 teepee), 2 zucchini, and 16' of cucumbers in one row. This is a very new bed that is only partially composted sheet mulch-results will not be great.
#5 is my "3 Sisters" variation. Basically it has 4 melons on 4' spacings with 30 or so corn plants on very wide spacings interplanted. Pole beans will go in soon. On the south face are 6 basil plants for easy picking and wicked pesto.

I have a 6th bed I am turning under right now for the remainder of my peppers and lettuce that buts up against the sea of Quack grass that the DOT maintains on the other side of the fence. Keeping out that any rhizomes is futile so I have enlisted some allies. Enter the Sunchokes.

Sunchokes
Quack grass is my nemesis here at Someday Gardens. I have pulled out rhizomes over 6' long and they laugh at my stone rubble raised beds. I have spent about 20 hours this year meticulously turning over my beds and sifting them to get as many of the rhizomes as possible and then weeding with a vengeance to rid my beds of them. But the Quack Sea on the other side of my fence has limitless rhizomal resources that belittle my efforts. So I am choosing to fight an aggressive pioneer with an aggressive native: sunchokes. Now part of me feels like Roosevelt in 1941, but hopefully I can do better at living with the Sunchokes than we were with Stalin. Bordering my beds to the west and north and separated by mown paths are 3' wide strips of Sunchokes about 30 feet in length. The Sunchokes offer both insidious tubers and a mild allelopathic effect that seems to keep the quack grass at bay. The upside is that this living rhizome barrier also supplies me with about 40 gallons of tasty tubers a year and beautiful sunflowers in August. Now if they just don't take over Europe and SE Asia in the next 30 years...

That is about it for edible gardens right now. In some perennial beds I have 4 Goumi Shrubs that will produce if the rabbits ever stop eating them to the crown each winter, and I just put in 3 blueberry shrubs as well. It isn't much, but with a more normal spring, at least half the beds get 2 crops, and they all do if you count the winter cover crops. I also have an Herb Spiral with Chives, and most culinary herbs. Out of this I will be eating from May through the winter (Sunchokes keep like potatoes) and producing enough to sell to a sandwich shop to pay for next year's seed and supplies.

June/July Plans

En route from Edible Landscaping: 1 Housi Pear Tree, 1 Seckle Pear tree, 2 Paw Paw (pushing the zones here) a hardy Kiwi, and 2 Red Haven Peaches. Nourse will contribute 2 gooseberry shrubs, and I have 3 hazelnuts from the Arbor Day Foundation in the fridge. All the above will be incorporated into a "guilded" orchard that I have been planning for about 8 months on and off. In the guilds will also be more strawberries, sorrel, more chives, some edible native onions, mulch plants, and much, much more. The absolute beauty of the guilding is that in the same space as a loosely planted orchard I will have everything in this paragraph and more driving the production of this 30x50' area to huge heights. In the same 8x8 area I will have a fruit tree, 1-2 fruiting shrubs, an edible groundcover, edible vines, and at least a half dozen edible and medicinal herbs while edible mushrooms decompose the wood chip mulch. All in a system that creates its own mulch, fertilizer, nitrogen, and attracts its own pest predators. Buya! There is much, much more to this frankenstein (including an engineered soil/swale irrigation system fed by my blueberry bog and raingardens)-look for an well documented install over the next month!

I have a .5 acre lot, but I am only using about .1 to do all of this leaving the rest for a typical landscaped front yard, a playsystem for the kids, and enough lawn for 160lbs of greyhounds to frolic in. Most lots, even true Urban lots have that much. On the flip side this approach can also easily expand up to 1-2 acres by losing the raised beds for 5x100' beds, adding zeros to the quantities of the fruit trees and enlisting a gaggle of ducks for slug patrol without getting so big that 1-2 people can't maintain it part time. Hello permaculture market garden!

This is starting to feel like hubris, but fingers are crossed!
-Beo

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Tuesday, June 05, 2007

HOA meets CSA

So as the realization that the farm is at least 3, and probably 5+ years out sinks in I have refused to let that get me into a funk. Those 3 to 5 years are an opportunity for me to learn, experiment, and grow in an environment that is both safe and challenging: the Suburban Backyard.

Earlier this year on a post at Groovy Green I threw a glove down by saying that I would like to grow upwards of a half ton of produce from my 1/2 acre lot in Zone 5b Suburbia. I am taking that resolution seriously and am investing heavily in both research and plants to make it a reality. But it is bigger than a number-in fact I trace it back to one of my mentors: David Holmgren. Holmgren, in his book Permaculture, made a comment that is haunting me. It can be paraphrased as referring to Suburbia as the Salvation of the 21st Century. WHAT?!! His point is that in almost no other time have so many people owned a plot of land for themselves. Right now those 1/2 acre plots are massive ecological deserts soaking up resources, but what if a few pioneers turned the paradigm on its head and showed what could be done on a sub acre lot in a subdivision. Authors like Sara Stien in Noah's Garden, and the entire Urban Gardening (or City Farm) movement are trying to do just that. Making food and sustaining yourself on a 5 acre plot is fantastic and still the dream, but what about the other millions that will need food in the near future. We are a net exporter of food only because of oil-that will change in our life time.

I guess in the time that I have in the Land of the Home Owner's Association I want to see what I can do to add to the Victory Garden tradition of urban gardening. When I start spouting off at work about my gardens-people ask if I have any lawn at all. In fact we still have over 1/3 of an acre of lawn on a 1/2 acre lot. My food gardens are only about 1/8th of an acre as far as space I have set aside in the Master Plan, but in reality it is only about 1200 sq feet right now-with only 2 fruiting shrubs and some brambles augmenting the veggies and strawberries. But in that we eat from our garden from May through November and once the Filberts are online will grow protein, starch, as well as fruits and veggies. We stretch our harvest by "putting food by" in sauces and storage.

We also stretch our labor around by shifting as much of the load to perennials or "come again" crops like Sunchokes as we can. Using those sunchokes as an example. They produce as much, or more, pounds of food per sq ft as a potato and take as the same amount of work to put in and harvest. But once established, from now until eternity (you can't eradicator them!) all you have to do is harvest. No fertilizer, no watering, and no planting. Every Fall I turn the bed harvesting tubers as I go by the 5 gallon bucket load, and then I lay the stalks down as mulch and store the tubers in the buckets with wet sand in the basement (50 degrees). This saves me about 2 days in the spring of work, and about $30 in fertilizer and seed potatoes vs the annual crop. In return I get over 50lbs of tubers for free!

I want to see what else I can do with perennials. I am trying to debunk the theory of the need to rototill your strawberry patch every 3 years and replanting. How does that makes since? I have 2 berry beds: an early and a mid season. Last year on the midseason bed after the harvest I took my digging spade and turned under about 12" every 3' or so in the bed and let it replenish itself with runners. Into that I sprinkled some left over pellitized chicken manure, but compost would have worked as well. That was the entirety of my bed maintenance other than weeding. This year the strawberries are so thick I can't tell where I tilled, and that bed is out producing my early bed 2:1 and they were dead even last year. This is the third year so time will tell, but I will continue my tilling strategy as it appears to be a huge success. It lets the bed reinvigorate itself and I can get by on 1/3 the space with no capital outlays.

I still have 2/3 of my "production" area to plant and even still I am planning on selling produce this year-I will have attained the permaculture criteria of a "surplus". Sure I am still bringing in inputs in mulch and coffee grounds for compost, but they are all by products of my neighborhood. True sustainability in a Suburb is about community-we don't live in the four walls of our plat of survey-we share in the resource web of our community.

I have about 10lbs of produce in so far in the first 10 days of the season, and I have alot of tubers and fruits to go. Agribusiness can get about 14,000lbs of corn off of an acre (200 bushels of corn/acre @ 70lbs/bushel), I would need to hit 1400lbs to beat that in my .1 acre production zone. That is huge... can I do it?

Time will tell, and I will need the fruit trees maxed out to do it, but this time next year I might have a CSA in my HOA and its a purely academic point because my strawberries beat the hell out of GMO feed corn in the taste department and I am carbon nuetral or better.

Be the Change!
-Beo

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Garden: June Wk 1

Right. So the Big Mission this year was control for the backyard. Last year we left for a 2 week trip to Alaska in Mid June, only to return to a jungle of weeds that we never got in front of. The backyard was not a pleasant place, and we have vowed to make a better show of it this year. So here are some shots of the garden in June. I know, all gardens look great in June, but I am taking solace in how well they are doing thus far.

Here is Bird taking her time picking the Forellenschluss lettuce from Cook's. Bird is an enigma. She'll take carrots over cookies, apples over ice cream and will eat her salad, heck even plain lettuce, completely before touching mac and cheese or her PB & J. Like her Father, she is especially smitten with this variety for its appearance and taste. The leaves are large and firm which makes them a dream to harvest as leaf lettuce and they are heading up nicely. We have about 12 plants going right now that I transplanted out 2 weeks early (Mia's pic below) and they have kept us in salad for 1-2 meals a day for 2 weeks, and are still going strong. We have 2 more rounds of this lettuce to go (I started the seed all at once, but staggered the transplanting which is having a similar effect on harvest times. My "nursery" bed is very low on nutrients due to neglect which essentially puts the transplants on hold until they hit the garden-they stay alive, but don't thrive.

Once we got back from Yellowstone I quick put my transplants from Seed Savers (my starts were murdered by yours truly when I left them out on a windy spring day...) into the garden. Last year I had 14 tomatoes and had used large wire cages for all my indeterminate heirlooms. It was an unmitigated disaster because I didn't prune them and had them spaced to tightly-I basically had a tomato "hedge" that became weedy and suffered from lack of sidedressing
during July. I spent the winter keeping an eye out for an alternate method of growing my heirlooms and stumbled across the idea of Tomato Teepees in Cook's Catalogue. They used 7'
bamboo, and bamboo sounded alot better than my ugly wire cages! Unfortunately my local independent nurseries only had 6', and even Local Harvest (which I use like a sustainable Amazon) came up empty. I was preparing to resort cobbling together mine out of firring strips from Menard's when I stumbled across these beauties at K-Mart of all places! Beautifully stained (I will not ask what with...) and a full 7' long. They came in packs of 6 for a very reasonable $5. I bought them out.


The idea is to space the plants in a 2' square and then prune the vines to a more or less single trunk that will be tied to the bamboo. This should allow me to grow almost double (24 v. 14) the plants in the same area due to going vertical almost twice as much (6' v 40") with commensurate increases in yields. Time will tell!

I also broke with my desire to stay with only one variety of Tomato for seed saving. With me now marketing veggies to the local coffee shop, I needed to grow Roma's and Yellow Pears for them, while also keeping with my Amish Pastes for our sauces-in all I have 6 varieties. Ditto for the peppers-we went from one (Anchos) to 3 to include an early and late red bell for the shop. I hope to still collect seed from my radishes, peas, carrots, and lettuce though for practice!

Here's to the optimism of June in the Garden!

-Beo

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Sunday, June 03, 2007

Living the Dream

I just finished building 7 tomato teepees out of 7' sticks of bamboo for most of my 30+ tomato plants (look for a post very soon). We have been eatin salad for lunch/dinner for the past week straight from our garden and will need to start selling produce soon (lettuce is hard to store). We are getting a pint a day (quart on one day) of strawberries and the larger bed with the mid season plants will be in production next week. The potatoes are 2' bushes and the raspberries and Sunchokes are 3'+ tall. Peas, carrots and beets are doing fab as well. We are adding 2 more 100 sq ft beds for next year to grow onions, more melons, and maybe squash.

Coming in the mail are two pear trees, hardy Kiwi, and next week will bring the peach trees, and more strawberries for next year. Sorrel transplants are waiting on the porch, and the basil went in yesterday along with the melons, cucumbers, corn, and a bunch else I am forgetting. Goal of 750lbs of produce this year might happen yet! This will be on about an 1/8th acre of space that still has a lot of lawn in it-the other 1/2 of our backyard is less agricultural and devoted to family space like porches and playgrounds. With 10 acres I would be dangerous! (probably more to myself than anyone else!)

What I am saying is that until we can move to our dream Someday House we are living an incredibly blessed life right now and won't be moving. Next year I will hit 10 years at my job and will have 5 weeks of vacation a year on top of paid holidays and the unbelievable fact that I only work 4 days a week. Starting in August my work week will switch to Tues-Fri from Wed-Sat so I will have real 3-Day weekends. All that free time means that I felt confident enough to start a business rather than go for a promotion and lose the long weekends. And now my side business is successful enough that I am turning work away and will be subbing out some labor starting this month while still augmenting my salary by 20%. Next year I might even rent an acre of land to go deeper down the road of Market Gardening, but time will tell.

Sure living on the freeway sucks, but if you put the iPod up that melts away and eventually the sight break I have planted will block it out, at least visually, and nature doesn't seem to care. The swallows love our yard since it is swarming in crunchy little pollinators, a nighthawk has moved into the area, and we spotted our first 13 line ground squirrel yesterday grazing in our replanted prairie.

Life is good. Even in the Suburbs on a freeway. Sometimes living in the Now is hard for me.
Now is not one of those times.
Be the Change.

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