There is a big difference between store bought vegetables, maybe imported internationally, and growing a vegtable from scratch. There’s a connection to your own homegrown food that doesn’t exist when you buy your vegetables from the store.
Four years ago, I moved to the country from the New York City suburbs of New Jersey. My then-boyfriend-now-husband and I didn’t have tons of money to spend on a first home but we had some good luck. We focused on houses in towns we liked, with lots of property.
I’ve always liked to work outdoors, compliments of my dad.
The first two years I focused a lot on landscape clean-up. Three plus acres of (non-wooded) land is a lot for one person with a few garden tools.
Three years later we tilled our first garden ground- a small 8 X 20 foot plot (I have to constantly double check my measurements- I’m not good with them. I first wrote 5’ X 10’ and my husband filled in the extra 30 square feed). The garden was small, crowded, rocky and mildly successful.
We made beautiful butternut squash soup that year.
Last year, was our first big garden. We grew lots of things but were ultimately defeated by early blight (on the heirloom tomatoes) and squash bugs on, well, everything.
This year, I decided to document the process. During this long, extremely rewarding food cycle we’ll talk about how different growing your own is from buying veggies from a store (where it was shipped across states, possibly imported from other countries, sprayed with glosses and preservatives)- All of which have nothing to do with you.
Ultimately, something grown without sprays or chemicals in you yard or kitchen, picked then cooked the same day (or eaten raw!) is an incredibly rewarding journey.
Here’s the beginning.
March is sneaking up on us. I just checked the date to see how many days until March. I thought this was a leap year. When I was a kid, grade school age, I felt bad for people born in a leap year. In fact, I couldn’t wrap my head around the idea that someone would have to wait years for their birthday to come- it seemed really unfair. I thought a lot about that at age 7 or so. After days of distress, my mom explained that most parents probably just celebrated a day earlier if someone had a 29th birthday.
Regardless, March is almost here and it is not a leap year.
Though this blog will not be about leap years or stressful situations from my childhood perhaps it told you a bit about me.
