Starting Seed, Again.
January 16, 2011
I am wearing short-heeled cowboy boots almost daily now. I think its indicative of the fact that I’ve pretty much given up on being cool. I haven’t been to a bar except to play a show in months, haven’t bought beer in even longer. I typically see about 5 people per week, one of them being my wife, one my boss, and the other three my parents and brother. And its really been pretty nice.
This coming week, I plan to start some tomato, pepper, and onion seedlings for later transplanting in the garden. Earlier in the fall, my brother was kind enough to help me haul a couple of loads of manure and composted straw from the far corners of the county to our rental house, almost exactly at the South East corner of the county. We laid out the cardboard I had collected before my truck died, enough for about a 20 foot square, and piled the manure and straw compost on top of that. I have several big bags of last year’s leaves and grass clippings waiting, about 5 bales of brome hay, and a whole bunch of discarded, but unused potting soil from my wife’s place of business that will all get dumped and spread on this little garden plot in a few more weeks, around the end of February.
This area will be for above ground plants. I won’t bother with many tomatoes, because our landlords truck-patch tomatoes to sell at farmers markets, and we get as many as we can use. I do really like cherry tomatoes though, which is something they didn’t grow last year, and probably won’t this year either. All the root vegetables, and some of the big space eaters (squash, melons, etc) will get planted in a separate tilled patch of our very week, slightly acidic, very dry sandy soil. I’ll work a few of the bales of brome hay into this in early spring too, just for a little extra organic mass. And any compost I can muster from the past year.
Our goal for this year’s garden is to grow a year’s supply of food for ourselves. We’re not shooting for any surplus.
Today, I bought a stick of Red Oak lumber with which to make my first two bows. I have not decided if I’ll buy or try to make my own arrows traditionally, but I do feel that if I am going to eat meat, I should be hunting it myself with technology I’ve made myself and understand completely. Otherwise, I feel I should become a vegetarian. I am also planning to set at least one trotline for fish through the better part of the year.
In closing, an unrelated point. Here is the mission statement of an organization I’m looking to start:
“Our mission is to provide a dependably peaceful, healthy, encouraging home for ourselves, our families, and our community. To encourage each other toward greater self-knowledge, creativity, philosophy, and understanding. To provide a place and a context to revive dying arts in need of preservation, and to encourage meaningful personal exploration and expression through music, art, food, literature, etc. We wish to do this in a way that makes a positive impact on our environment over both the short and long term.”
