There is no longer such thing as a "quick" trip to the store. I can no longer just load up into the truck for a day of silliness and window shopping.
I now have to plan this glorious event days in advance. School and weather must be taken into consideration, current pantry stock and gas prices must factor in also.
I can't afford the prices of the nearest grocery store, so the store I frequent is actually a 70 mile round trip, and consumes a minimum of 5 hours to "get 'er done".
Perishables and my beloved ice cream are no longer bought without care. During the summer, some never make it home alive and so I have turned to the desperate attempts of trying to make our own sweet cold treats at home.
Our meat supply has been greatly helped by the local wildlife and my job title #245 - butcher.
Making a lot of things from scratch has helped stretch our food supply and our number of weeks between grocery trips.
Another thing that has got me pondering our edibles is the seemingly endless news about recalls on food....people food AND pet food.
So City Boy and I stuck our city minded heads together and came up with a country solution. We ( meaning I) are gonna grow our own food.
yep.
A garden.
Job Title #246 Gardener
Now let me tell you, as sure as a California desert grows tumbleweeds and rattlesnakes, the Ozarks grows trees and rocks.... neither of which are beneficial to having a garden. Our solution has been to build raised garden beds. the hardest part about this was actually finding enough dirt to fill them with. Top soil is like gold around here....except a gold vein is easier to find. But after a forestry excursion into our "back 5" we found some usable loam.
There are 4 of these boxes and they measure about 4x8.The next obstacle to having our own food was to keep it away from the critters....owned or otherwise.
Wildlife abounds here and the last thing we want is to become a grocery store for them. So a fence was decided upon.
City boy used cedar trees for the posts. Most of these were tress that had fallen or had damage from the January Ice Storm. At the time my my blogging this the fence area has been completed, but my lazy butt just hasn't gone out and taken pictures of the completed project. OK. the truth is I ran out of batteries for the camera and see reasons above for why I haven't made a quick trip to the store for some more. lol
I have managed to get a few things planted. Some even before the fencing was finished.
If you look closely in the above pictures, one of the boxes has an old screen door on top of it. I had just planted peas and didn't want the chickens to get in there and eat them. the good news is, it worked. The peas have sprouted and the screen door is no longer adorning my garden bed.
I also planted potatoes right away.
And I've started lots of seedlings indoors to be transplanted to the garden beds at the appropriate time. So far my tomato plants are doing best.
Now, there might be some skeptics out there that just don't believe that a city girl like me would get her hands dirty with a garden that doesn't involve highly pruned rosebushes.....
But I'm telling ya...the proof is in the pictures!Things have been sprouting like crazy around here. We've been blessed with some 80 degree temps the last few days. I have honestly been able to "watch" the grass grow. With our latest rains and the warm temps, I swear that the grass is 3 inches longer and hour after I mow it. BUT obviously the weatherman didn't realize I had already started my garden because he forecast below freezing temps this week and SNOW on Thursday!
Oh well, live and learn. If I lose everything during this....I'll just call it PRACTICE.
There are some things that I'll never be able to grow....hmmm coffee comes to mind.....and toilet paper.............and there are a few things that I miss finding readily available as I did in CA. such as citrus and avocados. So for now it look like the grocery store and I will still have a love/hate relationship....that is until I get a greenhouse where I can grow citrus and coffee and I can convince City Boy that the native "flannel plant" around here is a great alternative to toilet paper.
