We’ve got rain today, which is good for everything but out-in-the-yard farming. Having no opportunity to prep the few areas that still need prepping frees up a moment to think back on the last four — and eight — months that my wife and I have been trying the things we’ve been trying. Good eats, but good grief.
The chart never lies. It doesn’t take a statistician to make sense out of the numbers we’ve cultivated so far, nor any kind of education, really, to see that we’re a wee bit off the mark. In the face of such shortage, I have to defer to Vonnegut’s oft-repeated wisdom: So it goes.
In the last few months my objectives have shifted like a political alliance — driven by convenience. For a time, the cold-season crop seemed a boon (and really, any amount of steady food would seem so in the context of last summer and our first four months at this) and I hoped for 2-percent-plus by the end of March. But salads and carrots and beets only cemented our understanding of how calorie-poor healthy food can be — hence the “healthy”. By the end of February, though still able to harvest something from the yard any time we wanted, I had adjusted to the certainty that we’d at least eke our way to our first big percent: 1.0.
Not quite. But we are more than halfway to that mark, and I’d like to think that the past eight months have shown us what the hard half of a percent can look like.
We’ve had some great successes since December 1, a highlight being the Anna Apple grafts, both of which have taken and begun flowering and leafing out. We’ve also made some good moves for the future, chiefly the construction of a coop and the raising of four chickens. Additionally, we planted a Haas Avocado and a Hall’s Hardy Almond, as well as several perennial fruits and vegetables: a blackberry and three raspberry plants, including an Anne; a blueberry bush; a Chayote Squash; and several plots of asparagus.
And, we’ve got warm-season sprouts pushing through the soil all over our property, with more planting yet to come.
All we have to do is get those little spits of green to fruiting. Easy, right?
I have to admit that I just started following your blog about a month ago and every time I saw that calorie graph I would think to myself “I guess they haven’t started yet”.
My wife and I shared a good laugh over your comment. Yeah, it’s been a tough first year, but we’re hopeful for a better harvest this warm-season.
Thanks for reading!
Maybe it would be heartening to consider how large a percentage of your food by weight comes from the garden. As you mention, many garden foods are not high-calorie, even though they may be filling, nutritious, and satisfying.