Eat The Yard

Getting to one percent feels like getting a point in a game that would have otherwise been a shut out — and despite the tasty food we’ve harvested sporadically in the past 10 months, there have been many times, even recently, that I’ve felt aced by the yard, certain that we’d come up not just [...]

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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, [...]

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With the end of January we reached the middle of our effort in terms of days, but certainly not in terms of calories.  The 7,568 calories we have managed to grow and eat from our yard since August 1 of last year represent .5 percent of our annual count, or about two days worth of [...]

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Sunday we decided to finally do something with a few of the Delicata Squash that have been ripening in a bowl on our counter for about four weeks.  I have been extremely skeptical of how edible they’d turn out to be because they were grown way out of season, and for the last few weeks [...]

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There’s little chance of growing 100 percent of anyone’s daily calories in a suburban yard.  It’s true for us, and our near fifth of an acre is a pretty good size as far as yards go.  It’s true for most people.  Beyond lot size, there are also light and soil quality concerns, not to mention [...]

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If our production and consumption of calories had been even and steady throughout the year, then by the end of November we should have harvested and eaten 75,030 calories from our property, or about 5 percent of our annual calories.  It would be friendly but false to characterize our effort so far as either even [...]

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What does it mean to have harvested and eaten 1,000 calories of food from a yard?  It’s a dubious milestone in the context of my overall objective.  Why?  Because it took most of August to get there, and to be on track we should have consumed somewhere in the neighborhood of 19,065 calories by now [...]

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