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Life After Lawn...
Next month in anticipation of a nice bonus, we will begin ripping out our front yard and adding several large, tiered raised beds for edibles, meandering stone pathways, drought resistant native perennials and a tasteful natural fence around the yard made from reclaimed redwood up against which we will grow taller plants and vines in order to privatize the sanctuary to be. We will have a drip system and a water reclamation system so that the landscape will use a very minimal amount of water. In this garden, I plan to plant things that can either be eaten out of hand, cooked with, used for medicinal purposes or for fragrance. I like my landscape to be functional and have a specific purpose outside of simply looking nice. The bottom line is that we want a low maintenance, low water use, high yield, edible, fragrant, environmentally beneficial, year round garden space that we can actually relax in... It's a big project but not bigger than what we set out to do in our back yard which we're very satisfied with. I will post the progress of this project once it's underway.
Cost of Living
Have you seriously checked out food pricing lately? If so, do you have the same kind of sticker shock that I do? I went to the grocery store yesterday and on every isle that I pushed my cart down, I slowly gazed at the price tags on the shelf with disbelief. I rubbed my eyes to no avail because there on the shelf still sat the small pack of yogurt for almost $6.00 dollars and the bread for over $3.50 and the butter for $3.50/pound and on and on... If you just feed yourself or one other person, perhaps the damage to your pocket book is slight but if your family is anything like my family, with two strapping boys who can chug a couple gallons of milk each week, you are trying to strategize this latest hit to your bottom line.
The hubby and I have talked and have decided that although dreadfully time consuming, we will make by hand as much of the food and other mundane household items that we normally buy at the store. We rarely buy any sort of processed foods at all let alone fully prepared items such as dinners or frozen thingys. We do however buy organic laundry detergent, soaps, organic cleaners, shampoo, lotions, cheese, yogurt, bread, crackers, other misc. baked goods, sweets and cereals all of which can be made at home. I've crunched the numbers and found that by making these staples at home we will save well over $160.00 per month above and beyond the cost of raw materials. It's not a huge amount but everything will be organic, hand made and there will be no question about it's ingredients, safety or integrity.
The hubby and I have talked and have decided that although dreadfully time consuming, we will make by hand as much of the food and other mundane household items that we normally buy at the store. We rarely buy any sort of processed foods at all let alone fully prepared items such as dinners or frozen thingys. We do however buy organic laundry detergent, soaps, organic cleaners, shampoo, lotions, cheese, yogurt, bread, crackers, other misc. baked goods, sweets and cereals all of which can be made at home. I've crunched the numbers and found that by making these staples at home we will save well over $160.00 per month above and beyond the cost of raw materials. It's not a huge amount but everything will be organic, hand made and there will be no question about it's ingredients, safety or integrity.
Today's Harvest
My fall crop has been started or seeded but that's of no consequence to the late Summer vegetables still going strong in the August sun. Most of my 12 tomato plants have produced at least one nice ripe tomato but I do have a couple that are either on their way out or have an abundance of green tomatoes forming, ready to ripen. This is the beauty of strategically planting heirloom varieties that harmonize throughout the season and keep the fruit coming from late June through November. The peppers, eggplant, corn, and potatoes are still maturing and will be harvested over the next couple months. The vegetables pictured practically beg to be made in to the humble but now famous French peasant dish, ratatuoille.
WOW! What an amazing trip.
Here are just a few pictures from our trip up the coast. We stayed about four hours drive North from the Bay Area just outside of the town of Mendocino. These shots were taken at the mouth of Big River where it empties in to the ocean at Casper Beach. The boys have on wet suits as they went body surfing in the ocean. This river is beautiful and has a sandy bottom where these pictures were taken . It's banks are studded with majestic red woods and salmon and steel head run its' length. We couldn't fish for salmon but we did fish off the rocks and off a boat and caught so many fish we couldn't eat them all so we were forced to freeze many of them. All the fish we caught were various types rock fish and ling cod, the largest of which was a gorgeous 10 pound carnelian cod. The trip was amazing. We did everything from building a fire on the private beach outside our rental house where we made s'mores to soaking in the hot tub overlooking the pounding waves below the cliff on which it was perched. We wanted to stay longer but alas, we needed to come back to the reality of day to day life in the Bay Area. Mauricio and I have decided that we really want to buy some property up this way. It's such a beatiful stretch of coastline with some of the largest and most majestic redwoods in the world.
Is It Too Early?
Well, my garden doesn't think so... We have pumpkins of all shapes, sizes and colors in all stages of maturity on vines in the back an front gardens. In fact, I'm beginning to wonder why we planted so many damned pumpkins, I mean there's only so much one can do with pumpkins, right?
We are about to leave for our coastal vacation. I cannot tell you how stoked I am to be going. It's a three hour jaunt up the coast by car yet world's away in feel. The sleepy town of Mendocino is a quaint artists playground perched high atop a bluff overlooking the most beautiful coastline in the state, in my opinion. There are amazing places to eat fresh caught sea food as well as sustainable organic foods. The majestic redwoods are a five minute drive and so are a myriad of beautiful rivers. There's everything to do from horseback riding to abalone diving to fly fishing. We'll also be taking a ride on the scenic Skunk Train out of Fort Bragg a mere 10 minutes from where we're staying. *sigh*
Impending Fall Harvest
Outside of the long season vegetables such as corn, eggplants, basil, peppers and tomatoes my garden is now cleaned, prepped, freshly composted and already beginning to sprout the myriad of Fall and Winter vegetables that I've seeded there. There's broccoli, cauliflower, beans, kale, collard greens, turnips, lettuce, cabbage, brussel sprouts, spinach, swiss chard and more that I can't think of right now. I was relatively happy with how my garden preformed this year, the first in this newly reconstructed bed. It fed us through the summer and I purchased very little in the way of vegetables at all. There are many changes I will be making such as raising the soil level another 4 inches or so to meet the edge of the bed, adding more compost, even more bat guano and paying closer attention to symbiotic plant groups which benefit each other by being placed in close proximity. 
