goodbye

I've been meaning to tell you guys this for a while.  This blog was created to document a purge of our belongings and the creation of our permaculture food forest.  I've released everything I don't need and the garden is growing fine.

I no longer have space in my life for this blog.

THE END

vegan

I've gone on a whole foods plant based diet.  So did my parents, siblings, husband, and children.  We're doing it for our health.

weird food

We've long had self-sufficiency on our radar and now we've got a chance to work a little of it into our lives.  We wanted to simplify, so we got rid of half of our possessions.  It seems like we still have lots of stuff, but this isn't just minimalism, it's urban homesteading.  We had to keep a few things, like a garden hose.  We wanted to spend less time shopping and more time cultivating the food forest.

The food forest is planted, first with apples, peaches, raspberries, kale, and the like.  Now we're moving into territory I don't remember at Save-On-Foods:

Behold, the medlar.

We're diversifying our garden, and also our meals.  The medlar is known for being under-ripe until it's rotten, a process known as bletting.  One sample looks a little soft on the corner.  It's almost ready.  We haven't tasted it yet.  I'm a little scared.

My husband was digging in the food forest and he extracted another new-to-me food, a Jerusalem Artichoke, also known as a Sunchoke.

I chopped it up and roasted it.  It tastes starchy and sweet, like a nutty potato.  

We also grow things that many people can identify, yet they don't have the faintest idea how to eat them.  "What do you use those for, jack-o-lanterns?"

"No, we eat them."

Stay tuned, more wierdness to come!

alien growths

They say kids these days don't know where their food comes from.  They've never seen a farm or a garden, only commercials.
"It comes from the store!"

I thought I was pretty versed in the basics.  I knew that chicken, the meat, came from chicken, the animal, and probably from a farm.  Yesterday, I was out wandering the food forest (the backyard garden) when I saw for the first time...

Brussel sprouts growing!  I had no idea they looked like that.  Last time we planted brussel sprout seeds, cabbages came up.  I think there was a mix-up at Seedy Saturday.  

It's one of those vegetables that you either love or hate, but I enjoy them and I'm looking forward to trying them out.

lovely cabbage

She came from the cabbage patch.  I feel like this is a good environment to bring her up in.

Somehow I ended up dragging her in a lap around the mall a couple weeks ago.  I was looking for boots (for myself).  I never found what I wanted, I'm so particular.  I felt bad, that I didn't want her to spend too much of her childhood getting trained to consume, so I got her back to the garden as soon as I could.

It always seems easier to shop than say, make saurkraut, but I swear it's worth it.  Tonight, I finally pummelled that cabbage into a jar with some salt and caraway seeds.  Now it's covered in water.  Wish me luck on the ferment.

Dreaming of Griswold

The last of the Christmas lights came down today.  In the end, for safety reasons, we ripped them down.

blogger's remorse

I asked the writer if she had any advice for writing.

"You need to have something to say.  Writers are very opinionated.  If you don't have anything to say there isn't much point in writing it down... Oh, and keep a journal!"