The Importance of Being Visible

Recently, I’ve been thinking about visibility. Jay and I have been debating the idea of buying land and building a homestead, which is something he’d really like to do. I, on the other hand, really like the idea of staying where we are and building a homestead of sorts in our current, “regular” suburban home. Aside from the logistical advantages to staying where we are, such as maintaining relatively short commutes for both of us, staying close to friends and family and the kids’ school , and having a mortgage that can be paid off relatively quickly, I really like the idea of our lifestyle and our choices being visible.

I spent a lot of time as a teenager and young adult trying to fit in and be less visible so its funny that I’m now advocating to increase the visibility of our differences to those around us. Having an edible front yard garden instead of a lawn makes us stand out in our neighborhood. There are many curious glances from passersby and questions from neighbours. Many of them probably don’t give the idea of using lawnspace as a way to grow food a second thought, but maybe someone will walk by and think “hey, perhaps I could do that”.

When they see our kids participating in the gardening, perhaps they’ll see that you can incorporate “work” like gardening with family time. Perhaps they’ll think about the cost savings of growing your own food and the peace of mind that comes with knowing the exact origins of what’s sitting on your plate.

Likewise, with cycling, if people see us choosing to bike instead of driving, they might think “I could never do that” but maybe they’ll choose to bike the 0.5km to the library next time instead of driving like they always do. Maybe they’ll see one of us heading out to get groceries or go to Costco with the bike trailer and realize its possible. I like the idea of people in my car-heavy surburban neighbourhood seeing me go about my daily business by bike instead of by car, wearing normal clothes, on my $99 Canadian Tire bike from 9 years ago. They might think I’m weird, or not efficient, or that my life must be totally different from theirs to allow me to do these things. But maybe they’ll be able to picture themselves walking or taking the bike, even once in awhile, in their own day-to-day activities. And maybe when they start riding, they’ll realize the terrible lack of cycling infrastructure in our town and want to do something about it.

Maybe not.

But to me, putting our choices out there is a way of “being the change you wish to see in the world”. Preaching about sustainable food and alternative transportation will most likely cause eyes to glaze over and people to tune out. Going about our business in front of our friends, family and neighbors, just might result in change, even if its only one person. And if more people see that person doing things a little differently, perhaps we can get a ripple effect going in our typical suburban community.

Prepping for spring

I don’t think anyone who knows us well would accuse us of being organized. Oh, how I long for clean and minimal spaces where everything has a place and people could drop by unannounced without causing rising waves of panic in my throat. But that just isn’t us.

As a result, this suburban homesteading thing can be…interesting. Choosing to live a life focused more on getting back to the land and rekindling lost skills and less on convenience means, quite frankly, there’s more shit to do. When you have two lazy people whose home often resembles a fraternity by the end of the week (even with me working part-time), giving them more shit to do can be a recipe for disaster.

We’ve had a few summers in our home now and we’ve learned some lessons, many of which would elicit a “duh” from most people given that they’re kind of common sense:

- We need to have our house in decent shape before gardening season gets to be in full swing.

- We need to have a solid plan for our gardens including layout, function,  and what’s going to be harvested when.

- We need to start seeds earlier than last year. Or the year before. (Or the year before that…etc)

- We need to have a plan for preserving any abundance of food so as to avoid piles of tomatoes on the counter with no purpose or place to go, like last year.

- For that matter, we should probably plant less tomatoes.

We’re gearing up for seed starting in the next week or so which means I’m spending the interim time trying to take care of some nagging jobs around the house.  Cleaning cobwebs and nasty baseboards, purging closets, toys and make-up cases mean that once garden season hits, I’ll be able to focus on the outside without the inside going to heck. Wishful thinking perhaps but I’m telling myself this is the year we get it together.

Really. I mean it this time.

“That’s Just Psycho” : On Being a Hippie Weirdo In the ‘Burbs

Sometimes I forget that we’re a bit “different” than a lot of folks in our immediate community. We don’t have cable, so we aren’t exposed to a lot of advertising. Some of our friends share a bit of our weirdness and those that don’t are used to us by now. Our families will sometimes ask questions, and our neighbors did double-takes last summer when we turned our front lawn into a garden, but overall I don’t often feel like the way we live is that far outside of the “norm”.

Don’t get me wrong, we are by no means cutting-edge in our approach to life. Our commitment to environmentalism, simplicity, frugality and breaking free of consumerism is deep and true, but in practice we are still refining things and finding our own way. We are relatively new to this urban/suburban homesteading thing.  There are far “greener” families than ours, that’s for sure. 

So I was really surprised a few weeks ago, when at a housewarming party for a work colleague, another colleague referred to me making my own yogurt as “psycho”. I don’t think she meant the comment to be terribly negative, but I found it odd that such a thing would be considered all that weird. The next week at the office, I overhead a group of women talking about it: “Did you know Kathryn makes her own yogurt?!” “Really? WHY?” “I could never do that”.

Last week my oldest son didn’t eat his school lunches. As it turns out, one of the other children told him his quinoa burger looked “weird” and “gross” and wondered why he didn’t have a “normal” lunch. Never mind that my son had been scarfing down the quinoa burgers like they were chocolate while helping me pack the lunch. He wanted a “normal” lunch too, which he informed me was things like chicken nuggets (store-bought), cheese strings, yogurt tubes and the like. He’s only 4. I thought I had more time until this stuff came up.

Last summer we put a garden in on the vacant lot next to us, with permission from the owners. You would have been forgiven for thinking we were planting pot, if you’d gone by the neighbors reactions. People looped around the street twice in their cars, slowing down to stare. People stopped us and asked us about what in the heck we were doing. Did we own this land now? Why would we put a garden in there? Does this mean anyone was allowed to eat the food ? People dumped their garbage in the garden. The by-law office was called because we used wood chips as mulch and someone didn’t like the looks of that. We were a bit flabbergasted – it wasn’t a meth lab for goodness sake, how can a garden be so controversial?

I’m not trying to sound self-righteous. We are by no means a family of eco-warriors, although we do aspire to be. We’re a two car family (for now) and we make many choices that are less than ideal from an environmental perspective. And while I do understand that some of the things we value and ds are not, shall we say, mainstream, its a little bit strange and isolating to feel so different from my peers. Moreover, I really worry about our kids feeling different as they get older. I believe in what we're doing, wholeheartedly. I truly feel that the only way we're going to make an impact on climate change is to stop trying to make everything convenient and easy, and rather re-learn some "old" skills like frugality, gardening, and cooking and most of all, learn to consume less. Its going to take a radical shift in values but its the kind of change that's actually achieved in small steps in our day-to-day lives with those little choices, like whether to bike or drive to the library or whether to make some yogurt at home or buy a 12-pack of disposable little containers of it.

Its a journey not a destination, and I don't think anyone should be criticized for whether they are on that journey. While I do think we are all going to have to change whether we like it or not because, lets face it, our current levels of consumption are completely unsustainable, we'll all have to find our own way in our own time. I'm in a much different place today than I was three or four years ago and I'd like to find a way to use my experiences as examples to my peers, so that growing much of one's own food on a suburban lot while working and raising young children doesn't seem totally impossible. I've spent a lot of my life trying not to be different or weird or anywhere outside of the norm. Its a silly and ultimately futile exercise anyway. Perhaps now is the time to just accept that as a family we do march to a different beat and that's ok. Hopefully we'll get some folks to join us along the way.

So many seed trays, so little time

Its been a busy few weeks (for Jay), planting all the seeds in seed trays and storing them

in small greenhouses. One sits in our family room and the other, more recently, on our

deck. R has been so excited to help his dad plant and water them and gives us daily

updates on their progress. Gardening with children is so much fun.

 

We are fortunate to live beside a very nice lot that’s owned by the developer who built

the homes in our subdivision. On a whim, Jay decided to ask permission to put in a garden

this summer and the developer agreed. And so we’re lucky enough to be growing food this

summer not only in our yard, but in this lot at well. I’m sure the neighborhood is wondering

what the heck is going on as Jay continues to spread out hay and woodchips, dividing the

lot into garden beds. Our biggest concern is that the lot seems to be the lunchtime hangout

for the kids from the local high school and we’re hoping not to find destroyed plants or

cigarette butts in our plants.

 

This year, we’ve decided to plant based on what we eat the most. Which means lots and

lots of kale and berries, as well as cucumber, tomatoes, herbs and squash, peppers,

watermelon, pumpkin, cabbage, currants, onions and gooseberries.

 

I can’t wait to take a basket out into the garden and gather our food for dinner

What's growing right now

Our raised bed

I cannot claim to be the brains nor the brawn behind our garden - the credit for that must go to Jay, who got our family started on this crazy journey in the first place. Gardening has developed from a seasonal hobby for Jay to an increasingly essential aspect of our life and the basis for our future plans. I'll be doing my best to share what's growing in our garden this season and what we do with our crops, but all difficult questions will be referred to Jay, the only one of the two of us who really knows what they're doing.

While enjoying a glass of vino tonight on the deck and admiring the green sprouting up around us, I asked Jay how he decided what to plant this year and I got a great tour of our little garden. I just love walking around and looking at all the life (and the food!) that exists right outside our door. As John from Growing Your Greens says, lawns are dumb - grow your own food instead. We are well on our way to making our backyard functional and productive as well as beautiful.

See what happens when you let things grow instead of just keeping lawn?

A key aspect of how Jay chose to organize the garden this year was mixing insecting plants, those that support beneficial insects, with our regular garden staples. By mixing certain flowering plants with veggies, the beneficial insects can prey on those that aren't quite as welcome.

Bachelor Buttons (with some basil in the background)

Some of our insecting plants:

- Bachelor Buttons

- Wormwood

- Peony

- Wallflower

- Butterfly bush

We mixed these with vegetables such as kale, brussel sprouts, cukes, squash, tomatoes (currant and roma, among others), basil and collard greens. Can't wait to start cooking with all this yummy food!

Kale

Squash

Wormwood

All the world's problems can be solved in a garden

" All the world's problems can be solved in a garden" - Geoff Lawton

It's true. A garden is a source of food, a way to battle pollution, a gratifying way to spend your time, a way to combat high food prices, a teaching tool for toddlers. We are so happy to have started our garden in our new backyard.

Jay has been hard at work for months; buying and starting seeds, planning the layout, building the raised beds. In the last few days, we've finally started planting. Its late, to be sure, but a newborn, a toddler and moving houses are all big hits to our productivity level these days!

Luckily, R has been a happy helper and his planting skills are pretty awesome for a 2 1/2 year old. The onions he and Jay planted last week are starting to sprout and the joy in his eyes when he saw the tiny bursts of green in the soil for the first time, and the pride on his face when we told him "you did that!" was amazing to see. He's a diligent little worker - he puts on his most serious face when planting and covering up the seeds with soil. Fiercely independent, its always a challenge to get him to follow instructions, but he's so smart and capable. There's so much for him to learn in this process.

We worked yesterday evening until the last light and although rushed, it was so gratifying to know that this garden will soon sustain us and fill our bellies. We'll have blackberries, carrots, beans, onions, kale, and so much more. More in another post on the process of planning the garden itself.