The Good Life

There was this very cute series in the UK once upon a time called "The Good Life" (apparently renamed "Good Neighbors" in the US, but I prefer the original title).  When I watched re-runs as a kid I didn't get the social significance of what this cute couple was doing.  I just thought they were eccentric and loved gardening a little too much.

A few days ago I was looking on Netflix for something to watch instantly to kill my boredom during kitchen chores.  I found this show and put it on for nostalgia's sake.  I found myself not only laughing loudly at the jokes, but suddenly understanding what it's all about!  These guys were urban homesteaders before it was eco-chic to farm your own land.  Here's a clip from the first episode when they decide to leave the rat race to beat "it".

Building a green life, part 2

Here are some photos of some of the stuff I've been doing.

I've been doing serious clean up.  Our yard needed it badly after being neglected all last year.  And that included cutting back some trees/bushes.  I had all these amazing branches from that that I wanted to use, so I built Regin a garden fort.  I want to eventually train some vines or something over it, maybe even edibles like peas or something, but I wanted him to enjoy it right away, so I threw a sheet over it...

It was all I could do to convince him to get in there for the photo.  Then he rushed back inside to get on his new wooden tricycle that he received from his Abuela for his birthday.  Oh my gosh he loves that thing!!

Isn't it cute?  I love it.  It's so great.

Back to gardening... So I also bought a bunch of starts for indoor/outdoor veggie gardening.

This is batch one.  I have since bought batch two.  At first they seemed to be loving life, even after I moved them over our fireplace (behind our projector screen) and put grow lamps in there.  Now all of a sudden half of them are looking really sad.  I don't know if they are getting too much light from the lamps.  They are also getting natural light when I raise the screen and our blinds every day.  Maybe it's overwatering, which I tend to be guilty of when I get excited about new plants (later that shifts to under-watering, or no watering at all.)  Or maybe it's because I haven't made sure there was some air-circulation going on.  I need to put a small fan in there.

I have also started some seeds...

It's very exciting.  Most of them are purchased organic seeds, but one third, the ones on the left, are all from seeds I collected from our food.  Specifically those are butternut squash on the left.  I'm collecting seeds from everything we eat right now.  Especially the organic stuff.  If you're wondering about the red-brown powder all over, that's cinnamon.  Apparently it has fungicidal properties.  Sadly I needed it because my forest green thumb (that's gotta be somewhere between green and black, right?) caused there to be mold or "damping off" on these seeds.  And I already lost a few swiss chard seedlings.  Another natural fungicide is weak chamomile tea!  Go figure!

Building my green life

So I have been working on getting stuff ready for the indoor and outdoor veggie/edible gardening.  I have been watching/reading everything I can get my hands on that's related to food production on one's land and permaculture.  My indoor plans don't fit in with that.  I'm sure real "permies" would be dismayed that I'm using grow lamps and may even get a warming mat for the basement.  But you know what?  I'm not allowed a greenhouse, so this is what I can do.  Actually there's a lot I'm not allowed to do on my land.  Technically I'm not allowed a vegetable garden, green house, or compost.  I'm not allowed chickens which are so invaluable for self-sufficiency in food production.  Not only do they give us eggs, and possibly meat down the road, but they control pests and fertilize as they forage around the garden.  

In Colorado we're also not allowed to have a grey-water or rain-catching systems for various silly and outdated reasons.  Ugh!

I think it should be a basic human right to be able to grow one's food on their land.  In fact, I think it should be illegal for anyone to try and tell us otherwise.  I want to change things in this neighborhood.  I want to try and get the HOA to reconsider the limitations I've mentioned and other limitations such as not being allowed to hang my laundry out.  This community's rules are not eco-friendly.  That needs to be changed.  In my dreams I also go national and try and get a law established protecting the individual's right to grow food.  In a country that gives me the right to bare arms, I should also have the right to bare food on my land!  Of course there are all sorts of controversial things going on right now that suggest the possibility that food production will be strictly controlled in the future.  The Future of Food (a film I recently watched and want you ALL to see) shows how scary the situation is with GMOs and patents on plants.  Seems like pretty soon you will only be able to get GM seeds and only through Monsanto.  And the whole GMO thing turns out to be scarier than I thought.  It's worth looking into if you haven't already.

There is also supposedly some sort of bill trying to be passed somewhere right now that would effectively make it illegal to do backyard food growing.  Ack!  Can this be true?

One of my concerns beyond laws and HOA rules is that my neighbors are pumping my surroundings full of scary herbicides and pesticides.  I know they must be spraying my plants that start sending shooters to their yards.  And I get water runoff from the properties behind us.  How much pesticides then am I getting through that?  I became afraid to eat anything near the borders of our yard.  But the way our land is landscaped, it would be difficult to plant our edibles anywhere else.

I've also been reading Food Not Lawns.  As you guys already know, I am very interested in this idea that we are wasting the resources on this planet, and a lot of those wasted resources are going to our lawns, which don't even provide food.  So the movement is to replace at least part of our lawns with food-producing or otherwise useful plants.  I'm also reading How to Grow More Vegetables (than you ever thought possible on less land than you can imagine) and it talks about a 99% sustainable system (which is as sustainable as it gets) and the thing is EVERYTHING has to go back to the earth, (food scraps, and even human waste if possible).  And not only that, but something like 60% of your crop has to be for little more than soil-building.  Apparently grain fits the bill.  So I'm thinking of growing wheat instead of grass in the back.  We'll cut it short for part of the summer, since wheat grass is just like grass, then let it go to seed later in the season.  Too bad we can't use the grain since our diet is grain free, but I suppose one of you might be able to make use of it.  

In the front we're talking seriously about ripping out the smaller lawn and replacing it with a spiraled "flower bed" that will contain "ornamental plants" that just so happen to be edible.  We're also talking about taking out the ugly bushes in the front and replacing them with blueberry bushes.

Another part of this is putting in lots of fruit and nut trees.  But we have very established trees and bushes which I would hate to take out now, so I don't know we can do anything with that.  But I'm thinking of getting some nut trees to put on my parents' property.

There's a lot to do.  I hope I can produce a significant amount of food this year even though we started planning this really way too late.  Our food budget really needs to go WAY down and RIGHT NOW.