Where the Food Comes From

One of the reasons that I run is to be healthy and another part of being healthy is how and what you eat. In fact, what you put into your body is more important than anything else that you can do for your health in my opinion. It is even more important than how much I run which for me is saying a lot

With the costs of food going through the roof  (but there is no inflation – just the food packaging getting smaller, at a higher price) and knowing how the food is being grown, has become more and more important to us. So we have increased our gardens’ size a bit over the past year. Notice that I said gardens .

Spring Pea Garden – nothing but Peas

The Main Garden

Main Garden-Woods View

This year we are planting peas, carrots, beans, squash, cucumbers, swiss chard, tomatoes, green peppers, and a bunch of other things, to see how well different plants will grow this year.

We have also added a few little things, using some outside the box thinking and a little ingenuity. The raised beds were originally packing crates and so was the cold frame.

Seedling House

A few weeks ago, we were coming home and saw these old skylights on the side of the road for free and thought that with a little adapting that they would make a great seedling greenhouse. Total investment about $20.00 for three heavy-duty hinges and two handles. Improvements that will be made – take out the center glass to give more room for seedlings and paint it black for weatherproofing of the wood. This setup has really worked great and is what we have looked for. Re-use of something that somebody else was getting rid of is a good thing .

The Front Yard

A lot of edible stuff here – Grapevine, three apple trees, mint patch, raspberry patch (needs a couple more years) and that white plastic thing is our cold frame. Which I built last summer and with the short growing seasons in Maine has really extended how early/late in the year we have salad greens.

Greens from the Cold Frame, along with Chives that we have all around the yard

Over the past decade or so, TheWife (mainly) has cultivated our organic garden, using my ability as “Harold the Destroyer” to do the heavy stuff like rototilling, adding compost/manure,  making rows and mounds, along with my ability to pull things up – did I ever tell you about TheWife’s asparagus patch, the first year I lived here that was 10 years old – that wasn’t one of my finest hours .

This is a quick glimpse into where a lot of our food comes from, as we continue to attempt to become more self-sufficient, eat healthier and know how our food is grown.

As we harvest and preserve our bounty, I plan to write about that as well.