What Ever Happened to Halloween?

So what ever happened to Halloween? Is it because I grew up, or Halloween grew up too? My memories of Halloween are filled with homemade fun.  Costumes were pulled together from the box of Good Will cast offs in the attic awaiting drop off at the charity shop, bits and pieces of things found around the house and sometimes raiding Grandma's costume jewelry.  Our favorite costume that was easy to pull together year after year was the Old Lady; we'd wear one of my grandmother's old polyester dresses, put on chunky black shoes, carry a big black purse (and something to stash the candy, of course), and don an ugly acrylic gray wig purchased from Grand Value, my home town's answer to Dollar Tree.  Sometimes if we had a bit of loose pocket change we'd invest in one of those corny makeup kits and add moles or wrinkles that made us look like we had leprosy. Actually, if we were more creative, I suppose we could have been old lady lepers or zombies...

The most 'commercial' costumes ever got were those boxed costumes with the ugly plastic masks. Remember those? You got a shiny plastic costume and a mask.  I remember a whole wall of those boxed costumes at Grand Value.  I always wanted to buy one, but they were too expensive.

Parties didn't involve bounce castles, fancy games, laser lights shows and treat bags for all. My older sister paid for our party out of her babysitting and later her work money.   She would make a pinata by blowing up a balloon and covering it with paper machine; crepe paper layers transformed the newspaper-coated sphere into a pumpkin pinata. She got the idea from library books.  From September onwards, each week when we got our allowance, we'd jog up to Grand Value and buy candy for the pinata, or cardboard Halloween decorations, or packages of black and orange construction paper. I'd make paper chains to hang from the ceiling of the basement play room. The year we got fancy we bought ghost and pumpkin candles.

There was bobbing for apples using my mother's big green Tupperware bowl, and lots of chips and dip; and candy and caramel apples, and popcorn balls. There was a limbo contest using a mop handle for the limbo stick, musical chairs, bobbing for apples and the pinata.

A good haul when trick or treating meant chocolate - real, honest to goodness Hershey's chocolate, M&Ms, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, Mounds and Almond Joy bars.  Colorful bags with a Dum Dum pop, five pennies, and a few pieces of gum.  Usually the old bachelors on the block dumped quarters and pennies into our bag. One old lady still gave out apples, which my mother made us throw away.

I don't know about you, but the Halloween decorations, costumes and whatnot were out and on the shelves around here in August - and this area doesn't celebrate Halloween all that much.  You can't go trick or treating on our block; you'd have to walk a mile to the next farm to get one small candy bar. The kids trick or treat in town or go to parties and such.  There were commercials on television showing all sorts of fantastical costumes that looked like they belong in a theater company.  We actually got a Halloween catalog here that sold nothing but adult sized costumes for $200 and up, realistic looking tombstones, spiders, mummies and zombies to deck out your house. Amazing.

I don't begrudge anyone some innocent fun, but the older I get, the more I yearn for the old construction-paper-chain and bobbing for apples days. There was something so wonderfully spontaneous and creative, joyful and innocent, in it all.

Happy Halloween!

Saying Goodbye to the Summer Vegetable Garden

Last night, I raced out with my huge steel bowl in hand to pick as many peppers and other hot-weather veggies as I could. As predicted, today we got a humdinger of a storm, with temps only reaching the mid 40s all day today and sleet pattering on the roof on and off. This is very unusual for southern Virginia - we usually don't see sleet or freezing rain until November, December most years.  I even turned the heater on in my office while I worked today. Ah, the smell of hot dust....a-choo!

But last night I indulged in a pleasant end of summer ritual.  I made a Caprese salad.  Thinly sliced tomatoes arranged in a pinwheel on the plate, interspersed with fresh basil leaves and a sprinkle of low fat mozzarella cheese, then drizzled with extra virgin olive oil. I poured a small glass of wine and sat at the kitchen table, my gaze lingering over the vegetable garden about 30 feet away. I raised my glass. Salut, I thought, and thank you for the bounty of vegetables. This was probably the best year ever for the veggie garden. Each year I learn more and more, and each year I harvest more from the garden.

Thank you, I said mentally, and dug in.

The taste of summer. I'll miss you.

Second Place Feels Like a Winner to Me!

So....does anyone remember how I was terrified to can my first jars of garden produce?

How I was afraid I'd poison my whole family....picturing them writhing on the floor in the throes of botulism poisoning....

Bravely channeling the spirit of my Grandma Rudmann, born and raised on a farm in the valleys of southern Germany, armed only with The Ball Complete Book of Home Food Preservation and Preserving the Harvest, my husband's grandmother's speckled canning pot and a shiny new utensil box set from Walmart, I proceeded to can two jars of peppers, several jars of pears, and two jars of pear butter.

And my family liked it. They ate it. They actually asked for more.

My first canning project, 2009

This is year three. I am proud to share with you that two of my canned produce items, my pickled beets and pickled peppers, took second place ribbons each at the Five County Fair. (The rainbow-colored ribbons go to all participants - it's like saying, "thanks for being brave enough to show off your stuff.")

I couldn't wait to show my husband my ribbons when I got home from picking up my items on Sunday.

It was the end to a perfect fall weekend. I couldn't help but think of my dad.  I spent many brisk October weekends as a child at the Long Island Chrysanthemum Society Shows at Farmingdale Community College.  I remember helping him pack up all his ribbon cards and the occasional bright silver trophy or two.

Placing my little jars on the counter with their ribbons put a big, goofy smile on my face. I did it.

I came, I saw...I canned!

Five years ago I was working in a cubicle farm at 2 Penn Plaza, a gigantic office building right over Penn Station and Madison Square Garden, in New York City.  I was bored, stressed and overworked.  I was tired of the rat race. I yearned to write again but every day was a drag. By the time I came home at night, I was so tired that I couldn't imagine doing anything creative. My garden consisted of several shady beds in my in-laws garden since we didn't even own our own home; we rented rooms from my in laws. To say that I was unhappy with my life was an understatement.



But there was light at the end of the tunnel. We'd found the perfect land in south central Virginia in 2005.  It was so covered with pine trees and brush that my husband kept asking doubtfully, "Are you sure about this?" And as I looked around, a little voice inside of me said, "This is the place."  I was sure as sure could be.

We bought the 17 acres and had three cleared.  We built our dream house. My elderly father in law moved with us.  My husband helped me build a fenced in vegetable garden; 10 raised beds, a nice stout fence around it, a shed we painted to look like a country cottage. The steep area next to the driveway that he felt he couldn't mow safely with the riding mower I transformed into a blowsy, "wild" flower garden as my friend Ilsa called it when she came by last week for the book group meeting, with winding stone and gravel paths and arched rose arbors and a bench to sit and watch the butterflies.

I grew not only enough produce to feed us throughout the summer, but enough to can almost 40 jars of peppers, beets, carrots and pickles.  I have bins of potatoes in the basement and sweet potatoes from the harvest of 2010, all 79 pounds of them.  I have grown and stored onions and garlics too.  We planted 30 fruit trees.

All this in four years.

Those shiny red ribbons are more than second prizes in a county fair. They're confirmation of the right choices I made and the hard work we - not just me, but the "we" of our family - put into our lives.

I try as often as I can to share these stories with you because I want to encourage everyone reading this to do what Yoda told Luke Skywalker to do - "Don't just think. DO."   Don't waste your life in a cubicle farm when you have a dream in your heart.  Don't rest content with life as your parents scripted it for you if your mind and heart tell you otherwise.  God has a plan for your life, but you've got to listen and act.  You can make your dreams come true. I am doing that one day at a time.

It's not that there won't be fear at making great changes like we made. There was fear, and many moments of fear thereafter.  Fear that we'd made a terrible mistakes and that we wouldn't fit in. Fear that I'd never make friends like I had in New York. Fear that working from home would keep me isolated and that I would never make new friends. Fear that my business wouldn't succeed, fear that we'd use up all of our hard-earned savings.  There's been times of plenty and lean times too, but I have learned to just trust the flow of life and enjoy the moment while prudently planning for the future.

If you think you can, you can, and if you think you can't, you can't, or something like it Henry Ford once said.  What is holding you back?

Five years is not a long time but I look back at my life and it is like I am a new person, with a new life, yet I maintain a connection to all that was good in my old life. I still miss New York City and the smell of hot chestnuts roasting in the carts of street vendors near Christmas. The constant clang of Salvation Army bells and the sway of subway trains while the muffled voice of the conductor barks the next station. I miss the beautiful area I worked in on the upper west side of Manhattan, the free Lincoln Center concerts on Wednesday and bringing our brown bag lunches over to Alice Tulley Hall to listen to performers run through their programs while we happily ate our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches along with the rest of the workers who loved classical music.  I miss running out for Indian food at lunch, or "street food" from a pushcart, the delicious $1 rice and beans made by an immigrant, legal or not, from his push cart. I miss the weird synchronicity that only living and working in Manhattan makes you appreciate; running into a friend on the subway I haven't seen in over a decade only to find out we will now be working for the same company in Manhattan, running into an old grammar school buddy on the A train during rush hour, waving madly to a sibling I see crossing the street who I didn't even expect to see in the city  at all that day, only to find us in the same block hurrying to separate destinations.


Two red ribbons marking the new place and new chapter in my life.  Am I sorry they aren't blue? No, not at all.

Red is also my favorite color.

And there's always next year....because I'm not going anywhere at all.

Four years ago, bare clay.  Today, blooming. Bloom where you are planted.

Hiking Cold Mountain

Don't you just want to spread you arms out and like an eagle, soar off this mountain peak?

This weekend, we completed our annual fall hike. We hiked to the top of Cold Mountain, and it was one of the best hikes I've been on in ages.  We took Shadow with us.  She loves to hike!

Hiking girls....your humble blogger and her faithful companion,  Shadow the German shepherd

Each fall, John plans the hike, but this year he announced the desired date but never told me where we were going. After we finished the hike and were driving back towards Appomattox, we passed the Appalachian Trail head just a few minutes from the start of the Cold Mountain hike. "That's where I thought we would go this year," he said, pointing to the other trail parking right off Highway 60 and I had to laugh - great minds think alike!  The Cold Mountain trail actually merged with the Appalachian Trail for a considerable distance, so he got his wish, too.

The hike begins at the Mount Pleasant parking area in the George Washington National Forest in Amelia County. It's a busy, crowded spot - I was surprised at how many people were camping and hiking. It also happened to be Boy Scout weekend, and I felt quite safe after passing several groups of polite, respectful Scouts on trail. I said to John, "Well, if either of us falls and twists an ankle, we have about two dozen kids working on their First Aid badges here to help us home!"

One group had us cracking up laughing. We were hiking on a narrow, steep section of trail, with a sheer drop to our right and boulders to our left. Not much room for two adults and a big German shepherd to pass a group of Boy Scouts and two Scout Masters coming in the opposite direction.

The Scout Master halted the group and was teaching them proper hiking etiquette. He had all the boys step to the side, carefully making room for us, and then he said, "And what do we say to warn hikers that we are on the trail." With a loud roar, a dozen pre-teen boys shouted, "HELLO, HIKERS!" They sounded so much like Ed Norton from the famous Honeymooners skit "greeting the ball" ("Helloooo, ball!" when playing golf ) that we burst into peals of laughter.  The boys loved Shadow and she wanted to go back with THEM thanks to all the pets she received as we hiked by.  When we got to the top of Cold Mountain Meadow and were enjoying the view, we suddenly heard floating up from the trail a faint and ghostly shout, "HELLOOOO HIKERS" and we broke out laughing all over again.

The trail directions which I linked to at the top of this entry have you hike the long way up, but the Scouts and many other people told me later you could actually start on the other side - and walk about a mile uphill, then get to the top of Cold Mountain, to the meadows, which is really where you want to be.

Here you'll see why - this waited for us at the top - an expanse of meadows, with an almost perfectly 360 degree view all around us, gazing down to the Blue Ridge and around.

Along the way, you can see signs of a former homestead.  A beautiful stone wall, broken in spots but still visible, reminded me of hiking in New England. We also found strands of barbed wire still attached to tree - again, evidence of a homestead.

An old stone wall along the trail

The hike was strenuous, no doubt about it.  Once we returned to the parking area, we explored the area around and found several more trails to try in the spring and next fall. By the time we got to Appomattox and the Chinese restaurant where we ordered dinner, my pedometer stated we'd walked 9.95 miles - and I knew that when we set out on the trail, I already had a little under a half mile on it already from just walking the dog that morning.  So we did indeed get a good workout!

I'm noticing that I get tired more easily on trail. My joints held up well this year, especially my knee.  I'd had very bad arthritis and wear problems with my left knee, which thankfully my doctor was able to advise me on ways to help it heal without surgery or drugs.  Good man. It worked!  I was able to hike with only minimal discomfort afterwards.  I am getting very winded on the uphill portions of the trail now.  We were both very tired so it must have been a strenuous hike.  Even Shadow came home and dropped into her corner behind my chair in the living room where she sleeps when we watch television at night, and she was so tired she didn't even want to come upstairs to her soft, comfortable dog bed to sleep.

When I hike and I get tired, or I feel like I can't go on, I think of my parents. Saturday would have been my dad's 86th birthday.  I wish he were here to see all the good things in my life now; I think he would have been proud of me. More importantly, as I huffed and puffed up a really steep section of trail, it suddenly occurred to me that when my mom was my age, she would not have been able to do this hike.  Multiple sclerosis made her unable to walk without a cane by the time she was in her early forties and she was in a wheelchair not long after that.

So more than ever, I gave thanks for the hike, thanks for the sore feet and the sore muscles, and thanks to God for views like this to carry me through my days:

Cold Mountain. Recommended hike!



Last year's hike up Bluff Mountain, and the things we found there:  Little Ottie Cline Powell
And the 2009 hike, which gave the word "strenuous" new meaning:  Hiking the Appalachian Trail

Fall Color in the Garden

Have you ever noticed that autumn seems to have her own color palette? From the golden yellow leaves dotting the trees to the rich, dark purple berries hanging off the trees on the edge of the woods, fall's palette is rich, deep and strong.

I'm enjoying the annual display of garden mums now. The bright pink daisy mums with the yellow centers are from plants purchased at the Cooperative Extension's spring plant sale back in 2010. I bought a small 4" pot and it's turned into an enormous mum that people sometimes mistake for a shrub. Next to it, the smaller dark pink colored pom pom mums from Lowe's, now in its third year in the garden, seems small by comparison.

I've still got zinnias blooming and marigolds, but most of the other annuals and perennials are finished. That doesn't matter much now, as the understory trees crouched below the loblolly pines flanking the garden are all beginning their transition. Looking out from my office windows towards the garden is like looking at an impressionist's painting, as if a master swirled a brush daubed in ochre, crimson, and burn sienna across the back of the canvas.

Even the vegetable garden gets into the act at this time of year. Have you ever noticed that fall vegetables are also richly colored?  I've got acorn squash, with dark hunter green skins and rich golden flesh, butternut squash, and many hued cabbages coming into their own now.

I love fall for its color.  I especially love Virginia's fall season. It lingers longer than I thought it would. I thought the south would be low in color in the fall but boy was I mistaken.

What's blooming in your fall garden?

What Is Homesteading?

Lately I've been seeing more posts, ideas and shares about homesteading. Whether you call it urban homesteading, homesteading in place, or another name, it's really about becoming more self sufficient. I think there's a growing discontent with the general status quo.  There's also a pushback against giant agribusinesses and the loss of the family farm, alongside the shuttered and empty stores on Main Streets across America but new stand-alone malls with giant big box stores springing up along the outskirts of now abandoned towns.  We yearn for yesteryear but we dial up information on our handheld computers.  We want the closeness of horse and buggy days while driving hybrid automobiles. I used to laugh at this dichotomy....and now I find myself drawn to it.

Part of this has always been a part of me, so to speak.  Growing up in an urban landscape, where our teenage rite of passage was navigating the New York City Mass Transit system by ourselves to go Christmas shopping along Fifth Avenue, I still yearned for a farm of my own.  Gardens. Lands. Animals. Growing my own food.  I admit, I wasn't terribly interested in homemaking, but that changed gradually until now I'm fascinated by it all.

There's the slow food movement, the eat local movement, the CSA movement.  There's the urban homesteading movement and the clean food movement and all of that.  Sometimes I wish for clarity and one set of guidelines and at other times I'm delighted by the messy overlap among all these movements.

The bottom line is that people seem to want to grow their own food. There's an increasing awareness that the packages, bottles and cans with jaunty labels lining the grocery store shelves contain something other than food inside.  People are starting to realize that all that soy and corn chucked into everything from hotdogs to potatoes au gratin just isn't good for us. Our bodies didn't evolve to live on soy beans. Or corn, for that matter. And certainly not genetically modified vegetables.

I'm not sure where I stand on the continuum of the homesteading movement.  If you can imagine a line with one end of the spectrum "I buy junk food and eat at fast food restaurants all the time, and all this talk about vegetables is nonsense" to "I'm a raw vegan who grows her own food and makes her clothes out of hemp fiber" I think I'm maybe a quarter of the way up from the guy snacking on fried chicken and hamburgers all day but not even halfway up the scale to some of the wonderful raw vegan people I know.

I grow many organic fruits, herbs and vegetables. We usually buy a share of a locally raised, grass-fed beef steer each year.  I'd love to raise chickens but my family remains unconvinced and afraid that having animals other than the cat and dog would tie us down too much. When I can, I beg fresh, free-range eggs from my neighbor.

I'm gradually getting better at baking bread, but my family still relies on loaves purchased from the grocery store for sandwiches. We're buying and consuming fewer packaged foods, and when we do buy them we try to buy them on sale and the healthy kind (no MSG soups, for example, or simple packaged foods like a bag of rice, beans or pasta.)

We telecommute and work from home by choice; no need for expensive clothing or expenditures on gasoline, and it saves some fossil fuels and pollution. I try to do my part to reduce my impact and to live according to nature's principles.

And I guess that's what this homesteading movement all comes down to. Living by your principles, whatever they  may be.  It's also not a race to be run and won, but rather a slow, gradual shift in perspective.

Five years ago I was living in a suburban home and working for a giant global company.  I donned a power suit and high heels every day, swiped my Metro Card at a New York City turnstile, and drank copious quantities of coffee to fuel my nonstop workday.

Today, I rise with the sun (or Pierre's incessant whacks with a paw - "FEED ME" ) and slip into a pair of jeans and a t shirt or sweat shirt purchased at the second hand or discount store. I make two cups of coffee for myself. I go for a walk. I eat a natural, healthy breakfast. I work from home, relying upon the magic of the internet to earn my daily bread and pay my bills.  I garden and grow some vegetables, but not all that I'd need to survive; it's not reality at the moment.  I try to eat and live simply but I still like my little luxuries - ice cream when it's on sale, a good book or movie, a concert.

Homesteading is what you make of it.  It's what you can do, rather than what you think you should do.  And if that means planting a single tomato plant on your city balcony, then do it.

Fall Vegetables Are the Best

Some people think that summer is the best time for the vegetable garden, but I'd have to say that it's fall.  Not only does the summer harvest continue, but now all the fall crops produce in abundance.

Just this week I harvested:

• Tomatoes - we are getting the last hurrah of tomatoes from the garden. They're smaller than the ones I picked during the peak of summer, but just as delicious.
• Peppers - 27 pints canned, 4 pints frozen and countless peppers eaten already in the form of sausage and peppers, stuffed peppers and stir fry dishes, I am still picking them.  We should have another huge harvest before the frost kills the plants.
• Eggplants - two are in the refrigerator already, waiting to be made into eggplant parmigiana tomorrow evening, but I've got more on the plants outside. I don't know how many more I'll harvest before the frost sets in, but it's going to be a good year for them for sure.
• Beets - the last of the beets are in.  I saved a few fresh ones for cooking but canned another nine pints last weekend.
• Carrots - I canned six half pint jars using a new pickling recipe for sweet carrots. If they taste good, I'll can more, but in the meantime I've frozen another six or seven pints, and left about half the bed in the ground.
• Strawberries - yes, you read that correctly! I planted ever bearing strawberries and they sure do live up to their name. Each fall, I get a second crop of fresh organic strawberries. They're smaller than the spring crop but still juicy and sweet. One word of caution (earned the hard way): wear gloves when picking fall strawberries if you happen to see some berries on your plants. Wasps, hornets and yellow jackets love them, and at this time of year those critters get MEAN.  Last year I got stung badly on my hand when I reached down into the strawberry bed and grasped a berry with a yellow jacket on it. OUCH.
• Herbs - I'm drying trays of parsley and basil this week, but there's also fresh sage, oregano, rosemary and chives to enjoy.  And the horseradish needs to be dug and made into sauce!
• Green beans - still coming in.  No matter how many times I cut back on the amount I plant, they keep coming in. Somehow I accidentally bought the flat Italian kind and so now at least I have some variety.

These are the vegetables that I am harvesting in abundance, but there are more out there. I have acorn and butternut squash on the vine. I found the trick to outwitting those awful beetles - plant the seeds in August!  Apparently it's just past their mating season so I avoided all the eggs and the swarms of newly hatched beetles that decimated the cucumbers, zucchini and summer squash.  We counted 20 butternut squash on the vine and just two acorn squash, but I'm hopeful we may get a few more of the acorn squash.

I planted cabbage, broccoli, and cauliflower in what I *thought* was the empty potato bed. Wrong. I must have left a whole bunch of little seed potatoes around in the soil, because now I have a gigantic mess.  I have potato plants springing up everywhere, with a giant cabbage in one corner and broccoli leaning against potatoes. I have no idea how I'm going to get the potatoes out, but I'll deal with that closer to Thanksgiving. The good thing about raised beds is that the soil stays workable longer. I can get in there and dig even after the frosts. So I can keep gardening until Thanksgiving or so.

The big yellow and black spiders are everywhere this year, a sign that the garden flourishes along its own terms, with spiders and birds keeping the insect population in check. The mole is back - this time, Pierre the cat found it near the shed. We caught Pierre digging fast and furiously in a hole and saw the mole scamper into the woods with Pierre hot on his trail. He lost the creature within a few feet but I had one excited kitty on my hands. I've had to watch Pierre very carefully every time he goes out into the garden. Last week, he managed to find a snake...which he brought up to the house, of course.  We heard a commotion on the back deck and went to the window to see Pierre under the picnic table playing with something.  I said to my husband, "Oh, how cute, he has a lizard." Oops. Not quite. A rather good-sized snake was trying to escape his clutches.  I yelled for John and handed him a shovel, which he used to scoop and fling the snake into the side garden while I quickly snatched up Pierre and moved him back into the house.  He mewed in protest, the ungrateful brute, as if to say, "Hey! Daddy stole my snake!"

If you didn't get a chance to plant vegetables this fall, now's the time to head over to your local farmer's market or a garden center and enjoy a little taste of fall. Do it now, before Halloween arrives with all that flurry of stuff to do.  Enjoy!

Readers Ideas About Money Saving Vegetable Gardening

I received an email from Liz Dunn, a local gardener, who shared the following tips for money saving vegetable gardening.  She gave me permission to post it verbatim, so here's Liz's note to me:

"As you pointed out, you did not include what you ate out of the garden in your savings.  That would be a huge amount!!  Even in the middle of the summer tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers still are expensive.  I saw red bell peppers while shopping the other day for $1.34 each.  I probably have 6 or 7 red ones on the vine right now.

"Another savings can be on seed since some seed will save for 5-6 years.  Tomato seeds can be saved for long periods and quite often for home use you don't need forty seedlings and can just plant 4 or 5 seeds of each variety that you want and once the plants get some size trim down to 1 or 2. You save the cost of buying seed for a number of years.  Cucumber seeds, squash, and others save well too.

"I know you compost.  Your vegetable debris goes right into your compost pile creating another savings in making your own compost instead of buying it.

"It's amazing how "rewarding" gardening can be!"

You might enjoy this publication from Virginia Tech Extension.

- Liz

Five Great Reasons to Grow a Vegetable Garden

Growing my own fruits and vegetables is something I love to do, and it's something I recommend to anyone who shows the slightest interest in gardening.  While flowers delight, vegetables and fruits nourish. There are many reasons to grow your own fruits and vegetables, but I've put together my Five Great Reasons to Grow a Vegetable Garden in this Hub Pages article. Please click the underlined words to visit Hub Pages and read the complete text.

Growing Your Own Organic Vegetables Saves Money

After a fun yet exhausting Sunday afternoon canning, my husband and I decided to tally up all the vegetables I had dried, canned and frozen this year - and put into the basement for storage.

All of these vegetables were grown using 100% organic gardening methods. I am estimating everything; please understand that this in not a scientific, mathematically accurate estimate. It's just an example to show you the amazing power of growing and preserving your own vegetables.


 The 2011 Tally 
(and there's more out in the garden, so I'm not finished yet)

• Carrots:  7  half pint jars pickled and canned;  6 containers of 1 1/2 pints each, frozen
• Peppers: 26 pint jars pickled and canned, 2 contains of 1 1/2 pints each, frozen
• Beets:  22 pints canned
• Dill pickles: 4 pints and 4 half pint jars canned
• Green beans: 2 contains of 1 1/2 pints each forzen
• Tomatoes: 4 bags of 24 tomatoes each, frozen
• Dried beans: approximately 1 pint, dried
• Potatoes: approximately 20 pounds grown and stored
• Onions: approximately 5 pounds grown and stores

That's the 2011 tally to date, as of October 1.  Despite the cool night time temperatures, I still have peppers in the garden, tomatoes, winter squash (acorn and butternut), plenty of carrots, parsnips, turnips and eggplant left.

We did a little experiment.  We added up the cost of buying in all of those vegetables if we purchased the canned or frozen equivalent at the store. I know that prices vary drastically, and if you have coupons or there's a good sale going on that can change things. To make things simple, I estimated the value of a pint jar and a half pint jar the same.  Here is what we came up with in terms of the value of what's in the pantry, freezer and storage cellar today:

• Canned vegetables and pickles: estimated at $1 each = 63 jars = $63
• Frozen vegetables:  10 containters (I estimated the bags of tomatoes as 1 container each) = $10
• Potatoes: Estimated 5 lb bag at store, $3.99 each so 4 "bags" worth x $3.99 each = $15.96
• Onions: Estimated weight, about 1 bag of onions, $3.99 = $3.99
• Dried beans: One bag at the store is about $1.49

Total: $94.44


That estimate doesn't include all the fresh vegetables we have consumed since planting the garden this year and the potential cost savings there.

Now we looked at the expenses. We did NOT include the cost of the canning jars and freezer containers. Why? Because these things can be used year after year until they break, so there are an unknown number of times of use out of them. The only cost is replacement seal lids, which are $2 for a package of 12, and that's negligible. I also did not include costs of vinegar, sugar and spices used to pickle and can the food.

Seed costs:
Beets = $1.99
Green beans = $2.29
Cucumber seeds for pickles: $1.49
Dill herb seeds for pickles: $1.49
Heirloom bean seeds for drying: $4.99 (two packages)
Peppers:  four pack of plants, $1.79 bought from a local farmer, plus two seed packages at $1.49 each
Tomatoes: Two seed packages of $1.99 each
Carrots: Two seed packages, $1.49 each
Onion set: $2.99
Potatoes:  half a bag received at no cost from friends; $2.50 for bag of seed potatoes from local store
Total of seeds and starter plants: $24.50



Round up all these numbers, here's the bottom line. Again, these numbers omit the investment into the canning jars and the costs of ingredients such as vinegar, sugar and spices. I'm also rounding up and estimating a lot, but I think it makes my point:

An investment of $25 yielded for me $100 in organic vegetables.

No special equipment...after planting the vegetable seeds, the only time I spent is tying and staking tomatoes, thinning vegetable plants, and harvesting potatoes (which was more labor intensive than I'd thought it would be).  All of the vegetables were grown organically, so I am guessing that buying the organic equivalent at the store would be more expensive than the conventional brands.

Not only do I know precisely WHAT is in my food, I have grown it all less than 30 feet from my house in a backyard garden.  Instead of fossil fuels burned trucking it from California, Florida, and other parts of the country, by growing my own food I have reduced some of that burden from the environment.

You might not have the space that I do to grow vegetables. But you can really grow quite a lot in small spaces.  My dad grew many vegetables in a tiny area in our yard; when I moved to another house on Long Island, we had dense shade in the yard and only some direct sunshine onto a patio and deck, so I planted tomatoes, peppers and many other veggies in pots on the desk.  You CAN grow vegetables no matter where you are.

In the fall of 2008, I wrote on this blog about my first efforts at canning. I was so afraid to try it. I was afraid I would do it wrong and poison my family.  Now I feel confident with the hot water bath canner - so confident that I have asked for a pressure canner for Christmas!  With the pressure canner, I can can garden vegetables without pickling them.

We harvested our first fruit from the orchard this year - one pear, and about six peaches.  When we planted the fruit orchard trees in 2008,  we read that it might take up to 5 - 10 years, depending on the trees, before we saw some fruit. Once those trees begin producing abundantly, I will be able to dry and can that fruit too.

I was born and raised in the big city. I grew up on Long Island, and worked most of my career in New York City.  Canning was foreign to me. It was a skill only one generation removed; my grandmother canned her garden produce and canned sauces and soups, but she moved when I was 8 and died a few years later, and I never had the chance to learn from her.

As I lay down to sleep last night, it wasn't the thought of saving money that made me smile. It was the thought of self sufficiently. There is a deep, strong appeal to me of the thought that I am beholden to no one for me food. I can grow it and preserve it on my own. If at some point we decide to raise some chickens and other animals, we can reduce our dependency even further.  It's definitely a lifestyle choice, but if self-sufficient living appeals to you, I urge you to try whatever you can in your little corner of the world. When I lived in the equivalent of a big city, I grew vegetables in pots on the deck.  I started small with my canning projects and now I can can close to 20 pints in one day and feel confident about it.  Each time you try something, you'll learn.

Yes, you CAN!