They'll Be Some Changes Made

A gold star to anyone who posts in the comment section where today's blog title comes from. Hint: It's a song.  Second hint: It's an OLD song!

A few quick housekeeping details as I embark on this - gasp! - fifth year of blogging.  And as I write this, I'm astonished that I have been blogging about Seven Oaks since the fall of 2007.  I began this blog shortly after we moved from Long Island, New York, to our dream home, a home my husband designed and we had built on a portion of a 17 acre timber farm.  It was my dream for as long as I could remember to live on a farm.  Originally I wanted horses and the space to ride them, and although I haven't given up my dreams of horses, I've been drawn more and more to the self-sufficiency part of life here at Seven Oaks.  Growing our own organic food, learning how to enjoy more from less, freelancing instead of working for a big corporation as I did back in New York.  It has been an incredible journey with much that I've learned and more lessons to come.  All of the fears I had about living in the country - "What will you do for entertainment? How will you make friends when you'll be working from home?  Won't you miss all the fancy stuff in New York City?" - have pretty much melted away.  I have all the entertainment I wish for here at Seven Oaks or with my friends; if I crave a good classical music concert, there's Longwood University, and if I want to go shopping or to a mall, Lynchburg is 40 minutes away.  I made friends through church and by going out and attending various farming lectures and events, and through neighbors and people we met here.  And as for missing the fancy stuff of New York City, I'll admit that I still miss the sweet potato vegetable "sushi" at Pacific Echo on 58th street; walking through Central Park on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving to see the balloons being inflated; St. Patrick's, Rockefeller Center and 5th Avenue at Christmastime; and all the wonderful friends I made over the years.  And Indian food.  If anyone wants to open an authentic Indian cafeteria here in Farmville (yes, there is such a place) I will be your first and best customer.

All that aside, we feel a shift here at Seven Oaks into new territory.  Last night we enjoyed a jar of delicious pickled red cabbage purchased from the local supermarket.  I said to hubby, "We haven't had this in a while and I could eat the whole jar, it is so good."  We used to eat it regularly back on Long Island.  He said, "That's because it's $1.99 a jar here."

What!  That necessitated another lengthy discussion.  I don't know if food prices have gone up all over the country or if it's just living in a rural part of the country versus a high population city; do supermarkets charge less near cities and more for us out in the boondocks because they have to pay more to truck stuff here?  But the cost of vegetables and fruit is staggering. We also can't find half of the goodies we used to enjoy - certain non-wheat breads, a lot of vegetables, some fruits that I love. (Macintosh apples, anyone? I see them at Walmart for two or three weeks each fall and they are frightfully expensive.  I used to buy them for 99 cents a pound back in New York. I know they grow better up north, but honestly, I wish we could get them for more than 3 weeks at a time here. I'd pay for it!)

We are rich in land here, flexible in scheduling time if not having a lot of time on our hands. Freelancing is a blessing because I can run outside and pick tomatoes if I need to, or use an afternoon to can peppers, but I also work longer hours to make less money than I did when working for a major corporate giant.  I work on average 50 hours a week, sometimes more.  It's a flexible week, though, so that's what I mean by "flexible" in scheduling if not rich in free time.

We sat down yesterday and brainstormed what we wanted to grow this year.  The fruit orchard trees are growing well but we are still a few years away from any noticeable crop.  The vegetable garden is doing exceptionally well, and we have a much better feel for what will grow and what won't.

So in self defense - in defense of my bank account and because I think paying $1.99 for a jar of red cabbage is insane - I am more determined than ever to grow as much of my family's food as I can.  Fresh and organic.

With all the seed catalogs spread out on the coffee table, I sat down and made a list of everything I want to grow and eat next year.  I made a separate list of permanent edibles to add to the landscape - nut trees, additional fruit trees and bushes, asparagus beds.

I also drew a map of the vegetable garden on the computer.  I have all the beds mapped in, and I can print blank sheets off to pencil in what I intend to grow. I want a three-season vegetable garden.  I want to harvest something from the garden for my meals most months of the year, give or take, and choose from good quality home canned produce during the winter.

On New Year's Eve, we sat down to a meal of leftover beef roast along with side dishes.  I pulled fresh carrots from the garden and cooked them on the stove top. I pulled fresh parsnips and made buttery mashed parsnips.  That's exactly what I mean. I want to be able to pull those vegetables from the storage in the basement or the garage, or pull them right from the garden, most of the year.

Over the next few weeks, I'll be sharing with you my approach to planning the vegetable garden. Starting from a detailed analysis of what grows and what doesn't, what our family enjoys eating, and what is easier and cheaper to grow here versus buy at the grocery store, I will walk you through the planning, seed buying, seed starting, and spring planting.  I also intend for 2012 to keep better and detailed records of the yield to share with you what exactly we were able to achieve from our organic gardening success.

And it's not always about success. If those squash beetles get my plants again, or the mole ruins the vegetable garden, or something else crazy happens, I'll share that too.

The vegetable garden and fruit orchard will be my main focus this year. The flower garden is just about done, as far as the major hardscapes are concerned. We have a few more feet of path to finish and then the stone wall to build around the center island bed, so I'll break up the vegetable gardening information with updates on our progress there.

In addition to this more organized approach to the blog, I'll also post more links to the content I've written for news sites such as Hub Pages. I've been doing a lot more writing about organic gardening practices there and it has been of interest to readers, so I'll share more links.

If time permits, I'll also be giving the blog a facelift.  Changing the design is on my list of things to do, but also getting rid of the blue underlined link-things is high priority. I never realized how annoying they are until I saw one of my own posts come up on a Google search.  Then it was shock and "ugh!" Time for them to GO.

Lastly, each post is going to be linked and tagged.  I've had content stolen in the past year, and while some may consider it flattery, since I make my living by my pen so to speak I consider it theft.  Hopefully having a bit of tag content at the end and a link or two buried within will at least give me some link backs to my website in the unlikely event content is stolen (right, you thieves trolling for content?).

So Happy New Year, dear readers, and thank you for sticking with me this long....Seven Oaks: now entering our fifth year of blabbing about everything growing, whether it's my plants, my pets or ME growing in spirit.