Planting Tomatoes like Trees

We have moved quickly from a glut of summer squash in June to a glut of tomatoes in July. Actually, a lot of different vegetables came to the table in July. We have already managed to get tired of corn on the cob. When I realized what my wife (i.e. chief cook) was doing, the first thought to pop into my mind was “cop out soup”. I had brought in new potatoes, onions, peppers, corn, green beans, the last of the summer squash, and tomatoes. I thought we had an understanding that since she was now retired, she would be willing to process my garden produce… but like to tango, it takes two to have an understanding. She had decided to “make soup” and everything along with beef and broth was going into one super-sized slow-cooker crock pot. She was killing seven birds (vegetables) with one stone by making soup. To me vegetable soup is something you make and eat in winter.  Anyway, it turned out I was surprised; with a tall glass of iced sweet tea on one side and a plate of cold salted watermelon on the other, a bowl of black peppered vegetable soup actually was a very satisfying summer meal …correction, a whole week of  savory summer meals, since she had made so much. We froze some of  it.                                                                                                    Getting back to the tomatoes, I planted some Celebrity variety tomatoes, a truly prolific hybrid, to use as a standard of comparison for several heritage tomatoes. Someday I want to find a really good heritage tomato and be able to save my own seed. In general, hybrids (of which Celebrity is one of the best) are considered to have better disease resistances and be more prolific, i.e. more tomatoes per plant, whereas the heritage varieties have better flavor. I started off by planting all the tomatoes like I had seen directions for planting young trees…in large holes. I skimmed off the ryegrass cover crop and laid that turf to one side. Next I dug out the hole to a depth of over a foot and two feet in diameter, chopped some of last year’s tree leaves into the bottom, and then replaced the  ryegrass sod inverted grass-side down into the hole to act as a sponge and hold water for the roots when the August drought came.  I added a good soil/compost mixture with a handful of bone meal thoroughly mixed in. I left the top three inches of the hole unfilled so I would have a convenient watering basin. I stripped all but the top leaves off the transplants and planted the stems horizontally with only the top leaves above ground. I put a cage over the transplants and that was it. I believe the bone meal really did the trick because we had many large (hand-size) green tomatoes.

                The Cherokee Purple heritage tomato did not compare well on my soil to the Celebrity hybrid. The Cherokees were large but very gnarled and knobby, tended to have rot spots (most ended up on the compost pile) but did have a somewhat better flavor than the hybrid. I won’t try Cherokee Purple next year, maybe Green Zebra instead.

                I planted a heritage Chocolate cherry in front of the old Amish heritage Brandywine thinking that a cherry tomato would have a small vine. Small tomato, small vine…WRONG! The Chocolate cherry (also called black cherry, I believe) had good flavor, better than the Celebrity hybrid; the tomato was about golf ball-size and there were a gazillion of them…definitely the most prolific output of the varieties. The huge vine was very invasive, covering much of the Brandywine despite the fact that there was a two-foot space between the cages. Still the Brandywine produced large well-shaped and good old- fashioned tasting flavorful tomatoes. The chocolate cherry was early ripening and the Brandywine was quite late to ripen. Since I am into organic gardening, I try to pick all the large tomato varieties either opaque green or at first blush of red and wrap them in newspaper to ripen in the house. If allowed to vine ripen, some grasshopper or stinkbug will take a bite and rot will set in. Greenness is the tomatoes own defense against most insects (but not the horned tomato worm). I am interested in giving Brandywine another try next year.

                Because I was comparing several types of tomatoes, we ended up with a glut; what do you do with all those tomatoes? Fried green tomatoes are delicious in June. We eat a lot of BLT’s and fried ham and cheese sandwiches with big slices of red tomatoes, tuna salad with tomato slice and also toasted cheese, mayo and tomato in July.  Tomatoes make a good side dish just salted and peppered. Green tomato pie really does taste like apple pie. If all else fails, MAKE SOUP!

Between Asparagus and Tomatoes

                “What do you do with a drunken sailor?” As I looked out into my June garden, the melody of that old song kept running through my brain, but the lyrics had changed to “What do you do with a crooked necked squash?” In our garden, June is that culinary in-between month. The asparagus spears are gone to ferns, the spinach and lettuce salad greens have bolted, the radishes have become hot and pithy and we have grown tired of picking from exhausted strawberry plants. On the other hand, July sweet corn, tomatoes, cantaloupes, bell peppers, snap beans, and cabbage slaw are yet to come. True, there are some early new potatoes, Swiss chard for cooked greens, fried green tomatoes, but overall June is mostly summer squash and lots of it. Summer squash is the one plant you don’t want to overplant but you also don’t want to underplant it either. A few years ago, knowing that a couple plants each of zucchini and yellow summer squash would be plenty for our needs, that was all I planted that year, just four plants. Cut worms got every plant. Squash bugs and squash borers are not the only enemies of summer squash. So this year I planted about four plants of each and then thinned out a couple weaklings.

                The sustainability principle of eating what is in season was hitting home this June. It is very easy to pick ten pounds of summer squash per day in June and that much poundage goes a very long way toward feeding a retired couple but after eating just one pound of bland squash on just one day, you are ready to sacrifice the rest of the month’s crop to the garden gods on the compost altar. But as I said, in June, zucchini and yellow summer squash are pretty much all that are producing. This illustrates a second principle: the importance of the cook over the gardener because she can prepare that daily ten pounds of squash in ten different savory ways to make it delectable throughout the entire month. Going online on the internet to choose from the many squash recipes is a good part of her success. Since there are so many recipes on the internet, we will only include a couple favorites at the end of this blog.

                Zucchini was the easier of the two summer squash varieties for us to handle its bounty. For starters we washed and sliced some raw zucchini and used it as “chips” to dip in hummus “dip”. Quick, healthy, low calorie. Some zucchini we also fried in canola oil and served with ketchup, thus reducing our need for fried green tomatoes.  Let a few more tomatoes turn red. Mostly we grated and drained zucchini and then froze them for use this winter to bake everyone’s favorite, zucchini bread.  That bread makes a great (and cheap) winter gift. We baked a number of loaves in June too, but no need to overload the A/C too much. Baking zucchini bread with children and having them participate from garden picking to baking to eating the bread is a great project. So far we have baked around a dozen loaves and put 34 pint bags of shredded zucchini into the freezer.    Oh… where the recipes call for “sugar” use brown sugar instead for better flavor. Again, there are plenty of good recipes for zucchini breads on the internet so just grate, drain and freeze your surplus for later winter baking and you should keep up with garden production. If you let a zucchini grow a little too big and the center becomes seedy and pithy (honestly, they can go from hot dog size to the size of you lower leg overnight) just scoop out the center and use what’s left. DON’T let SOMEONE tell you it is no longer any good and has to go on the compost pile!

                Crooked neck yellow squash is another matter. It is moister and softer and probably doesn't freeze as well, so we felt compelled to eat it in the here and now. My wife made summer squash casserole with a corn meal topping from squash slices and cream of chicken soup. I liked it with hot sauce. She sauteed squash with onions and mixed it with marinara sauce to serve on spaghetti. She also sauteed it with onions and served it in chili; one of my favorites is as a taco filling with cheese, chili and salsa. I've not yet been able to eat just one of those tacos. Still, my most favorite recipe is for summer squash pancakes. We ate some squash pancakes with ketchup and some with syrup. So those are some of the ways we managed to handle our daily onslaught of summer squash in June. Still, I am glad to see July with its more varied garden produce and menu. I am now down to just a single summer squash plant and I will be pulling it shortly to allow melon vines to spread.  I fear another zucchini for the cook and I too might have ended up sacrificed to the garden gods on the compost altar!  A couple squash recipes follow:

Zucchini bread

3 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

3 teaspoons ground cinnamon

3 eggs

1 cup vegetable oil

2 ¼ cups sugar (can substitute brown sugar)

3 teaspoons vanilla extract

2 cups grated zucchini

1 cup chopped walnuts (optional- you can leave out nuts or substitute pecans or raisins)

Directions:

1. Grease and flour two 8 by 4 inch loaf pans. (regular size loaf pans)

 (Optional*-After I grease and flour pans, I line bottoms of pans with wax paper.  The bread comes out of the pans easier.

 Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.

2. Stir together flour, salt, baking powder, soda, and cinnamon together in a bowl.

3. In another large bowl beat eggs, oil, vanilla, and sugar together.

4. Add dry ingredients to the creamed mixture and beat well.  Stir in zucchini and nuts until well combined.  (Dough will be stiff)

Pour batter into prepared pans.

5. Bake for 40-60 minutes (I usually bake it 60 minutes or until toothpick or butter knife inserted in bread comes out clean)

Cool in pan on rack for 20 minutes.

Remove bread from pan and completely cool loaves before wrapping.

Squash Pancakes

 2 cups grated summer squash or zucchini

2 eggs, slightly beaten

2 T chopped green onion

½ cup flour

¼ c grated Parmesan cheese (optional)

½ teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

¼ cup vegetable or canola oil, or as needed

1. Drain grated squash and press out excess liquid.

2. Stir squash, eggs, and onion in a large bowl.

3. Mix flour, Parmesan cheese, baking powder and salt in a separate bowl; stir mixture into squash mixture until batter is moistened.

4. Heat oil in large skillet over medium-high heat.  Drop  by rounded tablespoonfuls of batter in hot oil; fry until golden ( about 2-3 minutes each side).

5. Drain pancakes on paper towel-lined plate.

Wild Rabbits, Righteous Women, and Potatoes

                Women (i.e. wives, and I don’t want to mention any specific name but her initials are M.I.N.E.) have this really irritating habit of being habitually right, even though we men/husbands have logic and mathematical precision on our side. My wife was going into town to shop so I asked her to stop by the local nursery and pick me up FIFTY Beauregard sweet potato sprouts. Logically speaking, fifty is the number that I planted last year and the year before, and that number had perfectly served our own needs through the previous two winters and still allowed us to give a few away to the kids. Mathematically speaking, in March I had gone out and dug under rye grass cover crop and made a total of fifty feet of sweet potato ridges in three separate rows; I planned to plant slips one foot apart. 50X1=50. When my wife came home with 75 slips, rather than create a major row over a minor issue (i.e. choose your battles wisely), I just muttered under my breath about it “being a waste of money” and now I was going to have to “find a place to fit them” into my already preplanned garden space. I felt justified in my grumbling because logic and mathematical precision were afterall on my side. I was a little peeved and she returned the favor due to my ingratitude for her having shopped for me.

                Enter the plague of wild rabbits into the picture and my garden. I had bought some short fencing from one of the major box stores thinking it was designed specifically to keep critters out of vegetable gardens. I thought 2’x4’ weave would stop the rabbits, but they can run right through it without even changing pace. My garden became a rabbit sanctuary. And the one plant they loved above any other was sweet potato leaves. By the time I got some semblance of control with spraying soapy water on the sweet potato vines to change their flavor for the bunny palate, a third of the plants were eaten. Her 75 slips ended up being my 50; She was right on despite my logic and mathematical precision. And, yes…it is really irritating!

                While we are on the subject of “potatoes”, they (both white and sweet) form the backbone of my “Plan B” garden. Plan A is just using your income from job or retirement nest egg to go purchase groceries from the grocery store, i.e. living the American dream. Plan B assumes that hard times come a knockin’ and we like much of the rest of the planet are forced to live a more vegetarian existence relying on our small garden produce. Plan B assumes that western drought causes irrigation reservoirs in central California and Texas graze lands to dry up, skyrocketing the price of produce and beef. (Like that could ever really happen!) To the western drought and wild fires throw in several major hurricanes on the Florida peninsula and gulf coast. Plan B assumes that there might be a major financial crisis, another Great Depression, with banks failing, large corporations going bankrupt and many workers unemployed. (Like that could ever happen in America!) Plan B assumes that in order to stop bleeding red ink, the Federal Government reduces Social Security, Medicare, Welfare and Food Stamps. (Like aren’t we entitled to our entitlements whether the government has money to pay for them or not!) So despite the probability that a need for a plan B garden will never occur and Plan A will continue to function just fine, I went ahead and expanded my vegetable garden to include a Plan B section about 25’x50’. Even if there is no catastrophe, it is still a good skill to learn and should reduce our grocery bill.

                As I said, potatoes are the backbone of the Plan B garden. I planted two twenty foot rows Yukon Gold in mid-March as my early potato and harvested them in late June to make room for a second crop in their area, probably fall carrots and keeper beets. Yukon Golds are delicious to the point that my wife will not let me not plant them. These harvested Yukon Gold potatoes should get us through a good part of the summer. In mid-March I also planted two twenty-foot rows of Red La Soda potatoes which are much more prolific and suited to hot summers and sandy soil. These main crop potatoes will be harvested in late August and their area replanted to turnips for a fall crop. I will also plant some over- wintering spinach to harvest next spring. The Red La Soda should provide us with a healthy carbohydrate through the fall and early winter. The sweet potatoes on the opposite end of the garden will be dug in early October and will be our main carbohydrate in late winter through till next June when the Yukon Golds again come in. So the two white potatoes are on one end of the garden and sweet potatoes on the opposite end. Since whites and sweets are from two totally different botanical families, I think I can get away with rotating them end for end.

                In the ten-foot center of the garden between the sweets and whites on either end, are 12 “holes” that I have dug out to over a foot deep and filled  half-full with inverted rye grass sod and then added several inches of compost and soil mixed with bone meal for phosphorus. After being thus filled each “hole” still has a large basin/depression to hold water.  Eight of these holes have wire cages over them. Six of the caged holes are planted to varieties of tomatoes and two to cucumbers; a couple uncaged holes are planted to bell peppers (3 or 4 to the hole), two more are planted to zucchini. As an experiment, I’ve planted spring cabbages around the base of the tomatoes. The tomatoes give some shade to the cabbages and (I hope) deter the white cabbage butterfly.  The cabbages shade out the grass at the base of the tomatoes.

                Along the back of the garden is a 3-foot wide, 50-foot long bed of onions which I harvest as needed during the summer and then dry and store for winter. I plant 20-foot double rows of bush green beans at about three-week intervals through the summer, so I am always harvesting snap beans but never too many. Snap beans, sliced bell peppers and shredded zucchini are three items which we freeze for winter use. Since the sweet potatoes are planted in mid-May and then sit around for another month before they begin to spread, there is both time and space between some of the ridges for a springtime salad garden of over-wintered spinach, radishes, and scallion onions planted from sets.

                So there you have the Plan B garden; Soups from root crops in winter, salads and cooked greens with stored yams in spring, summer and fall bounty until frost. Horticulture is the poor man’s agriculture. I hope my wife doesn’t disagree with anything I’ve written because I definitely have logic and mathematical precision on my side.

Grandma Kept It Simple

                During this brutal winter in which “polar vortex” has become a pejorative term, I have had a chance to peruse and enjoy a number of gardening “how to” books. It’s been cozy reading by the fire. Quite a few of those books begin with stories about the authors’ grandmothers (and occasionally grandfathers’) who “came over on the boat” or “out on the railroad.” My sense is that there is a great affinity with grandma and gardening.

                My grandparents lived on one of those 100-acre self-sustaining, self-sufficient farms that still existed in the 1950s of my childhood. On that farm grandma was in charge of the garden. As I read the seed catalogs and “how to” garden books this winter I began to realize there was one major difference between my grandmother’s garden and these books and catalogs. The books are full of types of vegetables and varieties of those types whereas grandma grew only a few types of vegetables, but she grew those few vegetable types very well and in great quantity. In truth in my own little garden, I surely have twice the types of vegetable as she, a seasoned gardener, did.

                In terms of root crops, I only remember her raising two- onions and potatoes…lots of potatoes; I recall going down into her basement with her in winter to get some for a meal from what looked like a wagon-load pile. Besides potatoes, the only other member of the nightshade family in the garden was huge beefsteak tomatoes …no bell peppers, no egg plants. The only member of the cucurbit family she grew was cucumbers…no pumpkin, no summer squash, no winter squash, no melons…just cucumbers.  The seed catalogs and gardening books are full of “greens” and brassica family members. Grandma only grew cabbages but she grew them well and in large number. In the legume family, grandma grew lots of peas and lots of pole beans. I remember the peas because her method of keeping boys out of mischief was having us sit on the porch swing and depod peas for a meal. On the north side of the garden  there was a long permanent row of asparagus plants that we kids thought looked like little Christmas trees…to the west side was a permanent row of Concord grapes. Both of these permanent crops probably also doubled as garden windbreaks. The whole garden amounted to maybe a half acre. There were separate blackberry and sweet corn patches…probably a quarter acre each.  By keeping it simple and specializing in these eleven crops, Grandma was not only able to feed her family, Sunday visitors, my uncle who worked the farm and his large family but she also sold vegetables on her “egg and butter” route through the west side of Evansville. I still recall her weighing out green beans and sweet corn on the spring scale they hung on the back of their black van truck. I recall too that the boxed blackberries were especially popular with the ladies on the peddling route.

                So Grandma grew large quantities of a few vegetables…but that is not my main point. My major point is that grandmas cooking did not seem to suffer from the lack of variety of vegetables; rather there seemed to be a certain seasonal succession to eating. First of all the ‘50s were the meat, potato and gravy days and on the farm plate there was always fried chicken, beef with dark gravy or pork chop with white gravy to go with the ever-present potatoes. There was also some variety in the potato serving since in addition to mashed potatoes, grandma also served them country fried with onions, baked potato wedges with ketchup ( think big French fries), boiled new potatoes, and best of all as German potato salad.  After the potato and meat were on the plate, all that was needed was an in- season side vegetable. The cabbages made wonderful Cole slaws in summer and fall and krauts in winter. In late spring there were asparagus and by early summer peas with baby onions. Next came fried green tomatoes; then came cucumber and onion sweet vinegar salad, followed by tomato-onion sweet vinegar salad, cooked green beans, and sweet corn with butter. Fill in this “seasonal eating” with a little canned corn, canned green beans, some pickles, homemade bread with black berry and grape jams during the week and grandma’s famous baked kuchens and chocolate cakes for the week-end meals and it is easy to see that the lack of variety in the garden did not affect the quality of grandma’s cooking. I never heard anyone complain and I did see Sunday visitors unhitch their belts at the table.

                There is a real marriage between gardening and cooking; learning to grow a few vegetables really well and keeping it simple makes good sense. 

Five Years In: Tight Living Revisited

 

                Last days of winter…daffodils trying to pop a bloom but not quite able…spring is just around the climatic corner… if the groundhog can be believed. This morning I sat in my recliner listening to the quiet hiss of the natural gas burning in the artificial logs of the little stove next to my recliner and enjoyed its warmth as I mused how I would spend this last day of probably the last cold snap of winter.  My second cup of coffee for the morning sat on the stand beside my recliner, an afghan covered my legs and a half-finished hand of solitaire  lay on a tray on my lap…I looked out the window on the opposite side of the room. Framed within that curtained window frame was an amazing variety of birds in the woods…male and female cardinals, robins, chickadees, Downey woodpeckers and a single lost rabbit hopping beneath...all harbingers of spring. There is a certain serenity in bird watching from the warmth of a cozy room…a sense that “life is good.”

                It has been five years now, since I began my retirement. I was scared then…would Social security be enough to meet my weekly and monthly financial needs?  Was I certain I would not outlive my money? Would my health needs be taken care of? Could I survive runaway inflation...what about deflation and recession?   Would my wife be adequately taken care of after I died? Had I figured all the angles and variables, the worst case scenarios …or was I missing some really obvious pitfall? Around the time of my retirement I wrote a short book on the topics of retirement and frugality entitled Tight Living for Tough Times: A Frugal Retiree’s Guide to Thrift. In honesty, the book was as much a blueprint for my own retirement and a salve for my own worries as it was a guide for others to follow.  Everything has not gone exactly according to plan…does it ever?  There was the Great Recession, (I didn’t see that coming!), a couple bouts with cancer (a bit of a surprise!) and, as with many families during the  recession, we had a close relative move back in with us for a bit until she could get back on her feet. But in the great statistical bell curve of life, there were deviations to both sides of the plan. Unplanned shortfalls were offset by unexpected windfalls.  I am writing this present blog to report that retirement has been considerably easier than I had expected. I have gotten into a frugal retirement routine. My budget and schedule are laid-back second nature to me now and yes, “life is good.”

                I want to return to the topics of Tight Living for Tough Times because there is a universality to the themes and subject matter of that book. Everyone is going to grow older. Most people are going to retire. Most people need to be frugal and to be concerned about budgeting. And most people worry about all the aforementioned. I am no thinker, just an average Joe…but since I feel the subject matter is both important and universal; I want to write a few postscripts and insights about my retirement experiences.

                When it comes to living well in retirement on little more than a monthly Social Security check, there is an awful lot of wisdom and insight in some old adages.  For starters,(1) have everything paid off. Social Security stretches so much farther if there is no monthly mortgage payment or rent or car payment. If you are debt free, then social security can all be funneled into the monthly utility bill, gasoline, groceries, good medical coverage and a little entertainment.  In addition to having the house and car paid off, you should have both in good repair and know how to do routine maintenance. A paid off retirement bungalow or cottage is better than a mansion that is eating you alive.

 

(2) Live in an area with a low cost-of-living. It is amazing how much the cost-of-living varies around the nation! My property taxes are very minimal. If the same acreage and home were in a county that abuts ours, my property tax would be ten times more because that county has a medium-sized city whose infrastructure and school systems must be supported by property taxes. In the city there is a monthly bill for trash pickup, and a water and sewage bill. I have a great well for water, a septic system, and I haul a pickup load of trash and recyclables three miles to the free county collection site once or twice a month. We have an excellent tarmac country highway that runs across the front of our property. By the way, our county school systems are first rate.  Probably the best retirement low- cost- of-living area would be in a small rural town. Such communities are friendly, have a number of churches, either a main street or town square, libraries, low crime and hardly any industry. If there is anything I want to do or see in the city, I just drive in.

(3) Live within your means. Someone once defined a life of happiness and a life of misery as follows:

Happiness: income $100; expenses $99.

Misery: income $100; expenses $ 101.

Don’t overspend in retirement; budget so that social security is greater than your expenses. There are hucksters who are going to try to sell us expensive things that we don’t really need to be happy. Let’s compare the value and enjoyment we could get from a Caribbean cruise with the value and enjoyment from a stay at a state inn in Indiana or Kentucky. Both the inns and the cruise have good food in romantic settings. A cruise ship has a deck to walk around on and lots…lots of people. A state inn has a state park for nature walks and not too many people. A cruise ship has a pool and waterslides and spas. A state park has an indoor pool and hot tub in winter and an outdoor Olympic pool in summer. A cruise has a tourist-trap island to visit; a state inn usually has a nearby tourist-trap town to visit. You will most likely fly to your cruise departure port; you will most likely drive to the state inn. Mid-week state inn winter   rates run about $100 for two night stays. Would we really be that much more relaxed and happy from taking a cruise?

(4) Small is beautiful; more is not necessarily better. Even if you are debt free in retirement and own your home, you still have to heat that house. Utility bills are going to be part of your retirement expenses.  It is a lot cheaper to heat 1,000 square feet than 3,000 square feet, especially if the latter has cathedral ceilings. In winter I spend most of my time in our living room.  It has comfortable recliners and a sofa, a good library of encyclopedias and gardening books, a good DVD/VCR collection, and a flat screen TV. Here I can watch old TV comedies or PBS documentaries, write my few words of wisdom or surf the internet, listen to music, play solitaire, work crossword puzzles, bird watch out a window or if I’m really energetic do a few shallow knee bends. Did I forget to mention winter hibernation naps on the sofa? I do most of my cold weather indoor living in my living room. I mentioned earlier the small natural gas stove which keeps the living room cozy ; it also prevents the thermostat from kicking on  the central heating system and heating the entire house. Enough heat flows naturally from the living room to warm the kitchen but the rest of the house stays cool. There is no blower on the stove so unlike the central furnace it doesn’t use or need electricity. If a winter blizzard or ice storm knocks out the electric grid, we still have heat. So I really think small is beautiful; I’ve reduced my small house to the single room where I spend most of my winter indoor hours. I should state that we had our stove professionally installed and we do have a carbon monoxide monitor just to be safe.

                More is not better. Don’t become a hoarder; don’t let possessions own you instead of you owning them. It takes a lot of time and money to maintain and store unneeded equipment, so we have kept it simple. I knew a retiree hoarder who built or bought three storage barns to store possessions he never used.  Too many boats, motor homes, vehicles etc. will drain your income with unnecessary outlays for licensing, maintenance, storage and most importantly insurance. None of these “things” are cheap when you buy them either, even if you get a bargain. With the passage of time it all becomes outdated and worthless. Keep retirement clean and life simple.

                (5)Everyone needs a hobby. This is especially true for a retiree.  For me, a hobby is a job which you love to do; when you wake up in the morning, you can’t wait to get started.  You should also be able to take rest breaks whenever you like and for as long as you please. If after you have worked for ten minutes, you want to sit under a shade tree for fifteen minutes, that’s fine.  Your work day should be as long or short as you choose.  For a frugal retiree a hobby should also either make or save him money rather than be an expenditure.  One person may tinker with small engine repair and resell used lawnmowers; another may choose wood crafting.  My personal passion has been sustainable organic gardening. It is good exercise and challenging both mentally and physically. Also it is a conversation starter and gives me something to talk and think about. My wife loves to cook. Her father was an excellent cook and she follows in his footsteps. With these two complimentary hobbies, gardening and cooking, we are able to reduce our weekly grocery expenditures and have fun.

                What I have written and suggested using these old adages, is a method for reducing expenses so a retiree can “make it” on Social Security and assuring that those considering retirement do not need to be frightened by the prospect of financial considerations. I have tried to verbally attack one budget expense after another. With the first paragraph I tried to eliminate the mortgage payment, the car payment and interest payments from the retirement budget. With the discussion of “living in a low-cost-of-living” area, I tried to show how property taxes and municipal utility bills could be reduced or eliminated. In the “live within your means” topic, I discussed how entertainment expenses should be kept reasonable. In the “small is beautiful; more is not better” section I discussed reducing heating bills and insurance. In “everyone needs a hobby” I discussed how my wife and I used our hobbies to reduce our grocery bill. I have been purposely whittling away at one budget item after another until we can live an enjoyable retirement on Social Security while living within our means. Sharpen your budget pencil and you can do the same.

                No need to worry. A well ordered poverty is a wonderful lifestyle…less stressful and complex than the “middle class” existence we are all taught to aspire to. The simple life can be the good life.

 

Garden Menu

 

                An intelligent young man and I were having a discussion about the advantages and disadvantages of vegetable gardening. “Diversity”…he said, “I prefer buying in the market because I get a lot more variety in foods.” Obviously it is true there is more variety in the grocery store than in my small 30’X60’ vegetable plot. Food in the super market comes from other sides of the country, the other hemisphere, and other continents…although I’m not sure all that extra transportation cost is worth the extra “diversity” to the palate. I have never been opposed to agriculture/farming and world trade as plan A; I just like having horticulture/gardening as my back-up plan B. A small garden does not provide as much variety as the market but I feel it does provide “enough” variety…a surprising amount of variety. Too many people picture a gardener as growing a dozen or so vegetables; a rube eating a raw turnip or carrot and saying “Mmm, that’s good! I’m a vegetarian!” The truth is those dozen or so vegetables are only the raw material inputs into a finished product.  In fairness, one should consider whether a garden provides enough cuisine variety in the form of final product i.e. finished meals. With that idea in mind I will present what comes from my garden as items on a restaurant menu. This is what we actually eat in my household.

Salads:

Combination lettuce, spinach, chard, radish, onion, beet, bell pepper salads with store-bought salad dressing of choice;

Cole slaw from grated turnips and carrots with sugar/vinegar and mayo dressing;

Onion, cucumber and tomatoes marinated in sweet vinegar;

Onion and pickled beet salad;

German and American style potato salads with onions and green peppers.

Soups:

Beef vegetable soup with carrots, onions, potatoes or turnips, green beans, and corn;

Butternut squash soup;

Beet borsht;

Potato and corn chowder.

Plate lunch side dishes (served with store bought meat entre):

Sweet potatoes or white potatoes served mashed, baked, as French fries or hash browns;

Sweet corn, green beans, cooked carrots, boiled asparagus tips;

Cooked greens (turnip or chard) or wilted spinach with sweet vinegar and bacon bits;

Fried green tomatoes or fried zucchini;

Yellow summer squash casserole or green bean casserole.

Desserts:

Melon: cantaloupe, (watermelon, if the size of garden is doubled to allow for a watermelon patch);

Pies: rhubarb pie (tastes like very tart apple pie);

          Butternut squash pie (tastes like pumpkin pie);

          Sweet potato pie;

          Raspberry cobbler.

Sweet breads: various types of zucchini bread (tastes like cakes, especially chocolate zucchini bread.)

               

                 Not a bad menu! We do not have to eat only what is “in season” since much of our produce either keeps well naturally (especially the root crops) or freezes easily.  It is now mid-February and we have sweet corn, green beans, asparagus ,sliced green peppers, rhubarb,  and zucchini in the freezer  as well as several boxes of sweet potatoes  in the back room. We ate carrots from the garden until the beginning of this month. So there is much more good eating in a small garden than one might expect; especially if you are blessed with a spouse who likes to cook and has a library of cook books.

Creeping Rasberries on the Isle of Crap

                Actually, this blog is about chickens and fruit trees…but first let me explain the blog title. It all began with the cacti. When I began retirement these invasive plants had established themselves on much of my sandy property. Herbicides could not penetrate their tough hides and if I cut them up with a mower or tiller each piece put down roots and became a new cactus…more trouble than “tribbles” on the Starship Enterprise. I decided the most natural method of ridding my property of this nuisance was deep shade where they at least seemed to struggle. I found a small clump of trees just behind my garden and began dumping wheelbarrow loads on top of wheelbarrow loads. I thought the cacti on top would at least smother out those on the bottom. Soon I began adding other noxious weeds to the pile…crab grass and two kinds of sand burrs. These further smothered the shaded cacti. This pile of “crap”…super invasive weeds that I did not want anywhere on my property, especially not in my vegetable or flower gardens, soon became a huge natural compost pile. As the pile rose among those trees it reminded me of palm trees on a tropical island…so I began calling it the isle of crap.

                After several years of composting, this soil became the deepest, most fertile and organic I had anywhere but considering what went into the compost I was not about to put any of it into my garden. Still, it would be a shame for it to go to waste. I had planted black raspberries and a few blackberries just outside the fence around my vegetable garden. The fence was to keep rabbits out of the garden but also to serve as a trellis for the brambles to grow against. There is also an apple tree just outside the garden on the southwest side and neither the berries outside the fence nor the rhubarb on the garden side seemed to mind a little afternoon shade. But black raspberries and blackberries “walk”; they went over the fence and planted their tips inside the garden. Bramble fruits are as invasive as weeds but that makes them the easiest of fruits to transplant and grow.

                I cut the limbs from the trees on the island as high as I could reach to let in more light and moved some of rich soil from the north side to the south side. I dug up or pulled the raspberry plants that had invaded the garden and planted them in the rich cacti and sandbur compost… making lemonade from life’s lemons. I’m certain we will get many berries from the new patch and even if the weeds in the compost do come back, the raspberries will tower over and shade them.

                So, what does this have to do with fruit trees and chickens? Fruit trees are step up in difficulty over growing vegetables and berries. Raising small livestock is a HUGE step up in degree of difficulty over maintaining a vegetable garden. You must wait a number of years for fruit trees to begin producing; you must spray fruit trees; you must prune fruit trees.  And then the birds may still ruin all your fruit and the yellow bellied sap suckers peck the tree trunks full of holes. If you really want fruit trees, think it through first and get dwarf or semi-dwarf trees. Plant the trees far enough away from the garden so that their roots and shade will not invade the vegetable plot. If you buy standard trees, most of the fruit will be too high for you to pick and after it falls on the ground it will only be good for the compost pile.

                And what about chickens for self-sufficiency in eggs and meat? Can you go off and leave livestock for a week like you can a well mulched garden? Even if they are free range, won’t you still have to buy some commercial feed? That feed will eventually draw mice and rats…so you will need cats and dogs to take care of the vermin. But dogs love to kill chickens even more than they do rats. Chickens love to cross the road so some hens will get squashed. Why did the chicken cross the road? Answer…to cause a car wreck and get you sued. Free range doesn’t sound so good anymore…better to invest in a coup and fenced-in chicken yard. That means more commercial feed expenditures. It also means the hens will peck each other more. Do you have children or grandchildren? Roosters are mean. We once gave a rooster to an elderly woman only to find out by way of the grapevine that she got angry after it attacked her so she blew it away with a shotgun. So again if you want to raise small livestock, think it through very carefully.

                To my way of thinking a small vegetable garden and a melon patch give a great deal of self-sufficiency with much less headache. But, you say, what about those great pies and desserts you will be missing out on without any fruit trees? The garden can give you strawberries, cantaloupes and watermelons, rhubarb pie (tastes like tart apple) butternut squash pie (tastes like pumpkin), sweet potato pie (tastes like pecan pie), zucchini sweet breads  (tastes like cake) and last but not least those raspberry and blackberry cobblers (taste great with vanilla ice cream). Isn’t just a plain old vegetable garden enough self-sufficiency? Don’t spread yourself too thin.