Comments on: We’ll Grow All Of Our Food! And Other Misconceptions I Had About Rural Life

By: Katie

Katie — Thu, 10 Apr 2025 15:20:05 +0000

Always loved these posts and anything related to gardening homesteading etc. Hope you start writing them again!

By: Mary Ann

Mary Ann — Mon, 19 Jun 2023 20:44:36 +0000

OK. Thanks for your honesty. It KILLS me when people want the “dream” of producing their own food. There is even a best selling book out on how moving from the hunter gatherer stage to the farming stage in our evolution is the causer of all of society’s problems. Sheesh. My husband is a small family farmer but I like to call him a modern day pirate – facing nature, regulation, market price, public opinion, soaring California lands prices and taxes. Because he doesn’t label his crop “organic” he gets sneers from ignorant yuppies who are perfectly happy to go buy at Trader Joe’s. Trader loe’s BTW sells things like Chinese walnuts which have NO growing restrictions. My husband’s California walnuts are by far the cleanest product out there. It is incredible how people forget the incredible privilege of being a country that as a whole is food secure.

By: Caroline Joanna Mary Bowman

Caroline Joanna Mary Bowman — Mon, 12 Jun 2023 18:10:02 +0000

Have you considered bee keeping? I’d love to do that and apparently it does not involve a lot of work very often, and then there’s the whole ”honey” reward at the end.

Also! Maple syrup??? What of the maple syrup. Man, I love maple syrup.

By: Caroline Joanna Mary Bowman

Caroline Joanna Mary Bowman — Mon, 12 Jun 2023 18:07:33 +0000

In reply to Lindsey.

That sounds amazing – obviously you have managed to make it work and it’s satisfying and a big accomplishment…

It just sounds like a lot of work, and to make it sustainable, i.e. to be enough to feed our family, all the time or nearly all the time, it would involve a level of commitment I don’t possess.

By: Beth

Beth — Mon, 05 Jun 2023 01:45:18 +0000

In reply to nicoleandmaggie. Midwest girl here too. When is the only time country people lock their car doors? during zucchini harvest ;)

By: Little Billee

Little Billee — Sun, 04 Jun 2023 21:42:18 +0000

Omg, this made me laugh so much. I’m sipping on a rum and coke, while my preschooler is napping, and i just loved, loved, loved this post! Thank you for writing it – the authenticity, realism and joy in underperforming was pure gold!

By: Juls Owings

Juls Owings — Thu, 01 Jun 2023 16:12:57 +0000

Actually RINSE AND REPEAT is very correct. Might change variety of fruit/veggie. Might change from pig to cow to goat… but the work load is exactly RINSE AND REPEAT. My family was Amish 4 generations ago, some just lived homesteading 3 generations ago. I live amongst the Amish (work some for them NOT of the faith), in fact one young Amish wife (5 kids and she’s 30) just made that comment when I asked how it was going… RINSE AND REPEAT. LOL That would be a really great message for you to send out .. the reality of what it truly is.

By: Wilma

Wilma — Thu, 01 Jun 2023 15:34:41 +0000

Ok: I love your posts. While I am not an avid gardener, I grew up on a vegetable farm, and additionally we had vegetable/fruit gardens where we did produce much of our own yearly needs (family of 7, and no, I do not know how my mother did it–but she is Dutch, and was very stoic). She did however, teach me a few things over the years, some of which she learned through trial and error herself. 1. applesauce: Do NOT peel the apples. The skin is healthy, and just adds to the taste. And will save you SO MUCH TIME. 2. Many vegetables do NOT need to be blanched before being frozen (I KNOW, right?). Just put them frozen in the pot, cover with water, and take them off when just boiling (test first). The years of my life that could have been saved!! They do need to be cut into appropriately sized portions, but carrots fall into this category, as do many others. 3. to solve some of the strawberry woes, my brother hangs strawberry baskets at a convenient chest-ish level off metal poles he soldered. I wish I could attach a photo for you. It’s rather brilliant 🙂 4. garlic is fun to grow and to braid and hang. Satisfying and easy. 5. I agree with everything you say here. If it’s not fun, and becomes work, stop doing it. I love the example you’re setting for your girls.

By: Mark

Mark — Wed, 31 May 2023 18:55:57 +0000

In reply to Amanda. You might consider leasing some of your garden space to a local organic farmer in return for cash and/or produce. Let someone else do the hard work and get the benefit of fresh produce and, perhaps, cold cash in return. Your land is an underutilized asset.

By: Lise

Lise — Wed, 31 May 2023 11:07:29 +0000

The chard & kale abundance made me laugh, I too had a killer harvest of those one year, no visitor was allowed to leave without a huge bunch of those. I do like chard though in limited amounts, grow rainbow chard (only 10 plants) and chop them up with carrots and freeze about 10 small bags to last the winter. They can go into soups, pasta sauce etc. Kale is just one of those plants that I would really like to use…. but somehow I never quite manage it – trying a limited number of plants this year, think it will be easier to use cauliflower, broccoli and scallions, as I regularly buy them anyway, so have planted about 10 of each of those too this year. The tomatoes are an important crop for us, I prepare them in the oven, basically chop up tomatoes, garlic, onions and just a single chili – mix with basil and thyme and then cook in the glass jar and the lids just balancing on top, for 1,5 hours at 135 degree C, take them out of the oven and screw on the lids. Then you can hear the lids click as the jars become airtight when cooling. I follow the same method for making ratatouille. So growing the tomatoes, peppers, chilies, onions, basil, thyme, squash is important to us. We are self sufficient with a lot of stuff, but only because I love to garden and love to make jams, can stuff etc. The last couple of years I have intermingled our crops in the 10 large raised bed in the kitchen garden with lots of annual flowers, so I can dry flowers to use throughout the winter and also to provide me with flowers to use in the house for vases full of flowers. Somehow although I have a large garden full of perennials and roses, I always hesitate to pick those flowers as they look fantastic in the flower beds so having flowers in my kitchen garden has made all the difference to the vases in the house. The last couple of years I have also planted tulips in one of the raised beds, dug the bulbs up in the spring when they were finished, dried the bulbs and replanted them in the autumn – turned out to be a good move as the energy prices in Europe shot up and a lot of the greenhouses in Holland did not grow the tulips this year, so pressing up the prices to $12 for 10 tulips at Easter.
I also like to grow parsnips, potatoes, peas, leeks, lettuce, radishes, broad beans, french beans and beetroot. Tend to grow varieties that you can’t get easily, so beetroots & carrots in a lot of colors, purple beans and boletto beans, lettuce with freckles or just red lettuce. Potatoes because those bought are never as good as the ones that dug out of the ground and within the hour washed and cooked. One of our favorite June meals is new potatoes with butter and rams salt together with smoked mackerel just lightly heated – simple food but so good. Don’t have potatoes for the winter, we don’t have the place to store them and frankly speaking the winter stored potatoes are not that amazing to eat.
Berries are: Red, white and blackcurrants, blackberries, raspberries ( the autumn sort, I can’t really cope with more to make jam out of in the summer) gooseberries, blueberries and cranberries. Gave up on strawberries, as they always seemed to get attacked by some worms. Dug 2 honeyberries up after they finally gave fruit, I decided that I really didn’t like them.
Fruit trees: Peach, apricot, apples, damson plums, elderberries, 3 types of quince and a medlar tree. I use all the fruit apart from the medlar, tried and didn’t like it. Also tried pears but they got grid rust every year and never gave any fruit, so they had to go. Would love to get an asian pear tree though.
We make cider, not every year but when we have drunk the last batch, make apple sauce, dry apple rings, apple chutney, fruit leather, jams and think I will try apple butter this year. The elders are used for elderflower cordial, rhubarb is also used for cordial. The fruit is also used for cakes, although we don’t eat that a lot, so only when the kids/grandkids come. I will retire next year, mostly because I feel I waste so much time at work, when I could use my time in the garden/kitchen because I love gardening and producing edibles.

By: Erin

Erin — Tue, 30 May 2023 15:56:28 +0000

THANK YOU. As someone who lives on a small farm and could also do all of these things, but does NOT for many reasons (i.e. I don’t like most canned veggies, I am afraid of the boiling involved with canning, I straight up don’t like spending the most beautiful time of year in a kitchen for eleventy hours a day preserving stuff that I don’t even necessarily like fresh, etc), this made me feel a lot better. Bookmarking as a reminder not to be so hard on myself come August…

By: CaptainFI

CaptainFI — Tue, 30 May 2023 05:55:38 +0000

Haha oh my Liz you had me chuckling quite a bit through this article, we have our own CVP here in Adelaide that manages to chomp their way through our veggie garden at our rental. I’m still not discouraged from my goal to get a hobby farm through - looking to get 5-20 acres in the hills and have a go myself… but I must admit after reading this I am probably less enthusiastic about trying to be self sufficient