onward and upward

The first lesson in chasing your dreams is to never give up. Sometimes circumstances change, and with that, the path and your means of traveling it from point A to point B may also need to change. Onward and upward, friends!

Remaining in a city with dreams of farming proves challenging. Once you've filled your garden plot for the season, there's only so much weeding and watering that can be done until the plants start growing and you have to thin them, train them up trellises or can start harvesting your small crop. It's discouraging to wake up with the desire to be productive and get a little dirt under your nails when it appears there's little to no work to be done. That's when I look up. You can lay back and gaze up at the cloud-puffed sky, but I'm looking up to the roof.

When the ground is full and you have 20 more tomatoes and some herbs that need a home, and more seeds still sprouting in trays, it's time to think outside the box. Well, in the box, but outside the fence lines. I am fortunate enough to not only have a nice sized garden plot but also have access to a small portion of my building's roof that gets just the right mix of sun and shade. With the desire to dig in the ground is still very much present, it was time for another trip to the store. Soil, manure, perlite, peat moss and marigolds were on the list.

A couple beers and an afternoon later, a container roof garden was ready to grow.

Tomatoes, marigolds, herbs and other flowers potted for the roof garden.
Bamboo stalks were added in the pots to help keep those rowdy tomatoes in line.

ever changing

Dear Friends:

With the nearly three weeks of radio silence here on part of the whole comes some news. In the last two posts, you may have noticed my hinting to some anticipated changes. The changes were big...incredible...exciting! But sadly, are now off the table.

In the works were plans to move out of the city and relocate to a farm in Delaware County. Home would have been a historic cottage built in the 1700s, surrounded by creeks and open land - part of large horse farm where I already spend much of my weekends. The long commute would have been a hit, being 25 miles from work, but I imagine it certainly would have been worth it.

Ideas were sprouting for a large garden - enough to produce extra for a neighborhood farm stand. I was excited to start growing gourds and pumpkins, which could have also been sold at the farm stand. I've been collecting and reading all kinds of books about homesteading and small scale farming, saving images and building plans for potting benches and mobile chicken coops, looking at fire pit designs and lawn furniture. Maybe you know that I want to be a farmer someday, so this was the perfect opportunity to test the waters. It was a chance to get a feel for the work involved, the quality of what I could grow, the value it added to everyday life.

So, I'm disappointed to say that this plan is no longer working out. Much of what has been planted in my current garden was done so in in-ground containers for easy removal and transplanting. It's hard to put down roots when you don't know where you will grow, right? Lesson from the plants.

I was also excited to get back into regular blogging, using what would have been my new living situation and lifestyle as daily inspiration. What's it like to live by heat from firewood in a 1700s stone cottage in the dead of the Pennsylvania winter? What sort of recipes would I have been able to pull together using all the produce from my big, new garden? How successful is raising chickens when there is a fox den on the other side of the yard and two resident guard dogs (don't tell the little one he's only 17 pounds!)? Oh yeah...and how about waking up to gun shots all throughout deer hunting season? Maybe someday I'll know, but for now, it all remains unexplored territory. An unwritten chapter, if you will.      

For now, I'll keep on digging in my current ground, always dreaming about tomorrow.

The Mill House
image from thomaswillcox.blogspot.com

waking up

It was a slow crawl through winter. We more or less escaped winter for three years here in Philly, and it finally caught up to us. Some might say our luck ran out. I think we were full of luck and finally had a winter we deserve. Snow can be a hassle, and the cold can be unpleasant, but I loved this past winter. I don't understand why people complain so much about seasons. It may not seem like it in the moment, but you know the next one is always on its way. And sure enough, while maybe a little late, spring is here.

Spring's sleepy start had a domino effect, and it wasn't until this past weekend that plants were purchased, holes were dug and the watering can remembered what it was like to be full again. This year's garden is taking a little different turn. It's a focus on longevity and lasting growth. What exactly does that mean? Fruit! Bulbs! Projects!

Settling into their new spaces in the ground are three types of blueberry bushes, two plum trees, irises and Dutch windflowers. And the asparagus! A friend gave me several clumps of asparagus roots (I'm not entirely sure what to call them...they looked like stringy monsters) that are starting to grow! I've never had any luck growing asparagus before, but I'm excited by the success of these old transplants because I love to eat asparagus.

Indoors, the tomatoes are started, there's a mango tree (the seed was a remnant of a recently brewed beer) sprouting in a pot, the mail-order hops are winding their way up a sunny window and there's an evergreen seed bomb that is being willed to life...maybe it'll sprout someday soon.

Overall, things are creeping along, just like all the spring bugs. Seasons are changes, and with this season comes a bit of change to this space. Still the same ideas, the same feeling, just...more. I have dreams of becoming a farmer someday. No definition to the scale of said farming, but I want to be a farmer. That's my American dream - going back to the roots of our skills as human beings and the roots of our country. I can't wait to share the journey.