Food Solutions - grow our own?

The other morning, while contemplating our food budget and creating a shopping list (these activities always go hand in hand, no?) I, once again, seriously considered growing considerably more of our own food. We have a little garden every summer where we grow herbs, squash, tomatoes, and peppers...but what about seriously scaling this operation up? Would it be cost effective? Can I handle the time and labor demands?

I started with the money component first, since I really haven't the foggiest what the labor demands would be. Right now we receive nearly all of our produce from an Organic Farm's CSA box. This costs us $105 per quarter (we split 2 veggie boxes between 4 families of various sizes). That breaks down to roughly $9.60 per week for veggies, herbs and occasional fruit + the good feeling associated with supporting a family farm. We don't have a huge fruit demand in the winter as we have a very prolific Clementine tree. After breaking down my produce costs I was ready to figure out the costs of growing an equivalent or, ideally, greater amount of food. And, can you guess how far I got with those calculations? Yeah...not so far.

Then I started thinking...because I was at a bit of a standstill here, information wise....
Would it be more cost effective to offer up some of our admittedly limited yard space (1/3 acre including our 1900 Sq ft house) to friends in exchange for funds and physical labor to get the garden going and keep it going. Essentially a community garden in our back yard. This way we could pool our resources, various schedules, knowledge and enthusiasm for healthy food while all benefiting from the sense of community, responsibility, learning, and of course the good food itself.

I started to get really excited about this angle.

With this idea of group or community farming in mind I went on a little stroll through internetland....here's what I found. SPIN Farming.

While it's not exactly the small scale farming for my family I had set out to find....it is an incredibly interesting idea! Take small suburban backyards, rent them out to farmers and then acheive a mutualy beneficialy relationship. The land owners receive compensation in the form of money and food, while the farmer may be a first generation farmer, because it removes the two big barriers to entry - land and capital - or an established farmer who wants to diversify or downsize, or even a part-time hobby farmer. This entire idea completely changes how I think about 'farming'!

I poked around a bit more and found and example farm in Phillidelphia...
From Somerton Tanks Farm: (a demonstration urban spin farm)
"In its fourth year of operation, using the SPIN Farming method, we produced over $68,000 in gross sales growing high value vegetables on a half-acre—in Philadelphia, the fifth largest city in the U.S. By pushing the physical and philosophical boundaries of agriculture, it is achieving a level of productivity and financial success that many thought impossible."

Ok...now I am pumped...ready to start gardening like gangbusters.

Then I found this...(it's a link..click it to read a funny, yet enlightening article)

"An experiment in Brooklyn-style subsistence farming, starring smelly chickens, an angry rabbit, a freak tornado, a vegetable garden to die for, two psyched kids, and a marriage in the weeds."

Hmmm....I may have to think this out a bit more.

What this is all about...

We're living Small Box Style over here.
We celebrate thriftiness and handmade...
And it doesn't have much to do with financial resources.

It's a choice.

Our kids are involved in it in every way. We explain our choices to them so they have an understanding of why we live the way we do. Just like I explain why we buy organic food and recycle.

I truly believe this is one of the best gifts we can give them.

Better than any trinket.

We buy almost all of our non food/toiletry items from secondhand sources.
We get all of our fruits and veggies from our local CSA.
We make all of our holiday gifts (which we really try to keep to a minimum).
We buy our grains in bulk from our local Co-op.

When we shop at the thrift store or a yard sale I always explain that we may have kept some of those items from ending up in landfills...or that not finding what we want the instant we want it can be very good for us...or that vintage dishes and furniture are very often of higher quality than anything we would find at Target ...for 3x the price.

I don't approach it purely from a $ angle. I try to paint a bigger picture...make it about social responsibility and lifestyle, not just financial resources.
But, money, and how we view it, is a part of our lifestyle. So we do discuss it.

So far, they love the thrill of the hunt that has become a part of our thrifty life. It's all they've ever known. They are not stressed by money or budget concerns, but genuinely aware of the choice involved with each purchase.

And, for perspective, I was raised in a home of MASS Consuming and no regard for budget or the planet. I was a miserable kid who was totally preoccupied with 'stuff'.

My kids are truly happy and not overly concerned with possessions.

Interesting.

We're living Small Box Style over here.