Back in the Garden, Again (Still!)

With apologies to Gene Autry for the title, I am announcing that I am back to writing about my stealth farming again. I didn't quit farming for the last bunch of months, I just stopped writing about it.

Have you ever done something that was fun at first but then began to be a chore so you stopped it only to realize that doing it was actually rewarding and now that you stopped it you realized that you missed it? Well, blogging about my farming was becoming that and I realize that I have missed it for several reasons.

I missed it because it pushed me to do something regularly. Routine can be a good thing; it's how habits are formed. If it's a good habit, something that is beneficial, you want it to be regular and almost routine. By forcing myself to write about my gardening, I also forced myself to look at my garden in a different light or from a different perspective every time I worked in it. As I would be weeding (not a big chore, just a regular one) I would view in my mind how I wanted this to look on the blog.

As I would be thinning or harvesting or shaping or pruning or trimming or any of a dozen other farm chores, I would imagine writing about it and think about how I would tell someone about what I was doing.

And I got to take photos of my garden. That's fun because you get to make your garden look like a total success without any failures and without any weeds. Close-ups of bees and other critters are fun, so are flowers. Photos of my garden are fun for me to look at  because I get to remember the good stuff. Looking at a rather empty bed in the winter can be almost depressing. Looking at a photograph of that same bed all green and lush and productive is thrilling and makes me want to plan and do more.

So, for those reasons and for others, I'm back to writing about it.

There will be a few changes, though. I'm going to include more entries about home production and storage, not just the gardening. I'm going to have some commentary on why I do this and why I think others should (or should not) do it. I'm going to put more effort into the concept of the Stealth Farming to explain that more as I think it's not only a good idea, it's a very fun concept, too. And I'm going to discuss some other aspects of this concept like solar cooking and finding space to grow and wise water use and mulching.

I have been talking with folks who keep bees in my area. Now, in my area, bees are illegal in you backyard. (I wonder how they enforce that law to all the wild bees in the area?) We've decided that we want to push that issue to amend the code so that beekeeping is more acceptable and accessible to us. And, we're going to push the issue on backyard chickens, too. My particular neighborhood is an island of chickenlessness in a sea of availability. That's going to be a challenge, I'm sure. (My son lives a mile away and he is in an area that can have chickens. So he has one. The eggs are great.)

So I'll keep you posted on all of these developments as they work out. And I'll share more about growing food in the desert. Since I can grow all year long without a break, I don't think I'll run out of things to write about.