This is the time of twelvemonth when everything happens at once . Caring for plants , creature , skunk … it can get overwhelming .
And yet we always start raw projects . In the cool days of late wintertime and other spring , everything seems potential . Why not plant more trees ? And grapes ! And till a Brobdingnagian place for corn whisky ! And put in a watermelon patch !
And then the weather sire hotter and the weeds begin to proliferate . And sometimes we get flood . Or drought . Or a inundation and a drought , like this spring .
And then … it ’s 90 degrees out . And then 95 .
And then everything starts falling to pieces . And it ’s no fun to weed big areas , and contain weewee to new Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree , and drag in the hosepipe around the nursery , and fix the fence for the cows …
And by the prison term June / July hits , all enthusiasm for horticulture is gone , and you are beaming to get the occasional watermelon vine to quell the heat .
It’s Just Too Much!
Yesterday I was speak with Rachel about how we demand to simplify again . We moved to our belongings almost three years ago . Since then , we :
set a food forestInstalled dairy cows and built a milking areaInstalled Grocery Row GardensBuilt a crybaby coopStarted a plant life nurseryBought a tractorBought a BobcatStarted glade popcorn treesBuilt a nursery and filled it with plantsPlanted an apple orchardGot ducksGot goatsGot pigsTilled a big arena and planted corn whiskey , white potato vine , autumn pumpkin and yamsInstalled kine panel treillage for vining cropsMade a big compost areaBought an old zero - twist lawn mower and started collecting pasturage clippingsBought a laggard for our plant nurseryDid multiple industrial plant showsStarted merchandising at farmers ’ marketsLaunched a private residential area on Skool with video coursesStarted expanding on InstagramWroteMinimalist GardeningDid multiple Scrubfest eventsPublishedFree - Range Survival Chickens …
… and mankind … we are super , super busy !
For all the extra workplace , the cash in hand have not greatly improved , either . You get ahead , and then have to pay up more to fix something or get a fresh tool , then you attempt to get ahead again , and then …
lifespan is complicated !
We got free of our Goat , and the wimp were dispatched by a piranha . I have n’t supercede them .
We also leave office doing the farmer ’s markets . The nursery takes a lot of care , but we just sell some privately and at events . It ’s punishing to do everything . But we ’re still doing too much .
Simplifying
Sometimes I look at little houses near our church in Pensacola . Tiny little yards of sens that could be mowed in a few minutes . We could just go to Publix for solid food …
But then I mean of having neighbors and stochasticity . And intrusive government . And in an economic downswing , we ’d be completely reliant on long provision chains . And then I look at my productive mulberry trees and persimmons , pecans and yam , and feel grateful that we engraft them . This aurora I foot a smattering of vast , fat , sweet blackberries from a Prime Ark Freedom shrub I stuck in the Grocery Row Garden last year . And I ’m see my plums fatten up in the food timberland . And we ’re still eating pork from the pig we butcher last downfall .
The work is n’t bad work . It just may not be the unspoilt use of our prison term .
We just need to focalise on the 20 % of things that do great .
And really , if we had a footling place in the city , we would long for the food wood and orchards . It might be a nice vacation , but we could n’t do it for long .
I startle so many plants in the nursery that we are n’t really selling or using . I have unknown peppiness in sess that do n’t make anything for us , I have tropical seedling trees that ca n’t live outside here , I have transplantation I never fetch around to planting out …
or else of enjoying all these thing , it ’s get to be too much . Instead of doing a few things really well , we do a lot of things badly .
There are only so many hours in the day .
Who Gets the Axe?
Last yr , I started a gross ton of Osage River orange trees and honey locusts . Though I love these trees , they do not sell well ! I am water and caring for them without return . I think it ’s time to just plant them in the 1000 .
We also found a local beginning for bare-ass milk that costs less than the note value of the Labour it takes for us to manage for the kine , feed them in winter , milk them , and keep the fences specify . So I am thinking we might just sell the cattle . Rachel has to homeschool children , and if she is milk oxen , she is accept a couple hours per day off from homeschooling . Does it make sense at this season of life history to try and raise all our own nutrient ? Probably not !
As much as we enjoy all the butter and cheese and reinvigorated milk , we can at least meet our milk postulate from elsewhere .
And ballock ? I have a acquaintance with pastured layers that gives us an amazing deal on 6 dozen egg per calendar week . Do we necessitate to take care of chickens in good order now ? Fix the henhouse and patch the entrance and get another flock ? possibly not .
I am going through the lists of all the things that do great for us … and those that may be too much work … and simplifying .
Dejunking our living and our schedule .
Mulberries , Southern apples and yams have been big sellers for us , so we could just concentrate on those instead of on a hundred dissimilar plants .
piece of writing Quran has usually been a right use of meter , so perhaps I should do more of that while spend less time on the nursery .
High Effort/Low Reward
Here ’s one exemplar that hit me yesterday .
For four years , I have been growing a jaboticaba in a pot . It ’s now taller than me , and is fruit for the very first prison term . Perhaps ten or so picayune fruit along a couple of branches .
I have in all probability put 40 hours of attention into it , for a few fruits . Now it should start bearing regularly , but wow … what an investment of time ! I do love jaboticaba , but I ca n’t just plant one in the ground here , since it ’s too tropical for our mood . It ’s constantly going to be a high - needs flora , and it could out - live me ! In winter I have to interlace down the nursery and run a propane heater to keep it alive . And I have to have a nursery if I ’m going to grow it . Talk about a clip sink .
On the other hand , I constitute a couple of white-hot mulberry in the yard and they both bore an abundance of yield without me having to care for them much at all . It ’s easy to keep them here .
InMinimalist Gardening , I treat how simply you’re able to grow food . And how you do n’t have to elaborate your life . And yet , we plant nerd are always making more work for ourselves . Especially in those hazardously pleasant days of other spring .
Perhaps it ’s time to pare everything back to just the success , and let all the time - eater go .
perhaps I could throw a huge rare plant sale and say adieu to the tropicals .
Perhaps I should circumscribe my gardening to just the Grocery Row Gardens and the Food Forest .
It ’s one thing to writeMinimalist horticulture … it ’s another matter to really hold out it .
We have too much to care for and only so much prison term . The food woodland is easy to care for . The nursery plants are not !
Just thinking out loud . How are you all doing with your gardening projects ? Animals ? Homesteading ? Any enceinte tip for paring down – would bang to learn from you .
