Ways of Thinking

Just as Jason always says "Hindsight is 20/20"...

Let me reflect back: As the winter was winding-down, we flipped through page after page of the Gurney's Seed and Nursery catalog circling our wants and carefully mapping our garden.

Buy local, support local - Isn't that what we're all about? We dream of having our own self-sustaining homestead, yet we aren't actively supporting the people who have already accomplished it. How does that make sense? Here's my rational: It takes time to break habits - including our ways of thinking. We are use to going to the big, corporate grocery stores for our food and ordering our seeds from people who have built a business and reputation of providing strong and healthy plants (along with colorful, large 50+ page mass-mailers). Sure, Gurney's Seed and Nursery probably started with a dream of a self-sustainable future and it is 'local' to the people of Lawrenceburg, IN but... (So, now it seems that I am bashing Gurney's...not my intention.) We just really need to stop, think, and look around. There is probably something similar nearby - Actually, I can think of two places...Goode's and Lucille's. We constantly talk about how important it is to know where your food comes from. Lucille's is less than a mile from our house...duh. Despite which, the seedlings that we purchased from Lucille's are doing better than the ones delivered via the internet.

Lucille's isn't anything fancy but it has two gigantic greenhouses and is family-owned and operated. They sell seeds in old spice shakers and have a few dozen farm kittens occupying the baskets of onion sets and sleeping on the check-out counter. A quick peek out back behind the greenhouses and they have goats, chickens, ducks, donkeys (maybe more). Cool people, it seems. Needless to say, we will be loyal customers from today forth.

Additionally, we dried and saved some of our seeds from last year (bell peppers, jalapenos, spaghetti squash, green beans). Weird how something so simple can become so exciting. Also, new to us this year was starting our own sweet potato plants. Jason plopped a whole sweet potato in a jar of water and within days it was sprouting babies. A couple weeks later, we had 2-foot long plants begging to be planted. Here is a picture of Jason's baby sweet potato plant...this was about two week ago, so it's grown a bit...