As the summer is moving on and reflecting on my experience, you really realize how much work it takes to grow even a little bit of food. For example, my pickling of beets: I thought I had enough beets to do 12 jars, but I only had enough for 2. Though the greens were plentiful, the beet root was not as big as expected. I’ve realized it would have taken much much more if we were to sustain ourselves over fall and winters as 2 jars went in a couple of days. The carrots were awesome and provided a beautiful array of colours as we had planted many different varieties. We had whites, pinks, oranges, purples and multiple shades of each. We noticed while tasting each colour that each variety had a completely different taste, some subtle and some not so subtle. Some were very sweet and some were even spicy. I thought I had planted a lot of peas, but after harvesting and chucking I only ended up with a small container so that was a wee bit disappointing. Compared to the amount of foliage it did not give us a lot of peas.

The best thing about this experience, was the fact that our babies would help themselves and eat whatever they wanted right off the plant. They stole all the strawberries and tomatoes, even if they were green. I also enjoyed training the tomatoes– snapping off those suckers gave me great enjoyment. I also got the chance to experiment with planting those suckers and successfully growing them into their own fruiting tomato plants.

Overall, I have a much better understanding of how much space, time and work you would need to put in to sustain enough food for one family, let alone to sell. I can’t wait to start planning to grow our food on the acreage.

Jay