Do you really reap what you sow?

I hope sow (threw that in for my Father-in-law)! There has been a LOT of sowing around here lately! We have a new back garden, complete with bean "hideouts" for the kids (obviously not very useful as hideouts just yet). Also squash, tomatoes, bush beans, some herbs and brussel sprouts (which I just learned is supposed to be brussels sprout...but that would mean there should be an apostrophe, wouldn't it??) Oh, and we started some raspberries too...but that will be a year or so before they get going. We'll put in a few more plants every year until we have two rows behind this garden.



We moved all the strawberries out of Sophie's garden and have a TON of peas coming up in our front garden (plus carrots, beets, cucumbers, squash and green garlic). We also put an asparagus patch in that center part this year. I've wanted to do this for years but kept putting it off due to my lack of patience and annoyance that it takes so long to get one established. (You don't have to tell me that if I had put one in three years ago when we moved here, I'd have an established patch by now...I already know this!)



And we replanted our side garden with basil. This garden is a cold frame in the winter and it has been giving us spinach and carrots since March! Now we have tomatoes, peas, beans and basil in there! Oh, and that far side is another asparagus patch...we like asparagus around here!



Hopefully we'll have a good crop this year. This, combined with our CSA delivery, should make for a very local summer and fall. We are also now members of a buying club that is helping us get local flour, crackers, and a few other things we often end up buying "from away." I think our dairy habit will be the only thing keeping us at our neighborhood grocery store. We drink a lot of milk and eat a lot of cheese. We are going to contact a local cheese maker we know and check out the price--if we can decrease how much cheese we eat, we might be able to afford getting that locally as well. Of course that is the other part of all this--I'm feeding a family of 5 on $80-$100 a week. As much as we want to get ourselves of the horrid, disastrous, industrial food chain that this country has created, the bottom line is that it is a LOT cheaper...orders of magnitude cheaper. I know, I know, it is subsidized and not "cheaper" when you put together all the costs of our tax dollars, the costs to our health, shipping costs and environmental costs...but at the cash register, when it is all added up, it is cheaper. And that is a major problem! (but a topic for a different blog...)