Let’s try this again…

Hey.  What’s up?

Let me just catch you up since… about November.  Firstly, I am feeling much better.  I’ve been exercising a lot, eating moderately well, and generally trying to take better care of myself.  Stress is a nasty, nasty thing on one’s mind and body. The other thing is that stress is a little like that horrible story about putting a frog into water and gradually turning up the heat until it boils.  The froggy, theoretically per this story, never knows what hit him.  Metaphorically speaking, me = frog, stress = heat.  I thought everything was cool, but in fact, it had gotten quite warm.

Secondly, I got a job– rather, an “engagement”, since I’m a consultant.  It has absolutely nothing, whatsoever, to do with gardens, chickens, cooking, bees, or cooking bees, for that matter.  You can get a general idea about it on my other blog.  Anyway, that’s been great for addressing little distractions in my life like providing food, shelter, and healthcare for my family.

What does any of this have to do with backyard farming, you ask?

One side-effect of my new job is that I’m traveling a couple of times each month.  That means I need to rethink my otherwise time-intensive approach to planting every spot in my (enormous) city lot whereupon the sun shines its life-giving radiation.  The Urban Hayseed Center for Intensive Backyard Agriculture (or TUHCIBA, pronounced “TUH chee bah” for short) is now The Urban Hayseed Center for Low-Attention Agriculture (or TUHCLAA, pronounced “Took-Lah!”).

That means, we’re going to spend this year looking at how a guy who works, minimally, 40 hours per week, has two young kids, and travels a week or so each month can still get the dirt to cough up some delicious good-goods.  Luckily, during my TUHCIBA phase, I planted a bunch (i.e., 20 or so) fruit trees and scads of berries and started my beehives and chickens.  Those components should help a lot since they don’t require an awful lot of day-to-day maintenance.

Still, I have to do annuals.  I needs me some garlic, ‘maters, ‘taters, chard, basil, etc.  But, I don’t need to do so many experiments.  I don’t need to plant so many of everything.  I think I can condense my veggie gardening back info the confines of the farm.  I also think my newfound mastery of my ADD will help me to just get rid of a bunch of plants that… well, I kind of hate.  Before I’d just stare at them and think swirling, pointless thoughts about how “they’re perfectly good” and “what if this is the last of a rare variety” and “why was I standing here again?”

So, anyway, I’m going to try to get back outside and report on it here.  In fact, today, I planted half a bed of garlic, some sprouted potatoes, and some leftover shallots, and I re-arranged my raspberry bed to get it closer to the Raspberry Room idea I’ve had (canes trained to the walls of the patch with an open center for picking and hanging out.)

I’ll try to get the camera out there one of these days when the yard doesn’t look like a mucky monster truck rally ground.

Anyway, if there’s anyone out there anymore, I’m back.