Here’s the plan: for one year, I’m going to try to grow/ pick / bake / cook / preserve / prepare / invent as much of our food locally as possible. On a small city lot (33 x 122 feet), we’re tearing up the grassy front yard and converting it to an edible garden. In the back yard, we’re planting most of two huge new beds with edibles, in addition to the existing 9′ x 12′ garden plot. On other fronts, we’re aiming to shop locally more – from farmers’ markets to U-pick berry farms – to spend our dollars consciously and conscientiously.

Why?

1. Health: after reading books like The Omnivore’s Dilemma, the virtues of growing your own food have never been more apparent.
2. Environment: apparently, there’s this thing called “transportation costs” that aren’t really factored into the price of the foods we can eat.
3. Education: I would like my offspring to realize and appreciate the effort that goes into growing and preparing edibles, and value the taste of real food over fast food.
4. Curiousity: what’s involved in ripping up a lawn and growing food instead? What will the neighbours think? How much food can we realistically produce in a year without killing ourselves? We’re not out to lead the revolution, a la Path to Freedom. We just want to see what we can do.
5. Sanity: we have a basement full of crap and clutter that is just taking up space. my goal for 2008 is to get rid of 100 500 lbs of it.