{Originally published on The Green Phone Booth!}

Stretching up to my chin, the trim green leaves blotted out the dirt, the borage that really did reseed itself, the dormant foxglove and even the wide stepping stones we put in last fall. A plump green pea pod stood in contrast against the grey March sky. I reached over and gently tugged it from the vine. White flowers, I noted. Shelling pea. The purple flowers were for snap peas and I let the kids get those. But no one was touching my shelling peas.

Sitting on the porch steps, I pried open the pod. Seven tiny peas lined up like clothes in a tween’s closet. Popping them in my mouth, one by one, I realized that I should have waited until the pod was a bit fuller. I also realized that I had a lot of work to do.

It is March and the garden waits for no one. Not even a mom consumed with school volunteer programs and parcel tax campaigns. I shuffled through the envelopes I’d set out on the bench earlier. Pretty packages of pink and green spilled out. Zinnias. Ice box watermelon. Amish pie pumpkin. Potato runner beans. My hopes and dreams for the summer. My homemade meals for the winter.

In years past, spring marched through the garden with neither pomp nor circumstance. The green lawn stretched out sleepily as in winter or summer. The daisies perhaps a bit perkier. The dearth of bees and sparrows rarely varied with the months. The gardeners came through with a bit more regularity perhaps. March never triggered a flurry of activity before. The urgent need to tie back the passion fruit vine, the “o” of surprise when a toad or ladybugs overwintered in the cover crop, the pink blueberry buds peeking out from autumn’s leaves that, neglected, decomposed in the planting beds.

As I sat on my front steps, surrounded by seed packets and dreams, I realize that living this way is a lot more work. I cannot rely on a gardener to mow and blow through my yard once a week. In fact, that gardener and, with him an $80 monthly expense, is long gone. No one will cut down the cover crop and drag it to the compost bin but me. I’m the only one who will take the time - while the kids are in gymnastics class - to sketch out the yard, the open planting spaces, consult Carrots Love Tomatoes, and figure out just where to put the carrots and the tomatoes, the peppers and the potatoes too. When seeds need to be planted or weeds retrieved, it will be my hands that become dirty and chapped. When the grape vine needs to be trained over the trellis or the pomegranate tree transplanted, the responsibility will fall on me. But I’ll also get the first picked pea of the season.

{Originally published at The State of Discontent}

Once, there were two wise women who lived as neighbors in a village near a dark forest.

The land near the forest was fertile, and the village prospered. But every few years, a drought would sweep across the land, and fires would break out in the forest. For this reason, for generations, the people of that village had built their modest homes at a distance from the forest, and had taken care to keep the field between the forest and their village free of brush, so that the fire would not spread. And whenever the fires did come, the villages would work together, digging trenches in the field, and bringing pails of water from the river nearby to douse errant sparks and soak the ground around their homes.

But then more than a decade passed without a drought, and as the prosperous village grew more prosperous, and crowded, young families began to build homes in the open, empty field near the forest.

The two wise women considered it folly to take such a chance, and both shook their heads. They both advised their neighbors not to move into the field. But, enticed by the space and beauty the rich, open field afforded, the villagers continued to build there despite the advice of their elders.

Before long, the baron who controlled the realm around the village noticed this trend, and he began to encourage it. Because every time a new farmstead was created in the baron’s jurisdiction, he could tax the family that lived there for the use of the newly cultivated land. “Build near the forest,” the baron urged. “The climate has changed. We may never see a drought again. You are safe from the fires. Build larger homes and farms! Take all the space you want!”

And the loggers selling wood to those building new homes, and the merchants selling furniture, and the roadbuilders who were hired to build new roads into the new part of the village also found reason to encourage this trend. And some villagers even began to borrow money to build new, empty homes, in the hopes that they might encourage people from other villages to move there, and sell the homes at a profit. And so, people began to build houses right into the forest.

{Originally posted on Kelby Carr}

When I decided to work at home most days, a major MAJOR factor was having more time to make good food for my family. I wanted to use more fresh ingredients, and make more things from scratch. Oh, in my mind, I would be the uber foodie mom, baking and creating and freezing and canning and doing various fun food things. I should totally have a sustainable kitchen.

In my kitchen, I have gadgets for making yogurt, juice, pasta, even sausage. I have a bread maker missing just one piece. Besides that, I have the knowledge (or the ability to Google and find out) to make any number of things from scratch. I have plenty of land to grow my own stuff, and I live in Asheville, NC where it is super easy to find cool locally grown produce.

Yet, my gadgets and cookbooks are gathering dust. I still hit the Super-Walmart so I can super consume. I spend $200-plus at least once a week on groceries. And I do still, sometimes (although definitely less and less often as I am at home more), give my children processed, packaged crap. OK, I said it. I may be a foodie mom, but I am a real mom. I am buying things in extra packaging for extra money and being totally non-green when I could just make and store things at home. Criticize away, if you must.

I blame life and having lots of work and having three kids and all of that. But when my twins were babies, I was working full-time and making homemade baby food and pumping milk for them to have at daycare. It wasn’t easy, and I was pretty much psychotically exhausted. But it should be even easier now, much easier. So I clearly CAN do it.

So I’ve decided I will create this public Sustainable Kitchen Project as a way to motivate myself, to keep myself honest, to connect with other moms who want a more self-sustaining kitchen, and to track my progress. I’ve already started in a few ways, and I’ll post about these very soon. For example, we are starting an organic vegetable garden. Here is a lettuce seedling I’ve started:

{Originally published on Soy is the New Black}

It amazes me again each year that from the humblest beginnings, little dry seeds and tiny seedlings can grow with such fury. Reaching toward the sky. Rambling out of their beds. Stretching twining tendrils. Completing life’s cycle as Mother Nature intended.

Originally published on Kalyn’s Kitchen

This time I’m writing about one of my very favorite summer vegetables, spagetti squash (also spelled spaghetti squash), so it’s luckily for me that WHB can be about any type of herb, vegetable, plant, or flower. I learned from Wikipedia that spagetti squash is also called vegetable spaghetti, vegetable marrow, noodle squash or squaghetti. Squash is something I’ll be eating a lot of over the next few months as my garden starts to produce it in copious amounts.

Squashes are divided into winter squash (which ripen late in the season, can be stored through the winter, have hard outer rinds, and must be eaten cooked) and summer squash (which can be eaten rind, seeds, and all, and which can be eaten raw.) I like every type of squash, but in my garden I mainly grow summer squash since the winter squashes produce huge vines and take a lot of space. Winter squash is something I’ll be buying from the Salt Lake Farmer’s Market later in the season.

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