I am an avid reader of Jenna W. and her Cold Antler Farms blog. In fact, it was one of my early introductions to homesteading and following one’s rural dreams. Like her I am a graphic designer and I have to work a day job to keep things rolling around the farm. I digress though. I really just wanted to point out a rather remarkable post of hers from May 29. Entitled, “a real farm?” she tackles the question(s) that many of us face on a regular basis – What is a real farm? What makes it real? Her answers are spot on.

As the weekend continued and I found myself moving at a pretty good clip from task to task (in fact, as I write this I have one eye on the screen and another on the burn barrel just outside my window as I am trying to get rid of some old scrap wood that is too soggy to use for anything). Friday evening brought front yard work and cleaning the water feature. Saturday was invested in pressure washing the house and main fencing (complete all day job). Sunday was consumed by finishing up the solar heated outdoor shower (more on that in an upcoming blog post). Monday was spent cleaning out the garage and barn and trimming up the gardens. Of course we did BBQ in the evening and that made all the sweat and tears worthwhile. But mind you, all of this was done in between harvesting plants, taking care of chickens, doing odds and ends, moving dirt from one pile to another, dodging impending rain, etc. It is a balancing act, to be sure. “Where is he going with this,” you might be asking. Well, all of this work and its products make Odom’s Idle Acres every bit a farm.

As Jenna puts it, “As far as I’m concerned, if you have a backyard with veggies and a few hens, and you not only consume it yourself but others do as well (friends, neighbors, your community) you are a real farm. You are a producer. You are feeding people. You are real.” So OIA is a real farm – all 2.35 acres of it. We have 3 gardens, a corn field, a barn, solar power, chicken houses, etc, etc. We feed ourselves (almost 60% of our monthly diet is sourced here) and we feed others. While we don’t sell we tithe our extra and donate it to whom we feel led to. So yes, we are a real farm. And the aforementioned tasks – work, some may say – is what life is like on it!

I have been staring at this empty block for almost a half hour now. My only company the sound of the overhead fan in my 5th wheel office. I don’t like to write depressing things. I don’t like to add too much of the world’s reality into my own life or writing. But today I can’t seem to help it.

I turn to food for comfort. These past two months I have gained probably 10-12 pounds. What could I possibly be stressed about? Beyond the transition of a new job, a growing homestead, Pan and I trying to start a family, and the influx of media I am forced to swallow each day, I guess nothing. But each day I wake up I down a cup of coffee and a little pick-me-up (usually fruit or a bowl of mueslix) and flip on the news. I am not specific in which channel or news team. Delivery is delivery no matter how much Splenda you might put in it. BP. Wall Street. A failing presidential office. War. Sex Trafficking. Terrorism. Obesity. Obsession. It is all a bit much over what should be “the best part of waking up.” After about 15 minutes though I cut it off and join the sun as it rises into the sky.

My first stop is at the herb boxes. I love to smell them and wonder just what recipe they will end up ‘completing’ or how Pan will dry them for tea or shaker spices. I then ramble on towards the corn. We try to water it every other day and when I say water I mean for a few hours. Because of the position of the field it gets pummeled with afternoon sun and needs every drop of liquid it can get. It is usually at this point that I can’t help but checking on the chickens. I can hear them so they are pretty hard to ignore. And now with the new chicks…well, who doesn’t want to see new chicks fumble around and play what looks like a game of poultry rugby?

And then it is on to the main garden. I can’t step into it without being washed over by its miracle. At the risk of sounding emotionally drippy, this garden is so much more to me than probably to most. It represents new life in its most raw form. It is my church. It is where I was baptized a second time, changing from the consumptive person I thought I deserved to be in life to the humbled man I am now. I typically reach down and poke my finger in the dirt. Most mornings it is moist with dew; a reminder that each day is a new one and everyone deserves to be cleaned and refreshed. And then? Well then I park it. I sit on a bench made of old granite curbing that we recycled from a downtown renovation project. I star at the plants thinking about how Pan and I have poured hours into it hoping for a harvest that will last us well into fall and early winter. I think about how we tithe the first of the harvest and give thanks to God for what he has blessed us with on Odom’s Idle Acres. I think about how a tiny seed turns into a huge plant that bears food. Think about that for a moment.

What starts out as a seed….well, perhaps Robert Schuller (yes, the televangelist….so sue me) said it best, “Anyone can count the seeds in an apple, but only God can count the number of apples in a seed.” How amazing is that. And as I stare at that garden – what it once was, what it is now, and what it will be in a month – I find my hunger being satiated. No, I am not talking about a twinkie I hid amongst the okra but rather a satisfying bite of relief; freedom from the very stressed that one hour ago gripped me tight like a boa constrictor on his prey. And it is at that moment that the world makes sense again. It began in a garden. A garden shall sustain us. And if I have my druthers, it will all end in a garden.

Fox and his Friends can say what they want but when the world gets extra hairy and Uncle Sam reaches out his hand one last time, I am headed to the garden. And there I will find new life, new hope, and a new understanding of what we are here for.

Everyone knows we are an Apple Butter family. But we recently ran out and had to restock. Since we had over 100 empty glass jars waiting for canning season, we decided to grab a dozen or so, pick up a few regionally grown apples, and make a medium sized batch. And just to spice things up a bit (although I am having problems with the quality of the video) we decided to make a little vlog out of it all.

If you want to read our original apple butter post you can check it out here.

Otherwise, enjoy!

After a long week at work I was ready to get out and join Pan Saturday morning for some garden work. The weather looked to be promising and we had days ago decided to give up on the old adage about waiting till after Good Friday to plant or whatever that colloquialism is.

We started out with a trip to the Plant Emporium in Griffin, Georgia. Not too much there as they haven’t fully recovered from the winter and prepared for the spring. Further down the road though we fell into the arms of our bittersweet lover, Lowe’s. While we aren’t a huge fan of box stores or giving our money to large, corporate entities who hire folks poorly versed in horticulture and gardening, we were growing desperate watching the sun beat down on our Buggy Town.

A little over $100 later we emerged with seed packets galore (based on our garden plot, of course) including crookneck squash, butter beans, pole beans, lettuce, beets, and onions, 8 tomato sprouts, 6 different herbs as well as herb seeds (for a nice, thick, rotating harvest), some organic plant food, a little topsoil for the herb garden and an odd or end or two.

After arriving home we realized it was almost 12pm and we hadn’t done much of anything. Pan quickly made a plan of attack and we headed for the herb boxes. Now, I am a huge fan of Black Kow so we emptied our two bags of the soil into the newest bed and arranged our newly purchased herbs into what we knew would become a staple of our dinner planning routine.

Pan laid out the thyme, greek oregano, parsley, lavender, basil and other assorted tinctures. We dug our holes, put them in, salted them down with plant food, and stood back for a second to admire the box.

We then moved on to our raised beds where we took stock of the onions that were already growing rapidly. At almost 4″ tall each they had certainly become a reminder of what we enjoyed so much last year and were anticipating this year.

I had bought a few annuals earlier in the morning as well so I could build a sort of “garden gate” for any deer or dogs that may want to take a turn at our onions and peppers. After I fished them each out of their little square packaging and laid them in I have to admit they looked rather pitiful and I began to doubt they would do little more than blossom and die. I guess I now kind of view them as the meteors of our garden. Pretty to see but quick to burn out. Oh well. At 94 cents for a 6-pack I hadn’t lost much on my $4 investment.

By 3pm the temp had risen to a warm 71 º and we weren”t even half done. We had 10 empty 5-gallon buckets and as many tomato plants staring at us from across the yard. Although we are cultivating some tomato seeds we did decided to get 3 plants each of varying stages (and an odd one) so we would have a better rotating harvest. We’ll see how that works out.

One thing I am a stickler of is our reuse of materials. I hate buying things when we have objects around the house/yard that can be used. For a few weeks now we have been scavenging and cleaning/sanitizing 5-gallon buckets for use as planters. I knew I wanted to try planting all the tomatoes in planters this year rather than a bed. To achieve our desired effect we filled the bucket with our sifted soil and drilled four drainage holes in the ‘four corners’ of each bucket about two inches from the bottom. No sense in rotting the roots of perfectly good plants. We then dug our holes, plugged them with beautiful tomato trunks and strengthened them with stakes made from bamboo harvested off the side of Highway 36. (It’s our tax dollars, right?) They came out quite nice.

It was at this point that I asked Pan if we could take a break. We had already missed lunch and with my neck turning even more red than it was naturally (by heritage, of course) I had to enjoy a cool one. Afterall, it was Saturday!

(…stay tuned for our 3rd part to this seemingly endless Saturday. We still have the main garden to go!)

I have a bit of a problem. (No, not that one…..no, not that one either…….c’mon now…….) I have shelves full of empty mason jars that have done nothing but gathered dust since we went through our tomatoes and pickles like Sherman went through Atlanta. But hope could be on the way. Pan, my folks, and I are headed to Florida for a long weekend in late April where it seems oranges are darn near ready for mass consumption. So, of course we will be buying a crate or two for a number of uses. One of them, I hope, is either for marmalade or preserves or something similar. When I made the suggestion Pan kind of turned her nose up and I was left wondering if my thoughts of citrus colored cans was little more than a rotten idea.

So, I ask. What do you think I should do with a minimum of one crate of fresh, Florida oranges?

No yard, farm, homestead, barn, house is ever finished. It simply isn’t. You can hang up your hammer. You can set the last post. You can feed the last animal but the only one consistent is that the task is never done. It seems a cruel law in the spirit of Murphy. It is a cruel law.

This past weekend was to be a celebratory one almost. Since the onions began to climb through the dirt towards the light of the sky the patience game has grown to an irritable battle of wills. Who can hold out longer? Me or the sun! right now we are tied.

Saturday was supposed to see a raked garden, some deposited topsoil, a little spreading of compost, the filling of a new herb box followed by Sunday with a few turned rows, some seed and a good, solid cleaning of the chicken coop. What the weekend actually presented though was rain, mud, sniffling noses and stuffy heads. No work would get done.

It was sometime Sunday morning though that I remembered homesteading and living a simple life is supposed to be about living at your own pace. It meant not keeping up with the Jones’ and doing what you could, when you could. It was a lifestyle and not a life sentence. This thought seemed to relax me some. It relaxed me enough to put on a jacket and have a cup of tea while watching the backyard slide away in a Georgia red ruckus.

Thankfully the mornings have turned away from crisp frost and become more tolerable. The days are now a little longer and the work hours seem more acceptable. It will get done. We won’t lose out on planting season. We still have several good weeks and if there is one thing I have learned about hobby farming and homesteading it is that you can’t control the world around you. You can only work with the ground you’re given.

I posted my first blog entry on November 28, 2004. That was almost six years ago. Granted it was on a site that is no longer active and I have taken a couple of month long hiatus’ I can honestly say I have been consistently blogging in some capacity for at least five years. That is a lot of random one-sided conversation, if you ask me. In that time I have blogged for three companies, four non-profits, one magazine, four newspapers and countless contributions. That is not even counting the over 400 posts made to anotherkindofdrew.com. It is because of this dedication and because of the tone I take in my blog as well as the content that has led me to my most recent opportunity.

About three months ago I was contacted by GRIT magazine (after some emails and recommendations of other writers) to blog on grit.com. WOW! What a community of wonderful people. They are all ages, sizes and shapes and come from all different walks of life from extremely rural to suburban to downright urban.

And so it is with great pleasure that because of the popularity my writing (through anotherkindofdrew.com) on GRIT.com, I can announce that this blog and even an image of mine was featured in the March/April issue of GRIT magazine currently on newsstands. If you haven’t gotten a copy it is available at most newsstands across the country. Published by Ogden Publications it is a staple in small farm/hobby farm reading.

So again, thank you for reading my blog, commenting on my blog and supporting all my various projects.

I was sincerely hoping that by this time of year I would have several posts up about the transformation of brown, dead, winter-laden grass transitioning into wonderful blades of summertime glory. I was hoping that I would have several sets of Flickr pics showing our gardens decorated with little sprouts as if the dirt were little chocolate cupcakes adorned with tasty sprinkles. But alas, I cannot.

Winter hit hard this year and it isn’t done yet from what I hear. In fact, the weather channel is talking of snow flurries as late as tomorrow afternoon. Now I don’t believe in wives tales, per se, or even signs of spring but didn’t that groundhog see his shadow or something halfway constructive?

This you must know though. I am hard headed. When I awoke Saturday morning to no ice in the chicken waterer and no crunch under my feet as I navigated my way out to the yard I promised the day would not disappear in vain. I would make something of it yet.

Two days prior Pan and I had purchased some onion bulbs at the feed and seed in a mad attempt at making spring come. We had no plans other than to have them ready at the first peak of 50 degree weather. I knew what bed they would find a home in and I even had some compost and soil ready to be laid. So when that mercury jumped to 53, I must have looked like a pasty college student headed to the waves of Panama City, Florida on Spring Break. NOTHING could slow me down.

By afternoon we had turned the compost and laid it in. We had added some sprinklings of chicken manure for good measure. We had pressed the sweet onion bulbs into their earthen home. We gently watered the entire plot and carefully covered it all with hearty straw. What a great feeling! Spring had sprung if only for 2 or 3 hours.

As the afternoon sun fell from overhead and the wind started to bring in the night air we sat on the porch looking out at our first bed of the season. What a site! I gathered up our tools and headed to the barn to put everything away. I took one last look though – anticipating an early summer harvest – and said under my breath, “Take that Phil! Take that!”

One of my most dear friends, Lacy Razor, wrote today’s blog post and because I enjoyed it so much, I wanted to share it with y’all. Lacy and her husband Josh are a happily married, military family trying to start a farm, a family, and embrace the country lifestyle in a fast-paced world. Their REAL dream is to offer our community an organic you-pick orchard and garden, greenhouse, U-fish, country store, and so much more! Until then, we focus on sustainability. You can read about their experiences at Razor Family Farms.

Good and simple meals rarely involve exotic sauces, costly ingredients, or snobbery. The magic is that you can make Magic Potato Soup when your cupboards are nearly bare. When anyone else would walk into your pantry and declare that a meal could not be procured, you can just grab a saucepan and smile. In just moments (and with seemingly nothing at all), you can produce a soup which is so flavorful and lovely that your guests will beg for the recipe. Upon receiving the recipe, they will insist that you have left out an ingredient. Magic, I tell you.

This soup was first served to me by Becky Matheny, who graciously shared the recipe and agreed that all of GRIT-dom should be able to partake in a little bit of edible history. She, like so many master cooks, believes that simple and fresh ingredients make for good and clean food. Becky lives in a 220 year old farmhouse in the Shenandoah Valley and hosts Soundquilt, a non-for-profit grassroots music festival. Her husband Mark, a talented musician, can often be found with his band (the Walnut Grove Band of Walnutt.net) in their pre-Civil war era barn.

Meet Magic Potato Soup*

• 4-5 medium potatoes, peeled and diced
• 1 onion, sliced as thinly as possible (the onion will
  “dissolve” and be absorbed by the liquid almost completely by the time the
  poatoes are cooked if sliced very, very thinly!)
• 1 teaspoon salt (and an optional dash of pepper)
• 3 1/2 cups water
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 1 tablespoon flour

Combine the first four ingredients in a saucepan and cook until potatoes are tender. Drain, reserving liquid. In the empty saucepan, heat butter and flour until flour is browned.

Add the reserved liquid. Stir and cook until smooth (use a whisk or fork). Add potatoes and onion, then heat through.

Sprinkle with chives or parsley, if desired or if such items are available.
Recipes like the one above were common during the Great Depression when a few potatoes had to feed a large family. While most of us are able to purchase or grow a wide variety of vegetables in this century, we may not always be so fortunate. It is wise to learn, appreciate, and preserve the art of frugality.

One of my favorite cookbook authors, Xavier Marcel Boulestin**, once said, “Do not be afraid of simplicity. If you have a cold chicken for supper, why cover it with a tasteless white sauce which makes it look like a pretentious dish on the buffet table at some fancy dress ball?” Food does not have to be dressed up to be delicious. So, do not be ashamed of “humble” eats and serve this soup (and others like it) with pride.

*Recipe is similar to one found in the More-With-Less cookbook, by Doris Janzen Longacre, published by the Herald Press, in Scottdale, PA, copyright 1976.

**Xavier Marcel Boulestin wrote several cookbooks, my favorite being: Simple French Cooking for English Homes (1923). He was a respected chef, successful restaurateur, and the very first televised chef.