Homesteading: Making it Pay

Someone asked me to follow up with a return-on-investment for my 2009 summer garden. The life of a homesteader, even a kitchen gardener, is a life of chance. There is a chance that the elements will be favorable and a chance that the elements will not.

The summer of 2009 was not a good one for farmers and gardeners in this area. A sudden, violent rainstorm dropped 19 inches of water onto my garden just as it was going good. The rain beat down many healthy plants and drowned many others. Most of the butter beans and all of the okra rotted in the field before they had a chance to produce a crop.

Then, before I could recover from that, a heat wave destroyed almost all of the corn crops and my daughter-in-law and I had to scramble to get the potato crop in before it, too, was ruined. We salvaged about half of the potato crop. I did manage to eek out the can-equivalent of the following.

Veg/ INVESTMENT Can equivalent *Cash-equivalent Profit

Potatoes $6.00............95 lbs. .....................$47.50............$41.50

Corn $4.50..................17.............................$16.15.............$11.65

English Peas $0.45......8..............................$6.00..............$5.55

Okra $0.28................**0................................0.................-$.28

Lima Beans $0.50........2..............................$1.70...............$1.20

Green Beans $0.68......10.............................$7.50..............$6.82

Tomatoes $12...............60............................$45.00............$33.00

*Based on the quality of product purchased for this household.
**What the rain didn’t wash away, the heat burned to a crisp. Last year okra was such a bumper crop, neighbors were sneaking into yards and anonymously leaving bags of it on doorsteps just to get rid of it. This year there wasn’t any. C’est la vie of a homesteader.

The final cost of the garden was $24.41. The estimated profit was $99.44. Of course, this does not take into account the cost of fuel for the tractor and the tiller or the cost of the electricity used to run the irrigation system. The water is from my own well so the water itself is free. Also not taken into account are the many, many hours of back-breaking hoeing, thinning, weeding and harvesting of the plants.

I suppose $99.44 is not enough profit for some. But for me, it was not only profit enough but the pleasure was immeasurable. I got farm-fresh food for many days before nature turned against my efforts. I also managed to freeze/preserve/can enough to get me and my family through the winter. Most importantly, what I did can or freeze was done so with no artificial preservatives and under conditions that I know for a fact were as clean and wholesome as humanly possible.

Will I do it again next year?

You darn betchya.

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ENJOYING THE WEATHER

Finally the weather has changed. It is cooler; the bugs are gone; the skies are clear;

and the crops are in.

It's fall. The chickens
roam fartherafield on
days like this because

the grass is filled with

grasshoppers, a
delicate treat

for chickens.

Turnips are starting to get larger and should be ready to eat in just a couple of weeks. Certainly ready in time for Thanksgiving. The collards will be ready then, too.

I love the fall.

It's the time here in the country for our Heritage Festival. Some communities call it Founders' Day. We call it the Heritage Festival.

Local churches have Homecoming. So does the high school. There are parades with floats and beautiful young women riding in open convertibles waving at eager young viewers who line the small-town streets hoping one day that they, too, will sit on the back of a convertible in an evening gown and wave the royal wave.

The band plays what might or might not be a Sousa march as their shoes make shuffling sounds on the blacktop of small-town Main Street. And an embarrassed trumpeter just misses hitting the right note. But no one notices because they are watching the majorettes who, like our own grandmothers did, toss their batons high into the air and easily catch it when it falls back to earth.

The parade with its one band and five floats, not counting the Boy Scout troop, the Cub Scout troop, and the Ruritan officers, travels from the pharmacy to the parking lot by what used to be a car dealership. About 3 blocks.

Here in rural America, there are a lot of empty buildings that used to be something but now sit vacant. But we still turn out for our Homecoming parade. And people do come home.

Aunts and uncles, cousins and siblings, in-laws and outlaws, and even exes who owe more back child support than they can ever pay come home to watch their "kin" in the homecoming parade. Traffic is backed up for at least a whole block.

The smell of burning leaves lingers in the air after sunset. Families here still sit down to dinner at the table even if dinner is pizza from the local gas station, our only place to get pizza.

This is fall in small-town USA. I love it.

More later....

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