Here’s a quick update in the middle of a hectic summer:
Serviceberries
What’s growing on:
Right now we have made some achievements I’m happy with for the season, and a few treats that we don’t normally forage much of:
Mulberries: we had a great harvest and our kids feasted on the fruits pretty well this spring
Serviceberries: these are starting to ripen in our area and are not only delicious and healthy, but our kids of course are obsessed with them as well! We’ve managed to beat the birds to these tiny fruits where in past years we haven’t.
Tomatoes: these are looking incredible so far this year, and while it may be bold to say this early on, these might be the best tomato plants I’ve ever grown. They’re growing at unmatched speed and setting fruit very early which is encouraging after a few really bad years in a row!
Elderberry: the amount of flowers we’ve had on these has been impressive, and the harvest of berries will be great this year. I look forward to sharing with my friends and family!
Cane fruit: the black raspberries we’ve harvested so far have been incredible! We’ve been finding slightly larger fruit than usual with better flavor and more juice (probably due to the better rain than we’ve had in a few years). Our golden raspberries are just now starting to ripen.
Wood sorrel: my oldest has been snacking on wood sorrel here and there as he finds it in the garden, he is delighted every time he sees it.
Carrots: For the first time since 2020, we’ve had a great success with carrots! This year we tried a miniature variety called “Parisienne” that seem to do well. We mostly grew these for the kids since we either let our kids eat them raw or put them in soups.
Peas: The peas we used as a nitrogen fixer started producing pods so we figured we’d harvest them. I’ve been bringing these to work for lunch and it’s been a nice addition. I hadn’t grown peas much until this year.
Chamomile: We’ve had an early harvest of chamomile that I’m pretty excited about. Someday this will make it into the landscape of my permanent home considering how much we use it and how often I get asked for it.
Soapwort: We’ve been casually building up our supply of soapwort for making laundry soap as well. We got around 10 and a half months worth last year, so this year we’re hoping for closer to a whole year by the end of the season.
Mulberries
Looking forward:
Due to the nature of our living situation, we have once again found ourselves needing to move.
These are our limited options:
Buy a house in our area (I’d need double my current income to afford the cheapest home around)
Rent in our area (more than a mortgage right now)
Build a home (weirdly, the cheapest option so far)
Move to another area
We have met with a mortgage advisor (a friend of ours) and we realized that even though we qualify for the bare minimum cost for a home, we can’t actually afford it at all.
If something comes up within our price range that would be a God-send, but as it sits right now we cannot afford that. It’s not even a question of working more hours or squeezing it into our budget, we would quite literally go bankrupt within a year if we tried to afford the lowest priced home in our county.
Rent is generally more expensive than the cheapest homes (with very little exception) and so far we haven’t found anything affordable and available.
I could actually afford to build something small if the land is relatively reasonable in price, and legally I can live in it half-finished as long as the basics are in place. I know enough of the cosmetic trades that I can finish out the inside myself.
So if you know of anyone selling land (or willing to make a deal) then send me their info!
As far as moving goes, I have yet to find an area that is more affordable and has jobs available that match the cost of living. Unless I hear of some special case, I don’t think I can justify moving away from my community, friends, family, church, and work just to potentially afford a home, however I’m open to it if people have suggestions.
Please pray for us and think of us. It’s not easy on my family to not have a permanent place to live and we really want to actually lay some roots somewhere.
Our most beautiful cabbage
As for the gardens, we are looking forward to an amazing tomato harvest, my watermelon landrace that is still in progress, a couple of amazing cabbages (we’ve never had this luck before) and perennials that look incredible.
For the annuals, I attribute this mainly to the manure mix from my farmer friend, but even with the perennials they seem to shoot up dramatically more than I’ve seen so far after each rainstorm.
While I don’t attribute everything to electroculture, what I’m seeing makes me wonder if there is a connection between how the atmosphere is charged during a rainstorm and the copper-wound rods. I think I can say definitively that although the rods by themselves don’t necessarily contain any passive growth power, there may certainly be a more complex ecological role they play that indirectly contributes to plant growth.
I’ll need to study this further.
That said, in the future I don’t plan on growing annuals without some kind of animal-based fertilization. Using fermented plant matter is a great addition and I still recommend that, but I haven’t seen anything in my climate that plants like more than aged animal manure and mulch.
Black raspberries
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