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Who’d figure it could be so hard to get a chicken?
We started trying to get quail. Wyoming goes out of its way to make it particularly hard for someone to raise a few quail in their garage. Quail, you see, are gamebirds, and gamebirds are “owned” and managed by the state, even if YOU buy them from OUT of state, and they are regulated by the state. Even if they are essentially domesticated Quail that are non-native to the area, the state manages them.
So, quail take time. Lots of time. File for the permit, find a company that will comply with Wyoming’s certification requirements, wait for them to ship, hatch them (wait for that too), brood them, grow them, and finally they start laying. And then you can only have 100 of them. The eggs are so tiny that that is just about enough to keep a family in eggs (about 80 females, 20 males, for fertile eggs).
Quail would not meet our needs completely, for meat and eggs (they could, if we wanted to get a Game Farm License – $130 per year… maybe someday so we can sell quail eggs, but not now). So we were going to need something else. Keeping in mind our requirements:
- Has to be able to be cage raised, in a small space.
- Has to be productive for both eggs, and meat.
- Has to produce small eggs (easier to digest than big ones).
- Needs to be domesticated, not considered wild game (leaves out pheasant and some other options).
So we were left with Bantams. The do ok in cages, produce small eggs, and some breeds are good layers.
But it is very hard to find them this time of year. We can’t order chicks (several companies have them available), because they’ll die in the box before they get to the Wilds of Wyoming. So we have to order eggs, or find live animals near enough to go pick up. Both have proven difficult.
Getting chickens is easy. Getting a specific breed, is not so easy. Getting them when you want them, out of season, can be hard too.
I’m getting an education. But I’m also very persistent, so I’ll eventually get it done, in spite of the obstacles.
Because I’m now reacting to one of the ingredients in the B-12 supplements… so I need eggs that I can actually digest. It is causing enough problems to be a daily reminder that we need chickens. Soon.
Why the Heck are We Doing This Anyway?
First homeschool. Then owning our own business. Now bits of farming being thrown in (which is something I swore I’d never want to do, and Kevin was in no way prepared for!).
Well, each choice has just seemed right at the time. Independence is a good thing. The buck stops with us – if we do it right, then we reap the reward. If we screw it up, that’s our accountability too. But we really weren’t sure that we wanted to farm in any way at all, even in the back yard.
As Latter-Day Saints, we are counseled to grow a garden, and to be self-reliant. We are also counseled to have a food storage, savings account, etc. Now, this is counsel, not a commandment. But following counsel usually results in blessings, so we try to do so as much as we can.
We always had a food storage. And whenever we lived where we had a yard, we tried to garden, until we got to Wyoming. Here, it just seemed so much harder. And more expensive. For less return.
Gradually, we were able to store less and less. Mostly because we could eat fewer stored foods. This time last year, we had no food storage at all. The dietary requirement for fresh organic foods meant that we had to live from week to week on the groceries. A hard thing out in Wyoming. It also meant that our food budget skyrocketed. I hated being extorted by whatever price was being charged that week for the things we had to have. I also hated being an hour from the nearest supplies, on unpredictable roads.
The only way we’d be able to get our food costs lowered, to know we’d have what we need, and to have a food storage, was to grow it ourselves. We’d have to have the food storage on the hoof and in the ground. But we live in town, on a small lot. No space for a big garden, no space for a big greenhouse, no space for barnyard animals.
So we tried hydroponics (in the diningroom). That worked some, until I could no longer eat the things I could grow there, and nobody else ate much of them. Too costly and time consuming to do for a few heads of lettuce.
This year we didn’t even plant a garden, because we went to camp instead. Gone during the two best growing months of the year. No point. But when we came back, life was different – a little. I could eat a few more things than what I could when we left for camp, and we were making headway on reversing the Crohn’s Disease in myself and the two kids that have it. We’d still have to eat organic, and lots of fresh foods, for the rest of our lives though. So while we could now eat more of what we could grow, we still needed to grow it.
Before we left for camp, we talked about rabbits. So we did that. Then ducks occurred to us. We studied it out and got the ones we felt inspired to get. We’re still discovering just how inspired that choice was, as we learn how much that one choice is affecting our costs and health.
We had a desire to be more self-sufficient, and Kevin and I have talked about land and raising animals for some time. But I didn’t really want to raise the animals. He halfheartedly agreed (turns out he loves caring for the animals). We bought the rabbits when we did because we knew we would not have the choices we wanted in Wyoming, and David was traveling to Utah – right then. We got the ducks when we did because it felt like we needed to – turns out we really did need to.
So a series of needs have sort of pushed us where we might not have gone otherwise. I think we might have talked about it, but not really lived it.
Even now, we did not expect to do this in Wyoming, while still living on a small city lot. We expected to plan and prepare and move somewhere warmer first. A common thing for people to do as they get older, but this isn’t exactly retirement we are talking about.
So now, we divide our time between business and taking care of the animals and greenhouse. Hard to balance sometimes. Takes the cooperation of the kids to make it work too. But both the business and the farm stuff yields a profit. More than we thought it would.
One little Muscovy duck. Gave us 4 lbs of meat. Kevin and I had a meal of duck steak. Our family had duck soup for dinner. We gave 1 meal worth to my mother. Had enough left for seven meals for me (I was having pretty severe protein malabsorption so I had first claim on the Muscovy specifically, while the rest of the family continues to have hamburger). So let’s see…
Each duck cost about $10, and we’d put about $2 of food into that one. 4 lbs of high quality nearly organic meat (no medications in it) is worth about $5 per lb or more. So $20 worth of value from a $12 expense. So a profit of $8 on that duck… or so we figured ahead of time (we did the cost analysis ahead to make sure it would be worth it).
Except that I digest Muscovy so well, I now only needed two servings of meat a day instead of 3. Make that a profit of $20.
Oh… and then my vegetable needs dropped from 9 servings a day to 6. Make that a profit of $30.
Plus… my milk consumption dropped from 6 servings (milk and cheese) per day, to 4 (people with Crohn’s have higher dietary requirements than the average person). Make that a profit of $37.
And then… my need for dietary supplements dropped. By about a third. I have to take a LOT of individual supplements (B-12, B-6, Folic Acid, Magnesium, Potassium, Niacin, Calcium, etc). Make that a profit of about $50 total.
For one little 4 lb duck.
What a blessing! The ducks will make a bigger difference to our food bill than we could have possibly imagined. We thought we should wait and do it later. Doing it now has ended up being the best choice, even though it was hard to come up with the funds to get the ducks (when your food bill is high, it is hard to purchase something that will reduce it later – the double whammy is hard to afford).
We knew we were in a trap though. Food costs were high enough that they were sucking the life out of our ability to be self-sufficient in other ways. You can’t save money if you have to pay $6 per lb for organic meat, and $2 per lb for organic potatoes, and when your grocery budget quadruples in a period of about 2 years.
The greenhouse is now producing also. I was using dill (as a healing herb and to help control clotting problems in my legs). A lot of dill. It needed to be fresh to have the right properties. Fresh dill is costly – one $2 package lasted me 1-2 days. So when I got the greenhouse ready, I planted dill seed – I didn’t have any seed packets for dill, could not find it anywhere here this time of year, and did not have time to wait for it to be ordered by mail. So I went to my spice rack. Found an old jar of dill seed – those seeds had to be 10 years old at least! I figured at least a few might sprout, so I just planted the entire bottle. About 2 TBSP of seed. I think about half of them sprouted. I am drowning in dill! But that is actually good, because I was able to start using it within a few weeks, by taking the tops off the thinnings, and using them. One less thing to buy.
That is why we decided to do it. One more step in a series that may take us somewhere we didn’t plan on going. But it will put us in a position where we have the only kind of food storage we can have, and where we can have more control over the costs of the food that we require.
But I still wake in the morning and wonder how we got here, and where it is going to take us. I marvel that I am actually enjoying what I never thought I would. I am amazed at the number of miracles we have been blessed with in it, in finding ways to do what we thought we could not.
Now… I just need to figure out how pay tithing on a duck.
Rabbits, Ducks, and Worms, Oh My
Sometime before we left for camp this year, we started talking about getting Rabbits. For meat. Yeah, people eat those cute fuzzy things – many rabbits are bred specifically for meat production, the same as chickens. Rabbits are easier to raise though, produce a bit more meat in a little less time, eat less food to do it, and are easier to process. Butchering chickens is a messy, stinky endeavor. Rabbits are easier and less smelly.
Kevin and I talked about it a bit, decided it would probably be a good thing – Kevin is willing to do the butchering, I can process the meat after that (we’ve processed a lot of wild game over the years, so we know what we are getting in for). We need organic meat, and it is very expensive. Turns out rabbit meat has proteins that are a bit easier to digest than chicken, which I haven’t been able to have for a long time, because I can’t break it down (along with soy, and all other beans).
So this fall, after returning to camp, we located some breeder rabbits. We’ll be doing some selective breeding to see if we can come up with a good strain that meets our needs better than the current meat rabbit breeds. I rather dislike the red eyed white breeds – they are a bit ugly, and I dislike those red eyes! We also want a larger breed that is still an efficient producer.
We now have five rabbits, which are each housed in their own cage (after a week of frantic cage building accompanied by a series of small miracles). We have a lovely sandy Flemish doe, a Californian buck, a pure black Satin/Flemish/Silver Marten cross buck, and two Chinchilla gray Satin/Flemish/Silver Marten cross does. We have named our breeders – we won’t name the offspring unless we reserve them out for breeding. We’ll eventually add New Zealand to the mix as well.
The Flemish has already bred, but the two gray does are having a bit of trouble getting the idea. We think they are Feminists, they stomp and threaten the males any time we put the does in the buck cage for breeding. Like Feminists though, the militant is often subdued by mothering instinct, and they do seem to be mellowing gradually.
Then came the idea of ducks… Duck meat is actually a good substitute for red meat (if you get nutritionally deficient, red meat is best for recovery, and this is an issue with Crohn’s disease), but most duck meat is a tad harder to digest than beef. Except one…. Muscovy is easier to digest. Good for someone with certain kinds of protein malabsorption.
Turns out Muscovy is perfect for us in other ways too. They aren’t noisy like other ducks (so you can often keep them in city limits), and they produce more meat (can grow twice as big as other ducks). They are also better foragers, and require a little less poultry food. Between the rabbits, and the ducks, we should eventually be able to meet 100% of our meat needs, and for a fraction of what it is costing us now.
Hard to find Muscovies to buy though. We finally did, in Wyoming even (a miracle, since most places that sell ducklings won’t ship to rural Wyoming). Saturday, we spend the morning building a pen in the garage to house them temporarily – on the other end from the rabbits (our garage now smells like the poultry building at the fair…). Then we went to get the ducks – a three hour drive each way.They were so big they would not fit into the containers we brought, but the farmer kindly provided an additional cage for us, and straw to line it.
Monday, we fenced part of the yard, and Tuesday, after a mighty wrestle with each one (tough little buggers), we clipped their flight feathers (required to do so by law), and turned them loose in the back yard pen. We have 16 ducks feeding on weeds and grasshoppers.
We had intended to get ducklings – grown ducks are simply too costly. So when we found the ducks in Wyoming for the same price we’d seen ducklings for, we assumed they were small. NOT! They were nearly full grown! Some are mature enough to breed already! We got better than we had expected. We also suspect he slipped in more females than we paid for. A few of the breeders have been named – The Count (a large mature drake), Snowflake (a large female with white markings), and Cleopatra (a small duck with a black head, and white eyeliner markings extending back from the corners of her eyes). Some of the drakes will go to the table in the next few weeks.
So if you have rabbits, and a garden, the association of fertilizer and compost is a natural. Which leads the prudent to…
Worms.
That’s right. And if you have ducks, it is even more logical.
Worms are added to the rabbit waste – it just takes some litter material (sawdust, straw, paper pulp, etc), the rabbit droppings, and worms. This reduces the waste volume, and turns it into nice compost which is perfect for a garden. Those worms end up a tasty treat for the ducks too (they’ll multiply vigorously), and provide extra protein for the table birds. A nice cycle of efficiency. The worms have been ordered, and should be on the way.
Eventually, we’ll try other things – but not where we are now. You can only do so much on a city lot where you have to keep the noise and smells to a minimum.
This isn’t where we intended to go. But it seems to be where we need to go. Spiraling grocery costs dictate that you either produce your own food, or be held hostage by rising prices that consume an ever larger portion of your funds. Currently food takes more than half of what we make – and we are not frivolous (we buy things like wheat, rice, fresh vegetables, fresh fruits, almost no processed food). We just require a lot of organic food, and it is very costly. It costs the same amount per WEEK that it used to cost per MONTH to feed the family, and we had more kids home then. Not a sustainable trend.
Ducks, rabbits, worms, and a greenhouse and garden are a sustainable thing. They are a lot of work, but will give more than they take if we manage them wisely.
A Jungle in My Window
My view of the back yard is obstructed by green. This is a good thing! I have plants over a foot tall in my hydroponics system. Currently have about 70 plants in it, and we will add about another 20 sometime over the next few days. Working on building another system to hold about another 80 also. That oughta be enough to keep us in lettuce and broccoli at least.
Most of the plants are in early stages of growth. The lettuce is big enough that I can rob it of a few leaves for a salad each evening – somewhere around 15 lettuce plants are big enough to do that with. The broccoli raab is almost ready to sprout some buds – about eight plants growing like fury! Half the plants are still very small though, barely started, many still in the two-leaf stage, some finally sprouting a second tier of leaves. The chard has half-sized leaves, about 5 per plant, but is not ready to be able to use – the few leaves I could gather would not be enough to be of value yet.
The big stuff is finally big enough that it is now difficult to distinguish individual plants. And some experimental bush beans are turning out to be more like pole beans without the tendrils, weaving their way up through the other plants, finally forming buds that look like they may be blossoms.
After working so hard for it, and waiting weeks and weeks to get this far, it is satisfying to be able to selectively harvest once a day. But I am impatient for more of it to bear, because I need SO much more than once a day! And the kids need it too.
So right now, I look at this as a beginning, but know it is not the whole thing. Still much work to do to get it to do what we really need it to do. Overuse at the moment could postpone that day, so I reluctantly restrain myself from grabbing salads whenever I need.
Logistically, is it possible to provide for all of our veggie needs this way? I still don’t know. Because I don’t yet know how long growth takes in this system, or how much each is capable of bearing, between those plants that bear repeatedly, and those that bear once and need replaced, and all of those that fall somewhere between.
I am already planting once a week, a new round of about 20 more plants. Eventually we may need to step that up. There is the garden for the summer also, which will take the burden off the system temporarily, though I am CERTAIN my daughter will want the indoor bug-free ones instead of the outdoor grown ones!
No point to make, really, just a ramble to give you an idea of what is happening with it, and what our results were.
A Gift of Radicchio
I think a lot about vegetables lately – because I need quite a bit, and they are expensive in Wyoming. I am often surprised at how the Lord answers prayers, and try to make the most of it even when the answer isn’t what I really wanted.
I went out this morning to check to see if the strawberries we planted last summer were greening up yet – a friend said theirs were, and I was surprised because it is early for Wyoming. We had a mild winter though, even finding spinach plants that had managed to winter over – quite a few, in fact, and discovering more every day. The grass and dandelions are already making a comeback in the garden – the weeds grow long after the edible greens die, and they come back sooner in the spring too. So weeding starts before the ground is even fully thawed it seems.
Today, in last summer’s lettuce beds, I found some red heads poking up from the dirt. A plant that had grown leafy last summer was forming small tight heads – distinctly red with white veins. Close inspection and a nibble on a leaf proved it to be Radicchio.
I hate Radicchio. But I had prayed for vegetables, and here was Radicchio – something I had not intentionally planted, would have pulled if I had seen it last summer, and certainly did not ask for now. Our mesclun mix has 6 things I like, and three that I do not like. I do not like curly endive either, but it is distinctive enough to yank out the minute the leaves start to frill, and the arugula that makes me gag is also easily recognizable early on, and therefore erradicated without hesitation. The Radicchio had been green and red last summer, and had disguised itself as red lettuce, thereby escaping extermination.
Now I knew it for what it was. It is early spring. It will be many months before we have vegetables in the garden. It will be weeks before the plants in my indoor hydroponic system bear anything worth mention. Here was this vegetable, volunteering to grow NOW. Pickable and eatable, NOW. It demanded respect… and it plead for me to acknowledge that I had asked, and had been given.
I do not like Broccoli Raab really either. But it grows fast, and produces well out here. I find I can tolerate it, even come to enjoy it, if it is steamed, rinsed, and then sauteed in garlic butter. It has a similar flavor to Radicchio – sharp, bitter. If Broccoli Raab, then why not Radicchio?
So I searched out recipes – many of which made me want to cook more! One of which I have the ingredients for (important when many call for items I’ve never even seen in the local grocery stores), and which I can actually eat (many call for cured meats or cheeses that I cannot have), and which I think I can whip up and enjoy with dinner.
So I am heading to the garden to harvest some of the unexpected Radicchio, hoping I can like the gift I have been given. Trying my best to make lemonade of lemons.
Green Tomato Relish – Another Garden Metaphor
Yesterday, I enjoyed a nice chicken salad on crackers, made especially tasty by stirring in a healthy amount of green tomato relish. The day before, I savored nachos, topped with zingy green tomato salsa. Tonight, I’ll slice and fry the last green tomato to serve beside dinner.
Sometime about the end of August, our abundant tomato crop was hit with the first freeze. We weren’t sure then whether we’d get any mature tomatoes or not. In the best Frugal Yankee tradition, I began looking for recipes for green tomatoes.
Relish, Salsa, Fried Green Tomatoes, Pickles, Casseroles, etc. Who knew there were so many uses for unripe garden fruits?
Every single one required two things from me:
1. Additional ingredients. Sometimes they were things I did not have on hand – I had to get them specifically if I wanted to utillize the abundant crop of green tomatoes.
2. Effort and specific types of work. What I did with them made all the difference.
You can see where I’m going with this…
We didn’t plant the garden and say, “Oh! I hope we get a LOT of green tomatoes, I’m just so looking forward to having to make-do!” We had big dreams when we planted 40 tomato plants. We wanted sauced, diced, and ketchuped tomatoes!
That first freeze didn’t kill our hopes. In fact, after that first freeze, which only killed the tops of the tomatoes, we gathered a small amount of red tomatoes – enough to make a weeny batch of ketchup. A few more tomatoes ripened indoors after a hard killing frost in September.
But we had more greens than reds, and we had to do something with them. In order to use them, we had to add the right ingredients, and if we didn’t have them, we had to go buy them. One or two were things I’d not need for anything else – I had to get them specifically to make use of those green tomatoes. And I had to do the right things with them, to make them into something good, otherwise they’d just be yucky green tomatoes.
Life, family, and business all do that to us. We plan our plans, and start to carry them out, and along comes a disaster that blights our hopes and kills the plans. What do we do then?
Do we cry that we didn’t get our juicy red tomatoes? Do we look at the distruction of our plants and at all those sad green tomatoes and see nothing but disaster? Or do we go seek out recipes for green tomatoes, and then add the necessary additional elements to turn them into something unexpected, but every bit as tasty and useful as what we had originally planned?
Sure, I still wish I had been able to harvest a bounty of red, ripe tomatoes. But since life handed me green tomatoes, I’m just thankful that there was something good I could do with them to turn it into a blessing of a different kind.
Another Garden Analogy
There is a scriptural reference to seeds that are scattered in good soil, and bad soil, or which receive favorable or unfavorable conditions in which to sprout and grow. It refers to faith – but it makes it very clear that seeds need a good start, and careful tending, to grow. I often think that we ignore this simple truth many times with business, from ignorance, lack of motivation, distraction, impatience, or even greed.
So, in tribute to the comment made by Mitch Allen on my blog post titled Business is Like a Vegetable Garden, I’ll expand on this thought.
I think we often just toss the seeds of business out the window, hoping, like Jack, that they’ll sprout overnight into a great stalk that reaches a pot of gold hidden in the clouds. But Jack is just a fairy tale. Nothing good ever grows that easily.
Many of us, when the first seeds don’t produce the miracle we wanted, will turn around and throw some more seeds out the window, in the vain hope that they’ll sprout and grow by themselves. We may make a token effort to weed or water them, then we give up because they didn’t sprout soon enough, or bear soon enough.
We fail to take the time to clear a suitable spot for them, and to determine that we will give it the time each day to nurture and care for the seeds before they sprout, and then to care for the seedlings until they bear fruit.
Later, we fail to be patient while the plants are growing – we just want the good stuff, and are not content to see the almost imperceptible growth, and accept it as a promise that there will be good things to eat soon.
Whether you plant in pots, or in the yard, you have to follow through, and not get too distracted or impatient. Otherwise, our efforts only result in barren ground where there should have been growth.
Gone to Seed
We planted, and watered, and watered, and watered, and weeded, and watered. And just the squash came up. We watered some more, and replanted, and some lettuce came up. The deer ate it. We put stinky fertilizer around it. The deer left it alone.
This summer was hot. And stormy. For three weeks we had blazing heat. Right about the time we planted, of course. So the seeds got cooked before they could sprout. The soil is clay, so heat just bakes it and the soil holds the warmth.
The zucchini bore fruit. So did the squash. But the squash did not pollinate correctly, so it did not mature. The cucumbers grew, and we had enough cucumbers to eat and give away. Ah… the feeling of wealth that comes when you have something everyone else wants, that you can share!
Finally the beans and more lettuce came up. Along with about 6 beets. And countless tumbleweeds. Not to be outdone by the tumbleweeds, the grass, of course, sprouted and hollered for attention. Grass always does.
It is autumn in Wyoming. It comes early here. The storms are back, and the wind is picking up. The kids are a little less enthusiastic about watering the garden now, so it is not bearing as well. The weeds are attempting to come into their own. We are battling them, but it is a tough battle. And some of the plants want to go to seed. Growth, yes, but not USEFUL growth right now, since we don’t WANT seeds, we want fresh veggies.
Again the comparison to business is too strong to ignore. Have I let it go to seed – have I let it grow into something I did not want, and have no use for, at the expense of something I do need? Have the weeds of discouragement, disorganization, and distraction taken over and sapped the strength from the desired growth?
And if so, what do I do about it? I think it is easier to spot the problems than it is to actually SOLVE them. A plan. Some action. Good action.
Tomorrow WILL be better.
Business is Like a Vegetable Garden
We planted a garden again for the first time in about 8 years. Living at
high altitude, gardening is doubly difficult. Some of my kids have never
gardened before, so they are learning fresh.
First, you plan the garden. Where will you put it so it has the best
chance of succeeding? Which crops will you grow? If you choose the wrong
ones for your area, or for your soil, they’ll either die, or be twice as
hard to grow. And you make sure that the entire plan is actually doable
– not so big you can’t keep up with it, big enough to make it worth your
while, and designed and laid out so that it will be as easy to maintain
as possible. You might think about mulch, or pest management, or other
long term maintenance items, and how to implement wise timesavers to
keep it all as efficient as possible.
Then, you prepare the ground. You have to dig a lot, and then you have
to take some crap and use it for good rather than just wallowing in it.
You may need some help, or to borrow a tool or two.
Next, you get in and sow some seeds – you don’t know which ones will
sprout and which ones will die, so you throw a few extra into each hole.
Then you water. And water. And water. For three weeks you wait to see
signs of anything coming of what you already spent so much time doing.
Just about the time the sprouts start to show, some weeds crop up. They
can just suck the life out of the garden if you don’t nip them quick. So
you KEEP watering, and you start weeding. It can get discouraging at
this point, but that is the requirement of gardening, so you do it.
Eventually you have nice plants that look just great. Your garden, if
tended right, begins to show signs that it is going to give you a
reward. Because you still just have potentials, no vegetables. At this
point though, it is easy to keep going because you can see that it is
likely to pay off – as long as you don’t get complacent and slow down.
Eventually, the crops start to appear – small at first. Some can be
harvested early, but not too many. If you take too much too soon, you
miss out on the bumper crop!
And then the plants start to bear so much that you find yourself giving
away your hard earned results to anyone whom you think might enjoy them.
In the season of bounty, generosity feels just great, especially when
you realize that no matter how much zucchini you give away, there will
still be enough for you, even if you store as much as you have room for!
Business can be like that – but without winter coming to wipe it all out
at the end of the season. But where you put in months of work for a
garden, you put in years with a business.
I think as we have distanced ourselves from the soil, we’ve lost a few
of the inborn understandings that we once had – kids used to know from
raising animals and growing crops, that you had to give it a lot before
it would pay you back. How much feed and care and training do you give a
colt before you ever get to ride him?
So where is your garden? Have you sown enough seed? Have you watered it
after you sowed it? Did you weed it and tend it even when it wasn’t
certain that there would be a crop to reward you? And if your business
is producing a bumper crop, are you showering the needy with zucchini?
Gardening doesn't have to be that hard! No matter where you live, no matter how difficult your circumstances, you CAN grow a successful garden.
Life from the Garden: Grow Your Own Food Anywhere Practical and low cost options for container gardening, sprouting, small yards, edible landscaping, winter gardening, shady yards, and help for people who are getting started too late. Plenty of tips to simplify, save on work and expense.
