–Myles Munroe
For some personalities the reason for doing something doesn’t matter once the decision is made to do it. For others, the WHY will be what drives us to continue.
Be clear about your WHY. Not just in gardening, but in everything. It is okay if your reason is “because I can” but it isn’t very motivating. For those who are planning to garden on a larger scale, there are days when your WHY will keep you going. For me, those days are when the bugs are swarming or when my back is acting up.
The most common reasons I hear for wanting to grow food are, in no particular order, a desire for clean food, thrift, nostalgia, preparedness or prepping, a need to get back to the land, wanting to reduce your impact on the environment and/or food security. Most people have more than one reason. What put you on this path?
Project
While you wait for your seed catalogs, go pick out a garden diary. Any notebook will do but something hardback will hold up better than something flimsy. I cannot tell you how much I wish we had kept one from the very beginning of our adventure. We look back at it several times a year to remember what worked, what didn’t, what variety we planted and when we started our seeds. Get your garden diary at the very beginning. Make documenting your experiment a habit.
Changes you can make
On your next grocery trip, while you are reading country of origin labels on every piece of produce you consider, find something grown in your state and purchase it. If you can’t find anything, ask an employee.
Chew on this
Whether or not you are aware of the decisions you make everyday, you are responsible for the results.
Suggested reading, watching, listening
I eat up information but in order to do that responsibly, I have to fact check everything. I have never found any source that is 100% accurate and never flawed in any way. So disagreeing with part of something I read or hear is not enough for me to dismiss it. If there is far more good information than bad, I consider it a win. There is more information available to us in less time than at any point in human history. Dive in.
When I am in the garden, I love to listen to podcasts. It helps time fly and distracts me from tedium. Right now I am really into Healthy Living with Angela Busby. She is a wealth of knowledge and doesn’t put me to sleep. Healthy Living is available on iTunes and Stitcher.
Katy Had a Little Farm 