Isn't This Where I Came In?

I started a blog called The Ballad of Brown Thumb when this project was just going to be a hapless home gardener story. So far, it's still about as hapless as it is possible to get. However, with the crushingly high gas prices, followed by even more crushingly high food prices, compounded with my lack of employment and the woefully inelastic nature of my husband's paycheck, the back yard fiddlin' around gardening has taken on a much more serious tone. We don't have a lot, but one of things we do have is a fairly large suburban yard and absolutely no lawn. (Wild Bermuda grass doesn't count. It isn't a lawn, it's a scourge.)

Sort of like the homeschooling issue, my spouse was either vehemently against cultivating the yard or very vehemently against cultivating the yard (I think his choices were wide-spread herbicide or as much cement as the city would allow us to cover the place with). We achieved a sort of detente: He wouldn't grouse about what I did with the place as long as I didn't ask him to pick up so much as a stray dandelion. However, when push comes to shove (i.e. aforementioned sky-high gas prices combined with a perilously vacant bank account) spouse becomes extremely flexible. Growing as much of our food as possible doesn't sound quite as end-times-apocalyptic-nutjob or hippy-dippy-backwoods-counterculture as it used to. It sounds like a reasonable response to having little cash flow and three growing children to feed.

So, after a little discussion wherein he learned that I have been thinking about this a very, very long time and have some very, very firm opinions on how this cat should be saddled - and I learned that he's still the same stubborn quarter-Irish that I married all those years ago - he heard my goals and agreed with them. We're just going to have some lively discussions on how to meet those goals. I've never been threatened with a boring life.

Goal 1: Establish Hopping Goose Farm. This is going to take a lot of cleanup, digging, building, and general blood/sweat equity.

Goal 2: Replace as much of the grocery list with homegrown as is feasible. I'm not giving up dairy, the city won't let us run miniature sheep let alone miniature cattle, and the cost/benefit to me making my own laundry soap is dismal. However, I can see replacing a lot of staple goods in our fallow square footage.

Goal 3: Earn at least a little pin money by selling excess at farmers' markets.

Right now I'm struggling with the script that has followed me all of my life, to wit: I can learn how to fail at just about everything. Unfortunately for the script, I have a household to feed and it won't get fed on my curling up in a corner and refusing to even try. So the question isn't: Can I do this? It's more along the lines of: How do I get this done?

Welcome to Hopping Goose Farm. It ought to be an interesting ride.