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It is never to late.......right?

Posted at 12:08 AM on June 30, 2008 by Vera Schabicki (2 Comments)

I have started the recovery process from my enjoyable visit with my father. We drove to
Erie, Pennsylvania to visit some of my fathers cousins.....a long drive...very nice people. Listening to them talk about life before, during and after the war.........so much suffering and waste.....and it lasts for so many generations. I really wish this suffering was not being inflicted on so many people as I sit and write this..........all that horror.

I did notice that my very gracious host and hostess had a lot of local things; they had Luncheon meats from an Erie company and also delicious rye bread, all from a local grocery store . I wondered if the homogenization (is that a word?) of American food is progressing at different rates in different parts of the country (most of the town was the usual run of chain stores and restaurants that one can find cloned in any American town).

I have continued to feel a lot of time pressure, I get a lot of things done but not reading my co Locavores blogs, which I miss, not getting time to write my own blog or do more research into cool local things (I did drive for almost an hour to the Bolivar, TN inaugural farmers market to discover that there was no one there...oh the vagaries of high gas prices and the locavore lifestyle) or try to do something about my miserably failing garden........I feel too young to fail so spectacularly.

Gas prices are starting to be an issue, I have to drive pretty far to get to a farmers market, I am not connected well enough locally to find people who have managed to grow things despite armadillos (which continue to nightly dig up various portions of my garden) and beetles.

Best wishes, Vera

Comments (2)

Vera, I'm sorry to read that the armadillos have been so destructive to your gardens. I'm glad we don't have the little buggers this far north. Do you have any kind of fencing around your gardens? Or do the armadillos dig under the fences? I have no armadillo experience, but we have serious problems with deer and rabbits here. Only a strong fence will keep our gardens safe from the ravages of wildlife (our flower beds get munched regularly). Our main veggie garden is bordered with a solar-powered electric fence. It works pretty well; we turn it off each winter, then bait it with peanut butter each spring. The deer bite down on the peanut-butter-smeared electric fence and never want to come near the garden again. (At least not until next year, by which time they've forgotten all about the previous year's shock.) Alternatively, for our pigs, we found that chain-link fencing works well to prevent them from digging holes under the fence. If you turn the chain-link upside down, the points at the top of each link sit on the ground. When the pigs try to dig under the fence, the sharp points poke their noses. Maybe something like this would work for armadillos? I hope you have better luck in the future with keeping out unwanted critters.
Cheers,
Autumn

Posted by Autumn Long | June 30, 2008 3:13 PM

Hi, Vera - "Too young to fail" made me smile... it is hard to keep up a garden and this single-minded locavore focus when life-at-large is taking so many unexpected turns, on top of your adjusting to an entirely new environment (e.g., California to Mississippi). To not feel like I'm failing, I have to remind myself (for example) that Kingsolver had a supportive infrastructure and her venture was related to how she earns her local bread. That still makes for a huge undertaking, a great story, great inspiration -- but it's different. I read the blog more for those insights than for the stats... when you are committed -- committed publicly even -- to a deeply held value, what gets in the way of living it out? A lot, as it turns out, and along with the political, economic and sociological issues, that's where a lot of the human interest lies. You have lots of years to get it (the garden, or anything else for that matter) where you want it to be :-). Take care,
Cher

Posted by Cher | July 3, 2008 9:17 AM