Greenjeans Farm

We’re busting out of the greenhouses this year!   I’ve run out of trays, thanks to my dear friend across the valley Barbara who keeps giving me her saved seeds!  We have more heirloom vegetables than ever and I’m busy trying to figure out how to mark them in the big garden so we really know who they are.  The ornamentals are coming on strong.  Gotta get stuff in the ground! 

We are kind of in experimental mode this year!  And it is WAY fun!  That’s the way I like it!  Jeff is still trying to deal with the rain and the cold and the soil but I am looking forward to that first fresh pea and potato salad with chives and sour cream dressing!   I am also looking forward to the unusual that you can’t find in the grocery that have the taste that you could have had 100 years ago!  Some of the great gourds from last year are turning into fairy houses with a little carving and paint!  We are doing a fairy garden at the bottom of the bottle tree!  Stay tuned for that one, I’m going to let the Morning Glory run its course there!  

I think it’s going to be a great year, and we are really ready for it!    We are going to take it as it comes, and if you wish, please give us your email address and we will let you know when things are ripe and ready!     

I don’t know how many people actually read I Village articles, but sometimes I do.  Today I ran across quirky kitchen things we learned from mom.  Lot’s of peeling and throwing salt type things.

Honestly, I think the best things I learned from my mom were substitutions.  She grew up in the depression and was a young wife during the second world war when there were wide spread food shortages.  She taught me how to make sour cream from canned milk, garlic powder and wine vinegar. (I actually prefer that in my stroganov).  Things to do with crème of tartar! How to make a substitute for unsweetened chocolate out of cocoa and make the best black pudding ever. How to make REAL dressing, and great sauces though my recipe and her’s are very different.  The main lesson being It doesn’t matter what you don’t have!     The entire thread of the article even though it was not really brought out, was never waste!  How totally true that is!  There is nothing about a single piece of food that can be considered waste.  Either it feeds you and your family or it feeds your animals or the birds, or your compost pile!  Waste is the plastic that wraps the plastic bags in the macaroni and cheese you are cooking out of that box.   

We never peel a vegetable here at Greenjeans  because there are lots of tasty nutrients in vegetable skins.   We are lucky to have enough to be able to cook things whole like carrots and turnips and potatoes to make wonderful broths for soup skin and all. 

Truth be told I like my veggies whole.  I grow and care for these things to give me their whole flavor.  If you wash any vegetable well, it can come to your table in all it’s glory.  Double truth be told I like to stand out in the field and eat them dirt and all.  I don’t mind a little dirt in my teeth for eating a great green bean or a piece of lettuce .  I am a great grazer.     

There is a framed postcard in our bathroom that greets me each morning on the shelf where I keep my make up brushes.  It portrays a 1950ish beautiful blonde woman ala Lana Turner in full make up and the caption on the bottom is “Frugal is such an ugly word.”  There is also a framed postcard on another shelf in our bathroom that portrays a 1950ish beautiful red headed housewife type and the caption on the bottom is “My Garden Kicks Ass”.  

These two postcards totally explain my relationship with frugality.  On one hand thinking frugal is a pain, on the other hand it can be greatly rewarding and a heck of a lot of fun.  The fact that I chose to place these two in our bathroom is beyond me.  I guess I think of the bathroom as a place of reflection!  And I am definitely a split personality.

There is the me who wants to be able to live in the Pottery Barn Catalogue.  And there is the other me who looks at the pictures in the  Pottery Barn Catalogue and can figure out how to get the same look and feel at a fraction of the price!  That spurs me on to other frugal adventures.  It would be wonderful to be able to hire people to decorate your home, or landscape your property, or if dogs and cats and mud and dust and fly’s didn’t exist!  And yet it is rewarding to be able to plant with abandon and make things grow and have a beautiful multi colored frog visit you in the bathroom while you are brushing your teeth.  And to not have to pay $300 for a slip cover that your dog is going to destroy in a matter of months. 

I long for an all white living room, I always have.  If I ever lived by myself I would have one, it would also have a view of city lights and ever changing floral themes in the room.  But I live  on a working farm with the people I love, so I won’t attempt an all white living room any time soon and if I ever get there I think it would be initially satisfying, but really lonely. You are never going to get alot of people that want to live in an all white house.    And hey, I can always go to my all white living room in my head and the people I love know not to bother me when I’m there! 

Visiting second hand and consignment stores rather than “antique” shops.  Making new friends, finding friends who have saved what they tore out of their homes and are willing to give you that wood that is just laying around, or the clawfoot tub that didn’t fit in the new bathroom. Or trading a tent for a mattress!   Buying that fabulous three door refrigerator that is marked down by 50% because there is a scratch on the side that no one will see.  These are the things that make frugal fun.  Trading plants and recipes with a neighbor.  Buying a side of organic beef that two families can share!  Now that is fun!  That is participating in your life, being conscious of what you are doing!

There are a lot of people who think they are entitled, either because of education or their “place” in society, what ever they think that is.  But none of us should think that it’s not work, getting up everyday, hitting the ground running.  Here and there you slam your head against a wall or fall down and brush yourself off and hit the ground running the next day!  The only rule should be it is never at the expense of another. 

I am not sure what this whole ramble means, except that I am leading up to taking a sledge hammer to my 7 foot living room ceiling.  Honey get the tarps out and catch on to the vision!