I manage a Garden Center, and I cannot argue with any of your comments.
However, since I’m a Good Little Capitalist, you can be darn sure that I’ll ride this wave of mild “panic” and sell more veggie plants and seeds this upcoming season than the last.
It IS hard to grow food for your family. It takes time, energy, good weather, smart planning...and again, TIME. I have a 1/4 acre garden and an orchard and if I told you I managed a Garden Center (full time) and then showed you my garden, you’d laugh yourself silly.
However, when I had the TIME and worked from home and raised up the boys, I had an AWESOME, productive garden which fed us well. Not completely, but as a supplement to purchased, gleaned, hunted and fished-for foodstuffs.
And once you HAVE a bountiful garden, there are hours and DAYS of processing that food, either by canning or freezing or making jam or whatever. and that starts with the first harvested spring peas and beans through the last harvested apples and squashes. Yeesh, what a season-long job!
My SIL shared a wonderful recipe with me for white beans and rosemary. The beans are soaking right now. That bag of dried beans cost me 97 CENTS at Wal-Mart. She was talking this morning about planting drying beans in her garden this upcoming spring. I just chuckled and explained to her that she would need a huge area to grow drying beans in her garden; it is not cost-effective by any stretch. I don’t do it, even back when I had the time to.
While my customers will enjoy a few patio-grown tomatoes, and a row of green beans, a few pots of herbs or some home-grown lettuce, the vast majority of them won’t be ‘feeding’ themselves without the work of others and the Free Market (Hey! That’s ME!) any time soon. :)
I totally agree with you about the drying bean. Way too cheap in the store to bother messing with them.
Plain old green peas are another one, although I have to plant my peas. Frozen peas in the supermarket are just as good as what comes from the garden. Do you know how many row feet of peas you have to plant, and then the time to shuck them to get the 2 pounds that are in the $1 bag (on sale) in the frozen food aisle?
I like putting them in because they are the first real veggie I can put in the ground while it is still WINTER. They also look real pretty growing around the fence when nothing else is growing :)
I’m heading back to the kitchen in a few minutes, to get some more cookie dogh going for more cookies for our cookie exchange at church on Saturday. Then over the weekend I will put together the “sweet treats” the girls have to bring for the 5th grade Christmas party next Thursday. As of right now I’m planning on Grinch Poop, Reindeer Farts and (don’t you eat the) Yellow Snowman cookies.
After dinner, which will be after Girl Scouts, this evening Jax and I will be snuggling up to watch a DVD of Mommy’s favorite animated Christmas TV show!!!!!!!