Starting the Garden

Garden 
     We started our garden on a shoestring. Since money is so tight, fresh vegetables are a luxury. I hate to say it but it's cheaper to eat fast food that is horrible for your health than it is to eat healthy. I got a bunch of free seeds and bought a stack of 20 cent packages from Wal-mart. We had a lot of PVC pipe from when we had to replace our well, and we used it to make a 16 foot by 44 foot greenhouse. We had tried gardens before, but the deer and our pet goats had fun eating everything. We lost several fruit trees and vegetables to the animals. This year we are planting everything in the greenhouse, so the animals can't get our garden.
     We used toilet tissue rolls, paper towel rolls and rolled newspaper to make starter cups for the plants. The trays from our restaurant came in handy for plant trays. I had a huge compost pile for use in the garden. My plants went crazy. I've already got romaine lettuce ready to pick, tomatoes on the vines and a few of every type of plant started. I can't wait for the local farmer's markets to start next week.
      I've already been eating salad greens from the garden. I picked romaine lettuce, cut the greens from some of the onions, a few spinach leaves, carrots, radishes, radish leaves and swiss chard to make a great salad. I can't wait for the tomatoes to get ripe. Tomatoes are the food I miss the most in the winter. This year, I'm going to can, dehydrate and freeze fresh ones. I really hate the taste of the can goods from the store.

Just Starting

     I've had to start learning how to make a sustainable living without much of an income. That's where the creative part comes in. I left public school teaching in 2008 to open my own restaurant - I know, bad timing right! The restaurant went under in 2009. We started teaching private classes, but, with the economy, we rarely have a class. We started substitute teaching, but there are so many out of work teachers that we don't get a lot of work in that area. We have had to learn how to stretch our money, and get used to accepting help.
     We are lucky because we own our car, truck, land and home. We bought and had an old building from Fort Jackson moved to our land. It was an old day room. It was a big, giant box with no electricity, plumbing or air conditioning. My husband had done plumbing when he was younger, so he had plenty of building experience. We were able to do most of the building and plumbing work ourselves. We had to hire people to do the electrical and air conditioning, but we kept the cost of the house down.