Last spring, after reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma, which came recommended by way of a blog post by Waldo Jaquith, I decided to join a community supported agriculture program here in Northern Virginia run by the Hauter family at Bull Run Farm. Learning to cook with the seasons and trying a variety of new vegetables I’d not had before was quite a rewarding experience.

I had a basil plant that grew to be quite large (3’ tall) and some sage but nothing of a real garden. I decided that this year, it needed to be done up a bit more properly. But lacking more than the 5’x8’ concrete balcony floating 80’ off the ground, I am limited as to how extensive I can make it. But I’m going ot give it a good run for the summer and see how it progresses. I plan to keep extensive track of it via the blog, so apologies to those expecting some wonderful insight to usability or design on a regular basis. For the next few months, the order of the day is… dirt.

The basics were laid last week: an onion that had taken to sprouting on my counter was put into a pot, the Aloe Vera plant transplanted to a larger container, the sage given it’s own pot proper. And today, with the arrival of a variety of heirloom sees, the mini greenhouses have been sown with arugula, basil, lavender, thyme, and carrots. Tomorrow, I’ll plant some various lettuces, radishes, and beans in their pots outside.

I plan to put in tomatoes, lettuce, white eggplant, and squash by next Monday. I have also ordered a dehyhdrator and plan to attempt to do some pressure canning as well (with much direction from Lisa King, I’m sure!)

So, does anyone know of any good self-watering drip irrigation systems that would be deployable on a balcony?

Waldo linked to a great essay by Paul Graham entitled Stuff. Simple premise that most of us are aware of: We have way too many things. These things start to control our lifestyles, requiring larger spaces to hold our things. Restricting what we can do because us things preclude us from doing so. Houses grew astronomically in the last 30 years (look at the McMansion plight) and why? Simply to hold more things.

Stash It Away

When I moved out of my house and into an apartment with my then girlfriend in 2003, I put a ton of things in a storage unit. Door 2 Door storage. They drop off a pod, you fill it up, and then they take it away. I paid approximately $70 a month for my stuff to sit in a storage unit. In the mean time I broke up with the girlfriend, moved into a friend’s house, then bought a house, and then sold my share in that house and moved into a relatively large apartment. Three locations where I didn’t notice that stuff was missing or didn’t need it. Granted, there was a couch and coffee table in there that I now am using again, but the bulk of it is paper in boxes and items I did not want nor need.

Yet after getting all that stuff out of the storage unit, the “oh but I might need this someday!” voices start. And I realized how addicted I was to just… crap.

Absolut [sic] Minimalism

My friend Todd is able to live in an apartment half my size by ruthlessly getting rid of stuff. Todd could pack a car and be gone tonight. The most difficult thing for him would be to wrap all the (full) wine bottles he has. It’s not that he keeps these long. He just enjoys wine and keeps a good amount in regular rotation. Wine, Basic kitchen stuff, A bed. Clothes. A laptop. Some quintessential books. That’s about it.

But there’s something elegant about it. A very clean apartment. A very simple lifestyle. No distractions. But that’s not for everyone. Too many of us are infatuated with objects.

Why?

Friends of mine know that I am a five-year-old child who likes to ask “why” about pretty much everything. The stuff is a symptom of a problem. Why searches out that problem. I don’t think the problem is necessarily a personal one, but a societal one. Paul Graham discusses this briefly.

Suburbia has spawned sprawling complexes of things to buy to fill up your space. Pier One, IKEA, etc. are all vestiges of this. Temples to commerce surrounded by seas of asphalt where worshipers park their cars (because you can’t walk to the temple) and go inside to pray to the almighty dollar by spending it feverously.

I don’t hate these people. I am one of these people. So the question is: how does a pack-rat like me give up the ghost on stuff?

If you haven’t heard about it, you should.

Millions of bees are missing [also in op/ed | originally seen on waldo’s site]. There’s been a nationwide drop in population this winter, and it’s not just bees dying. They’re disappearing. This is important for a few reasons. First off, most agriculture that involves any kind of flower (e.g. nuts, fruits, etc.) requires a honey bee to help with pollination. There are no good man-made equivalents to these guys running around doing that which they do. Second, it’s worrysome because no one knows why.

One potential reason for this is the rise in industrialized beekeeping. Large hives are literally driven around the country and overworked. Weak bees, weak immune systems, bye bye bees.

The article also points to (but does not expand upon) a bigger problem: local honey. This article by Tom Ogren discusses the benefits of local honey:

Allergies arise from continuous over-exposure to the same allergens. If, for example, you live in an area where there is a great deal of red clover growing, and if in addition you often feed red clover hay to your own horses or cattle, then it likely you are exposed over and over to pollen from this same red clover. Now, red clover pollen is not especially allergenic but still, with time, a serious allergy to it can easily arise. [...] Honeybees will collect pollen from each of these species and it will be present in small amounts in honey that was gathered by bees that were working areas where these species are growing. When people living in these same areas eat honey that was produced in that environment, the honey will often act as an immune booster. The good effects of this local honey are best when the honey is taken a little bit (a couple of teaspoons-full) a day for several months prior to the pollen season.

Most of the honey you buy comes from China now.

Look at getting local and joining a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) program. I just joined the Bull Run Farm out in Haymarket. They deliver to 16th & P downtown once a week for the whole growing season.

Local honey might be more expensive on the sticker price¹ but how much is your health worth? Would you rather spend hundreds of dollars on allergy shots, or a few dollars on local honey?

UPDATE (7/17/07): It possibly appears that organic bees aren’t suffering the same losses and it would appear that hyper-bred bees and excessively large hives are the issue. Man screws with something and then wonders why it all goes to hell.

¹ This of course doesn’t take into account the cost of bringing the honey to market or environmental impacts of factory farming that make foreign prices less expensive in some cases