Growing categories to think about

Our autumn crops are in the ground, the goats milking season is over, and now it is time to pause.

Here’s a few homestead categories that I’m reflecting on:

1. Costs: What are the time costs and money costs that are going into our food yields, and into the homestead generally? What is easy to measure? What is difficult to measure, but important? Are we happy with the financial costs of our work, and are these sustainable? A few months ago, this consideration helped us to realise that propagating nursery stock was unsustainable, and that we needed to shift.

2. Yield: We need to take a realistic look at yield. How quickly does veg go from seed to seedling to something we can eat or sell? Can we estimate the relationship between time and yield? Are there places where our efforts are wasted, or we can redirect our energy? Are there foods that are easy/difficult to grow? Asking these questions has helped me to refocus on our values. Do we want to grow cash or calorie crops, and are there parts of the homestead that are underutilised?

3. Waste and practices that don’t align with our values Is there food that goes to waste? Is there food that goes to animals when it would be better consumed by people? How can we make that shift? Who can I gift produce to? Are there other types of waste in our system and/or household: e.g. plastic waste? Wasted energy? Are we happy with all the businesses and farms we work with, or would we like to slowly do certain things ourselves? This has helped towards a renewed focus on starting our own seedlings, ideally from saved seed.

4. Food consumed From our yields, much food are we consuming from the garden? How many calories, and how has preservation gone, where we’ve preserved foods? Are there foods we wished we had more of? Is it sustainable, or is it taking energy away from other important things? This reflection has helped us add fairly large plantings of berries and sweet potato.

5. Big picture How do all these reflections fit together, and fit with our connection to our community? Are there things I’m not seeing? How does cost, yield, waste and our food consumption fit with our workshops? How might these efforts care for ourselves, our land, and for people beyond our property? Are there ways to do better? What about concrete, small ways to do better the next six months?

These questions don’t have one right answer, but they are so much deeper and richer than “did you make money?” or “are you self-sufficient” or “are you organic/biodynamic/other?”

Here’s to times of questions and being at home with the inevitable tensions of growing together. Let me know your mid-year reflection questions?

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