its about time to start up the garden again with cold hardy plants and starts for the summer garden, just turned over my compost pile and found such wonderful black earthy richness to add to garden. 2 of my 4 children are gardeners and enjoy getting back to nature. had a divorce last year and moved into the city, with little ground to use as a garden, used pots, but did not fare well, will improve this year with bigger containers. love my fresh veggies.

I lived “off the grid” with my husband and son for three years. We did not have a fancy solar set up, just a couple trickle panels and gel batteries. We found that most the incentives and tax breaks are only if you are attached to the grid. We did not have any power or telephone poles on or near our property so we did not qualify for our states tax credits.
Still now that I have internet and year round running water in our home I miss the old lifestyle.

I grew up in a rural town. We had a garden every year. We “canned” tomatoes relish green beans yellow beans beats made apple butter pickles and ate the food as it came too. Now I’ve grown up I moved to a township i live where they can give me a ticket for not mowing my lawn fast enough. Now it’s not all bad. My wife and I are finding that there are some advantages. Number one for us is simply that it’s manageable. We can do everything that needs done upkeep wise ourselves and still have a life. We compost we recycle we put our one little itty bitty bag of trash out next to our curb every week while the neighbors put out mountains….and they notice. Someday when I’m older perhaps when the kids I don’t have yet are older or moved out I think i will live like this. ANyway sorry for the rant.

With the high cost of produce we decided to plant a garden 5 times bigger than usual. It was so nice not to have to buy a single cucumber or tomato this year….and the kids really enjoyed watching the vegatables grow.