Food Collection Total for January 31st

3 eggs = 6 ounces (.38 pounds)

Total so far this year: 18.81 pounds
Only 1981.19 pounds to go!

Food Collection Total for January 30th

4 eggs = 8 ounces (.5 pounds)

Total so far this year: 18.43 pounds
Only 1981.57 pounds to go!

Food Collection Total for January 29th

2 eggs = 4 ounces (.25 pounds)

Total so far this year: 17.93 pounds
Only 1982.07 pounds to go!

Food Collection Total for January 28th

4 eggs = 8 ounces (.5 pounds)

Total so far this year: 17.68 pounds
Only 1982.32 pounds to go!

Food Collection Total for January 27th

2 eggs = 4 ounces (.25 pounds)

Total so far this year: 17.18 pounds
Only 1982.82 pounds to go!

Food Collection Total for January 26th

4 eggs = 8 ounces (.5 pounds)

Total so far this year: 16.93 pounds
Only 1983.07 pounds to go!

Food Collection Total for January 25th

3 eggs = 6 ounces (.38 pounds)

Total so far this year: 16.43 pounds
Only 1983.57 pounds to go!

A Time to Sprout and a Time to Learn...

I performed a little experiment with the sugar snap peas this year. On December 31st, I planted some of the seeds in peat pots and placed them under a plant light inside; the rest I placed directly into the ground a week or so later. I wanted to know if the warmer conditions would give the indoor peas a jump start in their short but hopefully productive lives.

The indoor peat-pot peas sprouted in less than 5 days and have grown to over 8-inches tall in just 3 1/2 weeks. The outdoor peas just sprouted and they're about an inch tall.

I feel sorry for the peat-pot peas. Sure, they were quick to sprout and eager to grow, but they're spindly and appear ill-equipped for the transplant that they received today. The outdoor peas look robust and healthy and ready for the challenge of yielding up to a pound of peas per plant.

I can't help but be reminded of all the well-intentioned parents who want to give their children a jump start in life by planting them in front of the television and plugging in the Baby Einstein and Brainy Baby DVDs. Like the peat-pot peas planted under the artificial grow lights, these kids may appear to thrive early but may end up being spindly of mind, ill-prepared for the transplant into their adult environments.

I feel sorry for the peat-pot kids, too.

Food Collection Total for January 24th

3 eggs = 6 ounces (.38 pounds)

Total so far this year: 16.05 pounds
Only 1983.95 pounds to go!

Food Collection Total for January 23rd

3 eggs = 6 ounces (.38 pounds)

Total so far this year: 15.67 pounds
Only 1984.33 pounds to go!

Food Collection Total for January 22nd

3 eggs = 6 ounces (.38 pounds)

Total so far this year: 15.29 pounds
Only 1984.71 pounds to go!

Food Collection Total for January 21st

3 eggs = 6 ounces (.38 pounds)

Total so far this year: 14.91 pounds
Only 1985.09 pounds to go!

Food Collection Total for January 20th

4 eggs = 8 ounces (.5 pounds)

Total so far this year: 14.53 pounds
Only 1985.47 pounds to go!

Food Collection Total for January 19th

2 eggs = 4 ounces (.25 pounds)

Total so far this year: 14.03 pounds
Only 1985.97 pounds to go!

Food Collection Total for January 18th

We collected the following items from the garden today:

3 eggs = 6 ounces (.38 pounds)

Total so far this year: 13.78 pounds
Only 1986.22 pounds to go!

Food Collection Total for January 17th

We collected the following items from the garden today:

4 eggs = 8 ounces (.5 pounds)

Total so far this year: 13.4 pounds
Only 1986.6 pounds to go!

Food Collection Total for January 16th

We collected the following items from the garden today:

4 eggs = 8 ounces (.5 pounds)

Total so far this year: 12.9 pounds
Only 1987.1 pounds to go!

Food Collection Total for January 15th

We collected the following items from the garden today:

3 eggs = 6 ounces (.38 pounds)

Total so far this year: 12.4 pounds
Only 1987.6 pounds to go!

Food Collection Total for January 14th

We collected the following items from the garden today:

2 eggs = 4 ounces (.25 pounds)

Total so far this year: 12.02 pounds
Only 1987.98 pounds to go!

Food Collection Total for January 13th

We collected the following items from the garden today:

4 eggs = 8 ounces (.5 pounds)

Total so far this year: 11.77 pounds
Only 1988.23 pounds to go!

Food Collection Total for January 12th

We collected the following items from the garden today:

3 eggs = 6 ounces (.38 pounds)

Total so far this year: 11.27 pounds
Only 1988.73 pounds to go!

Food Collection Total for January 11th

We collected the following items from the garden today:

5 eggs = 10 ounces (.63 pounds)
5 small cabbage heads (3.44 pounds)

Total so far this year: 10.89 pounds
Only 1989.11 pounds to go!

Food Collection Total for January 10th

We collected the following items from the garden today:

1 egg = 2 ounces (.13 pounds)
1 small cabbage head (1.31 pounds)

Total so far this year: 6.82 pounds
Only 1,993.18 pounds to go!

Slicing and Dicing the Challenge

Just how much is one ton of food, anyway? Sure, it's 2,000 pounds, but what does that mean in terms of nutritional opportunity (calories and nutrients) or monetary value, for that matter?

Just for fun, I'm going to estimate the calories that my one ton of food will have and an approximation of what it would cost to buy my collection of food at today's grocery store prices. It's a good thing I'm keeping track of my daily totals on a spreadsheet. That should make it a lot easier to slice and dice the data when the time comes.

Speaking of slicing and dicing, I just harvested a cute little head of cabbage from the upper garden. My cabbage plants set off side heads that I'm now ready to harvest.

Food Collection Total for January 9th

We collected the following items from the garden today:

5 eggs = 10 ounces (.63 pounds)

Total so far this year: 5.38 pounds
Only 1,994.62 pounds to go!

Food Collection Total for January 8th

We collected the following items from the garden today:

3 eggs = 6 ounces (.38 pounds)

Total so far this year: 4.75 pounds
Only 1,995.25 pounds to go!

and Why...

Asking myself why I decided to embark upon the one-ton backyard garden food challenge is like asking the old 'Why did the chicken cross the road?" question.

I like challenges.

Several years ago, when my daughter made the fatal mistake of standing in front of a full refrigerator with the door wide opened claiming "there's nothing to eat!" I told her that I bet we had six months' worth of food in the house and then challenged her to see who could go the longest without having to go to the grocery store for food. We managed to live off the stores in the house for over six weeks. We were both shocked at how much food we really did have and how fun it was to make do with what we had on hand.

I can't help but wonder, though, how much of this challenge is about creating a feeling of empowerment during this prolonged period of economic uncertainty. I'd like to know that if things really got bad in this neck-o-the-woods that I could rely on myself to feed my family, just like may great-grandparents did 100 years ago.

The professor of my History and Culture of Online Learning Communities class at Cal State East Bay forwarded me this interesting link when she learned that I've embarked upon this one-ton food challenge:

http://www.energyfarms.net/node/1588

It's a haunting tale but one that I wanted to hear and learn from. Check it out and see if you agree.

Food Collection Total for January 7th

We collected the following items from the garden today:

3 eggs = 6 ounces (.375 pounds)

Total so far this year: 4.37 pounds
Only 1,995.63 pounds to go!

How...

One of the things I love about backyard gardening is that I instantly regain the sense of wonder I had as a child simply watching things grow.

How, for instance, did the pea-sized watermelon "ovary" from my garden last summer (the one pictured above) get pollinated and then grow to its peak of 13-pound ripeness in just 35 days? And more importantly, how did I as the overseer of this miracle tend properly to its needs along the way?

My good friend Bill surprised me with a soil test kit today. I've never used one before. I'm hoping it will help me understand how to create an optimal combination of soil nutrients for each different plant.

Food Collection Total for January 6th

We collected the following items from the garden today:

2 eggs = 4 ounces (.25 pounds)

Total so far this year: 3.995 pounds
Only 1,996 pounds to go!

When...

Knowing when to plant each crop will play an essential role in the ultimate yield. I plan on creating a calendar on a spreadsheet and placing each crop on the calendar according to the recommended season of planting. I am also going to experiment with planting some crops, such as green beans, in intervals so I can extend the harvest period.

To learn more about when to plant, I am going to start with the book The Kitchen Gardener by Sylvia Thompson. My oldest sister, who is an avid gardener herself, sent me this book along with her seed collection when she moved from the country into an urban setting.

Where...

Determining where to plant each crop will be a fun challenge. I know that I will need to pay attention to how much direct sunlight each location in the yard receives each day to make sure that whatever I plant there will be happy. I will be planting in the front yard, the back yard, the upper garden, and possibly in the easement above the upper garden.

Speaking of planting in the front yard, I know that some people have endured complaints from neighbors for filling the front yard with edible landscaping. I'm going to challenge myself to create an edible front yard garden that doesn't irritate the neighbors.

I picked the long and narrow plot right outside the backyard door to plant the sugar snap peas on December 31st. We're in Sunset garden climate zone #14, so I think they'll do just fine for a spring harvest before the heat sets in. I had a few seeds left over, so I planted them in little peat pots. They're already sprouting. I'm sure I'll find another good spot for them once they get to a good transplanting size. I'm looking forward to seeing which group fares better.

Food Collection Total for January 5th

We collected the following items from the garden today:

2 eggs = 4 ounces (.25 pounds)

Total so far this year: 3.745 pounds
Only 1,996.25 pounds to go!

Food Collection Total for January 4th

We collected the following items from the garden today:

2 eggs = 4 ounces (.25 pounds)

Total so far this year: 3.495 pounds
Only 1,996.5 pounds to go!

What...

Determining what to grow this year shouldn't be too big of a challenge. I have already had success growing over 40 different types of edible plants at one time or another.

Determining how much of each fruit/vegetable to plant is going to be a bigger challenge, except for the grapes, strawberries, lemons, and plums. They're already established in the yard.

I should take some time to estimate the yield from each crop. Here's my best guess today:

Crop	Estimated Yield
Artichokes	10 pounds
Basil	n/a
Beans (both green and dried)	50 pounds
Beets	20 pounds
Broccoli	10 pounds
Brussels sprouts	15 pounds
Cabbage	30 pounds
Cantaloupe	30 pounds
Cauliflower	10 pounds
Chives	n/a
Corn (sweet)	100 pounds
Cucumbers (lemon and pickling)	20 pounds
Eggplant	10 pounds
Fava beans	30 pounds
Garlic	5 pounds
Grapes	250 pounds
Leeks	5 pounds
lemons	20 pounds
Lettuce	5 pounds
Okra	10 pounds
Onions (green and whole)	25 pounds
Parsley	n/a
Peas (sugar snap)	20 pounds
Peppers (bell and hot)	5 pounds
Plums	300 pounds
Potatoes	100 pounds
Pumpkins	50 pounds
Radishes	1 pound
Raspberries	n/a
Rhubarb	n/a
Spinach	5 pounds
Squash (summer and winter)	20 pounds
Strawberries	10 pounds
Sunflowers	5 pounds
Tomatoes	250 pounds
Turnips	10 pounds
Watermelon	150 pounds

I have no idea if these estimates are even close to what I can achieve, but I've got to start somewhere, and if these estimates do work out, I will have met my goal (which includes the estimated 400 pounds of chicken eggs).

Keeping track of each harvest will be a great learning experience so I can better prepare how many of each plant to put out each year for the ideal harvest.

Food Collection Total for January 3rd

We collected the following items from the garden today:

2 eggs = 4 ounces (.25 pounds)

Total so far this year: 3.245 pounds
Only 1,996.75 pounds to go!

Who...

My great-grandparents were self-sufficient farmers in rural West Virginia in the late 1800s and well into the 20th century. They had 14 children, 12 of whom survived into adulthood. All of the children participated actively in the seemingly endless hours of daily work it required to keep the 60-acre farm going. My grandfather (who is standing barefooted with hat in hand just to the left of my great-grandfather) helped tend the kitchen garden. In addition to a prolific vegetable garden, they had chickens, pigs, and a milk cow. My great-grandmother would sell the eggs in order to buy coffee, sugar, fabric, and other essentials.

None of my great-grandparents' children grew up to become self-sufficient farmers themselves, but most of them tended substantial back-yard gardens that kept their own families well-fed. My grandfather was a mechanic for the Cadillac Company in Washington, D.C. My mother said he would come home from work each evening and work in his garden for at least an hour before dinner. My grandmother would can a good bit of the garden produce so they could enjoy the fruits of his labor throughout the year.

Both my grandfather and mother taught me the basics of backyard gardening, but it wasn't anything they had to force upon me. My desire to grow my own food feels like it's in my blood, like it's genetically programmed into me. When my grandfather was tending our family's garden in the early 1970s, that's where I wanted to be. I loved every step of the process: soil preparation, seed planting, watering, pruning, harvesting, and eating. I still remember the extraordinary taste of the first strawberry I had grown myself at age eight.

For my great-grandparents, growing their own food was a way of life that was somehow encoded in their genetic material and passed on to me, rearranged and reformulated along the way, to help create this strange game called the One-Ton Backyard Garden Food Challenge. They had no way of knowing how their daily labors would mold and shape their descendants' behavior any more than I can know how my meanderings in the garden will affect my own descendants one-hundred years from now.

My daughter and I will be doing the soil preparation, planting, tending, and harvesting of our one-ton garden yield this year, but all of our ancestors, in one way or another, will be there to help us, every step of the way.

* * * * * * *

Of course, we'll be receiving help along the way from neighbors, friends, and even the world-renowned Zeke himself. Zeke is a real gem. All I have to do is log on to the Internet, type in any question I have about anything using my favorite search engine, click any link, and there is my good ol' buddy Zeke, tellin' me everything I want to know about what I came to the Internet to ask.

My good friend Bill introduced me to Zeke a couple of years ago when Bill asked me where I had learned about planting fava beans as a form of "green manure". I told him I learned it all on the Internet. Bill snorted out a laugh and replied, "You mean you learned it from Zeke. Last I heard, Zeke was livin' in an old clapboard shack holed up in the hills of Tennessee, sitting under a dimly lit light bulb in front of a computer screen in a smoke-filled room, one of those hand-rolled funny cigarettes hangin' from his mouth, typin' pure nonsense on the Internet just to see how many yuppies would believe his crap."

Misinformation or good information, I like Zeke, and I'm going to seek out his advice from time-to-time. In the meantime, I'm going to do some digging and egg collecting and thinking about what I want to plant this year.

Food Collection Total for January 2nd

We collected the following items from the garden today:

3 eggs = 6 ounces (.375 pounds)
10 beets = 1 lb. 7.7 ounces (1.48 pounds)*

Total so far this year: 2.995 pounds
Only 1,997 pounds to go!

*This represents the total yield from last year's "let's scatter a few seeds and see what happens" approach to planting beets. This year I hope to harvest enough to make a few jars of pickled beets.

Who, What, Where, When, How, and Why?

Someone once told me that any goal, whether short term or long term, can be effectively planned out by taking the time to answer six seemingly simple questions: who? what? where? when? how? and why? It all seems simple enough . . .

During this season of fallowness, I'm going to take some time to answer those six questions, one each day for the next week. I'm also going to turn the dirt in the garden by hand with a big sturdy shovel as the weather permits. I will be using a rototiller later in the season on the upper backyard garden, but it is too big and unwieldy for the lower backyard garden and the front yard, so I will dig by hand, just as my mother did in her own garden, and her father before that, and his father before that.

Indeed, I will be the one doing the digging and planting and tending and harvesting and weighing, but everyone in my family who came before me will have some measurable influence in the what, where, when, how, and why that goes into creating my one-ton backyard garden.

Suddenly the simple question of "who?" isn't quite so simple after all.

Food Collection Total for January 1st

We collected the following items from the garden today:

2 eggs = 4 ounces
2 lemons = 14.2 ounces

Total weight: 1 lb. 2.2 ounces
Only 1,998.86 pounds to go!

The Egg Came First...

What a fine way to start the one-ton backyard garden food challenge! Yep, that's right! We're already 1.9 ounces closer to achieving our goal of producing at least one ton of food this year from the 17,000 square foot lot (.41 acre) of our San Francisco Bay Area suburban home.

We have 12 pet chickens who reward us with eggs every day of the year. If one egg weighs approximately 2 ounces and one chicken lays approximately 275 eggs per year, each chicken will produce about 34 pounds of eggs this year. That means we should receive about 400 pounds of eggs from all 12 chickens, or one-fifth of our goal.

The chickens also donate their manure to the garden so we do not need to purchase or use commercially prepared chemical fertilizers. Way to go chicken buddies!

If you're wondering, none of our pet chickens will be donating their flesh to the food challenge this year.

* * * * * * *

Each day this year, I will be logging the total amount of food harvested from the yard. This will include eggs, fruit, and vegetables but no meat. The measurable goal is to produce and collect at least 2,000 pounds of food by the end of the year, but I also want to learn as much as I can about organic backyard gardening techniques and have at least a ton of fun along the way.