I could have been much more brief, I realized.

I used to be comfortably middle class...but the past 10 years sort of eroded that, and as a result I have turned to what used to be a comforting pastime, and find myself trying to actually put a dent in my grocery bills through gardening. I fear it will suck the former joy from the experience, but I will give it my all.

Wow, I'm so sorry to hear of your circumstances. I know that it must be hard to be in your position.

How do you think you did in terms of saving money and preserving your crops?

I guess it doesn't have to "suck the joy" out of it. Personally, I really do enjoy trying to "make something from nothing" at times, I just try to look at it as a challenge rather than an obstacle.

I think that you were really fighting the weather this year, weren't you. All of the folks from the PNW seem to say that it was a horrible summer in 2010, kind of like we had here in 2009, except ours was cold and dry, whereas I believe it was cold and wet out west, at least west of the Cascades?

Is there anything we can do to help? Do you need seeds for next year?

Health is wealth, right? My co-worker has next to nothing in this world in terms of wealth, but his physical condition at 65 years old is such that many a billionaire would likely give all of it for his health.

And, not least, and regardless of occasional bad seasons, you've got one of the very best regions of the world for horticulture. My goodness, on this sandy neck of glacial till we can only gawk at the abundance of the PNW. I guess there is a reason folks walked all the way from here to there, and endured all kinds of travails along the track.

Kudos for bucking up and doing what you can do. Imagine if everybody did so?

I always have spare seeds also! Especially tomatoes, peppers,greens...my user name at frontier.com if you're looking for something in particular.

I've been lucky to still have a good job, no more overtime or extras but can't complain! Still, i think i've done more "pricing out" of my harvest this year than i ever have, and it's amazing what a pack of seeds turns into.

I'm in an area where I'm in and out of jobs. Always looking for work or always working overtime when I have work.

What about trying to start a hobby for money? I hate sewing, don't know if you're a man or woman, not selling anything, but I bought a book on how to make cloth sculptured dolls. Maybe that will give you an idea to try? People like sports, if I were to make a football player, I'd make a fortune! LOL! People don't need dolls, though. I might try painting too. The internet can reach people not in such a economic collapse. There are tons of hobbies that can make money, including gardening. What about starting off some house plants and selling them at consignment shops?

If you are really good, you can start off some Camila Sinensis/ Tea Plants, they are really hard to start off. So are coffee plants, but they might sell. If you start off some exotic plant like an orchid, you can really make some jack!

If you want to save a little money canning next year, dry your foods, start a winter garden of greens in a tunnel? I started one today, planted chard, spinach, cabbage, and collards in a 5x18 area. It's greens, but they might be appreciated in the middle of winter. I'm just experimenting. You don't have to quit gardening in the winter, you just have to grow under plastic in shorter heights. I'm still thinking of trying to plant carrots to see what they may do. I don't have a sprout yet, just planted today, but it may do better than my summer garden for sure. I can make up some losses maybe.

Not heavy at all. It is unfortunately an all too common circumstance lately. Just try to remember though that through adversity comes strength. I know strength doesn't pay the bills, but you have to stay positive.

My family has been blessed by circumstance and we are able to provide. However, my wife and I are on an active mission to learn about growing food and teach our girls an appreciation for the work involved in getting food to the table.

I view my garden as a labour of love, a source of great frustration, and the best supermarket out there, all at the same time. Will it take some of the shine off of your previously loved hobby? For sure it will. But the challenges ahead of you provide great opportunities to learn and grow yourself as a more self-sufficient human being.

The difficult challenges in our North American society is to fight the budget creep. It is all too easy to go out and buy this, that or the other. We are bombarded every day with reasons to buy the latest solution to problems we never knew we had (take a look through a Lee Valley catalogue as an example). The rise in the popularity of gardening has meant an accompanying rise in the number of gardening products being pushed to us. So, in these tough times ahead, remember your 3 R's (reduce, reuse, and recycle) and try to remember what it was like for our ancestors who didn't have 24hr Home Depots.
This mantra works for me: if I need it, I make it; if I can't make it, I find it free; if I can't find it free, I borrow it; if I can't borrow it, I improvise; if I can't improvise, I buy it on sale; if I can't buy it on sale, I buy it.

Good luck my friend, and keep us updated!
Michael

Welcome!

The politicians say, we will create more jobs - but the greedy elite send as many jobs as they can overseas. There is no law against it and since $ is the god of the US...that is how it goes.

Glad you are starting to grow now while times are kind of good.

Don't forget to forage for food. And keep on the lookout for abandoned fruit trees. I've been eating wild / abandoned apples since August.

Since I am retired nowdays, it is easier to give extra attention to the gardens....which I enjoy very much.

I have always raised or been involved in gardening, but I can see how for some there just would not be be enough time at home to properly care for a garden. It takes nearly daily care to bring a bountiful garden through harvest. Work, travel and other things could keep some from a good garden.

I used to invest realitivly little in soil improvement and probably got better dollar returns than now as I am hauling/buying truck loads of improvements of compost, horse manure, peat moss, and sand and even some good dirt a couple of times!

Everybody who grows food appreciates the dent it puts in the grocery bill.

The trip to the grocery store is the most depressing thing I do all month. Every time I go in, I can see the increase in prices on every item. I love having home grown food so I don't have to purchase so much at the market.

Another fun thing about gardening is that I love to cook, and I have used the internet to discover many excellent new recipes.

I'll say, "what am I going to do with all these pears?" I get on the internet and find new recipes to try. I love it.

A suggestion from me: home grown food is excellent to use to barter for small items. That helps the budget, too, if you can trade tomatoes for something instead of using your cash to buy it.

I grow fruit and that has excellent barter value. Trees take awhile, but berries are quick, and everybody wants them.

Another bright thing: your home grown is going to be better tasting and healthier than the store bought.

Don't give up. Jobs may be in short supply, but you will find something if you keep looking. Also, many people are taking that jump to try to start their own business because a salary is more difficult to come by right now.

I lightened my work schedule this year to make room for things like gardening, connecting with old friends, and learning about preserving. The garden helped with good, nourishing food, as well as gifts and plenty to stock the freezer with.

Made gallons of applesauce, pie filling, and crisp this weekend from the tree just outside. Took the filled pots and brought them out back to sit in an ice-cold spring to cool off before storing the contents. Cheap ... and priceless.

Thanks for bring the subject up. You can see from the responses that it rings a bell with most of us.

I'm retired, but my children are your age and work is slow or scarce. In the meantime, they are all either gardening their yards or helping out in mine. May I suggest a temp agency as stop-gap way to keep some funds coming in?

Your 'story' and the self-sufficient ways you cope with the challenges might be fodder for a newspaper article. Which might bring some networking in unexpected ways.

scarletdaisies suggestion to brainstorm using some skill or free/handy materials to make something to sell, seems very useful to me. Visiting a local farmers market or craft fair will spark some ides that might be useful.

Hope you are keeping a journal so you can track what works, what doesn't, costs,contacts, trades, etc.

Best wishes for you and your family.

Health is wealth...

That was a big reason I started to grow in '07. The food supply is getting pretty bad with all the poisons they use.
Sure some of the food is out of my budget. But health is a big issue as well with growing my own. I picked up a couple of comice pears today. They were $2.49 a pound...$2.80 for 2 of them.

Put them back. Too much $$ for me. I have a comice pear tree but nothing produced as yet. (An interesting thing, the store pulled out all their produce scales, so the customer does not know the price until tney checkout.)

As far as..."this mantra works for me: if I need it, I make it; if I can't make it, I find it free; if I can't find it free, I borrow it; if I can't borrow it, I improvise; if I can't improvise, I buy it on sale; if I can't buy it on sale, I buy it."

Hey, your going to collapse our country. You need to spend until your banckrupt.

The US of A was founded on the principles of Victor Lebow

Victor Lebow was a 20th century economist and retail analyst, perhaps best known for his quotation regarding the formulation of American consumer capitalism found in his paper "Price Competition in 1955"

"Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfactions, our ego satisfactions, in consumption...We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced, and discarded at an ever increasing pace. We need to have people eat, drink, dress, ride, live, with ever more complicated and, therefore, constantly more expensive consumption."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Lebow

How could the usa have been founded upon principles of someone who lived in the 20th century? The colonials were more doers than consumers, I'd say. Not everything they did was admirable, either.

He just means our current economic model here depends on the citizens constantly buying stuff rather than producing things for themselves.

Buying something generally puts more steps/companies/people in the way of getting something from producer to consumer and everyone in the way makes money and a living.

There's also an element to getting satisfaction and joy from being a consumer (lines for electronic devices, for instance...and the joy of those first many customers).

There's more to it and all that, but it's a valid point.

This pattern isn't unique to the US or anything. Even in emerging countries these things tend to show itself.

Solidago, if you still have your home and land to garden, you are doing well. It could be worse. Recently another poster mentioned in passing that he had just been foreclosed on. Maybe I was the only one to notice that.

Thanksgiving is coming up so maybe that would be a good time to count our blessings.

With every recession from the 1960's through the 1980's, I went back to school. For a guy who was going to stay on the farm and not go to college, I sure spent a lot of time with my nose in a textbook. But, if I was going to be starving in a garret, I may as well be a student, starving in a garret.

Actually, the last 2 times I re-enrolled, I was able to keep my job, working part-time. (And, I always seemed to be well-fed. ;o) All this bouncing back to school ended when I was in my 40's. There were too many daily responsibilities at home and physically, I also wasn't up to the challenges of the classroom. So, I can't really advise someone 54 years old to return to school. If you think you can get away with it - it still may be a viable choice.

As far as growing things, my intention was usually to move away from a farming way of life . . . but, it never really happened. You can, however, make money in agriculture - you just have a tough row to hoe.

I got out of school a little too early in the recession brought on by the OPEC oil embargo. Not only did I return to farming but I moved to a rather impoverished part of the country to do so.

One of the first things I found was that the way had been beaten by earlier "back to the land-ers." About a half-mile out into the woods in one direction was the remains of a Depression era logging camp. A mile out into the valley in another direction was a Depression homestead put together with wooden box car housing!

If you want to make some $ on growing things, I suggest that you stay with crops that already work well for you but pick the most labor-intensive direction. Your skills can count for something in production but your labor will probably be below minimum wage. Plan on it being that way and go ahead and put a pencil on paper to figure out how you can make it work for you.

The good (and bad) news is that food prices climb quite steeply during times of economic downturns. We seem to be in something of a deflationary time this go-around but higher value for food was certainly the result of the 1973 oil embargo and the recession(s) during Reagan's 1st term.

. . . my 2â.

Steve

Cheers, Solidago, and welcome.

I am sorry that you find yourself in this situation. It's one that more and more people are likely to find themselves in however, and you have the benefit of already having experience. I remember my first "desperation" garden--when I was about 20 years old and a destitute college student. Not knowing any better, I put out my beautiful, indoor-grown, totally not-hardened-off pepper and tomato seedlings out in the ground two days before a nor'easter snowstorm!

The pinch has been there a time or two since then. Though things feel ok for my family at present, one turn of events and my recreational garden will become my "victory garden," just like yours.

The consumer price index no longer includes food and fuel, the rationale being that the price of these items vary too much. Odd, since they're two of the most critical parts of our existence, right after air, water, and shelter. So anyone on a fixed income with adjustments based on the CPI (assuming that you still have to eat and that still must heat or cool your home) is taking it in the shorts now.

But now I'm getting heavy. While things seem ok for us, I am taking steps to improve the insulation of the home (reducing energy needs for heating/cooling) and working on refurbishing that old root cellar that came with this house.

Around here, there is a strong market that will pay top dollar for local produce. There is even plenty of ground available for use at low or no cost.

However, it's never easy to access a market - going to farmer's market costs money and takes a lot of time. Selling to retail outlets knocks most of the profit out. And the ground here tends to be so-so to terrible, low fertility, droughty. I think about if I had to pay my property taxes by growing stuff. It's too much to do without a small tractor and some implements, but the scale doesn't justify it either. I always come back to a homestead model, it's more effective to provide one's own market, but that means being very diverse, maybe having a cow, can't have a cow on a 1/2 acre home lot, etc.

Grrrr....

Maybe I should phrase it 'Victor Lebow the founding father of modern American consumer capitalism'

This old post on our 'Upside Down World' may explain what I am trying to say more clearly.

Our world is upside down, when the right way to a sustainable future will bring our world down. The only thing to do to keep the Ponzi scheme going is to do just the opposite of prudent advice.

What would happen to our economy if we took the advice and did as this reworked 'victory' poster from WW II suggested?

http://i685.photobucket.com/albums/vv219/keepitlow456/victorygarden.jpg

What would happen is our country would COLLAPSE!

Victor Lebow the founding father of modern American consumer capitalism:

"Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfactions, our ego satisfactions, in consumption. The measure of social status, of social acceptance, of prestige, is now to be found in our consumptive patterns...We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced, and discarded at an ever increasing pace. We need to have people eat, drink, dress, ride, live, with ever more complicated and, therefore, constantly more expensive consumption."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Lebow

IT'S NOT THAT SIMPLE TO DO A 180...Without compulsive spending and conspicuous consumption funded by unaffordable debt, we would fail as a country. Since our economy if fueled 70% by the consumer, we must stay in debt and consume by any means necessary to keep the Ponzi scheme from collapsing.

We must make shoddy products that self-destruct quickly - so new products are in constant demand to keep the workforce of drones working. All the while squandering natural resources, but we are increasing the business of the landfills.

We must not grow our own food. We must buy poisonous food from chemical laden farms. Our concrete jungles could never hope to allow anything else from their inhabitants.

...in short, we have built our world on a defective model for long term population suppport.

Sounds like you're a much better gardener than I, so you've probably already thought of this-- go heavy on the vegetables and stuff that grow easily in your area, without many pest problems. That may help to keep the joy and satisfaction in the gardening, along with giving you the best returns for your time.

Do dandelions, malabar spinach, amaranth, swiss chard, and collards like your area?

Now, keepitlow is getting *really* heavy.

Yes, if we all implemented the Victory garden approach, minimized our consumption, and lived on what we had, then the current spiral would collapse.

And then we could attempt to rebuild on a real foundation, so long as the Chinese or someone else didn't try to take us over. We are after all, heavily leveraged to them, and they are intentionally debasing their currency to attempt to keep pace with us debasing ours. We need to get away from being a service economy into producing something REAL. It would be REALLY nice if all our economic indicators were revised to reflect something REAL and be a genuine reflection of economic health, rather than including the costs of wars overseas and the costs associated with oil spill disasters into Gross Domestic Product.

Still, some of us may escape from this merry-go-round and try to be more self-sufficient without making it come off its axle. It does, after all, have a lot of momentum, and the Fed Reserve keeps magicking money into existence to help keep it spinning.

I make a lot of stuff, and grow stuff, and re-use used stuff, and still we buy a lot of newly made stuff. And that keeping in mind we are pretty much non-consumption type granolas.

For example, I built my house in 1990, and the cheap Delta faucets have been dripping on and off for over ten years. Just replaced with Kohler yesterday. Delta is junk, but we did get 18-20 years of big family hard use out of them. All the sinks are junk-yard freebies, porcelain over cast iron. Some have a lot of iron showing - gotta get some of those porcelain patch kits. Bought a new aga cook stove 4 years ago. Not junk, on the contrary superb craftsmanship and materials. Good stuff is still made, but a tradesman will have to work for weeks or months to earn the money to buy it. Before that for ten years we used a 1930's cast-iron stove, short money, worked great. Before that in less than ten years we put one new and one used pieces of junk in the trash. Would have been way better off putting that money in the aga to start but we didn't have the big purchase price then.

Moral of the above little story? If you don't have the money buy new heirlooms instead of disposables, then buy used quality. Plenty of it out there because everyone has to have the new junk. Just for the example of cookstoves, there is no better value than a 1950's era model. pre-war are getting a little too collectible now.

OK, since we're going WAY off topic now, one of my favorite things to do is cruise around my neighborhood on garbage day morning and see what kind of "stuff" people are throwing out. I started this a couple of years ago when I started cruising for bagged leaves and grass clippings, and lo and behold, I found a couple of really nice throw rugs and a wok in someone's trash, all with the tags from the store still on them. I was hooked.

I don't do this all the time, as I generally work most Thursdays, but every once in a while, I get the opportunity.

In a couple of years, I've picked up an amazing amount of good "stuff" that is gently used, and some that is new. I scored a perfectly functional, good as new refrigerated and heated water dispenser, all stainless steel. I scored a whole bunch of brand new, in the box five foot long wire shelves. About a bazillion flower pots. Hundreds of feet of hose that just needed a repair or two. That sort of thing. And so it goes.

So yes, I am a trash picker.

Our society is SO wasteful, so much of what goes in the landfills is perfectly good

Check out the Frugal Forum for more ideas.

Hang loose there! I know things look down now, but look at it this way, there is no where to go but up!

I grow my own food, I find great joy in the fact I can pass the produce in the store. The only things I buy there are things I cannot grow, and even then I do so reluctantly. I look at it as "sticking it to the man" and have fun doing it. This year I am expanding my garden, it's work, but it does not have to suck the joy out of it. It is all a matter of perspective on that.

Good luck!!

Solidago ... I was thinking about your situation and the ensuing comments from others, and found an article about how food prices have been increasing and are set to increase even more. Looks like we, who are fortunate enough to have space/know-how to garden, are going to be joined by lots of others. So, boo for hard times and hooray for the resiliancy to rise above them... and double hooray for gardening skills passed on through forums such as this.

Here is a link that might be useful: Rising food prices

Also, since you are unemployed, you might well be able to barter time for food at a local CSA farm, if there is one, or local truck farms. Also, check with your health food store about ordering in bulk (if you aren't already), for grains, beans, oils, etc. It's easy for them to order extra bulk packages on their regular deliveries for a small mark-up. Saves big on shipping vs buying those heavy low-value items via mail-order.

solidago .... you comment that next year you will be a better gardener than this and other years.

Would you consider starting another thread along the lines of "gardening skills I've learned from necessity" And as I mentioned before, hope you will consider writing a news article about the experiences of 'eating off the land'. I suspect that lots of folks are and more will be in the same boat. IOW, hard times have made this a 'hot' topic. You're in the unique position to write about it.

I'll try to keep it short.

Cheap oil runs this country. Everything depends on it. We are most likely at the "peak" of oil production. Things are about to go from bad to worse.

Population is/has been out of control, especially in certain areas of the world. Its something that is not talked about, but will need to be addressed or mother nature will do it for us (i'm sure that is what it will come down to).

The combination of shrinking oil supply and increasing population does not bode well for us. Its the #1 reason i garden and have been learning as much as i can about growing a variety of fruits and veggies.

Add in to the monkey business the "banksters" have put us through (with government help) and the whole system is probably going to fall apart around us.

I really hope this all plays out VERY slow and in steps. I'd hate for one day to see the grocery store shelves empty and the gas stations dry... The people in this country are already crazy...they'll go nuts when the system has failed.

Oregon is a great place for growing all winter. at least in some areas. not sure. But there are big farms all winter in Oregon. I can think of a few items.

walla walla onions are famous.
cold crops like cabbage, and asian greens, certainly scallions go much colder over winter in bitter cold.

The winter is good. your problem in Oregon is the summer does not get real hot to ripen tomatoes etc. You have cool weather all year.

You should contact local area farmers etc who know what works well in your area. Your university might help. county offices also. but even local farm stands and farmers and those selling plants will know.

Spinach for sure. most of the spinach, swiss chard beets etc seeds are all grown in your area over the winter. they give seeds in the 2nd summer after growing all winter. You are in spinach heaven. maybe the best place to grow spinach.

Here is a link that might be useful: Pacific Nortwest group here on garden web

Sol- I'm in close to the same situation as you, except it's my hubby who's out of work.
We "get by" on unemployment, just making the house payment, etc.
I make frugal living a game these days! Between the garden and sales, I come in below my stated budget for the week!
This year was the pits, however for my summer garden and freezing!
I usually am able to sauce and freeze enough tomato sauce for close to a year! NOPE! Very few tomatoes, green beans were zilch, peppers and eggplant I only got a few of each....etc etc.
I started a much larger than usual winter garden this year, hoping to pass up most of the produce dept. Things are looking good.I'm in the SF Bay area.
Another thing we do is, there are 4 houses in our driveway. One has a bunch of pears, one has blackberries, strawberries and apples, we have mostly veges and the last lady prepares and cans/freezes stuff.
Some other things to look for, is to look for "meat wars" between some of the major grocery stores. It seems to happen every month to 6 weeks. We usually go around the first of the month and spend some bucks on our once a week beef.
Good luck! Nancy

Well, for those trying to recycle, you might already find the government or locals are beating you to it. It might even be a requirement to reuse used metal for all I know.

For someone in bad need of help, you can go to government. There's foodstamps, missions, churches that will give food away. There's meals on wheels for older people if they qualify. Ask you local human services department for help if things get real bad.

It's really businesses that yours and our community has allowed in. I've been listening to a lot of small town talk, we can't have a walmart, it wasn't approved, we can't have a burger king, it wasn't approved. Businesses have to be chosen so not to run anyone else out of business, but they bring in a slave labor factory every time when they could have brought in something stable, then it moves to Mexico. You're not really losing anything worth keeping, but you are losing a pay check, definitely means something.

I love economics, but not enough to study it properly. When you plan for the worst first, then plan for the extras, you are always covered. We are covered for the best, then they hide the truth before it caves, this creates desperation, and it could have been avoided if given warning or used the implementation to prevent it by some efforts even if it's just a vegetable garden.

Do you remember in the year 2000 and New York City turned every vacant lot and building into a greenhouse or garden, they were going to fight off any kind of trouble that may come if the computers sent us back to 1900. They even made it a patriotic fun local thing to do. That's the spirit you should see, community planning to prevent it, or meet it with an alternative when it falls through.

Really what we should all be doing is calling our local city boards and asking for some community planning, what ever it may be, that people in hardship can work to make something good out of hard times.

Gardendawgie, are you the person who said he was foreclosed on and had to move? How are you, are you doing ok? Were you able to find a place to go?

Everyone has heard the stories about people, usually older folks, who starved to death during the depression because they were ashamed to ask for food. No need for that this time around - the USDA is constantly looking for ways to get rid of excess food.

Frank, playing out slowly and stepped is what some are calling the "soft landing" of energy descent. The much preferred option over what some call the "die-off" (crash landing). We need to stretch the energy descent out over at least two generations. Because we are still near peak oil, the new generations for the most part are completely unaware, absorbed as they are in social networking and slick gadgetry. This is a major problem, because the key to the soft landing is going to be voluntary energy conservation over the next 50 years, and ignorance doesn't mesh well with anticipation.

pnbrown-

I hear you. I could use another 20 years of a slow decent. The US has an advantage over a lot of countries, we still produce a lot of food (and waste a lot), we still produce a lot of oil (5 million barrels a day or so), we still have a lot of natural gas, coal, and other metals/minerals. What we seem to lack is leadership and a willingness to change some of these silly habits.

I figure knowing how to grow the foods i like to eat makes a lot of sense. Turning a lawn into a producing garden doesn't require much effort, just some time. If you start off easy with root crops (carrots/potatoes/etc) and warm season crops (tomatoes/peppers/etc) u can really put a dent into your yearly grocery bill. Having animals and growing grain just won't work on a city lot, so i know i can't avoid purchasing those items. I also have decided some crops aren't worth growing because they are grown locally in large amts (apples/sweet corn). Growing small fruits makes sense because they take little space and are very expensive to buy (raspberries/blueberries/strawberries), not to mention simple to grow (very few pests/diseases). My problem seems to be marginal fruits like peaches, that we love to eat but just don't work well in this cold (i still have 6 trees).

Another goal is season extension. We have a lot of sun early in the year, but the ground is just too cold until mid April or so to really get things going. I hope to buy a few weeks with a layer of plastic and therefor grab another crop out of the same space (i hope to get 3 different crops out of one bed in a season)...its still a work in progress!

Same here, lots of sun when the leaves are still off the trees in march/april but the ground is cold. I find cold frames are the way to go for me, I will put a frame over some bare ground and sow with radishes and lettuce in early March. That works good. I used to do hot beds with a cold frame over it but have tired of hauling manure in the last few years, I can wait that extra month and just keep eating the raw storage cabbages for salad.