“How Did We Get Here” by Adam

It seems like people do a lot of reflecting in November.

Thanks to the upcoming Holidays, like Veteran’s Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas, many people begin to take time to think about what they are thankful for and count their blessings just a little bit more.

With our Facebook Newsfeed full of daily “I am thankful for >enter whatever first world benefit here<,” Adam and I couldn’t help but get in the spirit.

Okay. So, maybe after we judged the people who said they were thankful for their iPhones within the first three days of the month…

But, it did make us ask “What are we Thankful for this year?”

The iPhone didn’t hit the list… weird. But there was one common denominator between us: The Garden.

We smiled at each other thinking of our love of the garden and our future plans for the garden. Then, I asked, “We are going to be those people, aren’t we?”

“What do you mean?” Adam questioned.

“The people who other people will think are insane for ditching their steady, corporate careers for sustainable farming. The people who have root cellars. Cows. Pigs. And, don’t know how to work an iPad. The people whose kids will be praying to the God of Sun and Rain while their cousins are singing, ‘Jesus Loves Me.'”

Okay… Just a little dramatic.

But, Adam, laughing, said, “Pretty much.”

“Oh my gosh,” I sighed, “How did we get here?”

Inspired by this question, our mutual gratitude for the garden and our excitement for the future, Adam and I, together, will be giving thanks and telling our versions of the story of “How we got here, where we are, and where we are going” throughout the month of November on Bloom.

Because you hear from me all the time… and because even I have enjoyed this story from Adam’s perspective, I thought Adam should start:

First off, I guess I should introduce myself. You all know Claire, as I am sure you have read her blog posts. Well, I am her crazy husband. You know that guy who drug that girl away from the city and “cut her off from”… you name it.

To understand some of Claire’s blog, I think you should understand who I am. I am the country boy who isn’t all that country. Don’t get me wrong, I wear jeans a t-shirt and a ball cap just about every day(if it’s cold I put on a hoodie). I hunt, fish, trap, drive a diesel truck, drive tractors and wear boots.

However, I am not the rebel flag flying redneck some people imagine when they hear someone is from the country.

I love a glass of merlot with my steak. I save my money to buy nice things. I enjoy dressing up in a suit for a wedding or a coat and tie for a nice dinner out with my wife. And a night out for Wicked on Broadway doesn’t sound awful any more. I’m that guy that Claire’s hometown never thought she would marry. I’m that guy who taught her about farming. I’m also that guy who has learned with her, dreamed with her, grew with her, and become passionate about our life together. (Sorry for the sap.) We’re on an adventure together no one would have guessed, not even us, and this is how it all started.

I’ve always thought gardening was fun. My parents had a garden when I was kid, but I’m not sure how many years it actually lasted. I certainly don’t remember canning. As I got into high school I would start a garden in the spring, typically consisting of tomatoes, zucchini, peppers and cucumbers. Not the most diverse selection by any means. Spring always came around and I was excited to get plants in the ground. Typically, I always planted 10 too many pepper plants, wait too long to pick zucchini, and tomatoes rotted on the vines from lack of attention.

Somehow, my mom was always on board. She would take me to the local nursery, help me pick out the plants, help me plant them, and watch me ignore them all summer as friends and girls kept my attention.

Fast forward to January 2013 and Claire and I are moving into our new house. I had already decided a garden is going to be in our future. My friends had one. The neighbors had one. Must be a small town thing, but everyone around me had one. So, I had to have one too.

I know what you’re thinking.

“So what! It’s a garden. Big deal.”

Well, that’s what I thought too. Until I started doing some research.

Claire was working for a public school as head of their food service and became involved in the Indiana “Farm to School” program. She quickly became passionate about these farmers, how they grew their food, where our food comes from and the environmental impacts of producing our food.

So, I jumped on board and began doing some of my own research. YouTube is my best friend by the way. Video after video, hour after hour of listening to people talk about their gardens had me excited to get started. Square foot gardening, raised beds, typical row crop gardening and many more.

I thought we would want to do raised beds, with the help of Claire and all her pins on Pinterest of raised bed gardens. Soon we found that they would cost more than her car to build. So, I simply started by tilling up eight large garden beds.

My mom thought we were crazy for having such a big garden. The twenty tomato plants probably had something to do with it…

We also settled on trying to grow our food as organically as possible.

I don’t want to get into all the political crap about anti-organic this or pro-gmo that. Everyone has a reason why they choose what they eat. My opinion was I didn’t want to waste the money on fertilizer, herbicides and pesticides if I didn’t need them. Also, I really didn’t feel that entirely comfortable putting things on the food I was going to eat that suggested chemical gloves, a dust mask and safety glasses as appropriate PPE.

I believe there is a place for both, and my backyard didn’t need the alternative.

With good management of crop rotation, proper maintenance and a little extra labor I felt like I could achieve the same results.

So, how was I going to fertilize this large garden? Back to YouTube I went. After many videos it seemed backyard chickens were the perfect companion to a backyard garden. They solved my pest problems, I could compost their manure for fertilizer and they produced eggs as a byproduct.

On Mother’s Day weekend, Claire and I brought home twelve baby chickens which launched us into an ever evolving production of growing our own food.

So, that’s how it all started. One idea of wanting a backyard garden launched me into a job as conductor of plants and animals, trying to make everything work in the most symbiotic way possible.