What am I doing here anyway?

My very first grown-from-seed eggplants!

That's a good question, actually. What's a girl like me who has spent the last 30 years of her life living and working in a midwestern city of more than 200,000 people doing in a farm town of less than 1000 people? Well, I'll tell you.

When I was a little girl, I wanted my grandpa's farm. I wanted to grow things both flora and fauna. It was a dream that I did not dare share with anyone. Ever. Or at least I didn't until I met my current husband.

Now that I am most definitely not a little girl anymore and after spending much of my adult life on the treadmill of corporate America, I find I still want to grow and nurture living things. Moreso now than ever before. Working for a massive corporation has been financially profitable for me but after a while, it has started to drain the life from me. Money, as they say, is not everything.

After much soul-searching, I figured out that I don't really want a farm. At least, not how farms are defined these days. I wanted to find an acreage and I almost did.

We have a small lot that is about 75 feet square situated roughly in the geographical center of our tiny town. A lot of the space is taken up with house and garage and dog kennel (which is another post entirely). The remainder of the lot is slowly being transformed into garden space.

The bulk of this blog will be taken up by our attempts to learn and streamline our personal food production in very small spaces. Here, where we are surrounded by people with two, three or even four city lots to their name, and in spite of the economic climate we will work with a piece of land only half the size of a single lot. It's a challenge to be sure, but it's also a place to start.

I can't wait to get started!