2021 Gardening Goal

The first full day of fall is a nice time to harvest our ripe tomatoes.

We started our gardening this year with one, clear goal. 

Our 2021 Gardening Goal was: 

To preserve more food than ever before. 

It is a reasonable goal because after years of having a garden, we are still relative beginners at preserving. 

Up until recent years we have been experts at eating fresh, but haven't focused on preserving as much as we would like.

This year we wanted to exceed our previous personal preserving best, which was last year.

Adding to our success this year is the fact that it was a great growing season with lots of rain at regular intervals. 

Temperatures were not too hot or cold. In other words, it was a perfect year for gardeners in south west Nova Scotia.

Now we find ourselves at the first full day of autumn, and we are working at wrapping up one of our largest harvests ever.

So much food! 

How much cash are cucumbers or kale or even tomatoes worth when you can't even give them away? 

At times like this it feels strange that people are paying for vegetables at the store down at the bottom of our ridge.

Today we went out to pick our ripe tomatoes because things are beginning to cool off at night and it is time to begin to finish our 2021 garden for the season.

We had already done our cucumber pickles, relish, and strawberry jam earlier in the season. We also canned one batch of cooked chipotle salsa.

We have been eating fresh garden veggies for weeks, but when there is so much food, one can't keep up regardless of how ravenous.

Now it is time for the bulk of our tomatoes to be processed.

We will do another batch of salsa because the first batch turned out so well. For the rest of the tomatoes we will simply can them diced, something we have never done before.

Another goal of ours is to get off store bought canned tomatoes altogether.

Wouldn't it be nice to get off store bought food entirely? 

That is the ultimate goal. 

While this goal of goals may remain elusive, it is fun (and yummy) trying nonetheless.

Happy Fall to all Northern Hemispherians, and happy Spring to all of you south of the equator.

Next garden goal - plant garlic some time before winter. I have planted here as late as a beautiful day in December.

7 Effective Consumerism Busters

Consumerism wants us to aspire to have more. More everything. 

Along the way we are supposed to find happiness, which remains elusive as long as there is something else to buy.

In a consumer society, there is always something else to buy.

These 7 Consumerism Busters can help us get off that treadmill.

7 Effective Consumerism Busters

1. Humility 

"Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it's thinking of yourself less."

- C.S. Lewis

2. Restraint

“Maybe the greatest power of all is the power of restraint.” 

- Craig D. Lounsbrough

3. Thrift

"The whole thing of clothes is insane. 

You can spend a dollar on a jacket in a thrift store. And you can spend a thousand dollars on a jacket in a shop. 

And if you saw those two jackets walking down the street, you probably wouldn't know which was which." 

- Helen Mirren

4. Responsibility

“Take responsibility of your own happiness, never put it in other people’s hands.” 

- Roy T. Bennett

5. Patience

“Patience will bring more happiness than power.” 

― Amit Kalantri

6. Sacrifice

“Anything that you cannot sacrifice pins you. Makes you predictable, makes you weak.” 

- Mark Lawrence

7. Austerity

“A lot of people measure others by what they've got. I've decided to measure myself by what I can give up.” 

- Geoff Nicholson

When we practice these busters, the desire to buy things we don't need goes away.

There are other positive side effects, too, like joy, contentment, satisfaction, and balance.

Consumerism is on the way out, a victim of its own excess, but these things tend to die slow deaths. 

With the help of the 7 Busters we can make changes, end the waste, and find our freedom sooner.

Mother Earth thanks us for our efforts, as do the people in non-consumer nations that are negatively affected by our profligate purchasing.

Life shouldn't be only about hurrying to buy more stuff. 

When we stop this madness, we can return to the real reason for living - to help each other.