First we Feed the Earth; Soil before Seedlings

Easing Food Anxiety, Building Household Resilience and Bringing Soil Back to Life From Scratch.

Warm greetings from my home to yours. You go to the grocery, pick up the same items you did last month, but somehow, when you get to the cashier, your bill is more. You’re not surprised because you noticed the price increases on the shelf, some subtle and some outrageous. The market? Sometimes you avoid going there altogether because prices are unpredictable, changing with the rain, sun and wind. That being the case, it’s completely natural to feel the weight of providing basic food items crushing you, the anxiety about how to keep food on the table sends you into silent panic.

Many mothers I speak to carry that worry with them daily, fathers too, but I say mothers since they are usually the ones preparing meals, and as the saying goes ‘who in the kitchen, feels the heat”. So when you open your fridge and it’s empty, the feelings of shame, worry and fear silently overtakes.

Past generations maintained home gardens, not as a trendy hobby, but as a vital pillar of household resilience. When you can step outside, harvest fresh seasonings and other vegetables, you have successfully taken back control of your food supply and dismissed the underlying fear of food shortage, be it from your inability to afford basic food items or an actual scarcity of goods.

Many people have the desire to plant, but don’t know where to start. When you decide to start a garden, it’s easy to look at the price of bagged soil at the Argo-shops or Instagram worthy garden set-ups and succumb to discouragement. Many of us spend our hard earned money on seedlings, hurriedly plant them in dead soil and hope for the best.

Then there is the intense tropical heat that cause plants to wither and you walk away with the faulty belief that you simply do not have that ‘green thumb’ or that it is more cost effective to face market prices.

Over time, a period of 7 years to be exact, through my own hands-on trial and error, I learned an important lesson: it was not the heat alone that killed the plants, it was the depleted or dead soil beneath.

I did not start off with a budget to invest in manure, pretty flowers or cute tools, I had to start with what I had. Sometimes that looked like saving kitchen scraps, other times it meant going to my neighborhood Chinese grocery and asking for carboard boxes. I would take these free materials and ‘feed’ it to the soil.

Do you want to start building food security in you home without spending thousands? If you answered yes, here are 3 steps you can take to bring your soil back to life:

• Layer your soil with free materials – Start with cardboard boxes, dried leaves and twigs for brown matter and kitchen scraps, vegetable peelings(no seeds) for green matter. Be sure to thoroughly soak the brown matter to create moisture. These simple materials break down over time into rich, dark organic matter – fuel for healthy plants.
• Observe the Soil Ecosystem change – When you start feeding the soil, you will witness the texture of your piece of earth shift from clumpy, dry or pale, to dark, crumbly, absorbent soil. At this stage, water the soil, and notice how the water penetrates and disappears below the surface, almost as though the soil was drinking the water. That’s signs of life. You’ll even notice richer grass sprouting and my favorite, the return of the earthworms!
• Protect your earth with mulch – Bare soil is vulnerable soil, so cover your nourished soil with dried leaves, grass cuttings or untreated wood chips to keep the ground cool and maintain moisture.

A note from my heart – The methods I share are not form the point of view of an Academic expert in Agriculture, Chemistry or Biology. This is from a woman who is living this life daily in her own home. Every family, backyard and container planting system has its own framework, so take these steps as encouragement to start your own garden, but make your own discoveries along the way.

What’s New at Little Muse in October – I’m thrilled to be serving you again in October! Last month, because of you, we had fully booked weeks and that led us into a strong finish for financial year end September 30th. How can we serve you this month:

• October Bundles – Check out this month’s feature offerings. The Slow Morning Table was the most frequently ordered item. We’ve swapped the banana-chocolate chip muffins for the Sunlit Berry Loaf. View the menu and check the description for details.
• Reserve your slow morning breakfast spreads when you need to wind down and refresh. Select delivery, stay in bed and we will bring your farmhouse goodies to you.

We’re open and ready to take your orders for October, browse the menu, select your favorites and place your orders directly on the website.

Thank you for allowing our Farmhouse Kitchen to be a small part of your home.

Tell me, does the idea of growing even a small portion of your own food bring you a sense of peace? Reply and let me know, I’d love to read your thoughts.