Now that the harvest is (almost) over, and I've preserved (almost) all the excess fruit and vegetables, it's time to take a look at what we actually got out of all that money and hard work; i.e., was it worth it?
Time invested:
Year round hours spent composting: 5
March and April
hours spent driving to and from store to purchase seeds, planting, watering, checking, protecting from cold, pruning, and disposing of dead plants: 6
May
hours spent rototilling, purchasing of seedlings to replace dead grown-from-seed plants, digging, laying out of soaker hose, laying out of weed-stopping plastic, planting, re-laying out of weed-stopping plastic after wind tore it off seedlings, weeding in spite of weed-stopping plastic, programming of sprinkler system to get soaker hose running properly: 25
June
hours spent weeding in spite of weed-stopping plastic, purchasing of further seedlings to replace dead plants, placing of tomato cages: 5
July
hours spent weeding: 2
August
hours spent connecting and disconnecting soaker hoses leading to plants that were getting too much/too little water, purchasing of bottles, lids, and other ingredients for proper canning, harvesting, preserving, storing: 40
September
hours spent harvesting, preserving, cleaning up kitchen: 35
Total hours invested: 118
Money invested:
Seeds: $15
Seedlings: $30
Mulch: $8
Soaker hoses: $40
Weed-stopping plastic: $35
Water: $75
All other equipment and supplies were already on hand.
Total money invested: $203
Return (preserved food only--this does not count fresh produce eaten):
3 pints grape jelly
3 pints ketchup
9 quarts pickles
20 quarts tomatoes
6 pints tomato sauce
6 quarts salsa
3 1 lb. pumpkins
So basically I got the amount of food I could have purchased at the grocery store for under $50. If you calculate a conservative hourly rate of $20 (what I would have been paid if I'd been working at a job instead of in my garden), these few jars of food ended up costing approximately $500. Ahem. For those of you who don't know how to do math so good, that's ten times what they're worth.
However, I now know how to make ketchup, which not everyone can say, I bet. I got skills. I also got to work the land, which decreases stress, which was probably worth about three or four counseling sessions. And my food is delicious! It has actual flavor. And no artificial preservatives, pesticides, artifical flavoring, or fillers. And you can't put a price on that.
So next year I'm going to have my soil analyzed, to see what's wrong with it and why 27 tomato plants only produced 175 lbs. of tomatoes. And I'm going to do some other stuff, too. Like use a grow light on my seeds.
But now, it's time to relax, pop open a bottle of ketchup, and enjoy a nice autumn snack. No, wait! That will leave me with only two more pints of ketchup to last the winter! I guess I'll just stop off at the store and buy me a ketchup snack instead.
Six months to peruse seed catalogs and stir compost . . .
7 comments:
And, if this was a MasterCard commercial, it would say...
Self Reliance? Priceless.
I am proud of you.
If you like hot, hot salsa, you're invited.
Also I forgot to say that I got about three lbs. of sun-dried tomatoes out of the deal. And those things are expensive! So I probably misrepresented the whole thing right there.
And if you're wondering if I really dried them in the sun, no. I didn't. I used a dehydrator. Daltonboy goes crazy with that sort of stuff. "Why do they call them 'sun' dried? They didn't dry them in the sun!" Because sun-dried sounds yummier and healthier than "dried tomatoes," that's why.
Never had a sun-dried tomato. In fact, I would add them to Th's list of things that are overrated.
There is a reason why large societies are *not* largely agrarian, you know. : ) But I bet your food is much healthier and tastier than the supermarket alternative. Plus it's just fun to use something that you've produced yourself.
I have to say, I'm really impressed. I've only ever tried jam, and the more I make it, the more I realize it doesn't really count in terms of difficulty and nutritional value. So throw that out the window. And hey, if you'd have grown spinach, you wouldn't be in a world of hurt like the rest of us, craving it or suffering from E. coli like how many people are? So there you go. You are One Who Grows Stuff and that's cool.
Yes, I see the ignorance in completely writing off sundried tomatoes, having never tried them.
I enjoy tomatoes, and dried fruit (Mmm... Apricots), but the whole IDEA of sundried tomatoes makes me go 'blech.'
Pedestrian? Maybe.
.
Oh, but we'll all stop laughing when the apocalyse hits and you still have a supply of ketchup.
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