Here we go! Life with the Shibaguyz…

(Good drama in the title… right?  Right?)

Yes, our own little gardening space does produce a LOT of food for us.  If you remember last year, we brought in around 800 pounds of tomatoes just from outside our own back door.  We had a lot of greens, beans, potatoes and peas.  There were a lot of other little food stuffs in there we enjoyed like some cherries and strawberries… but still…

While right now we are living mostly out of our pantry with supplements from the Ballard Farmers Market, there’s still that last part.  We’re still supplementing our food supply from someone else.

DON’T GET US WRONG!!  We LOVE our local food producers and have become good friends with the farmers we buy from over the past years.  However, we still have that ultimate goal of becoming completely self-supporting with our food needs… all but the meat and dairy part.  Haven’t figured out how to do that part ourselves yet… not sure if we even want to figure that part out.  Anyway…

With that goal in mind, we placed an add on our community blog looking for gardening space.  The ad read something like this:

Wanted: Edible Gardening Space
Do you have a space in your yard or vacant lot that is just BEGGING to be turned into an edible urban garden? Maybe you started a garden with the best of intentions but just don’t know how to get started and need a mentor? Maybe you’re just tired of looking at all that grass and dream of harvesting some real food! Or, you wouldn’t mind a couple of urban farmer types coming in and converting your grass into food space.

Whatever the case, we are looking for gardening spaces both large and small to grow food on this season. You own the land, we are stewards of that land for you. No lot too small or too large. Whether it’s a few containers or a full-size garden, we can use it. This is not a solicitation for a paid service, this if for our own personal urban farming use… and you could benefit in the process as well!

We can work out an arrangement with you where you share the work and get more of the produce or you can just set back and let us do all the work and steward your land for you. Drop us a line atlazylocavores@me.com and we’ll come out at your convenience and see what we can do. We’ll assess the options and work out what is most beneficial for everyone involved.

The growing season is upon us and we have food ready to put in the ground. Contact us today at lazylocavores@me.com.

Remember at this point in the story that one of us is an insomniac.  I’m okay with it… I just sleep when I feel like it and work when I’m awake.  I posted this at about 2am.  The next morning, I received a call from Jason asking me what I did last night online that would cause a flood of emails.  I had just woken up and didn’t put two and two together.  Without any other explanation, he told me to go check the email.

Over thirty emails later…

One week later…

We now have four garden plots we are either partners in with the homeowners or have completely taken over.  Sharecropping, land stewardship… call it what you like.  We have nearly half an acre of land here within just a few miles of our home that we will be growing our own food on.  We are now officially urban farmers!  WOOHOO!!

We still have the dream of having our own plot of land out in the country or on one of the islands here.  That’s probably a little while out.  So what’s a displaced farming soul to do?  It struck me in the middle of the night that night and prompted me to send out that posting.  And it happened.  We start planting this next week in the first of the plots that are ready to go right now.  A couple of the others are going to take a little more work and will most likely start producing our summer crops.  It all depends on how quickly we can get some raised beds put together and filled.

It really was that simple.  While we are still pinching ourselves, we’re also doing backflips knowing that this year we just might never have to shop for any food other than meet and dairy… well… and coffee and chocolate… we are human after all!!

This is a big step for us but definitely one we are excited about.  It also drives home a point of discussion prevalent here at the Shibaguyz household:  the fact that living sustainably… even self-sustainably… means being connected to your community.  Furthermore, it means relying on that community for support and resources.

This is phase one of a larger project that we’ll keep you updated on.  I used to loose sleep because I was stressed out.  Now I loose sleep because I can’t stop planning and being excited about what we’re doing tomorrow.  Like we said… this is one heck of a ride folks… and this is just the first of our projects.  Stay tuned…

talk to you soon…
The Shibaguyz