For some reason, I keep posting my goals here each year and then not meeting all of them. It’s a tradition, so we’re stuck with it now.
As I wrote in my last post, I met 2 out of the 5 main goals I set last year, along with a couple of secondary ones.
Life has a way of rearranging things.
As James says:
“Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit”; whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.” But now you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.”
Yes, if the Lord wills we meet our goals. And we do our best, knowing that our lives can be changed in an instant. I had no idea two years ago that I would end up failing to build my house in the tropics and be dropped in the state of Alabama.
Two years ago I was planning to build a house on this slab we paid to have cast:
And I was planting bananas alongside the little cabin I’d built:
That all came to nothing with the great plandemic pandemic of 2020.
So, with that in mind, I will say “Lord willing!” on this list and we’ll see how things pan out.
Here are my goals for 2022.
I. Create A New Weighing Station and Start Logging Yields Again
I miss my old chalkboard setup, and tracking my yields like I used to.
Like I did from 2012-2015.
I even managed to track yields for a few years in Grenada:
I really just need a good place for a scale, a nice big basket, a table and a chalkboard.
That needs to get fixed ASAP! I just harvested some turnips that need weighing!
II. Plant Two Acres of Pumpkins to Breed a Landrace
Last year we did great on pumpkins, planting seeds I had gotten from a Walmart pumpkin at the end of 2020. That gave us a wide selection of strange Curcurbita maxima vines, many of which bore well. I also interplanted a bunch of Seminole pumpkin seed lines, including seeds from Mark Akin, Karen Hill and others.
2021 Maximas and Moschatas
I hope to have one acre for the C. maximas and another for the C. moschatas. I may grow them with no irrigation and no fertilizer, just to see if we can breed a pumpkin super race.
III. Start a Corn Landrace
I don’t like the so-so yields of grain corn I’m getting, and I don’t like the low productivity of my Hickory King corn. So, like the pumpkins, I plan to intermix a bunch of dent corns and then select the best survivors.
Maybe we’ll do an acre of corn, just like the pumpkins, and may the best genes win.
IV. Make a Second Chicken Coop in the Garden
I like the idea of putting chickens in tractors, but it’s really getting time-consuming to move them around. Keeping them in one spot is easier and I think the best spot for a new chicken coop is in the middle of the gardens where they can eat overflow produce and weeds.
We can also harvest chicken run dirt/compost for the garden with minimal handling, as well as feeding scraps and culled vegetables right to the birds.
V. Hit 250,000 Subscribers on YouTube
In 2021 I added 41,832 subscribers to the channel.
Right now my subscriber count is 154,020.
I think we can hit 250k, especially if I keep posting 5 videos per week.
VI: Release Four New Books
The second edition of Create Your Own Florida Food Forest is just waiting on my layout guy, so that should be out within a couple of months.
I have also almost finished the text of The South Florida Gardening Survival Guide and am waiting on the final illustrations.
Noah Sanders has agreed to help me with Alabama Survival Gardening, and I hope to work on that after TSFGSG is done. Then, if I am really ambitious, I will write a final book in the fall. I have ideas for a foraging guide and a book on Minimalist Gardening. In 2021 my “surprise” book was Grocery Row Gardening, as that almost wrote itself as I got inspired by the idea.
I would also like to finish a science fiction novel I’ve been working on, as well as start on Jack Broccoli III (Slow to Bolt).
And, along with all that, I expect more books from John Moody and Steve Solomon will be published by Good Books Publishing in 2022.
VII: Put in (at least) Two More Grocery Row Gardens
I have a bunch of trees that need to get planted. Since it doesn’t look like we’ll be able to afford our own homestead any time soon, I’ll keep renting here and I’ll just go ahead and plant trees. If the Lord decides to send us a few acres we can own and plant long-term trees on, I won’t complain, but He is good and already takes care of us much more than we deserve. For now, I want to keep expanding the Grocery Row Gardens with a medicinal herb row and with more space for birds, frogs and other beneficials.
I love how the rows grew in 2021 and must plant more!
VIII: Post Every Weekday on This Blog
As my YouTube channel has grown, this blog has suffered. And really, I miss posting here every weekday. I’m going to get back on that schedule in 2022. I like being on my own platform and having a great archive of gardening thoughts and photos I can look back on, rather than having everything in video form on someone else’s platform.
Also, I will keep going to the gym regularly and pushing myself to stay in good shape. It would be nice to be SUPER SWOLE.
But I think that’s enough for one year.
What about you? Any goals for 2022?