On the food forest tips/tour video I posted last week, I got this comment:
I have no tolerance for this mindset.
You don’t have an acre? So what? Plant on what you have. Or what you can borrow.
Or work your tail off until you can buy something.
We met farmers in the Caribbean who hiked for miles to farm on pieces of marginal land.
Don’t be envious. Go make something happen.
It took me years and lots of hard work and savings, along with an act of God to get my first acre of land. People complain instead of changing their lives. Lazy people often complain the most.
Work with what you have. And life isn’t fair.
Also, whining is for losers.
8 responses to “Whiners…”
Wow you roasted this guy, but I agree with your assessment. It would have been much better if he said “I don’t have an acre yet, but I’m working towards my goals so I can plant my own food forest.” That would remove the image of a whiny Millenial and show a driven individual.
As a friend said, it’s envy cloaked in the garb of “I’m poor.”
It’s amazing what can be done in a small space if a person truly wants to work at it. A food forest can happen in marginal spaces as well and can end up being creative and beautiful as well. We have a 30 foot by 1 foot strip along our driveway planted with 5 fig trees, asparagus, strawberries, green onion, cabbages, flowers, Creole tomatoes and a cucumber plant or two. Like you said – work with what you have and build it up over time.
Shoot, we can’t even have an inch of our own land. Darned if that’ll stop us from growing stuff. Stuck it out with flowerpots for a year at our last rental, just to collect seeds for one more season. This year’s rental, the lease says we can’t stick a shovel in the ground without permission, so… we’re constantly finding and restoring old flowerbeds everywhere. Totally normal maintenance, which we are responsible for just like trimming the shrubbery and mowing the grass. The lease says so. Just needed a little help, some bright flowers, and hey, there’s enough room between the daylilies and cannas to squeeze in some beans and tomatoes too. Quite a lot of them. Nobody has complained. It’s all in the definitions.
Have you had much trouble with wild pigs in your food forests and gardens?
No, not here. We have had some deer damage, though, before Betsy the rescue dog showed up and started keeping them away.
We grow a decent amount of food on not even a 1/10th of an acre. Red rocky clay soil with low nutrients. I’m attempting to breed some squash that will grow well in these conditions. Okra does pretty decent or it did last year. Other than grass clippings I don’t add amendments. Don’t water besides right after planting seed.
If someone will go to the trouble of breaking in a few rows, it’s not really hard after that. That first sweat investment lasts a good while.
My next adventure is regenerating reclaimed coal mine land into decent soil. Got the land for cheap, at least compared to prices now. Gotta start somewhere. We plan to move next year.
Yeah, that’s right!
May your new land be amazing.