Man in Overalls

I want you to grow your groceries. Could you grow enough food to feed your family if you needed? Could we, as communities, sustain ourselves - even temporarily - if there was some major disruption like a cyber attack, supply chain failure, hyper inflation, economic fall-out, or - God forbid - war? Though I'm a fan of salads & tasty treats like sugar snaps, if you're hungry, those just won't cut it. It comes down to calories and protein. If you were gardening to keep your family alive, what would you grow?  This isn't about fear-mongering; it's about preparedness & keeping enough life-skills passing around in our networks so that, "if & when" we need them, those skills can be cultivated & shared . Even within a generally stable society, there are "minor" crises at the level of region, city, neighborhood, & family all the time that don't feel all that minor to the folks involved.  If you had to, could you grow enough energ...

“Why I Wear Overalls?”  or, more simply,  “Remember” 9. My grandfather was buried in overalls. His children placed seed packets in his breast pocket before they planted him. My mother, her bowed head dropping tears on his cold face, She tells me “He never wore a suit.” “Overalls everyday of his life.  Wore ‘em to church.” “Ain’t that the truth,” chimes my aunt.  “Clean shirt. Maybe some other shoes.” And my mother again: “Just didn’t make any sense burying him in a tie.” 8. Five days prior my grandmother was reselling Salvation Army china at the flea market. Granddaddy was waiting to go home. She found him slumped in the front seat of her van; Doctors said he’d had a stroke. I say, he caught a ride from St Peter back to the farm. 7. For decades he carried an inhaler. It helped him cope with the emphysema, earned, like his calluses, from a one-mule plow.  He carried the land in his lungs like gulps of oxygen. Every now and then, he r...

Well, today's my birthday.  I turned 25 years old.  For the first nine months of my life, I didn't have a name.  My parents were waiting for me to "tell them what my name should be."  I was known as "Mr. Baby."  For most of the next 23-24 years of my life, folks referred to me as Nathan.  Though my aunt did call me Brian up until I was about 15 because she named me ahead of my parents and thought it would stick if she stuck to it long enough.  Of course, growing up, there were a few "NATHAN WILEY BALLENTINE's" thrown in there and a few "migit's," (I didn't break five feet until 9th grade).  (Just in case you didn't know, "Wiley" means "tricky and cunning.") Then, last September , I took on this new persona, the Man in Overalls .  Promptly, I began doing things like standing beside the road to drum up business and to create a "buzz" around growing food. And today's my birthday. So, I...

My grandmother this coming spring will turn 92. She grew up picking cotton on other folks' farms in "LA, Lower Al'bama," south Georgia and N. Florida. She continues to "farm" to this day. Her vegetable garden-- heavy on peas, tomatoes, squash, sweet potatoes and peppers during the summer and collards, mustards and turnips during the winter-- is one of the things that keeps her going. Born in 1918, she "didn't fall off the turnip truck yesterday." Here she is in her garden harrowing a row with her five-year-old great-granddaughter, Mackenzie. Ever since I started growing vegetables when I was eight-years-old, food bearing plants-- and the eating that goes along with them-- have been one of the mainstays of our relationship. When we write letters, we always end up reporting on the state of our gardens, sharing things like the purchase of a new fruit tree or a bumper crop of collards. And when I visit her, the first thing after hugging is to dig i...

Update 2018: Nine years ago I publicly launched as Man in Overalls in Tallahassee, FL with this blog post following a few appearances along Tallahassee roadways in my overalls with big, colorful signs that said things like "Will Garden for Food", "Grow Your Own Food and Share it!", "We Can Grow Food!", and "HONK! For Food Gardens!" My dual purposes - rooted in the context of the Great Recession- were: 1)pay my bills by providing food garden support to those who could afford it and 2)develop a persona and business that I could leverage to contribute to efforts in the Deep South's "food movement" to ensure all could eat well. Now rooted in Jacksonville, FL, my locus of work has shifted, my perspective has expanded to think regionally, but these early roots explaining my aspirations still ring true. - NB, MIO Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Nathan, Nathan Ballentine. Tallahassee's home. Here's the gist of it: ...