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...

I just read a little book about a big deal: No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference  by Greta Thunberg. It's helping me make some sense out of my entire  adventure in Overalls. [For context, Greta  is a 16-year-old Swede who has been on a school strike to draw attention to the climate crises because we've got until 2030 to cut our emissions by 50% or suffer a positive feedback loop where warming leads to more emissions which leads to more warming leading to unprecedented climate disruption. (Even in my short life, I've seen the agricultural zones noticeable shift north - even moreso from the stories of my grandmother, so this worries me). Greta calls on us to assess all endeavors not just by financial ability but by asking, "Have we got enough of the carbon budget to spare to go through with this?" She speaks "on behalf of future generations" in simple, challenging words inciting us to confront what needs changing in order to address the cris...

I often hear folks joke, "Yeah, I had a garden once. I put in all this money & effort, and I only got a handful of tomatoes. Each one of them cost $27!" And they usually end by saying something about not having a green thumb. My first tomatoes of the season I smile and think about a mental model I've been working on: Growing your groceries is like washing your dishes. While they're raving about how many plants they've killed, I'm thinking, "It's not your thumbs. I bet you don't have a sink. And if you do, are you using decent soap or that garbage from the dollar store? And did you mention you've never washed dishes before in your life? And you're surprised you broke a couple wine glasses with no more experience than a four-year-old?" My eyebrows furrow involuntarily belying my thoughts, "Really? That doesn't seem all that surprising to me." But, of course, not only would saying all that confuse people, it...

I grow my groceries in my front yard. I've been growing gardens in front yards since I was eight years old. It started that way simply because that's where the best  sunlight was, right out front. Let me ask, if you're honest, where's your best sunlight? For, I'd say, 90% of Americans with yards, their best sunlight is in the front yard. "Yeah, but ..." I hear a lot of people say, "...if I planted it out there , people would take my tomatoes!" Like their neighborhood is especially prone to vegetable thieves. Like, maybe there is a vegetable-eating gang of young people that roams their streets, who they're afraid to talk about. (Which, if you do have a vegetable-eating gang in your neighborhood, please tell me about it because I definitely want to meet these kids!) Anyway, as I was going to say: if you're afraid to grow in your front yard where you've got good sun, and you instead choose a protected (albeit shady) sp...

For Immediate Release Monday, January 23, 2012 Contact: Nathan Ballentine maninoveralls@gmail.com Man in Overalls Grows 150lbs of Food in Small Winter Garden The yield was harvested in only three months during the height of winter. (Update: Upon moving away just 9 months after we installed and planted our 80-square-foot, front-yard food garden, my wife and I had harvested (and meticulously recorded ) 390lbs of fruit, veggies, and herbs, an estimated produce value of over $1600.) How much money has your front yard grown this winter? Gardeners in one Frenchtown household harvested over 150 pounds of food--a $600 value--in the past three months. In three raised beds with a total area of 80 square feet--the size of a very small bedroom--Nathan Ballentine, aka the Man in Overalls and Mary Elizabeth Grant-Dooley grew broccoli, collards, cabbage, carrots, herbs, and a host of other plants to eat, sell, and donate. "It's way easier to grow food than f...

Guest post by Lindsay , who's still in Tallahassee, still growing food About 5 months ago, I took a bus down to Tallahassee just in time to plant a fall garden with the kids from Nathan's church. I learned how to plant collards, mustards, turnips, lettuce, and shallots, and then turned right around and taught kids--from preschoolers who were barely speaking right up to sweet, awkward 5th graders--how to do the same. We planted five 4'x10' raised beds; a year before, the beds had been built and the students decided that they wanted the food they grew in "God's Giving Garden" to get donated to the food pantry that their church (Faith Presbyterian) ran along with other Meridian Rd. churches. Since then, any month when there's produce ready to be harvested, some students and other volunteers pick the vegetables, wash them, and walk the across the parking lot where they get added to the bags of food. In addition to the canned and boxed staples, folks ...

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...

If I'm not mistaken, this past summer, the universities' budgets in town were struck by 95 million dollars. Add to this the collapse of the housing boom and reductions in state government spending, and what you get is a Tallahassee economy heading for hard times. In fact, for many, times are already tough. This is our current reality. In the midst of such a financial situation, does it make sense to food garden? Is it worth it to shell out a few extra bucks upfront to either a)hire someone to plant a garden for you or b)to dig, sweat, make a run to the seed store, and plant your own garden? If money is already tight, if we're facing a tough economy, is growing food a good idea? Think for a moment about the places hardest hit economically over the last several decades. If I had to brainstorm such a list of US cities with the worst economic fortunes, I'd name towns like Flint, Michigan, Detroit, New Orleans and inner-cities in New Jersey. Interestingly enough,...

Last year CNBC ran a news story called "New Victory Gardens." It tells the story of how folks are "taking things into their own hands and backyards" by starting more and more gardens in 2008-- a year before, mind you, 2009 when the sale of home vegetable garden seeds jumped over 30% by some sources. According to the CNBC news report, there were 25 million households with home vegetable gardens. Now is as good a space as ever to mention briefly the outrageous economics of food-gardening. As the news report mentions, a large tomato at Whole Foods cost $3, and a package of tomato seeds in the same produce section cost $2.50. "So even if only one of these seeds turns into a plant," the reporter states, "then I'll have tomatoes all summer long." Okay, fine, but we don't have a Whole Foods in Tallahassee nor do most folks shop for organic produce. More and more folks buy organic, granted; the majority, however, still do not. So let's ...