Early Retirement on an Urban Farm
GCC: This past summer we met Mr & Mrs Crazy Kicks at the GCC Meetup in New York City’s Central Park. They introduced themselves by offering a handful of fresh picked cherry tomatoes and a fine summer ale, so of course we hit it off immediately :) Their approach to early retirement is a wonderful mix of amazing food and world travel, and I hope you enjoy learning about it as much as we did.
Early Retirement on an Urban Farm
When we got married, my wife and I made a hard plan to retire early. It was 2008, and we were both working at the same company where we’d met. It wasn’t so much the work itself as the high stress, man-child egos, and lack of vacation time that set us on a path to financial freedom. Our plan at the time was to reach financial independence then move to a homestead near a community college. My wife, who loves school, wanted to teach and we both wanted to get away from all the traffic and crowds – to slow down and grow our own food.
We just wanted a little spot to get away from it all
Chasing down our dreams
We both had decent jobs and were already living on one salary. When it came to investing, I used to waste time and money trading in and out of stocks, but over time we learned a simple three fund portfolio was all we needed. Soon we were maxing out our 401ks, making automated contributions to Vanguard accounts, optimizing for taxes, and increasing our savings rate to over 70%.
Financially we were starting to look good, but we had no plow experience. The only thing we knew about growing veggies was what we saw on documentaries – we were just a couple of beer drinking sofa farmers.
We decided to start a garden in our backyard. Living in the suburbs, we didn’t have a huge property, but 0.2 acres left plenty of space for a small plot.
It was time for us to get serious about gardening
Learning to grow our own food
I tilled up some dirt, built raised beds, and planted our first crops. If this had been our first year homesteading, we would have starved. I planted everything too close together and none of the plants got big enough to produce fruit. The few veggies we did get were enjoyed by squirrels and groundhogs. Considering the effort we put in, and the fact that we could just buy all these veggies at the store for a few dollars, almost made us give up.
At least it wasn’t our first year trying to live off the land somewhere in the boonies. Instead of giving up, I picked up the book Garden Way’s Joy of Gardening by Dick Raymond. The next spring, we started over.
It took time to learn the basics
I fenced in the garden, tilled up a larger area, setup an automatic watering system, added more compost, and mulched with leaves and grass clippings. With the right amount of space, fertilizer, and regular watering, we started seeing some real crops. Not everything turned out great, but we were making progress. Results improved each year as our soil got better.
After a lot of failures, we started having some success
Adding in some farm animals
Our crops were starting to look good, but we still wanted to move to the country and get a piece of land where we could have chickens for fresh eggs. Then one summer we took a road trip to Asheville NC, and ended up booking a room on an urban farm. An eccentric little hipster spot, they were raising meat rabbits, ducks, chickens, and bees – all on a tenth of an acre. Maybe it was all the free homebrew they shared, but this heady experience left us inspired.
Having chickens in a suburban development is unconventional, but so is retiring in your 30s. Screw convention. When we got home, we drew up plans on a napkin and built a coop the next day. After spotting an ad on Craigslist for various fancy breeds of chicks, we went and picked some out.
We added some chicks to the mix
Now, before getting into raising chickens, we knew we would have to butcher them at some point. Chickens only lay eggs well for the first three years of their life, but they can live for over a decade. On a farm, chickens are for both eggs and meat. We understood this was something we were signing up for.
Besides, we had good 3 years before we would have to worry about butchering chickens… That is, until we realized that 4 out of 6 of the chicks were actually roosters. Who knew the prettiest, strongest looking chicks were all dudes? We ended up with a lot of meat birds that first year.
The two hens we ended up with quickly found their spot on our little urban homestead. They happily took care of all our garden and kitchen scraps turning them into eggs and excellent fertilizer. We let them roam the yard where they’d devour any bugs in sight, eradicating our grub problem. They completed our backyard ecosystem.
These ladies help out in many ways
Sliding into early retirement
Each day we got closer to our goals, and each day our corporate jobs got more stressful. I switched jobs within the company and turned down some projects in order to reduce my responsibility. My wife however, kept getting pushed up the ladder. Becoming a corporate big timer was fun at first, but now the 24/7 emails had her on edge.
One day, she saw a position at a local community college. It paid less than half of what she was making, and at first, she didn’t think much of it. A few months later, we were on our winter break and really enjoying being away from work. My wife wasn’t keen on going back and told me about the teaching position – it was still open.
Maybe these weren’t the circumstances we expected, but this was exactly what she’d always wanted. I told her she had to take it. It was a massive pay cut, but not a big deal for us. Our spending was so low that her new gig would still cover all of our expenses, and we could keep putting away my salary.
Teaching has other perks, like summers off…
Leaving the corporate environment was transformative. Instantly I could see how much happier and healthier she was feeling. Life was good, really good.
With the bull market boosting our savings, it wasn’t much longer before we became financially independent. I thought I would pad our savings a bit more, but now my wife had summers off, and it was really tempting for me to quit my job and go travel with her. It also didn’t hurt that her community college gig still covered our expenses and provided excellent healthcare benefits. I quit my job the next summer – 4 years earlier than we originally planned.
I quit my job, and we hit the road. This is in the Catalonian Pyrenees.
Homesteading on an urban farm
It’s funny how we’d been chasing this dream for years, then it just kind of fell into our laps. After years of practice, we hit the ground running on our urban homestead.
Tending the garden has become second nature – we put in less effort and get more out. There’s nothing quite like walking out into a backyard grocery where you can pick more veggies than you can eat, and gather fresh eggs for breakfast everyday.
We’re still learning every season
With more time on my hands, I even built a greenhouse to extend our growing season. It’s March in Connecticut, and I just picked the last of our greenhouse kale. We made soup out of it with some garlic, tomato sauce, turnips, and herbs we stored from last summer’s garden. A lot of the meat we’ve been eating this winter is from the last flock of chickens we raised in our backyard.
Now we grow year round
How urban farming plays into our finances
If you want to run a profitable urban farm, your best bet is to intensively farm crops that are more expensive and can be grown fast – mainly fresh greens. You might even be able to expand your operation by finding neighbors willing to let you cultivate their backyards in exchange for fresh veggies. If you can find a market to sell within your community, transportation costs can be eliminated.
Fresh greens are usually most profitable
Our urban farm is far from being optimized for profit. We have a portfolio to support our financial needs, and the farm is more to increase our quality of life. That said, generally speaking we still come out ahead financially.
Startup costs
By staying small, startup costs remain low. It cost me a couple of hundred dollars to buy some rabbit-proof metal fencing and setup an automated watering system. I do have a small tiller that I picked up on Craigslist for $50, but you don’t necessarily need one to dig up a small plot. Just a few hand tools like a shovel, hoe, and rake will get you started. With a few bags of fertilizer, you should be able to have a garden setup for less than $300.
If you have decent soil, all you need is a shovel to get started
Getting setup for chickens costs about the same. I estimate we spent about $200 for materials to build our chicken coop, and it took us a day to build it. I made their automated feeder and heated waterer with scraps we found in a construction dumpster. The actual birds usually sell for $5-7 for a chick or $10-15 for a grown laying hen. When we got chicks, we made our own brooder out of a cardboard box and a lamp we had laying around.
Our DIY brooder
The most expensive piece of our urban farm is the greenhouse. Even though I did all of the work myself, it still cost about $650 to build. I estimate this will take the longest to pay itself off.
Recurring costs
The largest recurring costs for the garden are in seeds and watering. We might see our water bill increase by about $50 a season, and I’ll spend another $50 on heirloom seeds. While I might pay $3 for a packet of seeds, generally speaking I can grow those seeds into $30-$60 worth of produce.
A $3 packet of seed can become over $30 worth of fresh veggies
A lot of plants don’t even have any recurring costs to grow. For example, garlic and potatoes are planted from old ones stored from the previous season. Often times, they even come up on their own from strays that we missed during harvest. I can save seeds like green onion and dill from old plants and keep them for the next season. Plants like strawberries and asparagus are perennials and come up year after year.
Strawberry plants spread on their own
We hardly have any chemical costs, because we mostly use composted chicken poop to fertilize our plants. I never use pesticides, though I did introduce a few mantis eggs that I picked up for about $10 a few years ago. Our garden pests are kept under control by spiders and mantises who come back each year to work for free.
We don’t use pesticides
When it comes to our chickens, I’ve already calculated that half a dozen hens earn about $30/month in fresh eggs after accounting for feed costs.
It’s hard to put a price on how much produce we get, because we don’t weight it all out (we just eat,) but I’d estimate we get over $1k in fresh veggies, eggs and meat each year.
The biggest benefit for us is in eating well
Urban farm commitments
Our farm doesn’t exactly look like what we expected, but neither does our lifestyle. We’re traveling much more than expected, and have to balance that with our commitments at home. When it comes to our chickens, we do have an automated waterer and feeder setup. With those alone, our chickens would be fine on their own for a few days.
With adequate food and water, chickens are fine on their own for days
For longer trips, we have family close by to check on the ladies and let them out to graze. Since we rotate flocks, we sometimes have a break from taking care of chickens. This winter we took advantage of such a break to snowbird in Costa Rica.
While maintaining our garden does present some hurdles, it isn’t too difficult to leave it and travel. Over the last few summers we’ve taken long trips to Colorado, Nova Scotia, and Spain. During these trips our garden would become over grown, and some crops would go to waste. While this isn’t ideal, we can usually clear the weeds and still keep things productive after 3-4 weeks of absence.
The right size for us
Being in a more urban location has a slew of benefits like being close to major airports, and having a gym, grocery, bars, restaurants, and hardware store in walking distance. I even find myself happy that there isn’t more land to take care of, because it allows more time to pursue other hobbies like mountain biking, surfing, and traveling. Maybe this isn’t the homestead retirement life we initially envisioned, but for us, it’s even better.
Having a smaller operation leaves more time for other things
Would you Retire to your Urban Farm?
GCC: Thank you Mr. Crazy Kicks, I’m definitely inspired. To learn about future meetups, be sure to sign up for our mailing list (form below and in the footer.) Also, check out our own early ambitions to grow our own food: So You want to be a Farmer?
Those chickens are so cute! I think I’d have an even harder time killing them in 3 years because I’d have grown so much more attached haha.
How much better do fresh veggies and chicken eggs taste versus the organic in the store? It’d be cool to have a little garden when we’re retired. How many hours do you dedicate to it per day/season?
For me, there’s nothing like homegrown veggies, eggs, and meat. Commercial operations don’t allow for chickens to free range where they tend to eat a lot of bugs and fresh greens. When they do this, they also pickup a lot more omega threes and you can see it in the egg yolks and chicken fat. The yolks on our eggs are a richer almost orange color, and the fat on our chicken meat is a golden yellow. It makes a big difference in taste.
When it comes to veggies, you simply can’t buy a lot of the things we grow. Many of these veggies are too delicate for commercial operations, or just too difficult to grow en masse. Heirloom tomatoes for example have the most flavor, but a short shelf life.
I might take a few half days to plant the garden, and if I mulch well, there isn’t much weeding to do. Most of my weeding gets done with a beer in hand at the end of the day as I take some time to admire our crops :)
If you want to experience the same quality without growing your own, I recommend finding a local farmers market. The prices might be higher, but smaller farmers are more likely to grow rare heirloom crops and raise their animals to higher standards.
Man, those veggies are looking good! Impressive work Mr Crazykicks & co, you guys did an amazing job in that garden.
Thanks! We’re starting to get the hang of it :)
I think we are a couple years behind you, but following a very similar journey. We’ve lived in our Michigan home for four summers and every year we expand the garden and get better at growing our own veggies. We have 1/3 of an acre and it’s amazing what we can grow, while keeping a large space for our dogs to run.
Our proabably garden saves us $1,000 on groceries each year and we only spend $30-50/year on seeds and supplies.
Also, my husband chose to take a giant pay cut and go back to school (not to teach, but to get a PhD). The long term plan is to teach though. While homesteading in early retirement sounds fun, I love living in a college town so I think we will be urban homesteading for many years!
Very cool! Sounds like we’re in good company :)
Their veggies look awesome, and those strawberries! I’ve been growing wild strawberries in our tiny backyard and there is nothing like picking a strawberry and eating it while it is still hot from the sun. I loved reading about their progression, from people who didn’t know much about gardening or farming, and then look at them now! Very impressive.
Nothing beats fresh strawberries in summertime. Those little wild berries are especially delicious :)
So cool. I joined a CSA last year and have really enjoyed the variety of locally grown produce and being able to see everything growing on the farm. I can imagine how rewarding it would be to grow it all yourself. I also love stories of people who gave up the big paycheck to follow their dreams. I’m hoping to do the same one day myself. Thanks for sharing!
Awesome, a CSA is the next best thing to growing your own. You still get farm fresh veggies each week and learn to cook with seasonal ingredients :)
So awesome man! I really want to do this one day but I’ll need more land than I have now. My yard is paltry and mostly clay. And summers here in DC are so hot that even growing tomatoes is a challenge, they usually burn up
Interesting, I would have thought DC to be a great place for growing since you get such a long summer season… Though I can see too much heat being a problem. When we were in Catalonia, I noticed a lot of gardeners using shade cloth to reduce the amount of sunlight hitting their plants. Might be useful for your tomatoes :)
Thanks for the tip. Some things do grow fine here, I’ve done well with string beans. Squirrels and chipmunks are also a major challenge, but I think the fun of trying to outwit them is part of the game!
I live in Leesburg outside DC and tomatoes do great here, they just need a lot of mulch. You can do it, check out Southern Exposure seed exchange
There are a million ways to retire. Create yours!
Yep, sure are!
That was a cool one. Inspiring, for sure. Love those big smiles!
:)
Great article. Thanks!
Loved reading this. Mrs. PIE aspires to some of the same stuff although the growing season in the northern mountains of NH will make for a very interesting learning experience for us, compared to the relatively longer season here in MA.
A neighbor on our road in NH has pigs, goats, chickens and more so there is nearby expertise for us to tap into for sure. And we just learned of another neighbor who has a wonderful garden and grows some of the best local produce for Farmers Markets in the North Conway locale. We need to learn and seriously up our game!!
We’ve seen some incredible gardens on our trips up north! The growing season is shorter, but those long summer days can turbo charge plant growth. You should be able to have a fine garden in NH :)
Three years ago we put in a 20×20 veggie garden patch in full sun in our large backyard (it was in an area that a previous owner had fenced in so we did not have to buy fencing). Added organic hummus and mushroom soil amendments first. I found super cheap starter plants at the local state Ag extension greenhouse. We had a great first year–amazing haul, gorgeous vegetables, we were still eating our root veggies and squash long into the wintertime. The following summer it rained and rained, everything got moldy and rotted. The next summer was hot and dry–had to spend a ton of money watering the garden and nothing grew well. So, out of three years, we had one amazing year. The size of the garden was overwhelming to me, I realized I did not want to come home from a stressful job every day and go weed the garden for an hour in the humidity. And veggies are so cheap in the summer that it was hard to justify the effort involved just to get free Swiss chard. Now we are moving to a more wooded property and I think I may find a patch of sun to do some container gardening, tomatoes and perennial herbs, etc. Another way we have lived off the land is by having a neighbor teenager who bowhunts take a deer off our 2 acre property every year. For $90 for processing, we get about 30 pounds of venison (steaks and ground) and live off this for many months (venison chili in particular is really good!). It sounds like you have your garden management all dialed in! What is it like to “process” your poultry? Do you do all the plucking, etc, yourselves? We know a couple of families who raise heritage pigs and send them out for butchering once a year and have them turned into sausage, chops, loin, etc. At least they do not have to do the butchering themselves!
The ever changing weather is always a challenge. Depending on whether we have a hot dry summer or cool wet one has a huge effect on our garden. This certainly keeps us on our toes, and each year we learn a little better how to adapt and keep our garden more versatile.
The weeding can be a pain, especially when we let things get out of control. I like to be a lazy gardener, and found the easiest way to keep weeds down is with regular mulching. When mowing our lawn, I’ll bag the grass and then spread it around our plants. The grass naturally composts feeding the plants while stifling weeds at the same time. The weeds that come up through the mulch I pull out in the evening when its cool outside, and I have a beer in hand :)
Butchering the chickens isn’t my favorite part, but I’m getting better at it. Plucking feathers is the most time consuming, but it’s made easier if you loosen them up with a hot water bath first. Once you have a system down, it goes pretty quickly, and we can process half a dozen birds in one morning.
I’d love to have a regular supply of venison. And that heritage pig would be great for making some charcuterie, which I’ve been contemplating getting into :)
Great post Mr. CK. I’ve been a “urban farmer” for years too. If it’s done carefully and the right crops are grown it can be quite cost effective. The problem is most people run out of steam after a few years and the initial investment goes to waste.
Great veggie pictures btw!
I’ve enjoyed seeing your garden hauls :)
My wife would love a garden like that. We have a community garden at our building and that’s good enough for now. Once she retires, she’ll spend a lot more time in the garden. The ideal scenario would be some kind of part time job like Mrs. CK. It might be tough to find in her field, though.
Mr. Crazy Kicks needs to post more. I’m a big fan and he doesn’t post often enough. :)
Thanks for the kind words, Joe! I’ll try and get some more regular posts coming out :)
We have tried. Oh how we have tried. I think we suck at gardening. It’s also tough to do it right since we usually pack up during the summer and leave for 1-2 months when the kids are out of school. That also happens to be prime growing time here.
We did manage to not kill a cherry tomato plant that’s a volunteer and pops back up each year. And we have a kaffir lime tree we keep for the leaves (and haul inside every winter). Last but not least is a pot of green onions that keep growing and growing year after year (though their looking weak after a hard winter).
Volunteers are the best! I haven’t planted potatoes in a few years, but I still dig up a couple dozen pounds each season :)
Your onions should perk back up fine, if there is one indestructible plant, it’s the onion!
They’ve always come back in the past. And we planted some transplants from my mother in law’s garden so we have a second variety of green onions too (and they are thriving like crazy already in spite of a weirdly cold/snowy spring here).
I was also lucky enough to met and chat with Mr. & Mrs. CK at an NYC meetup last year (unfortunately it was not the GCC meetup). At first, I didn’t even realize they had a blog haha! Soon after talking with them about a wide array of topics, gardening included, I found myself becoming quickly inspired. I am curious how did the greenhouse hold up through the 3-4 Nor’easters we had this year? It seems like it did very well if you both were able to get some kale out of it. In any case, nice post and hope you’re both doing great!
Hey, Danny! The greenhouse held up just fine, and I wasn’t even home for most of the snow storms to clear it off :)
Hope all is well with you, and hope we can find an opportunity to share some pizza and beers again soon :) Maybe some more meetups for the summer?
Very nice! You didn’t miss much with the snow. Where did you two travel off to?
And yes, definitely up for some more meetups! I’ll bring the pizza if you got the beers ;)
I’ll bring the beer ;)
When I was four, my parents had a house built on 1.5 acres in a suburb of DC. Most of it was wooded and the rest was on a huge hill — but my folks decided that outside of some azaleas, they’d only plant what they could eat. So dad terraced some gardens. They planted a bunch of fruit trees, bought a bunch of blueberry and blackberry and black raspberry bushes, and soon I was living the wholesome ’80s kid dream of wandering outside on bright sunny days to pick fruit for that morning’s breakfast cereal or spring onions and lettuce and tomatoes for a lunch salad.
Today I’ve managed to not kill an aloe plant on our kitchen windowsill and a small rosemary bush in our front yard. Any more than that is possibly asking too much. Thanks to a neighbor on a triple lot who is HUGE into the local urban garden scene, though, I get to enjoy the next best thing: walking across the street with a six-pack or some ginger-lemon Haribo and walking back home with gorgeous fresh peppers and tomatoes and strawberries.
Showing up at my house with a six pack is a great way to get some fresh veggies ;)
Our neighbor has chickens, unfortunately our situation doesn’t support the care of them.
I do have a question though. What are the heating costs in winter for the green house? That’s what’s keeping us from building one. What temp do you keep it at?
No heating costs, I keep it completely passive. On a day like today, where its about 40F and sunny out, the inside will heat up over 100 deg, but at night it will drop close to ambient air temperature. I’ve been running it as an ongoing experiment recording temps, and seeing how long I can extend the seasons with different crops. Hope to share some of that data once I see how the spring goes, but it worked out really well in the fall. Even after the cold nights, when the sun comes out plants perk up and thrive in the heat and humidity :)
Any tips or suggestions for starting a container veggie garden for those of us lacking a plot of our own to cultivate?
I would have similar tips to a regular garden. Make sure plants have enough space (or in this situation big enough pot,) and make sure they get enough food and most importantly – regular watering. With pots you want to be careful about how much sun they get as they can dry out quick and kill your plants.
I do grow fig trees in pots and wrote about how I do it here: http://www.mrcrazykicks.com/cheap-hobbies-growing-fig-trees/
Nice! Having time expand our garden is one of the reasons I so look forward to FIRE, can’t wait.
Good luck on your journey, it’s worth it!
This just proves that you don’t have to have hundreds of acres to have a successful farm. This is pretty inspiring to read, and it’s something I’ve wanted to start for a while when I decide to settle down. Seems therapeutic..well, as long as you don’t get frustrated by how slow things may grow.
Nope, you don’t need acres, It’s surprising how much you can grow out of a small plot!
I’ve just put one seeds in my starter packs (egg cartons). Within a week I’ll move them to recycled Costco rotisserie chicken containers. After that they will make it outside in yet another contraption to harden off before popping them in the enriched soil from our lovely ladies (chicken and rabbits). I also add free collected leaves from the parks dept. I garden for the freshness and for the nurturing aspect. Some yrs are better than others, but I look forward to the season like a kid waiting for Christmas. I do love to share our bounty with others as they also share theirs with us. Our grocery bill averages $250 per month for three adults.
Very nice! Sounds like you’re a pro, and I’m gonna steal your egg carton idea to start some plants today :)
Nice work, Mr. CK! You’ve really made some great moves here. I’m a few steps behind in a couple areas, so I’ll be venturing over to your blog for inspiration. 1, You’ve hung it up much earlier than I will – mid 40s. And 2, You’ve figured out this daggum gardening thing! My attempt at square foot gardening in our small city plot was laughable at best. Course, it didn’t help that I planted on our south side, which also happens to be the NORTH SIDE of our neighbor’s story and a half house. Ugh…
I don’t do square foot gardening, but from what I’ve read it’s a great strategy! Most of my problems early on involved overcrowding plants (I was too greedy.) Square food gardening should really help get that spacing right.
That’s too bad about your neighbors blocking the sun. Part of my garden is in the same situation with a neighbors trees. While it’s not the best spot for sun loving veggies like tomatoes and peppers, cool weather crops like lettuce and cabbage still seem to do OK with less sun. Figuring these nuances is all part of the fun :)
Thanks :)
Growing own food is not only economical, also healthy and gives joy of accomplishment. I just love all the pictures you took, so cute.
GCC, thank you for the guest post and introducing Mr Crazy Kicks!
Mr Crazy Kicks, thank you for the very timely post. Look forward to checking out your blog and getting some more tips on backyard gardening/farming
We’re (hopefully) about to close on a house in the NJ suburbs of NYC, and one of my main requirements was enough of a small backyard with sun to seriously start vegetable gardening. We have a backyard now in our rental in Brooklyn, and I tried some veggies last year, but I realized halfway through the growing season that there’s no real full sun spot once you hit late July. To make sure that didn’t happen again, I used a sun seeker app on my phone when house shopping which shows where the sun will be at different times of the year. Great way to make sure there’ aren’t any trees in the way during prime growing season.
Good idea using the sun seeker when looking for a home. A nice way to make sure you have a good spot for the garden!
Congratulations on growing organically, eating so many veggies, and sharing those precious fuzz balls with us! Amazingly, the editor in chief of the American Journal of Cardiology shared, about seven years ago, why we should all be eating plant-based. How cool, to think of enjoying your feathered friends even more! Keep up the great life! XO
Every summer, when our garden is in full swing, I tend to lose a few pounds from all the healthy eating :)
*sigh*
This makes me remember my urban farm. I lived on 600sm on a block 16kms from the city centre. I had 12m of wicking beds, 6m of ordinary garden soil beds, chickens, (or as Aussies call them, ‘chooks’), and over 30 fruit trees.
Then I found out my block of land was worth over 6 figures…
I now live 30 kms from the town centre, by the beach, on a smaller block of land. I’ve had a break from gardening, but after I get back from my trip next week to China and North Korea, I’m getting the backyard remodelled to put in some wicking veggie beds. I miss the freshness of the veggies.
Give your Plymouth Rocks a cuddle, Mr Crazy Kicks. We had one called ‘Pudgy’.
Oops. I meant my block of land was worth over 7 figures.
No way I would have left my sweet set up for anything less!
It’s early morning here, I’m still in bed on my laptop. I’d better get up and have a coffee!
Seeing as I popped back, here’s a link to a friend’s blog talking about wicking boxes. She put me onto them and they work an absolute treat. Even in days of 45C/113F, I’ve never lost a plant.
https://foodnstuff.wordpress.com/water-wicking-boxes/
For 7 figures, I would also find a new place to garden :)
Is there anything to watch out for when buying heritage seeds? I had read that farmers who keep chickens caged but provide a ‘door’ that, if the chickens push hard enough, allows the chickens to roam free; thus enabling them to be labeled as free range. Didn’t know if there was anything similarly havey cavey going on with heritage seeds. Love your site!
I assume you’re asking if there is a possibility of fraud with these seeds?
The seeds I get are for different heirloom plants. It has less to do with how the seed was grown, and more to do with the plant itself. These tend to be plant cultivars that were cultivated decades or centuries ago, but didn’t make the cut for today’s mass production. These plants tend to be unique in some obvious way – like Cherokee purple tomatoes – when grown, so it would be obvious if you didn’t get the real deal. Hope that answers your question :)
Thank you for sharing your story! The aspect that I loved best was the fact that the decision to save a large portion of your net income and to invest it for the future allowed both you and your wife to pursue what you truly want out of life. It sounds like you wouldn’t have been able to retire 4 years sooner and your wife wouldn’t have been able to take the teaching job if you had both ascribed to the “normal” savings rate of 10% – 15%. Once again, your story has affirmed my abiding belief that saving money for the future is the next best use of money once the basic necessities have been purchased. Money buys options, and very little else. The more money you have, the more options are available to you. Congratulations to you both on having figured this out early in life and on being able to pursue the options that make you the most happy!
Yep, we wouldn’t have bee able to take advantage of these opportunities if we hadn’t been saving for years. I’d much rather have the option to pursue my passion over having a newer car or house :)
Awesome!
My wife and I are also slowly starting to re-do our back yard by converting some areas into vegetable gardens – mainly for our own consumption, but we’ll see how well the yield will be, maybe even end up with enough produce to start a small side-business!
We don’t have a lot of room to work with, but these days with vertical gardening etc, I”m sure we’ll be able to make something sustainable and even profitable from it!
Awesome post! If we eventually buy a house this is exactly how I plan to use the yards. In my opinion, growing grass is such a waste of potential!