Lists

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Are you a list maker?  I have made lists in my life, but don't so much these days.  Maybe making blogs has replaced making lists.  My friend was out in the garden across the orchard that separates their house from our tiny homes.  I saw her red sweatshirt and knew she was putting in the veggie starts she bought at yesterday's Tilth Farmers' Market.  I walked over to chat and see if she needed some help.  "Hey," I said.  She'd already heard the clatter of the gate at the far end of the orchard so she was alert to me heading her way.  "I'll take it from here,"  the starts were mostly in the rich dark lepo.  I took over the watering and then we just chatted about the current state of duck and chicken land, and this question:  "How much food does a family need to feed themselves?"

Whidbey Island is the largest island in the Northern Hemisphere, approximately 60 miles from tip to toe.  We live in one of the wooded communities in So. Whidbey and in a year we have experienced --seen, heard and got ourselves in touch with the enterprise and energy of people mobilized.  A ferry separates So. Whidbey from the 'mainland' (never did like that word from my Hawaiian Island times) and makes a big difference in the way life is lived.  We live in a rural place.  People garden, people farm, people raise their food and sell their food and mobilize around the keia ma kela (the everyday stuff) of food and sustaining practices. 

The question "How much food does a family need to feed themselves?"  came from conversation between my planting friend and her friend/our friend.  Well, I thought that was a good question, but thought maybe we needed to start with another question and that's where the 'list making' comes in.  Before you answer how much food a family (your family) nees to feed themselves start here:

WHAT do you and your family eat now?

While Mahina moves into the four 'ole moons of the First Quarter, that's a good review and consider kind of thing to do.  We're planting our first gardens in many years, and eating eggs from our chickens though not eating the chickens who lay the eggs.

I think I'll start them lists again and see what comes of it.  You?