Over the weekend, I read the book Barnheart by Jenna Wonginrich. It is a memoir of a twenty-something with no background in agriculture who desires a farm. And rather than waiting for some distant future in which she has sufficient capital to *poof* a farm into existence, she starts building it now. I loved this book and its message not to wait for some amorphous future, but to start fulfilling your desires now, especially since there's no reason not to start learning now. [This description is awful and sounds like it was written for a second-grade homework assignment, but the book is written by someone with skills and a sense of humor.]
Coincidentally, the seeds I ordered for my garden also arrived this weekend, which is good, since this book gave me an itch. The first year, we lived in this house, we tried growing a bit of this and that, and ended up with a pitiful year. The next year, I decided to focus on just growing lots of herbs. Now having had success with the herbs, I'm going to branch out a little into a few vegetables in a mixed bed using a permaculture technique. Not sure how this will go since we only get partial sun and the landlord apparently likes to spray all non-garden, non-grassy patches with weedkiller. I'm working on building a new layer of organic material in the area by decomposing a large pile of leaves, which I water diligently to get the moisture up. Maybe with the warm winter it will be dirt by spring.
By the way, "barnheart" is a term the author coined to describe a disease that starts out with the desire to get a few chickens and progresses into the realization that it would be even better if these chickens were on a farm with some sheep and a tractor. I, however, am not in danger of having this disease. All I want is a large garden, a few fiber rabbits, and maybe a sheep (I really want a sheep).
