Garden Challenge

Now that I have a garden plot, I am seriously thinking about signing up for Sharon's Independence Days challenge. I think it would help me to stay on track and record my progress in the garden as well as preserving food, and I like the idea of being part of a larger group of people who are sharing the same the goals.

Sharon's post on this topic really resonated with me. I was especially struck by these words:

"It is easy to forget how important this “little stuff” is - easy to think that your little garden doesn’t matter very much, or that your preparations won’t be enough. But we should also remember the exponential power of saying “no” and doing for ourselves. The corollary of the fact that every calorie of food takes 10 of fossil fuels is that every stir fry or salad you eat from your garden saves 10 times the oil as the calories contained within it. The fact that almost every packaged ingredient uses 7 times as much energy to create that packaging means that your choice to buy bulk oatmeal just saved 7 times as much energy as the package contains...

Every bite of food you grow, every bite you preserve, every bit of waste you reduce is a contribution to a larger project - keeping everyone fed. Every bit of compost you add to your soil, every bit of organic matter, every tree you plant is a contributor to a larger project - storing some of our emissions in soil, so we can have a future. Small things are the roots of vast and powerful ones."

Yep, I'm definitely signing up for this challenge. Anyone else?