First, let me just put it out there that today I have been adding unique products to the site throughout the day and I have a few more that will go up this afternoon or tomorrow depending on how much longer I feel like sitting in front of this dreaded little electronic box. It’s worth taking a look at just to see if there is anything in your size because they are all one offs. Some raw antler faced moose antler plugs, Pink Ivory wood plugs with Peony carvings in them, 9/16″ Labradorite plugs with gemstones set in the faces, 3″ diameter 00g Ebony spirals, 3″ Labradorite concave tunnels, and maybe some other goodies. Here’s the direct link to the Unique section of our site.
We have been getting our dig on and our dirt on here at the studio and at my house. We have built several large wood planters outside our building and on our loading dock patio that we have planted various fruits and vegetables in. The planters are 5 to 8 feet in length and 1 to 3 feet in width and contain squash, beans, strawberries and many other goodies that we are basically growing in an urban/industrial area, so it should give the building a nice touch in addition to providing employees and customers with stuff to grub down on. If you are a customer or find yourself in the area mid-summer, stop by to check out the garden and we’ll probably have some extra stuff to send you home with
I have also been working on a vegetable garden behind my house. I figured every self respecting pre-civil war house deserves an old time vegetable garden so I turned over and organically fertilized (sort of a misleading term, what I really did was churn composted matter and lime into it) a considerable amount of my back yard yesterday evening over the course of about four hours to prepare it for the army of edibles I have planned. Several different kinds of chili peppers, sweet banana peppers, more tomatoes than anyone really needs, pumpkins, beans, dill, thyme, coriander, oregano, lavender and a bunch of other stuff.
We had a garden when I was young for several years and although it was my fathers idea and he “directed” how it went, it was pretty much my garden. I worked it, I groomed it, planted, harvested, and prepared it for the next year’s crop before winter. I learned a lot about responsibility and patience and spent a lot of time in the garden willingly working because it is something I immensely enjoy. This was years before anyone ever cared about “organic” gardening or common sense gardening but this is exactly what we did. Plant the plants and let nature grow and nurture them. No fertilizers, pesticides, minimal watering. We didn’t till with an electronic machine because it creates a hard pan of material underneath the turned material that becomes very difficult for plants to root through, and tillers usually do not dig very deeply anyway. I was taught to go through manually turned material by hand and how to easily sift out the root structures to break up the sod, and what is left is lush, fine dirt. The added bonus of removing this organic matter is that you can plant faster because you do not need to wait for everything to die and then decompose. If you plant without removing it you run the risk of your plants rooting into a big mass of organic matter that just gets in the way, and much of that organic matter can continue to try and regrow. If it succeeds it can choke out your seedlings, and even if it doesn’t it is still using precious minerals and moisture in the process. I was also taught to pay attention to how far apart my plants are planted and to pay attention to root system growth when harvesting to judge how water and minerals are spread through the soil. To plant in hills and allow plants to spread out and grow wider and deeper to extend their reach and the amount of “food” available for each plant, which results in healthier, more nutritious fruit/veg, stronger plants and can virtually negate the need for non-natural waterings.
The nutritional value of industrially produced foods has plummeted anywhere from 10 to 50 percent depending on the vitamin or nutrient in question over the past 50 years. That means that all of those irradiated, waxed, pesticide filled, over fertilized energy hogging fossil fuel wasting non-native fruits and vegetables we see at the grocery store are not nearly as healthy for us as we’d like to believe. This coupled with the fact that it is very, very hard nowadays to find even simple foods that don’t contain processed sugars or unnecessary chemicals, means that as a society we are living and eating like shit, even if we are eating lots of supposedly healthy items. The best way to insure your own health is to have a hand in it, and growing and producing your own food, or at the very least, cooking your own food with basic ingredients puts you way ahead of the health game. I am all about organic and natural living, but it is also a billion dollar industry, industry is of course about money, and a lot of times it comes down to money vs ethics. Take yourself out of that equation. Many fruits, vegetables and herbs (buy seedlings or seeds from reputable companies) can be grown even in pots on your porch in the middle of the city. I purposefully chose a place to live with a yard where I can plant things, flower beds where I can harvest herbs and flowers for cuttings, and a small rear porch where I can grow potted items as well. Going through all that effort isn’t necessary but you can even start by growing in a window. Anything you can do to take the load off the world’s resources, produce locally, and be an active part of your own health, do it. As far as I’m concerned it’s our responsibility. It all tastes better with a little effort mixed in anyway! 