But we stopped buying paper plates and napkins!

One thing I'd like to teach my boys (of many, many things) is about food sustainability.
I want them to make better choices about eating than I have most of my life.
I want them to understand where real food comes from (not the grocery store or the corner store or the Chick-fil-a).
I want them to know that without farms and farmers there is no food, so we should support local farms and farmers, Farmer's markets and food sustainability efforts of all kinds.
I want them to respect and care for the Earth.
I want them to be producers of some kind, and not just consumers.

To that end, I figured Lester and I ought to start modeling some of that behavior.

Don't get me wrong. We will never, ever be organic, composting-with-worms, vegan backyard farmers. But we can take some baby steps toward being better.

So when the Green School asked if I wanted to be a neighborhood porch farmer, I readily agreed. It seemed easy. All I had to do was water and nurture a pot of small plants on my front porch for the summer. By the fall, I should have had a pot of tomatoes, cucumber, chocolate peppers and some kind of eggplant.

I was psyched!!

Here's what came of my farming:


That's. IT.

(OK, earlier in the summer, we did have three yellow cherry tomatoes, which were incredibly sweet and delicious! Lester fed two of them to Cary and Dean. We ate the final one.)

Take a look at that sad, sad "garden." That scythe looking thing is supposed to be a pepper, people. Not a jalapeno pepper; a fat, roundish, delicious pepper pepper! And it's supposed to be brown. Hence, the chocolate.

And the eggplant was supposed to have at least 5 or 6 brothers and sisters. Sigh.

This urban farming is harder than I thought.