April 29, 2019
What’s the most unusual expense you’ve had?
I live a fairly understated life. Simple, basic, although not boring. So, I really had to think hard about this one.
Was it the food dehydrator for drying fruit? Or maybe the ice cream maker? How about the supplies for drying and selling the straw flowers I grew one year?
I thought about it, and decided it wasn’t any one thing, but the pattern of purchases that counted. After all, how many people do you know who have grown Kentucky Wonder beans? (I think that’s what they were called. That was a lot of years ago.) This variety had a beautiful purple bean. I don’t remember that the flavor impressed me, but the rich color did.
Or how about the years we grew gold potatoes? They are more common now, but were a rarity back then. They were pretty to look at and tasted great.
One year we grew a plot of kale because it is supposed to be healthy. You’ll note we grew it one year and only one year. That should tell you what we thought of it.
Then there was the disaster with Brussels sprouts. No matter what we tried, we couldn’t keep the bugs away. We lost about 90% of the crop.
Image by Hans Benn from Pixabay
Remember the straw flowers I mentioned at the beginning of the post? We had a bumper crop. I sold bunches at a craft fair, made Christmas presents for my large family, and had plenty left over. The decorations I made with them lasted more than a decade.
Are any of these purchases unusual? Taken one by one, no. But there aren’t many people who have the space to experiment with different plants. Most people who garden grow the same thing year after year. And yes, we had crops we grew every year, but we also were lucky enough to be able to experiment.
So, that’s my most unusual purchase (or purchases.) What was yours? While you share in the comments, i’m going to hop on over and see what the other authors have bought.
April 29, 2019
What’s the most unusual expense you’ve had?
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Ugh, Kale. I’ve tried that too, but the taste wasn’t to my liking.
We love kale, but I use it in stirfry and anything tastes good toss with fried sausage or bacon.
When I was a kid, the gold potatoes locally were called Swedish potatoes (having something to do with the seed potatoes coming out of North Dakota, I think). Now, you buy them in the store as Yukon Gold, but they don’t appear to be grown in Canada. Because Lower 48 seed potatoes have a fungal infection that devastated the commercial potato crop out of the Matanuska Valley about 20 years ago (while putting the Interior potato farmers out of business), seed potatoes here are incredibly expensive (because they have to submit to an expensive inspection process), so we just buy a bag of Matsu Valley potatoes at the grocery store and let them eye. The Matsu farmers no longer import seed stock after what happened, which eliminates the risk of blight entirely, but also means we’re stuck with growing white, red, and russets. I have considered taking the risk and buying some expensive designer seed potato just for variety. I never do though. Once you get the blight, you can’t plant the ground for a half-decade, so I always err on the side of caution. I can always buy Yukon Gold at the store.
Yeah, that was more than 20 years ago, and in an area not known for growing potatoes. I haven’t looked through a seed catalog for too long.
Kale chips are ok. I’m underwhelmed by it. Lol I’ve tried! Those flowers are so pretty. I used to have decorations made with them. Very nice stuff.
I wish these had been my flowers. I don’t think I have any pictures of mine, but they looked very much like this bouquet.