Ramble On

It is finally time to start working on sustenance for the year to come. Unlike last year, I at least have a start on where I am going to plant my crops. And also unlike last year, I can start planting significantly earlier.

I wish there was some type of fertilizer I could add to my fields, to help promote the growth of my plants. Alas, I do not have any type of animal farm, which could help produce natural fertilizer. And also unfortunately, I do not know what is in fertilizer, other than nitrogen, which will add nutrients to my fields.

I do know that there is some type of composting that can be done, to waste plant matter. The thing is, though, other than the deceased parts of the crops, I do not produce that much bio-waste. There is no yard in which I keep the grass closely cropped, on a consistent basis. Also, I cook what I need, and no more. I do need to keep a handle on my stores, so that I do not eat myself out of house and home.

There will be a bit of a large variety of produce that I produce this year. I do not need to focus solely on vegetables that can store for long periods of time, like legumes and tubers. I can produce some food that has a very short shelf life if not preserved in any way.

I am happy, in a relative sense, in that I have not really had to worry about having enough food to eat. However, my diet has been rather lackluster over the winter. I did not have the time nor the ability to produce any type of pickled vegetables for use over the winter. So, I have been eating basically the same type of stew, which while filling, was bland.

I have included in with my other produce, herbs. While they might not be vitally important to my survival, they can add the much needed variety that I desire to my diet. Variety is the spice of life.

I am sorry, that was a bad dad joke.

How I wish I had the knowledge to produce glass. I wish that I could build some type of greenhouse, to be able keep growing food throughout the year, even it was to a limited extent. Fresh food is something that has a brightness that I am unable to replicate with my limited ability to cook food.

I will put this out front, it is too early to start planting my fields. While the temperature during the day is moderately warm, there are times when I wake up in the morning to see frost clinging to the ground. My knowledge might be limited when it comes to horticulture, but I do know that freezing living things, especially young entities, is a bad thing.

So, while I am working on breaking up the ground, I am not spending all day, everyday, tilling the fields. The ability to continue doing mind numbing labor, is something I have in spades, I am not willing to put my body through that strenuous torture of continuous repeated motions. That, and my shins have been graced by the meeting of the back of the plough too many times.

I have only been processing the soil for one year. Though I have removed a good portion of the rocks from the field, there are still numerous amounts of them littered underneath the ground. That is also not counting the expanded parts of my garden, which are still virgin soil.

As a way to break up the day, I work on the fields in the early parts of the day, and the later parts of the day, I am working on finishing up the rest of my house, as the soil is now more easily able to be processed into clay, for the bricks.

I should be done working on my house, as I have already created the required tools to produce the components, in a few more weeks. If I have figured it out right, it should be done just before some of my earlier crops have started producing. And finally, I will have a, mostly, completed house. There will, knowing myself, things I will have to patch up, or additions to be added.

With all that done, I will finally start to be able to ply my trade. Finally, I will be producing pottery to be sold. A milestone that has, and will have, taken much longer than it should have, according to my original plans.

I have a few orders that have already been requested of me, without the quality of my work, known. Girts, himself, has ordered a few larger pots to be used for storage. Along with him, my mother has asked me to make her some new plate ware, not made of wood.

I was already planning on making my family some new tableware, even prior to being asked to make them. There are two reason for that. One, was from my own generosity of gifting something to ones that raised me, and my sisters. A gift to show my own appreciation of their effort in being caring parents. The other reason, it was practice for creating consistent pieces of pottery.

My quality of work, while decent, has not been tested to an extent where I have had to systematically produce the exact same thing, over and over again. I know that there should be some way of creating molds of my work, but I do not know how, or if, that would work for what I am trying to do. There is also something that was appreciated in my other life of hand-crafted goods, imperfections.

I am not trying to say that any imperfection is a good thing. If an imperfection will degrade the quality of work, I will not allow that to be considered a product for sale. No, I am talking about the imperfections on a piece of work that will add character to a piece. Making each original piece have it's own existence, instead of being some mass produced work.