March 16, 2009

Busy Weekend

It was a good weekend at our fledgling suburban homestead.

My boys and I dug out our first raised bed -- and man was I ever pleasantly surprised. Our backyard soil is gorgeous. It's a loose, deep and dark, well-mixed soil. There were worms everywhere. I did an initial soil test and learned it has a 6-7 pH and is already ideally fertile. Wow. God is good. It seems soil preparations will now be much less extensive than I had originally planned.

I also planted some oregano and rhubarb and thinned out my other seedlings, which are growing and leafing beautifully under my makeshift grow lights. My goal now is to acquire additional lights and expand my little basement growing operations.

The best news of all, though, was discovering how much my 11 year-old son enjoys the work. He really dug his hands into the earth and worked his tail off on the new bed. It was a wonderful time together and I'm looking forward to spending more time like that this summer.

It struck me that this is how we were made to live...not sitting in front of a monitor or TV set. My son and I are both diagnosed with ADD. But when we're outside in the dirt, who would know? I'm coming to the conclusion that ADD is not a disorder of any kind. It's a temperament that simply doesn't coexist well with today's unnatural lifestyles. For my real job, I recently interviewed someone that represents employers in the State of Illinois regarding healthcare reform. He said this one line that impacted me greatly: "The American lifestyle produces disease." Amen and amen.

Now, let me get away from this machine and get my hands dirty (and healthy) again.

2 comments:

  1. Just to say, stopped by here earlier to view your video, and I quite liked your grimy basement and growing crop of simple! For some reason that one doesn't allow me to post my comment, so I do it on this one.

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  2. Thanks for stopping by, Wildside. Not sure what's up with the commenting...

    ReplyDelete

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