Maria Bergner
A loud popping sound echoed through the crowded patient’s room, “Maria, is that you?” asked Jenny as she squints at me, drenched in sweat. We were bent over the waist, arms outstretched as we try to lift a deadweight patient off the floor.
“I think so,” I said while trying to feel which part of my body made the dreaded sound. I tried to straighten up but then darkness enveloped me.
Fast forward three months later, my orthopedic doctor, Dr. Sullivan told me, “Maria, I think your best course of action is to change your profession. Your body cannot take the strain anymore and it needs ample time to rest and recuperate. There is only so much that therapy can do.” I knew that I must do something because bills don’t pay themselves, they come like clockwork.
The next morning, as I make myself hot green tea to wake me up from a sleepless night. I find myself staring at my empty backyard which measures roughly a tenth of an acre, sitting barren with nothing but thorny weeds and littered with torn down cement, a thought came to me. “I am paying a lot of money for this property and here it is barren and unused.” I mused, then a thought hit me, “why don’t I make my property work for me.” An old English proverb stated that necessity is the mother of all invention, that aha moment prompted me to transform my tenth of an acre property into a homestead, given my current circumstances, it must be done for next to nothing.
The first step is cleaning up the place: to get rid of the thorny weeds, instead of using harsh expensive chemicals, I dug them up by hand. Then to get rid of all the torn down cement that littered the yard, I ask for a free pass ticket from the city dump department so I could get rid of them, they said each resident of the town can get 2 per year, I also discovered the construction dump where I can get usable items like cinder blocks for free.
The second step, checking on the nature of the soil or dirt; upon inspection, I discovered that my yard has layers of sand. I must dig at least half afoot to reach the soil and found that it is not the best quality and needs to be amended. An example of good quality soil is something that you could form like a ball in your hand, the soil in my yard is mostly loose and sandy. Buying soil to grow food is out of the question, so I used the power of social media to get dirt. I used the Facebook marketplace, Craigslist and word of mouth to find free soil. After two weeks I was able to gather a truckload of free soil, which is not enough to fill the entire yard.
Since I cannot fill the entire yard, the only way is to use planters. This leads to step three, gathering materials to make planters for free. Every weekend for a full month, my husband and I went to the construction dump, I found cinder blocks that still have cement on them but still in good usable condition, I also found tires, metal pipes, wires, and cow panels that can be salvaged. A neighbor gave me his damaged canoe which can still be upcycled, another neighbor gave me wood pallets, and a friend gave me three huge plastic barrels. After a full month, I was able to gather enough materials.
Step Four, constructing the vegetable planters using the materials gathered and picking a sunny location to place them. My backyard is north facing, observing the shadows cast by trees and houses around the property for a full day shows that the middle part of the backyard is the best place to grow food. I lined up cinder blocks into rectangular forms using only one layer of cement blocks, I ended up with nine planters measuring six feet by two feet in diameter. I used cow panels as trellis by bending them in the middle, using trellis would save growing space since plants like squash and melons take up space. I trained the plant to weave its way upwards on the trellis using cut up pieces of old t-shirts, I also supported the heavy produce as they grow using t-shirts. I layered the tires and used it to grow red Norland potatoes and I used the canoe to plant sweet potatoes.
Before planting seeds, I must first stop weeds from growing back, the solution I found is to cover them with mulch. Step five, finding free mulch materials because buying them would cost around $80.00. On one of our trips to the dump, we came across woodchips piles from yard waste. I asked the manager if we could get some woodchips for free, and she said yes, she also said that the electric company also cuts down trees. I called the electric company and they agreed to dump two truckloads of woodchips in our yard, for free! I then proceeded to spread layers of woodchips around the backyard which helped stop the thorny weeds from coming back. The following year as I was re-mulching, I discovered that half of the woodchips have decomposed from the initial year and that it helped amend the soil!
I discovered that if I buy the seeds that I need, it would cost around $60.00! this fact led to step six, finding free seeds. I asked around through word of mouth and inquired at community gardens, in roughly two weeks I was able to gather enough seeds to plant. I used empty containers of sour cream, yogurt, and egg cartons to start the seeds. I used popsicle sticks that I got from the store for $1.00 as seed tags so I know which seed is growing in each container. To water the garden, I harvested rainwater using huge plastic barrels given to me. I saved the vegetable peels and turn them into compost using earthworms to serve as fertilizer. I used wood pallets in constructing the compost bin by nailing the four of them together forming a square and placing it at the back corner of the yard. During the entire growing season, I cooked our meals based on what is harvested from the garden. At the end of the growing season, I harvested roughly fifty pounds of fresh produce. Having excess fresh produce meant that I need to learn how to preserve them.
Step seven, learning how to preserve food for free and get canning supplies for free because buying them would cost around $50.00. I borrowed books from the library about how to preserve and can food. I got my canning supplies from a friend’s garage sale using the barter system, I paid her with three quarts of homemade salsa. Some friends permitted me to harvest their excess produce like apples, rhubarbs, and grape. I canned around fifty quarts of vegetables, forty pints jams and jelly, twenty pounds potatoes, four pounds onions, and garlic, fifteen quarts applesauce, ten quarts spaghetti sauce, ten quarts mild salsa, and brewed four gallons grape wine. I preserve the potatoes by digging two feet in the ground then covered it with loose dirt and hay. The preserves lasted throughout winter and into the beginning of spring the following year.
The garden helped lowered our grocery bill down to 10% of our monthly budget and the only items that we mostly needed to buy are the ones I could not grow like grains, nuts, and fruits like banana. For dairy and meat, I used the barter system with other like-minded people, for some reason most people chose mild and hot salsa as barter products. The garden also produced excessively during the growing season that I ended up selling them to neighbors and friends. The garden raised roughly $225.00 from fresh produce sales, I used the money to buy fruit-bearing trees like apple, peach, pear, and plum for a mini orchard that I placed near the fence the following year, they would serve as a food source and windbreaker.
The following growing season, the garden made around $300.00 in fresh produce sales which I used to buy two honeybee hive for honey production and four chickens for meat and egg production, both of which is placed on either side of the property where it is shaded. I again used recycled materials from the construction dump to build the chicken coop. Within two years, I was able to transform my tenth of an acre property into a homestead with almost zero dollars and lots of elbow grease.
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