happy fourth

The beans are coming in pretty good now. We have had a couple of yellow squashes with more on the way.

There are still three more varieties of bean waiting to develop, one more green snap bean, one dry cooking bean, and one mystery bean I refer to as "Strong Vine Needs Support" because that was all that was legible on the hand written seed packet.

The Tomatoes are slowly starting to turn red and the first of the cantaloupe should be ready any day now.

This picture was taken almost two weeks ago and is looking much better developed these days.

I started a second run of basil yesterday hoping to extend the basil season well into fall.

How It All Began

If I had to pick a place that this began for me I would point to the Athens Tour De Farm. It helped in changing my perspective on food growing and sustainable living. One farmer suggested that whoever controls your food supply can control you. Which seems to make sense. If I want to take more control of my life then, it would seem a good place to start would be by taking control of my food supply.
After reading Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply By Vandana Shiva I was awakened to the reality that large corporations are trying to take control of the food we eat. As an activist I knew that something had to be done, but what does one person do to alter the course of this juggernaut of corporate control? Well, after talking with folks like Dr. Robert Rhoades, and Susannah Chapman of the Southern Seed Legacy and the Agrarian Connections Farm I realized that saving the biodiversity of plant life from being taken over and homogenized by the likes of Monsanto starts with saving seeds. So I attended the Southern seed Legacy's Old Time Seed Swap, planted some seeds, and will try my hand at preserving some heirloom plant varieties and thus strike a blow to the corporations in their attempt to takeover my food supply.

The AUHP begins

This is my attempt to chronicle my path towards a more sustainable and self reliant semi autonomous lifestyle using Path To Freedom as a rough template for my project. I will call this the Athens Urban Homestead Project or AUHP for short. Through a series of diy projects and a hopefully ever expanding food garden I plan to lessen my impact on the environment while simultaneously lessening my dependence on the government and large multi-national corporations.