By Renee Martinez, Founder of Raising Boys World
We’ve always enjoyed growing a few veggies every summer and going to the farm to pick fresh strawberries. This year, I decided to plan a real garden.
A little background: For the last several years, we were members of a local CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) “Community Supported Agriculture consists of a community of individuals who pledge support to a farm operation so that the farmland becomes, either legally or spiritually, the community’s farm, with the growers and consumers providing mutual support and sharing the risks and benefits of food production. Typically, members or “share-holders” of the farm or garden pledge in advance to cover the anticipated costs of the farm operation and farmer’s salary. In return, they receive shares in the farm’s bounty throughout the growing season, as well as satisfaction gained from reconnecting to the land and participating directly in food production.” We loved our farm and every summer we would make the weekly 35-45 minute drive. Once we arrived, in addition to picking up our veggies for the week, we would go in the fields and pick whatever crops were ready for picking.
It was fun and I honestly believe that this is one of the reasons my boys eat veggies – willingly. They’ve grown up picking and eating and helping me clean and freeze or can them. Unfortunately, I’m ready for a year off from the commitment of having to drive out to get everything. It’s also a financial commitment so I miss a week, I’m wasting money.
What I’ve decided to do is to set up a garden that we can get a few items from, and when there are veggies at the farm we would like to pick, we can go and pay a fee to do so, and whatever I can’t grow, I can go to a local farmer’s market (or my nearby Wegman’s grocery store) to buy on Saturday mornings.
To begin the process of planning my suburban garden I’ve decided to do a small compost. It’s been a good learning experience for the boys and not as challenging as I had previously thought. Since I didn’t want to spend money on a compost at this point (not knowing if I’ll do this again next year), I decided to use a big plastic garbage container as my place to compost. So far it’s working out.
Some good websites to reference are:
Composting and gardens for kids
Next I found a location and started to strip away the grass to make way for a small fenced in garden. Tonight the boys and I will make a list of what, and where, we will plant our veggies. They’re really excited. Gardening is a wonderful hobby for anyone at any age. My experience with exposing gardening and farming to my boys (in addition to what I mentioned above) is that they also want to help me cook. They understand the process of how food gets to the table and know that it’s a lot of work.
What I find rewarding is when it’s the middle of winter and I make some homemade sauce with tomatoes we picked in the summer. I’ll pull out a bag of frozen tomatoes and the boys always ask, are those tomatoes we picked?
About the Author: Renee consults and speaks professionally on social media marketing, integrated marketing communications, public relations and branding. She is the president of Ruby Marketing Communications (www.rubymarcom.com), a boutique marketing communications company that specializes in providing branding, social media strategy and integration, and creative services. Her blog (www.lisac95.sg-host.com), provides resources on everything marketing and social media for her active audience. Renee has contributed as a featured monthly columnist in the monthly jewelry industry publication, JCK, on matters related to internet marketing as well as in InStore Magazine as a featured blogger where she writes about developing effective marketing strategies for the jewelry industry using social media. She is the founder of: Social Media Biz Summit (www.socialmediabizsummit.com), the first large-scale SM conference to come to Buffalo, NY; #jewelrychat, a weekly twitter chat for the jewelry industry and www.RaisingBoysWorld.com. Renee teaches social marketing courses at Canisius College in Buffalo, NY for the business school as well as offers small group social media marketing training and educational seminars for businesses in Western New York and beyond. Renee has dabbled in the internet marketing arena since the early 90′s and is not ashamed to call herself a “marketing geek”. From chatting in AOL, “sharing” music on Napster, and teaching HTML classes before it was considered “cool” to developing comprehensive social media strategies, effective public relations campaigns and managing online communities (most recently Chevy Girls Buffalo). She enjoys being able to help people find their voice online and to create buzz about their product or service that will give them the results they desire. Renee can be found on Twitter (@reneemmartinez) and Facebook (http:/www.facebook.com/RubyMarCom).
