Dealing with my old payroll office was a bear – the first time I called the woman said that she couldn’t mail me the duplicate request form (“I’m not really good at doing that”) or email it to me either (“I don’t understand how email works”). I was flabbergasted at these responses and feel she really was clueless and not just trying to get out of helping me. About a month later I called again and got someone new, thankfully, who had no problem emailing me the form. But, the duplicate W-2 just sat in the mail pile for a few more weeks until I realized that tax day was quickly approaching. But, procastination did have one good benefit in that I won a free tax gift from Money Smart Life site.

I’m pretty sure we filed on April 12 and by April 16, Maryland had already deposited our state refund. The timing was perfect as I knew this week was going to be a a near hit-or-miss in covering all our bills and spending. Thanks to the timing of some of our larger monthly bills, including the mortgage payment, and the next paycheck deposit, our buffer was being hit pretty hard. Then we had another major bill show up (life insurance premium) and knew that it was going to be a very scary week indeed. I initiated a transfer from savings just to fluff the buffer a bit more but wasn’t sure if it was going to be deposited in time (one downside to online savings accounts). I wish I’d reviewed our checking account balance first and seen the tax return, because now I don’t need the transfer from savings to get us through the next week. But, having a bit more cash is much nicer than being short.

For us, it is a combination of financial and ethical motivation that prompts us to incorporate more sustainable practices in our life and support other’s doing the same. From an ethical standpoint, we’ve read and watched several books/movies lately that have really helped us define our previously unsubstantiated reasons for making a difference in our ecological footprint and fully utilizing our land. These experiences helped us shape the sometimes incoherent thoughts, ramblings, and reasons we’ve given for our view points that come from a fairly deep-seated personal and ethically motivated response to the current conditions of the world.

Financially, increasing our personal sustainability is a step in reducing financial unknowns and variables. This year’s plans include growing as much food as we can and learning about raising chickens for meat and eggs. One of the requirements for buying a house was that there be enough land to raise as much of our own food as we could and our little one-acre plot provides a good start in that direction. With food prices on the rise, this couldn’t come at a better time.

Currently, we have four garden plots dug and plans to dig up 4 more plots and add space for 4 vertical-crop plots. We’re currently using the Square Foot Gardening method developed by Mel Bartholomew. Anyone interested in growing their own food (whether to supplement your weekly grocery shopping or to replace it altogether), I suggest checking out Bartholomew’s Square Foot Gardening book. For those who are going this route, I like pointing out that we’re using an older addition of the book and method, and are planting everything the ground as opposed to the raised beds he now recommends. The older method is a little more work, but also uses less material resources and makes use of the land we purchased for that purpose.

We started seeds indoors about five weeks ago to get a jump start on the season. Last week, those items finally made it outside and in the ground – just in time for two overnight freezes. Luckily, these are cold-hardy plants and they did just fine. Each weekend, we’re busy adding more and more crops to the plots or starting them in seedling trays with supplemental heat (because I only heat house at 58 degrees during the day) and light. I need to add up how much we’ve spent so far, but I’m pretty sure it’s still less than $100 and half of that was on seeds.

In addition to fruits and vegetables, we’re interested in raising our own meat and eggs. We’re not even slightly interested in becoming vegetarian and I happen to live by the mindset that if processing animals for my table is too gross or offensive, then I shouldn’t be eating it in the first place. We currently have 10 baby chicks that are living in our mudroom, waiting to go outside in chicken tractors. We got the chicks when they were just one day old and have really enjoyed watching them grow. We’ll keep 4-5 of them for egg layers and the rest will be harvested for our freezer. The goal is to start small, in terms of processing them, as we learn what we’re doing and get the hang of it. Financially speaking, raising your own meat and eggs isn’t all the cheaper than buying from the grocer – but you have the reassurance that you know exactly what they’ve been eating and how they were treated. I do plan to sell excess eggs and will probably take a few orders for meat chickens on the next go-round.

While raising our of food reduces the impact on soaring grocery prices on our budget, we trade the financial variables for natural ones. Several things could take our crops, from drought conditions (we live with a well and that is a very real concern for us) to predators. Our chickens could get sick or attacked by a neighboring dog. While we’ll take all the necessary precautions to protect our food investments, it is somewhat more risky than relying on super market convenience. But, when we sit down to dinner, we’ll know exactly how things were grown and that it didn’t take much oil consumption to get it to our table. Separating ethical and financial motivations for increasing sustainability seem impossible at this point, but I appreciate that individuals interested in either motivation can take steps to reduce their environmental footprint.

For the non-gardening types, when you order a packet of seeds, you usually get more than you’ll use in a year or even three years. Luckily, if stored properly, seeds will last. But for folk just getting started, initial seed purchases can really add up.

For example, we spent a total of $47.20 on 32 packets of seeds. We purchased 22 super-tiny-packets from artisticgardens.com for a total of $11.20 and 10 packets from another seed catalog for $36.00. The packets from artisticgardens.com (also known as Le Jardin du Gourmet) will be enough for all of this years’ planting and most of next years as well. The packets from the other seed catalog will probably last us for 2-5 years.

While the cost per seed is slightly higher in the smaller packets, the savings for our first year of serious gardening justifies the cost. Also, this lets us try out some items to see if we like them or not. We may find that we don’t care for one of the plants we selected — I’d rather find that out with a $0.50 packet of seeds versus a $3.60 one. If we’d gone with our original plan, we would have spent another $68 in seeds. Thanks artisticgardens.comBekah for the tip!

Also, GRS discussed how they also pool resources with other gardeners to split the cost of seed orders. I’m hoping to take advantage of that idea next year when I have time for a little more advanced planning. However, looking at our gardening calendar this past week showed us that we needed to get moving on starting some plants asap and we just sat down and got it done.

Now bring on spring!