| I don't know about forming a club, per se, but wouldn't mind getting together to meet sometime. I've been a member of the National Home Gardening Club for a long time and those of us in SC who use their bulletin board online try to meet at Park Seed in Greenwood in late June when they have the Festival of Flowers. We didn't meet last year because it was 100F that weekend. But we communicate online year round. There are 3 or 4 of us. Used to be 8 or 10. I'm not big into trading plants or saving seeds, but I don't mind sharing the end product if I have extra. Mostly veggies right now. Branching out into fruit trees. Will be a while before they start producing. I've got 8 acres, and a good bit of that is in fruit trees and/or veggie garden plots. I think around 100 fruit trees now and about 1/2 acre in veggie garden. I try to grow unusual veggies for a home gardener that you can't get at the grocery store or produce stand, but I do like the standards as well. I get 200 sweetpotato slips every year to plant and end up with closer to 300. I like yellow squash and zucchini. I've tried patty pan squash, but I don't care for them, so I'll not be doing them again. Green beans a couple times a year. Corn was spectacular last year, so I've expanded a plot so I can double what I had last summer. I have greens growing right now - collards, kale, rutabagas, turnips. I don't like them to get big like you find in late December. Mine are about as big as my hand spread out right now, so a little bigger and they'll be perfect. I'm trying to get back into canning. I used to can a lot in Salem, but I moved and lived in a cracker box for a while and didn't have room. Now I built a bigger house and use the cracker box as the summer kitchen and there's plenty of room to can out there and store things. The last year has been about jams and jellies and pickled things. Lots of peach and blueberry things last summer. Hopefully lots of veggies and cucumber pickles next summer. Chow chow in the fall. etc. Folks at work love fresh veggies and I bring things in to sell cheap. There is no profit overall, though individually, crop by crop, there are some obvious profits. 50 cents per pound for tomatoes and squash because they're easier to pick. $1 per pound for okra. $2 per pound for snow peas. $1 per grocery bag of greens. etc. There is another person at the office that also brings in veggies and we kind of work together to set prices so we don't disagree when we bring in different things on different days. Plus we trade things between ourselves as well as we have things that the other one wants. She has chickens, so lots of fresh eggs . I'm not crazy about them, but I won't turn them down. She has duck eggs occasionally. I really don't care for those, but they're not terrible. I've been collecting (I guess you could say) tractors since 1998 to help with my gardening/farming efforts. Ford Jubilee NAA was the first, and it doesn't run any more. Then came a Massey Ferguson Model 65 (1960, I was told it was 55 HP, but think it's really 45 HP) that works great to till and bush hog. Then came a 2005 Kubota B7500 (26 HP diesel) with a belly mower that I bought used. It's awesome. Last summer, I bought two used John Deere 870's (28HP) - one with turf tires and a belly mower, one with ag tires, both with hard canopies. I use the one with ag tires to do the cultivation of row crops and other utility tasks like scraping the driveway. I had been saving a while for a new mid size and found these on Craig's List and couldn't resist. Plus, I have a Craftsman 26HP GS6500(?) that I bought from someone with the sleeve hitch on the rear for plows and things. It's neat for pulling a 4x8 wagon around and mowing grass, but it doesn't run right now either. Tires are flat, won't crank. Just sad. :-) All in all, it's too much, but I like to have fun and also to have the right tool for the job, and I think I have them now. If I only understood more about engines and things, I'd be better off. That's why I have a real job at Clemson to support my hobby at home. :-) |
