Money Matters

There are lots of good reasons to grow your own food. It’s more nutritious than food flown and trucked hundreds if not thousands of miles. Thus if you also can cut down on your trips to town for gardening supplies, you can consider your contributions to the effort to reduce CO2 emissions. Gardening is a good workout; and it probably puts some distance between you and all your electronic gadgets – which might be a good thing. See “Does Power Corrupt?” Electropollution.org

But another good reason is that the cost of food is skyrocketing. According to the United States Department of Labor, Consumer Price Index Survey,

The food index rose at a 5.3 percent SAAR (Seasonally Adjusted Annual Rate) in the first quarter of 2008, following a 4.9 percent increase in all of 2007. The index for grocery store food prices increased at a 5.9 percent annual rate, reflecting increases in each of the six major groups ranging from annual rates of 0.7 percent in the index for dairy products to 15.7 percent in the index for cereal and bakery products.

Math is not my strong suit but I do love numbers. Sometimes translating activities into numbers clears things up. I have recently begun to track my expenses. (Some people have been doing this forever, but I am a late bloomer in the world of budgets and personal finance.) Since I have become a responsible spender, I know exactly what I have spent on food Jan., Feb., and March - which is evidently 5.3 percent more than I spent the previous quarter (for which I didn’t keep records.) Doing some backwards math, I had to spend about $85.00 more in the past 3 months to buy the same amount of food that I bought in the previous 3 months. And that’s just for me – a “family” of one.

The truly alarming increase is in cereal and bakery products. Bread – the staff of life. As far as I know, there are very few grain growers in Haines. Nancy Berland grew some oats last year; and I have grown buckwheat; I believe that grain has been grown on the Nelson homestead out Mud Bay too.

The point is, that until we figure out how to produce grain locally, we are stuck with importing flour. But we can offset these costs by growing our own vegetables. It’s not too far fetched to imagine that you can save $100 in groceries over the next three months growing your own salad greens.

And you might just have a chance to recoup some of your gardening costs if you try your hand vending at the Haines Farmers Market. The first Market will be June 14. Information for vendors is now available. Check out the public bulletin boards. Or give me a call and I will send you a registration brochure (either snail mail or email).