Too Much Stuff for Your Garden

One of the defining features of post-war American life is stuff. Stuff for every need and desire you have ever entertained, all of it purchased affordably and conveniently – especially with the Internet now responding to our every click and thought! You have more clothes than you need, more furniture than there is room for, more books than you will ever read, and more technology heaped in a shrine around your television than you have remote controls for.

This kind of prosperity is great, but there are consequences for our massive amount of stuff – among them, a serious lack of space. The more stuff we get, the more we have to move other stuff out of the way, but where is all of our old stuff to go?! It’s a dilemma that every homeowner is faced with as the years go by and more and more stuff piles up around the house. Inevitably, that stuff finds its way into corners and closets and then, eventually, the garage.

Beyond the Garage 

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The garage is, for many people, the last resting place of all kinds of stuff, but it doesn’t have to be, especially for that stuff which you need to use on a regular basis. Take, for example, the popular pastime of gardening. Plenty of homeowners indulge in gardening, and today it’s become quite a popular thing to do with your property as concerns over the quality and health of food have come into the media. Growing your own fruits and vegetables means that you can be certain they have not been genetically modified or tainted in some way – plus, food from your garden is always more fresh and considerably tastier than food from a supermarket.

 But if you’re a true gardening enthusiast, you’ve no doubt collected quite a set of tools for your garden by now. Doubling and tripling up on those tools probably wasn’t a bad idea either; after all, what if something breaks or is lost? You need to have a replacement on hand, and perhaps a replacement for the replacement! Then there are the bags of gravel, birdseed, fertilizer, and planet seeds that you’re saving for the next planting season. All of this and more can find its way into your garage, cluttering everything up and often becoming lost, necessitating that you go out and spend money to replace something that you absolutely, positively know is somewhere in your home. The solution is simple and straightforward: create a space dedicated to storing your gardening tools and supplies. For some people, a corner of the garage, cleared out and properly cared for, is sufficient. If you have a truly substantial gardening arsenal, however, then a shed that can store all of those tools and keep them organized and easy to access is the best and most efficient answer to your “stuff” problem.

The Where, Why, and What of Your Shed 

A garden shed can take many forms, and it can go in a number of places on your property. A gardening shed near your home makes it a kind of “second garage,” which may be convenient; sometimes, you want your shed far away from your home so that you have two convenient locations to bring your tools and supplies. The best place for your shed is as close as possible to your garden, though. Some people even design their garden space around the shed, making it the centerpiece of the garden, or at least building a walkway to and from the shed that runs throughout the garden.

The look of the garden shed can vary as well. The color scheme is obviously up to you – there is plenty of paint out there that can stand up to the weather and protect the wood so that your shed lasts as long as your garden. Some garden sheds include a garage door, however, so that tractors can be stored there and large amounts of supplies can be easily moved in and out of it. Other sheds are a little smaller in size and have only a door and a window or two.

A prefabricated shed is, obviously, the least labor-intensive way to get a shed as quickly as possible onto your property. Spring is right around the corner, which means you’ll be back in your garden in no time. Starting the season without a shed means you’ll be wrangling with all of your gardening stuff all over again – head off that whole boondoggle with a shed!

Verifiably Clean and Safe Food

People are becoming more and more concerned about where their food is coming from – a concern that is understandable. Between the E. coli outbreaks in our spinach and the chemicals occasionally found in toothpaste and other things-we-put-in-our-mouths, we can’t afford to remain ignorant about what is going into our bodies any longer. Unfortunately, while that knowledge will empower you to make better purchasing decisions, it is difficult to verify that knowledge.

Sometimes, even knowing that a product is unhealthy for you because of the way in which it was produced and prepared – imagine meat, eggs, or vegetables in this example – is not enough. What if you can’t find a decent alternative the health of which remains unconfirmed? What are you to do – simply cut that part of your diet out of the picture entirely?

Cluck Cluck Goes the Chicken 
 

Chickens are an especially big part of the problem for many people. Many chickens are kept in unclean conditions, which can subsequently taint the meat, making it dangerous to eat. The eggs that result for these conditions aren’t healthy, either. Indeed, the way in which a chicken carcass is prepared – by boiling it in often quite unclean water, and then injecting it with massive amounts of antibacterial solution to keep it “clean” for consumption – is enough to make you go vegetarian!... At least, for a little while. The fact remains that you’re an omnivore, and you like your eggs and chicken meat. So what are you to do?

Why not take matters into your own hands? Instead of relying on the good nature and food preparation practices of big companies like Purdue and Tyson, you can raise your own chickens. You would be surprised how affordable – and easy! – it really is to raise and care for chickens. All you need is a coop to keep them in, troughs for water and food, the food itself, and then the chickens. You’ll want to “cycle” your chickens out over time, replacing them with new flocks of chickens as your layers age out of laying, but generally there is very little in the way of continuing costs outside of food – which comes quite affordably.

The Life of a Part-Time Farmer

The act of going into your coop in the morning (or afternoon or evening, as you like) and collecting eggs from under your hens, the chickens clucking around your feet as they wait for you to feed them, is enjoyable. It connects you to something essential about human existence; we lived most of our lives as a species with a real connection to our food and where it came from. Having a chicken coop for your own eggs and chicken meat means having that connection again.

The coop is the largest initial investment that you will have to make for the chickens, but it doesn’t have to be something that costs too much or gives you trouble as time passes. Many people try building their own coops, but it turns out building a sound structure for other beings to live in is actually… kind of difficult! Fortunately, you can purchase prefabricated coops with all the trimmings – an area for nesting, screened windows, troughs, ramps, doors for you and the chickens, and so on – quite affordably, and even have it constructed on your property by the people you’ve purchased it from.

by TimothySanders.
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It’s important that your chicken coop is secure; foxes, weasels, raccoons, and other critters will try to get into the coop and either eat the eggs or eat the chickens themselves. Obviously your chickens won’t appreciate this, and neither will you when you’re cleaning up chicken bodies and not getting your eggs anymore. That’s why investing in a sturdy, secure, high-quality coop is so essential at the outset of this new, exciting venture!

With a chicken coop and your own chickens, you won’t have to worry about where your food came from – it came from your chickens, whom you’ve raised and cared for. The food on your plate and in your mouth is the result of your own efforts, and it is as clean as you want it to be. That’s a reassuring feeling that most people don’t have… but could, if they were just willing to put up with a rooster crowing in the morning.