The New Suburban Agriculture - No More Grass

This weekend we ripped up nearly 700 square feet of our yard to make vegetable garden beds. All that precious green carpet, that suburban commodity, taken right out.

We put an ad on Craig's List offering the free, rolled up sod, and we got about 30 calls in a single day. Grass is king.

Considering that the American lawn fuels a $40 billion industry and that there are about 26 million leaf blowers in this country, we felt excited to invest more in our dirt than our grass.

It was brutal work. The sod cutter whipped Dirk around like a

rag doll. Each roll of sod weighed about 50 pounds. The rototiller was easier to use, but transforming this small suburban plot gave us unbelievable empathy for farmers and their sprawling land. They might have machines for the work, but the larger scale brings other complexities.

We loaded, unloaded and spread eight truck loads of planting soil from Colorado Materials, Inc., and we still don't have enough. We'll need more for our rows of tomatoes, kale and other veg.

The kids were absolutely elated to be part of the work. Being in dirt was second nature.

Our seedlings are doing well

inside the house. We've already transplanted the pumpkin seedlings into larger containers. These are big pumpkins, roughly about 100 pounds each. They grow fast and big.

We are working as hard as we can to get seeds planted and growing under our grow lights. We all feel that farmer tug that we won't have enough or something may going wrong. I recently watched the documentary about the American apple industry called Broken Limbs, and one of the farmers says that you can do everything right. All the variables will be accounted for, but the only thing you can count on is crop failure. It happens to everyone and sometimes it's a mystery.

We're staying positive and the kids are talking to the plants. They even chose to leave the room where the plants are if they start arguing because Patrick insists, "It's not good for the seeds!"

So, we look out at our new plot of dirt, our new suburban ideal. And we fantasize about all that green that we will eat and not mow this summer.