Do-it-yourself

By David Dawson

While waiting my turn at the supermarket checkout I noticed the man in front of me had a small bunch of kale. Then I noticed that this little bit of kale cost $1.99 and that got me thinking. I grow a fairly large vegetable garden and have been self-sufficient in vegetables for many years. In spring and summer I have fresh things like spinach, peas, beans, cabbage, broccoli, leeks as well as tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, zucchini, baby carrots, beets and more. Then in winter I eat my own frozen from the freezer. OK it takes a bit of work, but I cannot imagine buying vegetables from foreign countries that have likely been sprayed with all sorts unknown chemicals.

I have calculated that at supermarket or farmers market prices I, as a single person, eat about $5 worth of vegetables per day. That is equivalent to about $1,800 per year but if I had to buy those vegetables it would be from taxed income so it would be roughly $2,500 pre-tax. At $20/hour that is equivalent to 125 hours of work or 3 weeks. I certainly don’t spend the equivalent of 3 weeks working solidly non-stop in my garden, and even if I did it would be good healthy exercise in the fresh air. For a family these figures could be doubled at least. So why is it that most people seem to prefer to work for 6 weeks each year simply to pay for vegetables imported from California and beyond? It probably takes as much time mowing and watering a lawn as it would take to care for that same area were it a productive area of eatables.

So converting a typical lawn area to growing vegetables (assuming you have a suitable sized lawn) would be equivalent to getting a $5000 raise at work. Who wouldn’t go for that, you would think.

Bread is another thing and is the easiest thing in the world to make: humans has been doing it for thousands of years and it only requires three ingredients – flour, yeast and water; though a little salt as an optional extra is usually included. If you can make scrambled eggs, you can certainly make bread. It takes about 20 minutes not counting the rising or baking time (when you can do something else) to make a batch of bread of say 6 regular size loaves, and it costs around 40 cents per loaf. If you want to add a few extra ingredients such as sunflower seeds it will cost a few cents more, but certainly nothing like the $5 per loaf one sees for ‘artisan’ bread in stores. At one loaf per week, which is very modest for a family, you would be saving about $250/year or roughly 2 days of work.

I know I know you haven’t got time. You are too busy with everything else in your life, but how many hours do you spend watching TV? Start small. Instead of one half-hour TV program each week you could make all the bread for the whole family, and unlike Mick Jagger, get a lot of satisfaction doing it.