What do you call this?

I call it a start.  These are the first two of, eventually, five raised beds which will provide us with most of our vegetables in the coming years.  I can't begin to tell you how hard it's been this summer to swallow my pride and head over to the farmers' market to buy overpriced produce which I know I could grow better myself.  

This is actually the one part of our new life that makes me long for the old one:  The Visalia farmers' market (Central Valley) is so vastly superior to the Templeton farmers' market (Central Coast) it's astonishing considering both markets sit in the heart of perfect areas for growing local food in abundance.

But whereas the Visalia farmers' market features true local produce which is reasonably priced, the Templeton farmers' market features high-dollar fruits and veggies, much of it grown in the Central Valley and trucked over the hills to sell in Templeton, as well as some professionally grown produce being sold as small-farm products.  Kinda sad, really.  

But whether its the farmers' market or the produce aisle in the supermarket, what you can grow on your own property will still be guaranteed to come to your table fresher and therefore more nutritionally charged-up than lettuce picked last week and packaged to sell or a few cases of hothouse tomatoes which took a U-turn and never made it to the supermarket because someone decided to sell them at a huge mark-up at a coastal farmers' market.  

Next week I'll be planting lettuce, onions and carrots and in another couple of weeks, spinach, broccoli, snow peas, and cauliflower.  I'm currently freezing eggs in anticipation of the short days when the hens will not be laying as much, and digging out all the produce we froze last spring to use in our fall meals.  Bottom line, we're getting back to our former self-sufficient ways, and it feels like coming back to the faith after spending a few months living on the wild side.

But we'll hopefully have some vegetables in time for Thanksgiving, which means my weekend trips to the farmers' market can finally come to a close and I can leave the Templeton farmers' market to the foodies willing to pay high dollars for produce that's probably traveled as far as if they'd bought it at the grocery store for half the price.  Huge relief.