Live like an Indian

Last night I was thinking as I tended/watered my Farmville (Garden), that everyone should try to Live Like An Indian.  What I mean by that is everyone should be a Hunter/Gatherer as my husband affectionately refers to me as I do all the shopping for my family.  I feel like it is my mission everyday to determine what errand I will try to do over my half hour lunch hour.  Usually it is a run to Sam's, a trip to Lowes, a stop in the Grocery store.  I actually keep a full size cooler in the back of my jeep for trips like this so I can keep my purchases in the car rather than lug them into work to put into the disgusting communal refrigerator that is shared by 100 people. 

The Live Like an Indian idea translates well into my garden as I will hopefully reap the benefits of abundant produce such as tomatoes, cucumbers, beans etc.  Since this is my second year gardening I can only hope this happens as last year I had over 17 tomato plants and a pole bean teepee that looked amazing but bore no fruit.  Actually the tomato plants did grow tomatoes, but only green ones.  Hence I found from this lack of red tomatoes the beauty of Fried Green Tomatoes.  I also realized that Green Tomatoes are extremely hard, which makes them great for frying, but also that maybe the indians experienced this problem and that is how baseball was invented.  Imagine a stick and a basket of hard green tomatoes, and no tv or internet, you could become pretty inventive and start a game of baseball out in the fields. 

But back to Live Like an Indian, the reason my tomatoes and beans bore no true harvest, is because I in trying to be cheap or get something for free, instead of filling my raised beds with traditional soil (which costs $30-40 a truck load), I opted to fill the beds with "free manure" from a local horse farm.  For about two weeks in an effort to get these beds full, i would use my lunch hour to drive my husbands pick up truck to the local horse farm and have them load me as full as the truck axles could bear.  What I didnt realize is this wasnt aged or old horse "shit", but right out of the horse's you know what.  I guess my first clue would have been how it smoked when they loaded it, or how my ankles burned as I shoveled it out into the beds.  After about 12 truck loads, I was pleased to see that i had raised the dirt level significantly without spending a dime.  But looking back or into the reason my plants looked great but didnt produce, was that this manure had raised the nitrogen level to such heights, that it stunted my plants ability to produce, but still grow like weeds.  And the flies and the smell, with the heat, not a good combination.  This year, Im opting to hunt and gather dirt and fork out the $ to prepare the beds correctly.

The Live Like an Indian does translate into one of my strange habits of stealing condiments, or about anything that is offered free in stores.  It is almost like a game for me, a hunter/gatherer game.  For instance, Sam's puts by their hot dog station, free packets of red pepper, parmesan cheese, sauer kraut and sliced onions.  For some reason it makes me so happy to fill my purse with these "free" packets.  And who can resist taking 50 sweet and low packets from the Quick Trip, salt and ketchup packets from Burger King, and free jalapeno/banana peppers from Quiznos (and I love the little cups these come in).  There are alot of examples of how one could Live Like an Indian, off the earth, or off the free condiments out there on my travels.