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So, this afternoon I did something that happens fairly often in the summer - I combined ham radio, and gardening! This isn't really as fancy as it sounds - basically, when our garden is in full-scale harvest mode, every few days we grab a box from the garage, go out and harvest whatever is ripe, pull a few weeds, etc. Usually gardening time is family time, but once in a while I'm out there on my own. In this case it was because future operator 1 was playing in her outside playhouse, and future operator 2 was in his pack-n-play next to the YL in the kitchen, who was in the process of making some fermented hot sauce (with Thai Chillies, Habanero Peppers, and Hinklehatz Peppers - this stuff will probably make my bald spot sweat - that's a good thing!)
When the rare occasion happens that I'm in the garden by myself, I often grab one of my cheap-o HT's and clip it to my harvesting box, and listen in, and sometimes chat on, my club's repeater while I'm out there. There are several other gardeners in our radio club so sometimes we end up chatting about Kale, Rhubarb, Asparagus, and the sorry state of Tomatoes in Lancaster County this year.
So, seeing my HT clipped to the box of beans I had just picked got me thinking - In our house we're on a quest to produce less trash, be more self-sustainable, eat real foods (not too much, mostly plants!) We often re-watch a TED talk given by Ron Finley (you can watch it here, but warning if you are easily offended - some of the language is defineately not PG rated, but the message is AWESOME) in which he makes the statement that growing your own food is like printing money. So how many pounds of food would I need to grow to "print" enough money to replace this cheap HT with something proper?
When the rare occasion happens that I'm in the garden by myself, I often grab one of my cheap-o HT's and clip it to my harvesting box, and listen in, and sometimes chat on, my club's repeater while I'm out there. There are several other gardeners in our radio club so sometimes we end up chatting about Kale, Rhubarb, Asparagus, and the sorry state of Tomatoes in Lancaster County this year.
So, seeing my HT clipped to the box of beans I had just picked got me thinking - In our house we're on a quest to produce less trash, be more self-sustainable, eat real foods (not too much, mostly plants!) We often re-watch a TED talk given by Ron Finley (you can watch it here, but warning if you are easily offended - some of the language is defineately not PG rated, but the message is AWESOME) in which he makes the statement that growing your own food is like printing money. So how many pounds of food would I need to grow to "print" enough money to replace this cheap HT with something proper?
Well, the haul today was 6 lbs and 1 oz of beans. Luckily the YL keeps a journal of the garden, so I was able to peek back through things for this year. Below are just 2 of the many pages she has written - I've seen logbooks with less detail!
So far this year, everything that was journaled with a weight (sometimes she just writes things like "3 heads of cabbage") added up to 194 lbs. With the stuff that she notes that we don't actually weigh, we're easily over the 200 lb mark. I tried to do a generic Google search for "average cost of a pound of vegetables" but all the results I scanned through listed specific veggies. Looking at those results, and for the sake of simplicity I'm going with $1 a pound. That means we should have an extra $200 available for a decent HT from any of the big 3! (Don't tell my YL...I'm going shopping!...or not.)
So, it doesn't actually work that way, but you get the point. Part of our frugality just kind means we do this stuff - it doesn't actually mean we suddenly plan on spending more!
So finally, here is the whole point - I propose that some enterprising ham, or ham radio club should start a "Vegetables for Radios" program. The premise would be that kids from areas that are "Food Deserts" can join a day camp program where they garden for part of the day, and do radio stuff for part of the day. A goofy premise maybe, but I know lots of hams that are also gardeners, so why not!
So, it doesn't actually work that way, but you get the point. Part of our frugality just kind means we do this stuff - it doesn't actually mean we suddenly plan on spending more!
So finally, here is the whole point - I propose that some enterprising ham, or ham radio club should start a "Vegetables for Radios" program. The premise would be that kids from areas that are "Food Deserts" can join a day camp program where they garden for part of the day, and do radio stuff for part of the day. A goofy premise maybe, but I know lots of hams that are also gardeners, so why not!
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