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We got a little excited about growing our own peppers this year.  I picked out some really nice looking Anaheim and Serrano peppers that I figured would make some good salsa.  We planned two 20 ft rows of peppers. That should be enough right? But we didn’t plant any bell peppers.  I don’t know why, that’s what we buy the most of at the grocery store.  Usually we get that pack of red, orange, and yellow peppers from Costco and it lasts us a week.  I guess we like peppers.

Cari really likes them. She has taken to just munching on fresh bell peppers as a snack.  She especially likes the sweet red ones. When she found out that we hadn’t planted any in the garden she was really sad.  But she was determined she would solve this problem by herself.  She took the one last red pepper from the fridge, cut it open, took all the seeds, and put them in a paper bag to dry out.  I think she got about 100-200 seeds from that single pepper.

Our garden peppers were already sprouting and some even had good leaves growing. It was late June when Cari told us that she wanted to plant her peppers in the garden with the others.  We didn’t want to break her heart by telling her that it was too late. The other peppers had a good 4 or 5 weeks head start and she probably wouldn’t get any peppers before the first frost, if they even sprouted at all.  So we humored her and tried to prepare her for the fact that her peppers just weren’t going to grow.

Because we figured hardly any would sprout and partly because we were tired of digging holes to plant things we planted about 20 seeds in each hole. Nothing happened.  For weeks she would run to the pepper rows and check for her sprouts.  Each time she would come away with the same heart-broken look of disappointment. Then something crazy happened.  They came up. All of them.  In a matter of days we had many many dozens of pepper sprouts crowding each other.  So we thinned them out. Another week later we thinned them again. I think we thinned them out a total of 4 times.

Now we have as many bell pepper plants as we have other peppers.  We have been harvesting our other peppers for about 3 weeks but hadn’t seen any flowers or tiny peppers yet on the bell peppers. Until last week.

Cari and I were at the farm harvesting a couple baskets of tomatoes and Cari was asking me “How come Mommy was so excited over her first tomato? We have TONS!” I tried to explain the excitement ones feels when they first start to see the fruits of their labors.  She didn’t get it.  Then we walked past the peppers and there it was.  The first pepper.  Cari was so excited she started screaming and jumping up and down.  And she finally got it.  She understood why Mommy was so excited over the first tomato.

And I am amazed.  Seeds from one pepper we bought at Costco.  Now it looks like we’ll have bell peppers to last us the whole fall and first few weeks of winter. Not to mention all the salsa and spaghetti sauce we’re canning.  I think we’ll even have plenty to dry in those cool bunches and just hang up for fun.

Moral of the story:  You can count the seeds in a pepper (if you’re patient) but you can’t count the peppers in a seed. Never underestimate the hopes and desires of your children.

This is not my house, but it's close.

If you recall way back in Oct of 2007 we decided to sell our condo and not buy a house.  I remember how hard that decision was. I didn’t want to be “a renter”.  But I had enough good sources telling me that buying a home in 2007 was a bad idea.  It’s easy now to look back and say “duh, 2007 was almost as bad as 2008 for buying a home”.  But at the time not buying a home because of bad timing was like telling people the sky was falling, anyone who had a stable job desire could qualify for a loan for just about any amount they wanted and move in to a brand new home in a matter of days.

Anyway, now I have this stigma that follows me around.  Some people get it but most don’t.  They still see this big “renter” sign on my forehead and just assign all those stereotypical things that we’ve been taught go along with “renter”.

When we moved in my wife was so excited to be in the new neighborhood.  She made a huge batch of cookies and took plates to all our new neighbors.  Most of the had seen the “for rent” sign out in front but they didn’t say anything, they just smiled and took the cookies.  One neighbor was rude enough that when my wife introduced herself the first thing she responded with was “Aren’t you guys renting?”  As if renters can’t bring their neighbors cookies.  It’s been almost 4 years and that neighbor still won’t talk to us or even look us in the eye.  Since then when a new neighbor moves in and starts talking with us about home owner issues it always comes up and half the time we get the “Ooooooooooh… You’re ‘renting’.” and the subject gets changed.  The other half of the time we get to tell our reasons and they look at us like “Man, I wish I had been that smart”.

So I was wondering about it the other day.  4 years worth of rent, that’s a lot of money.  Was it really the right decision?

Math time.

What I’ve paid – 48 months times $1200 = $57,600

What my neighbor has paid – 48 months times $2521 = $121,008

Right there that’s some pretty decent savings… But wait, there’s more.

What do I own for my $57K – Nothing

Where does my neighbor stand with his $121K paid?  Principal paid – $15,809. Balance on home – $304,191. Home value – $219,000

Wow, that’s worse than I was expecting.  No wonder so many of our neighbors have lost their homes.

But there’s still one thing.  Freedom.

I can move any time I want.  My neighbor? He’s stuck there until his value comes up about $80K or until he decides to walk away from it and ruin his credit.

I guess that’s worth having this “renter” stigma that follows me around.  That’s a small price compared to what I could have paid in order to have that “homeowner” stigma.

So my stake has a big farm.  Actually the church owns a really big chunk of Saratoga Springs and it’s all farmland.  But they have this small strip of it that’s probably about 10 acres or so that they set aside for the wards.  Each ward is in charge of what they do with their lots.  Our ward this year just announced that anyone that needs extra garden space can sign up and get some garden space down at the stake farm.

We like fresh produce as much as the next family so naturally we signed up.  Turns out that only 4 families from our ward signed up and we ended up with a whole section to share with one other family.  Each section is 40ft by 160ft.  That’s bigger than the grass that I mow at home.

So far we have spent about 20 hours planning and digging and planting and watering and we’re almost a quarter of the way done getting it all planted.  And I’m sore.

But there’s something about farming (gardening) that just feels right.  I don’t know if it’s because I live almost 70% of my waking hours in front of a computer screen but standing in the middle of a field watching the sun go down as I dig neat little rows in the dirt is really an amazing experience.

We did our pumpkin carving last night.  The kids actually all did their own.  They did pretty good eh? I bet you can’t even tell which ones were done by the kids.

Tools of the trade

Tools of the Trade

And the results:

A Werewolf and the Grim Reaper

Ghosts, a Haunted House, and a Scary Looking Bat

From my 4 year old:

A family is kids and parents… That love each other… And eat food.. And breakfast… when they wake up in the morning.

So my son just started blogging. Real blogging that is.  He’s had a BlogSpot blog for quite a while and has been fairly casual about it but he writes pretty good posts.  I recently added adsense to some of my sites and he’s excited to be able to earn a few extra dollars the same way.  So we setup his blog tonight and he has been copying all his posts over from his old blog.  So far he says he really likes WordPress compared to BlogSpot.  Can’t agree with him more.  I can’t stand BlogSpot.

Tomorrow I’ll show him how to setup analytics and adsense and he’ll be on his way.

So please take a minute and check out his blog (www.jonathancurtis.com) and don’t forget to support him by visiting a sponsor or two.  He’ll be thrilled to see his site getting traffic and earning a few cents.  And don’t forget to check back to see his updates on his stories he’s writing.