New Fruit Man Makes Me Feel Re-Nude!

My ultimate goal is to NOT pay for my food at all. After all, isn't mama Earth's bounty available to all, with some better soil management practices? What was God's original plan?

 

In the meantime...
I am having to buy my produce. I was recently gifted a membership to a local restaurant supplier-- Restaurant Depot. All I do is flash my card and I'm in like Flynn. It's been way better than shopping at the overpriced grocery store.

Here's what I bought the other morning:

I can't imagine how I will grow the equivalent amount of calories living where I do. I'll probably need green thumb neighbors and a deep freezer.

7 Romain Hearts
2.5 lbs of spinach
70 lbs bananas
60 eating oranges
3 cantaloupes
40 lbs of juicing oranges

22 mangoes

TOTAL = $100.35

TOTAL Calories =19,000

CALORIES PER DOLLAR = 190

When I compare the calorie/$ value to the menus at some traditional fast food places, one can see that the Cal/$ is similar. 

The real metric to consider, though, is the nourishment per calorie. And I don't just mean "nutrients"-- since that merely considers food from the paradigm of chemistry, which isn't adequate to describe wellness, (at least, not our current understanding of it). 

UPDATE ON INTERGALACTIC COMPOST BATTLE
To catch everybody up, I built a new compost for the garden AND an indoor worm bin a couple of weeks ago. I pitted them against each other in a good-ol' fashioned compost duel, to see which method would generate high quality organic matter fastest. Sus and I have heaps and heaps of fruit/veg peels and they definitely aren't going in the trash, (as "the man" might have us do). That's high quality organic matter, which is the basis of any nation's wealth.

Worm Bin

Whenever I turn the lights on, the worms worm-away. If they are so fast, why are they not eating very much? I have decided to leave the lid off the bin so that mold doesn't grow on the worms' food. It was looking and smelling like rotting fruit. That can't make worms happy. 

My worms will be so happy with all my scraps. They are munching their little fannies off, but they are slow as dirt at making dirt. More than hungry, right now I need them to be horny. About 1/3 of the weight of the produce I just bought is skin that will either go into the new compost pile or the new worm bin. With only 1 lb of worms in the bin, who only eat about 1/2 their weight in kitchen scraps per day, I'm thinking that most of the kitchen scraps will continue to be diverted to the outdoor compost.

C'mon, worms! Start making horny worm babies who make horny worm babies. Your poop is amazing!

Compost
The compost continues to grow in height, but I can't tell if decomposition is happening. The microorganisms in the composts don't seem to be too fast at decomposing in the cold of winter, so I sprinkled about a half pound of store-bought "compost starter" on the pile.  Luckily, the high temperatures are starting to peek above freezing and there is a bit of spring in the air. Thank God for Puxitawny Phil--early spring on its way! The added heat should help get the microorganisms happy and hungry. In other good news, I also found out that I have a neighbor who loves to brew his own beer, and I've got good intel that says if I can get him to give me his "waste" from the fermentation process, I can sprinkle it on my compost bile and it will quickly decompose the pile.

If I were a worm, this is where I would be. It's quickly becoming the Kilimanjaro of Oakley--you could build a ginger bread house out of my orange peels alone. I see bio-fuel in my future. Maybe I'll build an anaerobic digester this spring.