I’m finding it fascinating to see the ripening timelines between different Mutant locations around the world.
The last of my peaches were gone nearly a month ago now (northern Indiana, U.S.), and my peppers were gone around the same time. Still some tomatoes, because the spring weather (very hot, with storms that deluged the ground) meant they took an extra month to ripen after growing full-size and then sitting there, hard and green.
I’m not super far from you, or significantly north, but my peppers are just starting to ripen and tomatoes are not quite at peak. I’ve only picked about 30 lbs of tomatoes and a bit over 5 lbs of peppers so far.
well… time to harvest the 'nanners. the tree has almost fallen over. i have had a crutch propping it up for over a month, but the tree has finally given its all to the fruit.
Just look at it!
Do you dig up the root and reform it into a “seed” to get another plant to grow? I think I saw that on a documentary once.
the root system already has generations of pups, one of which is also bearing. the only thing other growers around here tell me is to chop the trunk into mulch and spread ot on the base of the stand.
bananas are a type of grass (like bamboo) and tend to spread into large clusters, or stands. the new trees are all sizes from 10cm to 4m tall
@anon29537550 If you run out of crates, laundry baskets and hampers (cleaned) work well, and can be hosed out when emptied.
This was one of the worst hard years for food raising for us in Central Texas. We got a lengthy drought, our community well is at 40% mandatory curtailment (goodbye supplemental irrigation between rains!), and the heat has been triple digits for a much longer span than “usual.” All this and more pushes me to find our forever home outside of Texas (frankly, I had thought this one we are in now was our forever home and I planned to die here, but nope).
We are in Month Two of curtailment with no end in sight. Every bloom is a miracle. Every drop of rain is a miracle. I found out recently that our Trinity Aquifer water is 45,000+ years old and our pocket (where well taps in, 800+ feet deep) of the aquifer recharges very very slowly, unlike the larger Edwards Aquifer. The event horizon for Zero Day of water supply is nearly upon me and mine.
As I cast about, looking for the next living spot on our only home planet, I will say goodbye here to soils I helped build and inoculate, young trees I planted, still caged to keep out the deer, that must fend for themselves once we move out. I must read the signs and understand where they point me.
To garden is to set down roots. Some roots go deeper than others. We are impermanent (or our bodies are, anyway). That message to me is clearer and louder every day. A crescendo that will continue until we sell, load out, with this joint in our rear view mirror.
Looking at a few places with soil and respectable rainfall (relatively; I know past is no longer prologue thanks to climate change). Good broadband–not satellite–is second priority to having a reliable (as can be feasible) water supply. Virginia looks good, among other places. The cost of living there, compared with here, in their smaller towns at least, seems doable. The job scene, we may have to do more to sort out. Some of our work is remote, but not all.
Food water shelter.
Gardening is right there, in between the spaces of each letter.
I’m sorry that you are becoming a climate refugee.
There are some affordable pockets of Michigan and generally plenty of water. Higher speed internet connections are mostly found in small cities rather than rural areas. The growing season is shorter and then there’s snow, but you’d get used to it. We still get good harvests, it just all arrives at the same time.
Hey, the Shenandoah Valley meets all of the above requirements and is forecast to be among the last areas to become uninhabitable, so there is that!
Or… not! (If one has the materials, or the money for them:)
Thanks for your kind words.
Our human future is linked together.
It is more than solidarity and identifying with less fortunate humans.
My upsight is that our future is likely ubuntu or not at all.
ETA: I cued the video to the discussion about ubuntu (but the whole interview with Boyd Varty is remarkable and worthwhile).
I can’t believe I’m doing this, considering that I say I live in Upper Stupid…. but North Alabama, particularly the areas in and near Madison County (Huntsville), has some merit. Good infrastructure Google Fiber city), Tennessee River watershed, excellent employment options both in person and remote (much tied to DoD 
, but also NASA:slightly_smiling_face:), and while the real estate market is kinda ridiculous in town, there is acreage available not far out at reasonable prices. Politically it’s trending purple. No real winter. Food for thought.
Yes.
Most of our road trip patterns these past few years takes us along US 81, from Knoxville [TN] to Scranton [PA]. A lovely drive with much to recommend it.
We were in Harrisonburg in last month.
Most college towns have a decent data pipe at least in town.
We were pleased to learn some of our inferences about Harrisonburg (drawing from multiple data sources, not just Zillow) were borne out by a walk through the middle of town.
Thanks for this.
You are very sweet!
I have been following Huntsville’s storied history from afar for quite some time.
It does have some fascinating parts. I did not know it was a Google Fiber city but considering its population of Redneck Rocketeers, it makes sense.
Looking to relocate in an area with a cold- or frost-season to knock back some of the insect population, both the kinds that prey on crops and the kinds that transmit diseases to humans. We have had a near-biblical struggle against grasshoppers and locusts. A good cold snap usually knocks their population numbers back. A blessing to gardeners, growers, and farmers everywhere who expect a produce yield.
And then there’s this. Attention please, all you gardeners in Gulf States, Florida and Hawai’i especially. Heads up:
ETA: clarifying the NASA aspects of Huntsville
Staunton is well worth a look as well. Lower cost of living, vibrant and funky downtown.
Alabama definitely has a cold season. A few Thanksgivings ago, it even snowed. This was south and west of Huntsville by a coulpe hours drive (in the 2nd “reddest” county in the state). I didn’t pack well for that visit, left my actual winter coat in Michigan. We’ve been there before, same time of year, and it was 70-80. 
Chicago suburbs are pretty decent. Some of the more far-flung burbs will get you plenty of space. Water is rarely in short supply. Taxes are, well, not great.
It sounds like you have some sort of municipal water system (800+ deep well into the aquifer).
If you have never lived where you yourself are responsible for the maintenance of your own well and septic system, that is a serious consideration.
Areas that cost more to live in also provide valuable benefits such as professionals checking the water quality on a daily basis. If you like living off-grid, that’s great, but you’ll need electricity to run the pump or you won’t have any water. And you’ll need to do your own checking on a regular basis to make sure you’re not accidentally poisoning yourself, and run a water softening system to protect your pipes from the mineral build-up, and then some sort of filtration system at least in the kitchen for water you’ll actually want to drink.
Our community of roughly a hundred people owns and runs our potable water well through our water supply co-op. The one currently in use was drilled in ~2000. It replaced our well drilled in the 1980s (900+ feet deep). Through solid limestone. The costs were onerous. There was no other way to get water out here. Then and now.
During 2021’s Winter Storm Uri some of us were at the wellhead, trying to unfreeze it with blowtorches. Pipes had already frozen and burst. No power (the Texas grid was well and truly down). It was… complicated. Expensive. Lengthy. We are still recovering, financially.
Our well is subject to regulations and laws, state (like the Texas Department of Health) and regional (Hays Trinity Groundwater Conservation District), among others. We submit samples regularly to TDH, and pumpage reports to HTGCD. We are required to chlorinate the water by law, and so it is chlorinated. I understand the reasons for it, as I run the swimming pool for our community (also chlorinated).
Our well water is extremely hard, and lithifies the soils it touches, unless we get rains to rinse and dilute the accumulated calcium carbonate grit and powder. The soil biota are not thrilled with lithifying soils that are blasted 3 months a year with solar radiation, parched, compacted, etc. Native plants–no problem. Peach trees and tomatoes, heavy feeders? Big problem.
The dose makes the poison.
Fwiw… when I water our plants (the food plants especially) with well water, I am pretty clear on what’s in it. I used this database:
results for our well:
(Sadly, the City of Harrisonburg’s water supply report has some serious hitchhikers and if we move there, we will likely install a reverse-osmosis filter… I have lost friends and neighbors in my area to cancer, living and dying in communities with statistically significant cancer clusters.)
ETA:
missing word(s)
That just sounds so precarious to me! But I’m pleased to hear that you are part of a coop, and also that there is a lot more regulation than I would have thought (as so many Texans brag about the supposed advantages of having ‘no regulations’).
There are cusp areas between small towns and rural areas where you can get the best of both worlds, so you wouldn’t have to be that involved and knowledgeable on all that but could still have land to farm, etc.
In my area (Indiana), the wells are individual and not subject to any regulation once they’re put in. Most are 40-50 feet deep only, but environmental professionals have told me 80 feet or more is what everyone should be aiming for, to get below the clay layer. Just south of the Great Lakes means a lot more ground water and aquifers closer to the surface. But the politics would be out of the frying pan into the fire for you, which is why I didn’t suggest it when others were giving you good alternatives.
Texas has a very “business friendly” regulatory atmosphere, and the phrase ought more accurately be worded as “poorly enforced, unenforced, and easily contested regulations.”
Our local limestone (karst), full of holes and faults, is far less effective at filtering out the water’s “bad guys” than soil. So a well 800-900 feet down is no assurance that effluent will not enter it. Correlation is not causation; heaven help us if we try to prove our well water goes bad because treated pee and poo water needs a place to be dumped in this frenzy of hyper-development out here.
