Going to Town

I am a second generation Floridian. My grandparents and great-grandparents came to Pinellas County in the early 1940's. I spent the early part of my childhood living a rural life on a few acres of Florida swamp and scrub land in Pasco County surrounded by bears, panther, gator, turkeys, deer, feral dogs and cats, rabbits, chickens, and twenty foot tall orange trees.

When I was in my elementary years we moved 'into town'. The community we moved to was a tourist community on the beach. Granted, most of Pinellas is beachfront in some form or other, but Tarpon Springs is made up of more spring fed bayous and beaches than most communities in the county. My parents still live there and as of May 1st, so will we. After 10 years away from home, I am going back, husband in tow.

For a while anyways, we will be living with my parents on a 1/3 acre plot of land 'in-town' just minutes away from my old schools (preschool through college) and the beaches, bayous, and springs that I grew up playing in. It's weird going back. Sometimes I get this nostalgic kick that makes me so proud of where I grew up that I'm practically humming with country music and other times I stop and have to take a deep breath and remind myself why we are leaving our latest 'home'.

After graduating from University, my future husband and I left Florida and ended up in foggy San Francisco for five years. When the tech-bubble burst, we found ourselves moving to busy Queens, NY where I ended up working in Human Resources in Manhattan's financial district and my husband continued working in tech. But four years was all we could take of the continuous press of flesh, noise, & pollution.

We had to get out.

So, Florida here we come. Back to the scorching hot & humid summers, the hurricanes and the mosquitoes. Back to the beaches, bayous, lakes, rivers, and pine hammocks. Back to the fish and fowl and bear and alligators. Back to Southern hospitality like no other place on this planet.

Back to family and friends.

Our primary goal is to completely reinvent ourselves while at home (careers, family, & health). There will be several parts to these goals, but the one I will be focusing on here, is health via an experimental garden I will be planting with my father's help in the back yard. At each step of the process I will try and write down what I'm doing and what I'm hoping to gain from it.

I will also be discussing two other items quite frequently: local food options (u-pick, farmers markets, butchers, homemade items, etc) and heritage preservation. The local food options you probably understand without me explaining, things like vegetable picking at Hunsader Farms (we went in July 2011 and had a great, if hot time).

A good resource for finding local FL farms is located here.

However, you are probably scratching your head at the 'heritage preservation' comment. This summer, I will be interning at the Largo Heritage Village several days a week. I will be dressing in 1860-1880's period costume and working with the volunteer students to teach about Florida, specifically Pinellas County, during civil war and reconstruction eras. So plan on hearing about that as well. It's not too off-base either, as I plan to grow heirloom vegetables and herbs organically in the gardens using techniques from the time period where I can.

I hope that you will stick with us during this experiment and please, feel free to comment and give me feedback. I'm new at this and any help you can give would be appreciated!