Dillards 66: Appropriate Spaces for Inappropriate People

[Maggie Mae]

15 minutes ago, SilverBeach said:

Nobody ever said that. Just that they are not as cost-prohibitive as you are presenting. If you can't afford a big garden, do a small one. It's OK just not to have interest in gardening, but with the Duggars and Bates having so many kids and money issues at one time, it just seems disingenuous that they didn't even try.

It seems to me that they might not have even considered it as something they could do. I don't know, the Duggars seem lazy and sort of dumb - or scared to try new things? I'm not sure which. 

[HerNameIsBuffy]

25 minutes ago, QuiverDance said:

 As for Jana's garden, the setup definitely required an investment of cash.  She has raised beds, a potting shed, even decor.  None of that materialized without money, even if the family supplied all or most of the labor.

I think the point a lot of people are trying to make is none of that is necessary.

And these were homeschooling families.  Had they started out with small gardens when the kids were small as part of homeschooling (you can get a lot of science lessons in practical application) they could have been able to supplement their diets with things they've grown themselves.

In your first post on this a tractor is mentioned even though not as a necessity - that's where I think people are talking about two different things.  In no way would a tractor be practical for a backyard garden...that's much grander scale than what we're talking about.

You have a shit load of kids.  Tomatoes are expensive.  Practically anyone can grow tomatoes...my ex did it out of old kitty litter tubs, seeds, and some wire things that cost less then $1 a piece.  However many tomatoes you get that so many you don't have to buy.  Ditto all the other things cheap and easy to grow.

Again - I know nothing about orchards but I know with one cherry tree my mom made pie after pie and tons of cherry preserves the neighbors coveted.  I swear it felt like half my childhood was pulling cherries off one tree and she never did anything to it after planting it.

Yes, I'm sure the year she planted it she didn't break even but over the years she absolutely did by never having to buy a single cherry and still being able to turn our kitchen into Boone's Farm in season.

Raspberries too are ridiculously easy to grow here...and you end up with way more than you want if you're not careful.  I wish I liked them.

[melon]

There is nothing like a fresh tomato from someone's garden.I love a tomato sandwich.

Now,I feel the need to go to the Famer's Market from this thread!LOL.

[HerNameIsBuffy]

2 minutes ago, melon said:

There is nothing like a fresh tomato from someone's garden.I love a tomato sandwich.

Now,I feel the need to go to the Famer's Market from this thread!LOL.

A co-worker of my son sent him home with extra heirloom tomatoes she'd grown.

After my initial skepticism as I am not fond of trying new things, I fell in love.  So much more...tomatoey.  

Kicking myself for never having tried to grow anything.

[allthegoodnamesrgone]

4 minutes ago, HerNameIsBuffy said:

I wasn't even alluding to that.  Just that adult responsibility isn't something everyone wants, and some people really struggle when they weren't prepared for it before it was thrust upon them.  

JB and J'Chelle did her no favors in this regard.

I didn't say you were, I'm saying that I think Jill has more going on that just having trouble adjusting to wife & mom, and that this (in my opinion) is causing some anxiety issues for Jill. I added in about my issues, because I can see some of the same things she's doing were similar to what I had done, but I didn't do it on line or in the public eye, thank goodness.

[SilverBeach]

13 minutes ago, Maggie Mae said:

No one is saying they needed to invest heavily in agriculture. However, it seems ridiculous that they are such poor planners, poor cooks, and lazy. They are NOT an example of anything other than greed and laziness. Furthermore, while I'm not a theologian or religious in any meaningful way, I just don't get their philosophy - doesn't the bible tell people to work hard? To tend their lands and use their extra to feed the poor? I don't remember reading "have more kids than you can afford and get a reality TV show to buy you a big house" 

Well said sister!

Just now, HerNameIsBuffy said:

A co-worker of my son sent him home with extra heirloom tomatoes she'd grown.

After my initial skepticism as I am not fond of trying new things, I fell in love.  So much more...tomatoey.  

I'm a born and raised city girl. When I moved to the suburbs and planted a small garden, my first taste of a home-grown tomato blew my socks off. It was nothing like the tomatoes in the store, the flavor was so intense and delicious.

[HerNameIsBuffy]

4 minutes ago, allthegoodnamesrgone said:

I didn't say you were, I'm saying that I think Jill has more going on that just having trouble adjusting to wife & mom, and that this (in my opinion) is causing some anxiety issues for Jill. I added in about my issues, because I can see some of the same things she's doing were similar to what I had done, but I didn't do it on line or in the public eye, thank goodness.

If she is then I hope at some point she is able to get real help.  

[apandaaries]

5 minutes ago, HerNameIsBuffy said:

A co-worker of my son sent him home with extra heirloom tomatoes she'd grown.

After my initial skepticism as I am not fond of trying new things, I fell in love.  So much more...tomatoey.  

Kicking myself for never having tried to grow anything.

Heirloom tomatoes are entirely worth growing a garden on their own.  Nothing in the world like them. 

 

[Beermeet]

42 minutes ago, QuiverDance said:

Look, I'm not making a value judgment about it.  I LOVE GARDENING.  I grew up riding a tractor with my grandfather through rows and rows of beautiful vegetables, my dad still does it, and I love growing my own food now on a smaller scale.  I'm just saying there is a lot that goes into it, crop success is not guaranteed, and it doesn't necessarily provide economic savings, though it certainly CAN if everything goes well.  

 

 

 

So, on Long Island,  the soil is amazing. Just dig and plant.  Here in Los Angeles my soil is dry, sandy and adobe in parts. It sucks.  As soon as I can afford to buy good dirt, I will container garden. Hundreds of dollars in dirt! Ridiculous. 

[EmmieJ]

23 hours ago, Hashtag Blessed said:

She’s a stay at home mom, surely she has some time on her hands to watch the food network and get a little inspiration to step outside her comfort zone? That’s how I found the desire to learn to cook when I was younger. But maybe that has too much booze and gays for her delicate sensibilities. Or maybe just too many career women actually enjoying their lives. 

This.   We know she has access to the internet because she watches her church services on line sometimes.  So she must be able to go online and for the love of pete, go to allrecipes.com and look up any sort of recipe she might want to try!  She has access to Facebook just like I do - and I frequently have friends sharing one of those quick videos showing an easy recipe - sometimes it's something seasonal and fun to do with kids, sometimes it's a healthy version of an old favorite.  As you mentioned, there is the Food Network (although it's mostly competition cooking shows now).  There are so many easy resources out there for a person who wants to try his/her hand at learning new recipes or cooking techniques.  Whatever floats your boat:  "cooking healthy on a budget", "gluten free recipes", "5 ingredient recipes," etc.

Jill doesn't seem very adaptable.  She's got this vision of how she can best present her testimony to the world, and she's sticking with it.  On the other hand, Jessa and Ben seem to be more adaptable - after getting some negative backlash for comparing abortion to the Holocaust, they learned "hey, maybe that goes over fine when we're in church, but in the big wide world, that apparently isn't so well received.  Maybe we won't do that again."  

Also, maybe she's in serious denial that her life isn't what it was promised to be.   If she just smiles wide enough and pretends hard enough, it will be all right.  

[Maggie Mae]

2 minutes ago, Beermeet said:

So, on Long Island,  the soil is amazing. Just dig and plant.  Here in Los Angeles my soil is dry, sandy and adobe in parts. It sucks.  As soon as I can afford to buy good dirt, I will container garden. Hundreds of dollars in dirt! Ridiculous. 

I currently live on what can best be described as "someone filled in an old swamp and built houses." Chances are pretty good that the next major earthquake will slide us right off into Cook Inlet. Part of me doesn't want to be home when that happens, but that also means that i won't have anywhere to go, and my cat and bird will be trapped. Granted, I don't know if I could really save any of us if I was home, either. So, you know. Basically just hoping for no earthquake. Anyway, we spend so much on dirt. And it's cold most of the time but really sunny in parts of my yard. So I can grow potatoes in the ground, but broccoli bolts .We grow tomatoes but they get mealy because it's basically refrigerating them at night.  Cabbage grows well. We don't have raised beds but I'd like some, and a greenhouse. Peas, beans, and zucchini grow well, but moose seem to like those things as well.

Oh, I guess my point was that our dirt sucks too. Maybe it's just west coast north american dirt? But I can manage to grow a few things with spending very little and I live in an extreme climate, the Duggars might have terrible dirt, but they might have fantastic dirt for their climate. I don't know. I don't know if they know.  

[EmmieJ]

22 hours ago, patsymae said:

Jeeze, even Martha Stewart has developed a sense of humor about herself. Anybody else see her show with Snoop Dog? Martha Stewart in a beer hat, Snoop making chicken cordon bleu ("you're the rolling expert") and showing her that some people actually use stuffing from a box ("No, it's not a base...) Priceless.

Ha!  I never could stand Martha Stewart until she teamed up with Snoop Dog.   I enjoy watching them together.

[Maggie Mae]

2 minutes ago, EmmieJ said:

So she must be able to go online and for the love of pete, go to allrecipes.com and look up any sort of recipe she might want to try!  

This is the kind of thing that they clearly struggle with - no one told them that the internet can be used for recipes and since they had the curiosity beat out of them as infants, they aren't going to experiment or see what they can find online, or at the library, or in the paper. 

[EmmieJ]

18 hours ago, SassyPants said:

I was always baffled that the Duggars did not have a garden or orchard to help offset food costs.

Me too.  When I was 4 years old, we moved from a small city to what was then a small town in northern California, on a 1.5 acre piece of property.  My dad had grown up in Los Angeles, a city kid but his parents' home had this huge, long back yard and his dad was a gardener, so they always planted corn, tomatoes, zucchini, etc.  That's what we did too, in a small garden plot.  The soil wasn't very good, and it was hot work pulling weeds and watering on summer days, but I loved picking a ripe warm tomato and eating it straight off the vine.  Sooooo good!  We also had a lot of wild blackberry plants, two walnut trees, a pomegranate tree, and a couple of apple trees, plus chickens for fresh eggs.  We still bought most of our fruits and veggies from the store, but it was nice to have the little bit of fresh produce we grew ourselves.

I never could understand why the Duggars didn't have at least a little garden (until Jana decided that's what she wanted to do).

[formergothardite]

1 hour ago, QuiverDance said:

.  I'm just saying there is a lot that goes into it, crop success is not guaranteed, and it doesn't necessarily provide economic savings, though it certainly CAN if everything goes well.  

I grew up with a large family where we gardened pretty much every year. My dad didn't have a tractor or a tiller. He borrowed a tiller. We used a hoe a lot. These families didn't need to start with a huge garden. They could have started 20 + years ago with a couple of containers and added a little bit each year. Our peach and apple trees were planted in various years when my parents found them cheap on the end of the growing season. It wasn't like my parents went out the year they married and planted a massive garden with lots of expensive fruit and nut trees, it was a slow process. 

 I'm just saying that if Jill Rodrigues figured out how to either make a garden on her own or grift garden things to make a garden, the Duggars and Bates could have. They chose not to. They both homeschooled, they could have incorporated learning to grow things into their children's education. Maybe they wouldn't have been able to raise enough to can food for the winter, but they could have gotten some fresh fruits and veggies if they had put forth some effort. 

Both families are instead known for having raised their children with limited fruits and veggies and instead fed them super processed meals that came out of cans and packages. 

[Alisamer]

5 minutes ago, EmmieJ said:

I never could understand why the Duggars didn't have at least a little garden (until Jana decided that's what she wanted to do).

Definitely agree! We had a medium size garden behind our house the whole time I was growing up. I was probably in mid-elementary school when it dawned on me that not everyone had one. We grew corn, squash, okra, enough green beans that we never ever had to buy any, tomatoes, and a few other things. It didn't completely feed us, but it made a HUGE difference. With the land the Duggars had once they moved into the TTH, they could have easily grown a big garden cheaply, and possibly even raised a few beef cattle. They had the time, space, and a free labor force, and by that point had enough  money to get started as well. Canning is easy, especially with TWO kitchens. It would have certainly made them seem less greedy, I think. 

Honestly, the only people I know who don't grow tomatoes in the summer here, are people who don't like tomatoes. Put two or three in buckets on an apartment balcony and you'll be wondering how to get rid of them all once they start to ripen. 

[SapphireSlytherin]

Gardening takes a LOT of time.

The Duggars like to sleep and travel.

There's your answer. lol

 

 

Just now, Alisamer said:

people who don't like tomatoes.

::raises hand::

 

[Alisamer]

Just now, SapphireSlytherin said:

 

::raises hand::

 

Yeah, me too! People STILL try to give me tomatoes all the time though.

[SilverBeach]

23 minutes ago, Maggie Mae said:

This is the kind of thing that they clearly struggle with - no one told them that the internet can be used for recipes

Really? This is like the Maxwells being amazed about Google. Do fundies really have to be told everything? Grown-ass married with children people who have an online presence? Damn.

3 minutes ago, Alisamer said:

Yeah, me too! People STILL try to give me tomatoes all the time though.

Pass them on to me!

[formergothardite]

57 minutes ago, Maggie Mae said:

It seems to me that they might not have even considered it as something they could do. I don't know, the Duggars seem lazy and sort of dumb - or scared to try new things? I'm not sure which. 

I too get the impression neither families ever even considered it. For the Duggars, they were in rental houses for a long time, and by the time the big house got built they had lots of television money so I bet it was never anything they thought they needed.  Gil and Kelly I think are just lazy. Granted they can hustle when they want something, but Kelly barely even cared for her babies, and Gil had a weird thing where he only worked his job in the afternoons, so I don't see either of them putting forth the effort to garden. And having the children do it would mean they would have less time cleaning house, cooking meals and raising siblings. 

I think the last reason is why Jill Rod doesn't garden anymore. She was a more involved parent before they started living in the RV and now she has gotten used to doing nothing so redirecting her kids to gardening would mean she would have to do more parenting and house work. 

[SilverBeach]

1 hour ago, HerNameIsBuffy said:

1 hour ago, QuiverDance said:

 As for Jana's garden, the setup definitely required an investment of cash.  She has raised beds, a potting shed, even decor.  None of that materialized without money, even if the family supplied all or most of the labor.

Over how much time? I doubt she started out with all of this. And where would Jana get so much spare cash anyway, she has never had a job.

[EmmieJ]

2 hours ago, QuiverDance said:

In an attempt to be fair, I'd posit that gardening is a good deal more expensive than buying produce, and much more expensive with the initial investment.  Just to start my small backyard garden this spring was a pretty large investment.  For a larger garden, a family would have to invest in a tiller (at a minimum), or a tractor for a larger garden, hoses and irrigation, a water source and water to keep the crops alive, fertilizer, seeds, organic pesticides/repellants, hoes, rakes, mulch, garden soil, compost/compost bins, bird and insect barriers... It's not cheap. It's not just a matter of digging a hole in the ground and sticking a seed in it.   Even container gardening is costly.  

It would certainly be nice to have a tiller or a tractor, but we had neither.  My dad got out there with a pickax and a hoe and broke ground for our first garden.  We did have plenty of hoses, a couple of wheelbarrows, shovels, rakes, a hoe, etc.  I don't remember him using pesticides - we just picked the little green worms off the corn or tomato plants.  We also didn't have bird barriers although that would have been helpful too.   We still managed to have a garden, and it can be done on the cheap.  I'm talking a small garden plot, maybe 20' x 30'.  I agree there is cost involved but with craigslist and apps like NextDoor, and garage sales, you can pick up used planters and other implements on the cheap as well.   I think the Duggars may not have had a garden because they traveled too much for the show.  I don't know why the Bates didn't bother to raise any of their own food.

[libgirl2]

7 minutes ago, Alisamer said:

Yeah, me too! People STILL try to give me tomatoes all the time though.

Not a tomato fan either. I have tried and tried to like them for the last 40+ years..... I can tolerate them on a sandwich and I love pico de gallo...... but that is about it. I have had co-workers offer me tomatoes and I say no we don't really eat them. DH isn't a fan and my son would be okay with them but wouldn't seek them out. 

[Rachel333]

1 hour ago, Maggie Mae said:

They live in an area with adequate sun, heat, and soil. The fact that the Duggars aren't/didn't do anything with the #blessings they were given in regards to land irritates me to no end.

Actually, everyone I've heard talk about the soil in NWA says that it's terrible for gardening because it tends to be very rocky. You can do it, it's just going to take even more work than it would take to garden in areas with better soil.

We actually had a good garden when I was growing up but that's because the man who had our house before us went to extreme lengths to set up a good garden. He actually dug about six feet down and then layered it with elephant dung that he got from a circus! We still had to rent a tiller every year, though, and we had a fairly small garden..

In the Duggars' case, though, they also live on what used to be a landfill, and I don't know how that would impact gardening but I suppose that might mean that their soil conditions might be different from typical NWA soil.

[SapphireSlytherin]

7 minutes ago, libgirl2 said:

I have tried and tried to like them for the last 40+ years

My grandmother's husband used to try to bribe me (with a whole QUARTER!!!) to eat a single slice of tomato. Nope. Never could do it. Not even for 25¢.