Dillards 66: Appropriate Spaces for Inappropriate People

[QuiverDance]

7 hours ago, EmmieJ said:

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.

Watching my grandfather plant and grow things as a child was one of the most important formative aspects of my life.  Before he retired he worked offshore on an oil rig in the Gulf 7 days on 7 off.  When he was home, he was in the garden sun up to sun down.  After he retired, he was out in the garden every day.  Morning to evening.  He cultivated about 3 acres of his 10.  He did have a tractor.  An old one.  Real old.  He grew corn, potatoes, melons, beans, peas, green beans, cucumbers, acorn squash, butternut squash, pumpkins, zucchini, watermelons, cantaloupe, honeydew, sugarcane, strawberries, tomatoes, carrots, parsnips, turnips, beets, cabbages, lettuces, broccoli, okra, cauliflower, garlic, onions, shallots, peppers, all different varieties of everything... He loved heirloom seeds.  My favorite were his field peas (tiny and purple) and his butterbeans (tiny and bright green).  He loved heirloom seeds and was an avid seed saver, and if you could name it, he could grow it.  He also had fruit trees:  peaches, figs, mandarin oranges, lemons, Japanese plums, kumquats, plums; and beautiful pecan trees.   I miss that garden so much.  My mom and dad still own the property and keep a garden there, but it is nowhere near the same.  The reason, of course, is that they are not out there tending the thing 12 hours a day, every day.  

 

 

 

 

[TheOneAndOnly]

I watched the video with no sound on. The kids are cute as hell even with Izzy looking a little tired. 

Funny thing, I had a youtube video of some 1966 series Dark Shadows clips on in another window and the overly dramatic, something-awful-is-about-to-happen music was hilarious with the kids being kids. I highly recommend it.

[Cheetah]

32 minutes ago, QuiverDance said:

 

Maybe I'm just doing it all wrong, but I gurandamnedtee you, it is way cheaper for me to buy my cucumbers at ALDI than grow them in my back yard.  I do it because I like it, and I will keep doing it because I like it, but definitely not to save money.  

At any rate, my point was not to defend the Duggars' or any mega family's choices.  The gardening thing is mentioned here so often, I just thought it was worth offering my perspective as a person with an actual garden that doesn't save any money.  I mean... for all we know, they've tried and given up.  They are kind of bumblefuckin idiots, after all. 

No, I get it, I said nearly the same thing (there are a few vegetables that do work out cheaper to grow here but most aren't).  My zucchini this year was definitely worth the whatever... $2? for the starter plant, but that was probably the only one that returned more than I spent on it.

[3SecondSideHugger]

35 minutes ago, Cheetah said:

No, I get it, I said nearly the same thing (there are a few vegetables that do work out cheaper to grow here but most aren't).  My zucchini this year was definitely worth the whatever... $2? for the starter plant, but that was probably the only one that returned more than I spent on it.

Some of us have the special ability to kill any plant we touch  The only thing I’ve kept alive is my indoor rubber tree. If I was home 24/7 and had a dozen kids to help out, I might try a little harder with a garden. I’m also unskilled city folk- my relatives in the country (near the Bates) plant at least a few vegetables successfully every year with not THAT much effort. In their part of the country, it would be weird to NOT grow anything..

[SilverBeach]

1 hour ago, QuiverDance said:

I do it because I like it, and I will keep doing it because I like it, but definitely not to save money.  

Home grown tastes so much better though. As has been previously mentioned, gardening could also have provided homeschooling lessons. It's not just about the money. With fixed costs factored in, a garden for twenty people may be more economical than a garden for two.

[Shadoewolf]

Cucumbers =pickles is all I gotta say about that. There are plenty of farms and such right outside Fayetteville and Bentonville, fresh stands are everywhere during the right seasons. They could produce a pretty decent garden with all those kids. And the homeschool lessons would be good if they believed in science, but they don't so cellular stuff, photosynthesis, pollination, etc are lost on the Duggar kids. Personally I kill everything but marigolds and the rose bush next to the porch that was planted here before we rented the place.

[grandmadugger]

I feel like it has taken me a month to get caught up with these people. 

Canned foods - I used to be a snob about canned foods. We didn’t have them often because we did a low sodium diet. Fast forward a bunch of years and I now have to cook a different restriction diet. What I have learned is that there are canned foods that make my life easier and I do use them from time to time.  Not only are they easier sometimes the texture is more like homemade than I can make from scratch. 

 

Jill’s blog- the experts say your blog should have a niche. You need to be focused so you have authority and people will come to you. You should also balance your authority with authentic things. You have to not only have answers to solve your audience’s problems but be a real person about it. Someone shared a thing about Jessa and pot roast. That’s perfect. She solved a problem, short on time and fool proof. She was also was authentic about her troubles. People respond to that. Jill could post cream of whatever recipes if she related it to a reason. For example tator tot casserole. When the weather turns colder I love making tator tot casserole. It reminds me of my childhood. We would often have it because it is a crowd pleaser. I don’t make it as often now because it isn’t the healthiest recipe but I balance the meal with a salad loaded with fresh veggies. I get to share a piece of my childhood with my boys, warm the house up a bit, and still make sure we are getting our veggies in to feel better about eating the cream of soups. 

[Beermeet]

23 hours ago, HerNameIsBuffy said:

I make homemade sauce that my family loves...but I break out the can for me every time.

There really is something special about a can formed sliced can o' cranberry on a Thanksgiving break out the *fancy* plate to serve it on. Don't lie, we all do it. There's the real homemade cranberry sauce and also that sliced can form complete with stripes from said can that is not only present but enjoyed!  Tradition.  Moscato me!

[allthegoodnamesrgone]

10 minutes ago, Beermeet said:

There really is something special about a can formed sliced can o' cranberry on a Thanksgiving break out the *fancy* plate to serve it on. Don't lie, we all do it. There's the real homemade cranberry sauce and also that sliced can form complete with stripes from said can that is not only present but enjoyed!  Tradition.  Moscato me!

I love it when it glops out just like this.  

 

 

[Pretzel]

I think there's a lot of potential when it comes to a garden for 20+ people. Do they need to plant eggplants and split a single eggplant into 20 pieces as some other member previously mentioned? No. But there's stuff like pumpkins and zucchini (which usually grow like weed if you do it right) and they could easily make fried zucchini with tomato sauce and serve it over rice, or make pumpkin soup, baked pumpkin, pumpkin pie...etc.

Also, picking fresh tomatoes is such a nice activity for the little kids. Same goes for raspberries, blackberries, etc. They could have planted (maybe they did?) apple trees and harvest a huge load of apples every fall. Great for snacks, apple pies, baked apples with cinnamon and sugar, serve with some vanilla ice cream and you have your perfect crowd-feeding desert. Quick and easy. 

I don't know how much Jana is planting in her garden and how much they save by having Jana tend to the garden, but I am sure that with so many people in that family, they could double or triple the size and grow a ton of veg every year. Canning is also not a hard task if you do it right. They don't even need to can. They could freeze. I would assume that a family the size of the Duggars would have a huge deep freezer. 

I don't get how they can be so lazy and uncreative in the kitchen. The only fundie who really seems to experiment in the kitchen and make her food taste good is (AFAIK) Erin Paine. Yes, the Erin that was made fun of because she didn't like cooking for 20+ people. I now think it may be that she just didn't like cooking the glob that they served at home. Tori didn't know what fresh basil looked/smelled like and the little kids had no idea about broccoli...and I honestly don't think the Duggars have lived and eaten any different than the Bateseseses*. 

*Kelly Bates, unlike the Duggars, has often stated on her blog (back when she was still answering comments) that she didn't know how to cook, basically grew up on Tv-meals and didn't think that any of her recipes were worth sharing. So, while I think it's just lazy to feed kids a crappy diet and not look deeper into how to make the food appealing, I give her credit for not pretending that it was stuff other people had to try. 

[DillyDally]

Adding my two cents on the garden discussion:

I think they just didn't have the time to take care of a large garden in a systematic, organized way when most of the kids were younger. In between the travelling, filming, meal preparation, laundry, homeschooling and just literally making sure there's no major chaos, I just don't see them having the time and energy to draw up a schedule for gardening duties. I know that the kids took on a lot of chores from a young age, but adding gardening to it? It may just not have been worth the effort of planning what and when to sow, water, harvest etc. I mean, (no idea why this stuck in my mind), they did not even put the kids in pajamas (sometimes?) at night, so that should tell you something about how "well" they were coping just with ordinary daily tasks.

[Four is Enough]

Starting a garden can get expensive. We started with raised beds. The wood, topsoil, and cow manure did run us a pretty penny. But we've had those same raised beds for nearly 25 years now, and every so often we toss in compost or another couple bags of cow manure. Mattra fact, when the circus came to town, we could have shoveled some exotic shit, like from elephants, to add to our soil if we wanted to, for free. Mr. Four even re-uses seeds. He stores them in glass containers. No need to buy fresh every year.

The cost per serving of vegetables goes down dramatically.

[fluffernutter]

Aww see I LOVE making homemade cranberry sauce at Thanksgiving. It's one of the things we make the day before, It's so simple, smells divine, and the kids loved watching the cranberries pop. Then everyone stands around waiting for it to cool down enough to have a taste before we put it away to eat the next day. It's really just all about tradition. My husband's family always had either tomato juice or apricot juice served with dinner. So every Thanksgiving he requests that, which seems weird to me but that's what they did. Now I'm getting excited for next month!

[Meggo]

11 minutes ago, fluffernutter said:

Aww see I LOVE making homemade cranberry sauce at Thanksgiving. It's one of the things we make the day before, It's so simple, smells divine, and the kids loved watching the cranberries pop. Then everyone stands around waiting for it to cool down enough to have a taste before we put it away to eat the next day. It's really just all about tradition. My husband's family always had either tomato juice or apricot juice served with dinner. So every Thanksgiving he requests that, which seems weird to me but that's what they did. Now I'm getting excited for next month!

My husbands family is very suspicious of "new" foods but I volunteered to do cranberry sauce one year and did it from scratch - and now they all love it (and fight over who gets to take home the leftovers). I don't do the canned stuff. 

I could just sit down and eat it with a spoon (and have done exactly that)... 


On the topics of gardens. I have a TINY little garden - maybe 2x6 feet - very small. And my little Minion helped me plant this year so I honestly have ZERO idea what was in there aside from tomatoes. We found a radish, a carrot and some beets. My son will NOT eat cherry tomatoes - but he will snack on them off the plant in the garden. I cannot grow peas or beans - I've tried countless times - no luck. But I will always grow tomatoes because a fresh tomato, warm from the sun still? Nothing.better.

[karen77]

9 hours ago, Beermeet said:

There really is something special about a can formed sliced can o' cranberry on a Thanksgiving break out the *fancy* plate to serve it on. Don't lie, we all do it. There's the real homemade cranberry sauce and also that sliced can form complete with stripes from said can that is not only present but enjoyed!  Tradition.  Moscato me!

I have started making my own, it tastes so much better and it's so easy! BUT, I still love the canned version too! And of course, on a fancy plate!

[SilverBeach]

I eat cranberry sauce year-round. Luv the stuff. Sometimes I eat it by the spoonful directly from the can. Yum.

[SassyPants]

20 hours 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 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. 

Even the Maxwell girls know about the "GOOGLE". They even did a blog post about it, LOL!

[HerNameIsBuffy]

2 minutes ago, SassyPants said:

Even the Maxwell girls know about the "GOOGLE". They even did a blog post about it, LOL!

Yeah, but not every fundy girl is lucky enough to grow up in the same family that invented the 1 Ton Ramp!

[PennySycamore]

@karen77 and @Beermeet, we actually have a little cut glass serving dish that is made just for the canned cranberry sauce.  It was a wedding gift from one of my husband's childhood neighbors. They knew how much he loves cranberry sauce.  He hasn't eaten much chicken lately, but he'd get a small can just to have with chicken. 

[formergothardite]

I do make cranberry sauce, but there is nothing like the canned stuff served on a fancy plate. I always loved getting to put it on my grandma's nice plate when I was little. I felt super grown up when I got to slide it out of the can onto the plate and slice it into thin slices! 

[SassyPants]

4 hours ago, DillyDally said:

Adding my two cents on the garden discussion:

I think they just didn't have the time to take care of a large garden in a systematic, organized way when most of the kids were younger. In between the travelling, filming, meal preparation, laundry, homeschooling and just literally making sure there's no major chaos, I just don't see them having the time and energy to draw up a schedule for gardening duties. I know that the kids took on a lot of chores from a young age, but adding gardening to it? It may just not have been worth the effort of planning what and when to sow, water, harvest etc. I mean, (no idea why this stuck in my mind), they did not even put the kids in pajamas (sometimes?) at night, so that should tell you something about how "well" they were coping just with ordinary daily tasks.

They already had 14 kids BEFORE they had a TV show. Lots of years without significant travel or a filming schedule to contend with-

They are above all else lazy-

[SilverBeach]

36 minutes ago, PennySycamore said:

we actually have a little cut glass serving dish that is made just for the canned cranberry sauce.

One of my prized possessions is a leaf-shaped amber glass dish that perfectly fits a can of cranberry sauce. It was my grandmothers. That's all I use it for, cranberry sauce.

[PlentyOfJesusFishInTheSea]

11 hours ago, Shadoewolf said:

s. And the homeschool lessons would be good if they believed in science, but they don't so cellular stuff, photosynthesis, pollination, etc are lost on the Duggar kids.

I'm not familiar with the Duggars' curriculum but want to point out that many creationists do learn this kind of stuff but in a "isn't God's creation amazing and must be designed" context.

I'm an environmental scientist and it sort of drives me nuts that they have to put a design spin on it but on the other hand, I can see how the intricacy of biochemistry can look designed. But only if you ignore all the evidence for evolution using what it has: Extra tendons in our arms, wisdom teeth, knees that give out because bipedalism is relatively new, etc.

[libgirl2]

2 hours ago, SilverBeach said:

I eat cranberry sauce year-round. Luv the stuff. Sometimes I eat it by the spoonful directly from the can. Yum.

It love to get the jellied kind (not can shaped) and eat it on break with cheddar cheese. Yum......  

2 hours ago, formergothardite said:

I do make cranberry sauce, but there is nothing like the canned stuff served on a fancy plate. I always loved getting to put it on my grandma's nice plate when I was little. I felt super grown up when I got to slide it out of the can onto the plate and slice it into thin slices! 

My dad loved the canned shaped sauce so we had to have it every year and yes on a nice plate! 

[Alachantal]

On 10/16/2018 at 6:13 PM, SassyPants said:

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

Hell, my ex and I had a vegetable garden on our balcony and grew rediculous amounts of tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers and we each worked 70 hour weeks. I'll never understand how the Duggars couldn't do it. You'd think gardening would be a good homeschool topic at the very least. ?‍♀️