Why Grow Mushrooms? This year, I have been looking into different types of vegetarian protein sources I can grow at home. I am not vegetarian at the moment, but I have been in the past, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't have some food security concerns. I also am too.... weak-willed, shall we say, to raise animals for meat myself.

Why Beekeeping? While I should probably be focusing more on my garden this year, one of my favorite parts of my little micro farm is raising animals. Since I was a child, I’ve just really enjoyed taking care of things. It’s probably how I ended up with cats, dogs, chickens, ducks, and frogs pretty much the second I had the space and a little bit of grown-up money.

My hens are taking a break this winter (well, they’ve actually been on a break since August, so that’s one of the things we’re working on this year). That means I had to go buy eggs from a store this week. Eggs are actually not that expensive here in Georgia yet. I paid $8.99 for 18 organic brown eggs at Costco (which finally returned after being recalled).

This is the longest January ever. While they always feel long, this one is especially dragging on due to unusually cold weather, gloomy days, and my final semester of library school starting. Most notably, January has felt long because I haven't been able to get outside and get my garden prepped for the spring, and the few things I do already have planted out there are clinging on for dear life (I had to get frost blankets for the first time!).

A Little Background on Why I Did This Experiment I started baking bread in college (so about 8-10 years ago now). For whatever reason, although I do not have a talent for baking in general, I am pretty good at making bread. Naturally, I eventually got sucked in to the world of sourdough. For the longest time, I was intimidated by the idea of sourdough, and I wasn't the biggest fan of the sourdough bread you can buy at the grocery store.