Guide to Backyard Farming

by Kara | Apr 20, 2020 | News

Backyard farming — sometimes referred to as urban farming, container gardening, or micro-farming — is a way to transform your yard, patio, or even windowsill into a thriving garden. From smaller gardens that grow vegetables, herbs, and fruit to larger operations that include beekeeping and chicken coops, backyard farming encourages sustainable living and healthy eating among multiple other benefits. Here are some tips to get started.

Benefits of Backyard Farming

Planting and growing your own produce is an amazing way to live more self-sufficiently, eat organically, and avoid the middle man by going from “farm” to table in your own home. In fact, if more people farmed at home, the accessibility of local food would increase and prices in stores and farmers markets would decrease.

Planning your garden and backyard farming is also a great way to spend quality time outside with your family. If you have children, gardening can teach them the importance of responsibility and teamwork, as well as basic math, measuring, and science concepts. 

Additionally, backyard farming is an excellent stress-reliever. Sunlight is a great source of vitamin D, which encourages production of serotonin and dopamine — a.k.a. the “happy” chemicals in the brain. In one study where participants who gardened over the course of 12 weeks saw a significant improvement in their moods and alleviation from depression symptoms. 

Getting Extra Help

While you spend time in the garden with your family, enlist the help of a personal assistant to help with some of the planning that goes on behind the scenes. They could gather what’s needed for DIY planter projects, schedule out the best dates to plant each crop, order other necessary materials online or over the phone, and even water or weed while you’re away at work. 

Backyard Farming Locations

If you have a sizable back or front yard, you’re in luck — you’ll have a lot of space for backyard farming, and can find optimal locations for plants that have different sunlight needs. If you live in a condo or have a smaller amount of space, don’t fret. Backyard farming is possible just about anywhere.

Square Foot Gardening

Square foot gardening uses small wooden-framed garden beds, usually 4’-by-4’, and a grid dividing that space into 1’-by-1’ squares. If you’re tight on space, this uniform, organized approach to gardening might be the right choice for you. Square foot gardening is also a smart option if you’re just beginning to learn the tricks of the trade, since it requires less management and upkeep. 

Vertical Gardening

If your outside space is limited, consider growing upward via vertical gardening. This method encourages vegetables, herbs, and flowers (especially those with vining habits such as tomatoes) to grow vertically instead of horizontally on the ground. Vertical gardening sees your plants grow upward on a trellis, garden netting, or a number of other creative DIY options. Check out online tutorials to learn tips for vertical gardening and give it a shot!

Container Gardening

Container gardening, or potted plant gardening, is a practical choice for those of us with no yard space. This method of gardening can be done on a deck or patio as well as a windowsill, as long as the sun exposure is right. Container gardening is an easy way to incorporate different herbs, plants, and produce in small spaces, each with their own portable pot. Imagine having an entire herb garden right outside your condo door or on your kitchen windowsill!

When to Plant

Deciding when to plant is a big part of pulling off a successful backyard farming harvest. Consider your local climate and the time of year it is. In the Pacific Northwest, we don’t start seeing regular sun until May and sometimes even June, so waiting until mid-spring to start your backyard farm might be your best bet, depending on what you are planting. Almanac.com has a helpful gardening calendar guide; all you need to do is type in your location and see when the best dates are to plant your crops.

What to Plant

Again, consider your climate and timing before you plant a certain type of vegetable or fruit. Snap peas, cilantro, carrots, broccoli, chard, and lettuce are among the many vegetables that take kindly to the Pacific Northwest climate. As for fruits, Seattle is a great place to grow berries such as blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries.

Backyard Chickens

Check with your city’s zoning regulations first, but many places allow households to raise chickens on their property. Most chickens lay 250 to 300 eggs per year, so consider that while you decide how many chickens to raise. Check out your local livestock or hardware store, or talk to farmers at your local market to find out where to purchase chicks. 

You can either order or DIY your own chicken coop, but make sure you do the necessary research so that you have enough space and can provide a good home for your chickens. 

Raising chickens can be a great option for those interested in farming their own eggs — eating better in the process. Chicken manure is also a great fertilizer for the rest of your garden!

Whether you’re starting a larger-scale backyard farming project complete with chicken coops or are just setting up your windowsill containers in your condo in the city, backyard farming is an activity that is accessible and enjoyable for everyone.

How to Handle the Household When Your Spouse Travels

by Kara | Feb 28, 2020 | News

When your spouse travels extensively for work and you’re left to run things yourself, you can feel overwhelmed, exhausted, and lonely. Even if you’re getting everyone fed, clothed, and meeting basic needs, trying to get everything done alone can be exhausting and cause tension between you and your partner.

Treat yourself well and don’t be afraid to ask for help, and with a little planning, you can better handle your spouse’s travel schedule and keep things running smoothly at home.

Keep Meals Simple

Keep meals simple by making things such as lasagnas, casseroles, DIY-pizzas, and other easy-to-throw-together dishes. Crafting up an ultra-fancy meal can be fun, but not if it makes grocery shopping, prepping, and cleanup more difficult than it needs to be. 

Consider meal delivery services, or enlisting outside help for meal prepping and planning to ensure that mealtime isn’t stressful. 

Taking yourself and your children out to eat once or twice a week while your partner is away can also be a fun and simple way of cutting down on household cooking tasks.

Don’t Take on Extra

Avoid taking on extra school volunteer duties, staying late for work, or starting extra projects while your partner is traveling unless you feel like you have a lot of available time. 

Understand that you cannot physically or emotionally tackle all of it on your own, especially not without piling onto your mental load. Ensure everyone is fed and clothed and gets to sleep, and consider everything else a bonus!

Keep a Routine

Stick to your normal routine as much as possible, especially if you have kids. Having a semi-normal routine will eliminate a lot of unexpected bumps in the road and help you anticipate what comes next and how to handle it. This will keep things calm and maintain order in an otherwise potentially stressful household while your partner is away. 

[Related: How Stress Affects Your Health]

Create Personal and Social Time

Make sure you take time to practice self-care throughout the chaos of running a household while your spouse is traveling. Schedule lunches with your coworkers or friends, or carve out one evening a week to hire a sitter so you can go out and grab dinner or drinks. Have other friends that are going through something similar? Invite them and their kids over for a potluck-style dinner.

If you find that you’re running low on time spent with yourself, get the children to bed a little earlier and have a bath or make yourself a cup of herbal tea. Alternatively, getting up before your kids to practice yoga or meditation can help you see things clearly and keep calm.

Enlist Extra Help

Although handling your entire household yourself may be possible, you don’t want to stretch yourself too thin. Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it, especially if your partner’s away.

You can hire a personal assistant to help with tasks such as running errands, grocery shopping, meal prepping, household tidying, and more to keep things running smoothly, especially while your spouse is out of town. Hiring a personal assistant will free up your schedule so you can spend more quality parenting time with your children and participate in some essential self-care as well.

Having a personal assistant available to help out on a regular basis and provide additional support while your partner is away can be extremely beneficial. 

Pepper’s Personal Assistants can help you manage your household and keep things on track long term no matter your situation. We provide services such as meal prepping, grocery shopping, laundry, and running errands so that you can have more time. Contact us today and let’s see how we can help!

Living in Your Zone of Genius

by Kara | Feb 14, 2020 | News

Are you doing your best in your day-to-day life, but still feeling unsatisfied? Sometimes when we try and take on too much at a time or get stuck in a routine, we lose sight of our passions and the ideas that make life truly rewarding.

In his 2010 book, “The Big Leap,” Dr. Gay Hendricks, Ph.D., discusses taking the jump from your comfort zone into your area of genius that’s waiting for its full expression. He urges you to “go beyond your internal limits, release outdated fears and learn a whole new set of powerful skills and habits to liberate your authentic greatness.” 

Once you learn how to function in your Zone of Genius, you can find more happiness in your everyday life.

“The Big Leap”

Hendricks’s best-selling book “The Big Leap” discusses our self-built barriers that prevent us from reaching our full potential, and in turn prevent us from being truly happy and satisfied. Hendricks lays out a comprehensive plan to overcome these barriers and achieve success and fulfillment in your career, finances, and relationships.

Four Zones of Function

In “The Big Leap,” Hendricks outlines what he calls the “four different zones of function”: 

• The Zone of Incompetence is a zone of function where you are engaging in something you have no skills for, or do not understand. 
• The Zone of Competence is where you function with the same efficiency as almost everyone else, meaning your capabilities are not particularly unique or special.
• The Zone of Excellence is the zone that most people aim to achieve and then stay static at. This zone allows you to perform extremely skillfully at something you are particularly efficient at, that you have practiced and cultivated over time.
• The Zone of Genius is where you can capitalize and function at the highest level using your innate abilities, rather than the ones you develop over time..

[Related: What to Know About Mental Load]

The Zone of Excellence vs. the Zone of Genius

The Zone of Excellence is good but not ground-breaking. A lot of individuals functioning in the Zone of Excellence feel stuck in autopilot, delivering quality work but not feeling as though they are fulfilling their highest purpose. Hendricks believes that we each have a unique perspective and gift that only we can give to the world, and that can happen only when we fully express our genius and commit to bringing it forth.

The Zone of Genius is where every highly successful person should aim to function at, according to Hendricks. Most intelligent individuals function in the Zone of Excellence, but ultimately don’t feel as fulfilled with their lives because they aren’t pushing further. 

When you function in the Zone of Genius, you find inspiration and produce work that is innovative, creative, and completely unique, excelling in your area much more than others around you. Yet pushing yourself to find your Zone of Genius is a lot easier said than done.

The “Upper Limit Problem”

In “The Big Leap,” Hendricks brings up something he calls the “Upper Limit Problem.” This issue suggests that we create our own internal glass ceiling that limits our fullest expression of self. We do the best we can but stop ourselves from pushing forward for fear of consequence or failure. 

In order to enter your Zone of Genius, you have to take risks and make the leap from your familiar life into working with your unknown realm of genius. You will not only be more successful, but entering into your Zone of Genius will also make you happier, more creatively energized, and more socially magnetic.

How to Enter Your Zone of Genius

Turn the hours of the day into chances to express your best, creative, and most energizing self. Hendricks recommends meditating or journaling starting at only 10 minutes a day to brainstorm where your Zone of Genius lies. He suggests asking yourself these few questions that can help you begin your journey towards your zone:

• What work do you do that doesn’t seem like work?
• In your work, what produces the highest ratio of abundance and satisfaction to the amount of time spent?
• What is your unique ability?

Think about your answers to these questions and how you can push internal boundaries and release your anxieties. Once you master your Zone of Excellence, you can then go further into your Zone of Genius, living your most passionate and engaged life.

Although you may be functioning in a Zone of Competence (or even Zone of Excellence!) doing activities like laundry and grocery shopping, we think your time is valuable, and could be better spent in your unique Zone of Genius. 

Let Pepper’s Personal Assistants help you start your journey toward your Zone of Genius by giving you the gift of time. We can assist you with tasks such as spring cleaning and running errands so you can begin meditating on what you’re innately gifted at. Make every hour count, and contact Pepper’s Personal Assistants today!