Time is Our Most Important Asset
Time is our most important asset, followed closely by our health.
And health—more than most people want to admit—comes from what we eat and drink.
Yet those two priorities get shoved down daily task lists to the point of absurdity. We’ll spend hours scrolling, commuting, and “running errands”… and then act shocked when food gets expensive and energy gets scarce.
This site exists to flip that.
Core Concept 1: One Hour to Feed Yourself
Before we started this site, Elaine looked at me and said:
“I don’t think we need any more responsibility… getting back into our own high-output garden will take time.”
She wasn’t wrong. But here’s the thing most people miss:
Most people are already spending an hour a day feeding themselves.
They just don’t recognize the accounting.
If you work a job, you trade time for money. Then you trade money for food. But the “food pipeline” comes with hidden friction:
- commuting time and cost
- taxes and fees
- price inflation
- convenience premiums
- waste (food that goes bad)
- and often, interest (credit cards, delivery markups, etc.)
So yes—gardening “takes time.”
But so does buying food. You’re just paying for it in a way that’s harder to see.
Hour-A-Day Gardening is grounded in what we call Reality Finance: counting the whole cost, not just the grocery receipt.
Core Concept 2: One Hour a Day Is Huge
Let’s do the math.
There are 365 days in a year. One hour a day equals 365 hours.
Now compare that to a “regular job.” A full-time schedule is roughly 40 hours a week.
365 hours is more than nine full work weeks of effort.
And here’s the kicker:
Your garden has zero commute.
It’s outside your back door—or at worst, a short walk away.
So when we say “one hour a day,” we’re not talking about a cute hobby number. We’re talking about designing a system that can absorb two+ months of focused annual labor—and convert that into food you can see, touch, and eat.
One person can do a lot with that. Two people? Even more.
But the point of this site isn’t to recruit you into farm life.
It’s to prove that an hour—focused and systemized—changes the whole equation.
Core Concept 3: You Run Your Life
How many times have you said, “If I were the boss…”?
Well—this is one place you get to be.
You decide:
- what you like to eat
- what you can grow in your climate
- which methods fit your body and temperament
- how much automation you want
- what your “personal farm budget” is
- what comfort level you want on labor (clean hands? raised beds? no bending? we can do that)
We’re going to use a mix of time management, ag science, and plain-old American inventiveness to hit the One Hour A Day metric.
And when it’s done right, something subtle happens:
You stop asking permission—from bosses, from prices, from supply chains, from the weather panic on the news.
You step closer to the steering wheel of your own life.
Core Concept 4: Right-Sizing Food
We believe in continuous harvesting.
A lot of gardens look great… right up until they bury you.
What do you do with 300 pounds of tomatoes in a short window?
What do you do with 60 heads of romaine all at once?
Hour-A-Day Gardening isn’t about bragging rights. It’s about a measured pace and a steady stream.
We design for:
- fresh eating first (daily greens, herbs, steady vegetables)
- seasonal surges (tomatoes, peppers, squash, beans)
- and controlled overflow that can go to family, neighbors, or the local farmer’s market
And yes—your local farmer’s market is also an intelligence network.
If you want to garden better, find the people who already do.
Core Concept 5: Scalable When It Matters
People ask: How much food can one person really grow in an hour a day?
Answer: more than most people believe—if you use high-yield cropping and remove the time-killers.
Here’s the operating doctrine:
- Grow the highest output crops per square foot (greens + high-yield fruiting crops)
- Plant in succession, so something is always coming on
- Keep soil covered and alive: mulch + compost top-dressing (not constant digging)
- Use automatic drip watering so you’re not chained to a hose
- Build for a daily loop: walk-through → harvest → quick resets → done
When those pieces are in place, your hour isn’t spent “fighting the garden.”
It’s spent harvesting and steering.
And in an emergency—price spikes, supply disruption, sickness, job loss—this scales.
Not into a fantasy homestead.
Into reliable calories and real nutrition when you need it most.
How We’ll Post
In the coming weeks, we’ll try to post regular updates on Thursdays. That gives you Friday to pick up parts or supplies as part of your normal weekly workflow—and gives you the weekend to work the weather intelligently.
If you want to do more than an hour a day, by all means—go for it.
But we’ve got other dreams and projects. Out here, circling 80, we still intend to have adventures.
We’re in this for the food… and for the freedom that comes with it.
We’re still growing,
George and Elaine