Breadth Thrusts & Bread Crusts: Rebalancing Your Backyard

JC Parets
February 3, 2022

From the desk of Willie Delwiche.

It’s difficult to stay on top of things if you don’t periodically pause for reflection. 

What did you do yesterday that you want to do more of tomorrow? What do you want to do less of tomorrow? Rarely is any single day a make or break situation. But success over time is about leaning into the things that work and leaning away from the things that don’t work.

From an investing perspective, it’s about trusting prices and their trends. This involves tilting toward the parts of the market that are moving higher, while avoiding areas that are moving lower. It’s about avoiding “should” and dealing with “is”. The market is dealing with a negative reaction to disappointing data from several stocks that are in well-established downtrends as I type. That really shouldn’t be that big of a surprise. Stocks making new lows tend to be those in downtrends, while those making new highs tend to be those that are in uptrends. That’s the way the world works.

Last week I mentioned ordering seeds and starting to plan the summer garden. In addition to taking stock of what we had left from last year, we also had to ask ourselves questions about what worked and what didn’t, what we wanted more of, and what we could do without.

What did we figure out?

First, we want less Amaranth this year. The plants were beautiful in all respects – absolute stunners. But they were also quite large (growing over 6 feet tall) and had trouble staying upright on their own. I am inclined to try growing it again, but perhaps in a different spot. 

On the other hand, space is a scarce resource in our urban backyard garden and we want to balance aesthetics with production. From a production side, it’s hard to justify keeping Amaranth in the mix. After harvesting it, letting it dry and going through multiple iterations of removing the seed from the chaff, we ended up with about half a pound of Amaranth. Our local co-op sells it all day long for $2.99/lb. That was a lot of time and energy to produce $1.50 worth of Amaranth. Maybe I’ll grow a little Amaranth this year for beauty’s sake and let the birds eat what it produces. 

This year, we decided we want more growing space and a longer growing season. Last fall, we cobbled together a greenhouse enclosure on top of one of the raised beds. It was warm enough for greens to survive using a heat lamp (though they didn’t exactly thrive). But we are learning by doing and we want to lean into this. We’re looking at taking down the now unused swing-set and putting up a larger greenhouse. We’ll see how it goes. I’m sure I will share pictures and updates along the way…  

Don’t persist in doing something just because you’ve always done it. Lean into what is working and tilt away from what isn’t. 

Adapt and adjust, following the path where it leads. That could mean rebalancing your portfolio – or your backyard. 

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