TANSTAAFL

If you've never heard of TANSTAAFL, it stands for 'There Aint No Such Thing As A Free Lunch', and is a concept from Robert A Heinlein's science fiction classic, "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress".  (Recommended reading for history buffs and computer geeks alike)  The idea of TANSTAAFL is that even if something is "free", in the sense that it costs no money to obtain, it is never truly free, in that it must cost something: labor, time, or energy. 

You can plant tomatoes for $1 worth of seeds and potentially harvest $30 worth of tomatoes, but only after growing them.  You need soil, water, protection from insects, all of which cost you something, even if it's not cash.  And there's the $1 you spent on seeds.
 
I even once bought one of these.  I planted it a foot away from the corner of my house, and my "kind" uncle mowed my lawn for me, not knowing that the six-inch "weed" had cost me $13.95. 


But back to the point: saying that nothing is ever truly free, well, that's just kind of splitting hairs.  And here's why: ask a statistician what the chances are that you win the jackpot with the scratch-off ticket you found in the parking lot, and she'll be able to calculate the mathematically correct answer.  However, ask anybody else and they'll tell you "zero".  Technically, the answer isn't zero, but it's so incredibly small that it may as well be zero.  So, you can say TANSTAAFL, but as far as I'm concerned, if something cost you so very, very little, in the way of money AND time AND effort combined, then you may as well call it "free".

So here's a few of the "free" items you can get in north central PA:

berries -many varieties of berries grow wild in my area, including raspberries, blackberries, and strawberries.  You just have to know where to look.  You can also buy blueberry plants and grow them year after year with no extra work.  The only catch is that you have to buy more than one so they can pollinate each other and produce berries.  A single bush by itself will grow, but will not produce.  I bought raspberry bushes from Walmart 8 years ago, two little stalks that grew and seeded, and grew some more.  These are my older two kids 3 years ago picking berries in front of my house.  Blackberries and raspberries will need weeded every other year or so, otherwise the roots will grow so thick they'll choke themselves.  I wait until they begin to produce leaves every spring, then pull up by the roots anything without leaves.

fish - There are two free fishing days every year in PA, when you don't need a license.  These are Memorial Day and Labor Day.  So if you're lucky, you can get some free fish.  If you want to buy a license, and fish the rest of the summer, it's $22.50 for a season license, which only saves you money if you catch at least 6 fish.  Otherwise, it's cheaper to just buy them.

apples -  There was a time when people had apple farms all over these hills, which were then abandoned or sold.  Many apple trees grow wild now, and the apples are free for the taking every fall.  They are ugly, unlike the apples from the store, usually misshapen, with "hunchback of Notre Dame" bumps on them, but they taste just as good, and are free for the taking.  The downside:  like wild berries, you have to find them first.

zucchini - zucchini grows so much from so little investment that it may as well be free.  If you live around here, you've probably noticed that in the fall, many people are giving it away; they've grown much more than they need.

rhubarb - If you plant a single rhubarb bush, you can harvest it once a year (mid-to-end-May) and have roughly a gallon of frozen rhubarb.  Unlike berries, you don't need more than one bush for continual growth, since the part of the plant that is eaten here is the stalk, not the "fruit" (the seed-bearing part).  True, the original plant costs money, but since you can harvest one plant indefinitely, it's "practically" free.

So that's it.  Go fishing, go picking, don't ignore the free food that grows in abundance around you.  And have a good week.