There are certain qualities you can expect from a genuine homegrown product, qualities which could be desirable or undesirable depending on what you are looking for. Homegrown products are often unique and have a character of their own, attributable to their localized origin: without the standardization and systematization you would typically have in a commercial operation, the quality of the product is more dependent on the quality and the standards and local circumstances of the craftsperson putting that product out. This is not to say that a craftsperson or household does not have certain repeatable standards or systems, but they just aren't going to be as developed or set-fast as a commercial operation, in most cases.
An example might clarify this. Every year I like to brew some seasonal herbal beers. One of those beers is a nettle beer, brewed from stinging nettles gathered in the immediate vicinity. The quality of the brew depends on where the season is, an increasingly tricky prospect given the increasing volatility of the seasons. You gather in the spring when the nettle are young and fresh, but have had some time to grow and get established, and then you can gather on into early summer, which is when the mature nettle get leggy and start flowering, which changes the quality of the brew.
The microclimates where the nettle like to grow are constantly changing as the forest undergoes constant change, amidst a backdrop of climate change no less. Old and damaged trees go down in the winter, changing the light conditions on the forest floor in the spring. And the streams occasionally change course, drying up in one place and growing ever more vigorous in others, altering the water content of the surrounding landscape, and so the plants themselves are constantly changing in terms of where they are thriving and what they actually look like, in the course of their seasonal, cyclical development.
I have the requisite equipment and a good recipe, and a proper routine to get consistently good brews, but I don't have a commercial kitchen and commercial equipment and climate controls and all the rest. I don't have the time or the resources to monitor every variable and fine-tune and control the process from start to finish.
The shop is subject to fluctuating temperatures and conditions throughout the seasons, so fermentation happens at different rates. The plants change. The color of the brew changes, but all in all the product stays consistently good, which is the objective. Consistently good in the sense of being consistently enjoyable and desirable, even if its specific attributes change from batch to batch.
Further you can't typically find a beer like this to buy anywhere. It tastes good, and it feels good. Nettle is medicinal and its effects accumulate with regular consumption. You develop a relationship with the plant that is hard to describe here.
But sometimes you just want to go out and buy a cold six pack. You know what you are getting, the quality is consistent, and the product is dependable. You know where to find it when you want it. There is a familiarity and a continuity to having constant access to it. That too is nice, and that is one of the advantages of commercial.
Getting that consistency and quality is really hard: those quality products that have withstood the market competition and established a standard often have histories of a lot of hard work and experimentation. They can also have histories of predatory behavior, or otherwise as loci of wealth accumulation after having made it, they can become targets of predatory interest and their institutions change in the direction of that interest, but that is another topic.
With the larger commercial endeavors you have a relentless fixation on all of the variable sets that contribute to quality and consistency, and whatever can be controlled is invested in and capitalized to cement that control: say with the quality of raw materials, of the labor and processes that go into fashioning product out of those materials, of the infrastructure and environments and conditions where that fashioning takes place, and so on. And then you get that coveted quality and consistency which encourages a loyal consumer base and the ensuing market continuity.
Which is not to say you couldn't achieve this sort of thing with a robust enough household system. Indeed we've been doing it that way for a very long time, with the modern iteration of commerce being relatively recent and anomalous. But the modern commercial system is dominant and widespread, and so we look to that system and its products for sizing up quality standards and the like. But from an entire system flows larger consequences that go beyond the simple advantages and disadvantages of that system's products.
All of this is a really long way to set up another angle to describe my project here. In a way, this writing is homegrown. I don't have an established brand or consumer expectation, or even a set of institutional pressures to reproduce a certain product. There is a certain consistent commitment to quality, and a coherent set of interests and methodologies you'll find here, but as you can see, the quality and focus of the writing can fluctuate depending on living conditions which can be quite volatile. There are advantages and disadvantages to this, as there are with everything else.
Further, the dichotomy between homegrown and commercial set up here is only being explored for explanatory purposes; the reality is that there is a huge variability of operations and products along this spectrum. My own project my change in nature over time. But one thing I can say is that I've tried to avoid the commercial realm for various reasons, and for better or for worse, and that activity has consequences of its own, which I continue to explore in these writings.
