Adventures of an urban homesteader growing greens, preserving the harvest and tending a backyard barnyard
We found Milt a farm! Our drake, or male duck, is now spreading his love among a large flock of ladies living on a farm just south of Eugene. Whew! We were not looking forward to having him for dinner. I think Bess, Pepper, Gladys and Ramona are enjoying the peace and quiet. We are getting a steady supply of eggs already from both Gladys
Like a crazy woman, I went back to the local farm to u-pick more strawberries. Our cupboards are stocked with jam and I am getting tired of standing over the stock pot stirring. So this round I decided to just freeze them all – easy and versatile. I lightly rinsed the berries, since they can be little sponges and soak up excess water. I then
Our chocolate runner duck, Milt, needs to go. He is four months old and humping everything in sight! How do you wrestle being a modern feminist with the animal world? He will corner one of the ducks, bite the back of her head to keep her in place, then mount her. It doesn’t look fun, enjoyable or kind. It’s kind of a frustrating spectacle to
Typically I go a million miles an hour trying to balance roughly 10 things at once while standing on my head blindfolded. I am happy to report, however, that my summer break from school and work has led me to discover the off button. I am still doing little projects – writing, some book events, lots of volunteering – but I am for the most
Marmalade is similar to jam in texture, but typically they include some amount of fruit peel. In this case, I made a delicious batch of strawberry-lemon marmalade or, as my friend Behak described it, strawberry-lemonade in a jar. It tastes like I canned summer and I can’t wait to pop these suckers open in January when I’ve forgotten what the sun feels like. The original
Most years I completely miss strawberry season. It comes so early for us here in the Pacific Northwest that it is barely, sort-of-consistently-sunny when they are ripe. And after about three weeks, they are all but gone for the year. This year, however, I stayed organized enough to stay on top of the harvest season. I called around to several local farms offering u-pick berries
Just like any garden, homesteading life never stays the same. There is always some new challenge, right when you thought you were finally getting the hang of things. Change was inevitable for our backyard ducks. Right before the raccoon attack, I realized we had a drake among us. Drake is what you call a male duck. They are not illegal in the city, since they
Time flies and here we are already at the summer solstice. The sunrise was at 5:30 am and the sun will set at 9:00 pm. It’s going to be 81 degree outside today. Boy, did this just turn into summer overnight? The changing of the seasons is always time for me to take stock of what’s happening on our little slice of homestead. There is
I have a book signing tomorrow (Saturday) in Portland at the St. Johns Bookstore at 10:30am that I have been looking forward to for weeks. It’s a cute little independently owned shop and the farmer’s market will be going on just a block away. Our original plan was to stay up for a long weekend with friends and family. After yesterday’s raccoon attack, I’m going
Last night I went to bed and started to feel terrified. It was a really spooky, windy night. But I wasn’t terrified about the weather – I was worried about the ducks. Our original intention with our backyard flock of ducks was to lock them up every night in their duck house. Unfortunately, after a week of that they became completely frantic whenever they would
