Adventures of an urban homesteader growing greens, preserving the harvest and tending a backyard barnyard
A couple weeks ago our temperatures in Portland were dropping to unusually freezing temperatures. I wrote about the mysterious happenings, describing how my China Blue vine started turning black on the areas of new growth. I also noticed my beautiful hardy kiwi vines were showing black leaves as well. I decided to write the folks over at One Green World to see if this was
Jay finished construction on our 8′ wide x 8′ tall four-post pergola. We are calling it the Taj Mahal, as it was a labor in honor of love for me 🙂 Sappy, but in a funny way. It’s safe to say that we are both incredibly impressed. He had no idea he could build something so awesome, and I had no idea we could have
This is the first time I have grown vegetables from seed indoors. Normally I am a direct-sow kinda girl, but I wanted the greater variety in vegetable options so I could focus on heirlooms this year. So I went out and bought a grow light, made my seed pots from newspaper, and got the growing underway. It’s getting on late-April now and I starting to
Today I wrapped up the “Chick Condo”. It’s a roughly 4′ long x 2′ wide wooden box I have attached to the opposite end of the big girl’s hen house. There is a small doorway opening to the run, so the new chicks and the older girls can get know each other. When the chicks grow up into the big house, I can store my
Of course I need another outdoor project! 🙂 I have been wanting to build a patio in the backyard for some time, but have struggled with the best material options. There have been a few ideas floating around, but I was really starting to lean towards getting some nice flagstone and just going for it. It would be the most expensive option, but it would
It was a perfect day in Portland today. The sun was shining all day and the it was actually shorts and T-shirt weather. This morning I started in on renovating the chicken coop, which meant the girls were allowed to free-range for the day. My chickens don’t lay eggs until late in the day, so a good part of late morning and early afternoon was
It seems like the chickens just sprouted overnight. Here is an updated profile on each of the girls (hopefully) and my crazy idea to follow these pictures: Chick #1 Breed: Araucana Coloring: Grey/White Egg Color: Blue-Green Additional: She’s a “floater”, neither the top nor bottom of the pecking order. She is still the cutest. Chick #2 Breed: Rhode Island Red Coloring: Reddish Brown Egg Color:
I totally spaced that the post before this one was my 100th post, so I’ll just have this one acknowledge 101 posts! Pretty fun to hit the triple digits and I don’t see anything slowing down for awhile.
This past Saturday I attended a workshop on building rain gardens, which was organized through East Multnomah Soil & Water Conservation District, the Johnson Creek Watershed Council, and Leach Botanical Garden. The workshop was held out at the Leech Botanical Garden in outer SE, which I have never been to before. It was a very peaceful and serene environment and I would love to go
The baby chicks are babies no more! The baby fuzz is being replaced with real feathers and they have just grown so much in only a couple weeks. I caught one of the little girls standing on top of the waterer this morning, to the dismay of her sisters. They were squawking at her, trying to get her to come down. I think they were
