Adventures of an urban homesteader growing greens, preserving the harvest and tending a backyard barnyard
Seed swapping is a great way to pool your saved seeds with friends and divide up the loot. My sister came over this weekend and we spread out in the kitchen with our bounty from this past season. There was cheese. There was chocolate. There were good times to be had. It is such a relief to get some of those seeds off my hands.
Our house has a fabulous new improvement, compliments of our mad carpentry skills. That’s right – we have skills. Carpentry skills. We have never been thrilled with our eating arrangement in the kitchen, and have hence not invited tons of friends over for dinner, unless the weather was nice enough to be outside. I had Ladies’ Poker with about eight friends once, and it was
I have this bad habit of working so hard to preserve the harvest and then actually forgetting all about it until the next harvest rolls around… Amazingly, I broke the habit this past weekend when I remembered the bags of frozen berries stacked up in our freezer. I decided it was a good time to whip them out and into some tasty smoothies. My version,
It’s been a long, cold weekend. The temperature has been hovering near freezing in Portland for a few days now. Friday evening we received an email that a friend battling cancer was in grave condition. So it’s been a weekend of waiting. During rain breaks, I have been running outside to try to finish spreading the shrinking pile of wood chips – the last load.
Growing Gardens, a local non-profit here in Portland, is hosting their 5th Annual Tour de Coops this summer on July 26th. I am on their email list and they sent out the following asking for local urban chicken-keepers to consider opening up their backyard for the tour (click the image for closer detail): This was a really helpful event back when I was pondering whether
I’ve come along way since last May when I posted my first phase of the food forest garden design for the backyard. Lucky for me, all the trees and shrubs I planted last year made it through the season so I can build off of that initial plan. The Great Sheet Mulching of 2007 went well also, so the garden is a blank slate just
As mentioned earlier, I attended the Fruit Tree Pruning class this morning that was being offered for FREE through Portland Parks & Recreation. It started at 9:00 this morning, which was a little rough for me on a Saturday. Our power went out sometime last night too, so my alarm never went off. I actually made it there on time, but my hair was sopping
Portland Nursery has a helpful brochure that is a pruning calendar for the NW region. (If the link doesn’t load, try refreshing it once or twice…) Judging by their expertise, I should set in pruning my fruit trees and grape vines in February. I have done some pruning before but I tend to get carried away. This should be the first year my fruit trees
Typically after the holidays die down, my Spring fever starts acting up. It’s that time already! The seed catalogs for 2008 have started pouring in and I have spent way too much time with them. What a peaceful way to spend a cold, January morning though. I have decided a theme for my vegetable garden this year will be “Old & Ugly”. Anything warty, oddly-shaped,
Although this is not gardening-related, I just have to share some details related to my last post. Sunday I decided to make a cannonball run to the beach, in an effort to entertain a friend visiting from England. Well, mission accomplished. We had some terrific luck in Cannon Beach as the rain subsided while the tide was out, allowing us to explore Haystack Rock. It’s
This cluster was about the siz
I start with a
