Adventures of an urban homesteader growing greens, preserving the harvest and tending a backyard barnyard
My sister made me an awesome birthday gift that I wanted to share for fellow gardeners. It’s a pattern for a gardening apron from You Grow Girl. There are little pockets along the front to hold things like trowels, twine, seed packets, gloves, what-have-you. The possibilities are almost endless. Almost. Anne tells me the pattern was really easy to follow and it took no time
The Felony Flats Pub Crawl was a huge success. We had about 10 people that made it out on the rainy and cold Saturday night. There were about 11 bars on our list with a neatly laid out time frame for each location. Here are some highlights: Little Rascal scooter spotted at two fabulous dive bars. That guy really gets around. Props to the bartenders
As renters in Portland, we had the luxury of living in whatever neighborhood we wanted to plant ourselves in. The burning desire to buy a house and plant a permanent garden finally took over about a year ago and we began the house-hunt. Housing prices in Portland can be challenging, but we found our great little 1927 bungalow in SE with a great big yard.
I knew I would be doing all of the sheet mulching alone this weekend. I also knew the weather forecast was rain all weekend. To say I haven’t really been looking forward to this weekend would be an understatement. However, I had two gigantic heaps of wood chips on our front yard and someone had to move it. Saturday morning got rolling and I made
I just have to share the random chicken adventure from this morning. Here’s how it went down… The chickens were free-ranging in the backyard and got excited when they saw me come in with a huge load of cardboard for our sheet mulching project. They ran over, probably expecting food treats, and Winnie got out because the gate was open. I was trying to lure
Our plan is to sheet mulch our entire front and backyard. We want to eliminate all of the grass in our yard and replace it with fruit bearing trees/shrubs and beneficial insect attracting plants. Here is a quick recap of why we don’t want grass: Labor intensive – I want to spend my weekend leisure time putzing around the in garden, not mowing my lawn
We have been calling around to different tree services asking if they are interested in dumping off wood chips at our house for the Great Sheet Mulching 2007. Someone finally panned out! I came home last night to a big, beautiful pile of fresh wood chips. It’s steaming away outside our front door and I have to contain my excitement, else I would be outside
I should be working and not blogging… but I just found my new favorite website: Overheard in PDX I love living in Portland.
After completing my recent travels, my body decided to round everything out with a nice head cold today. I guess that is my body telling me to slow down a little. Ugh, I hate being sick – I get so bored at home when I can’t allow myself to do anything productive. Hopefully I’ll kick the cold quickly. Jay and I took advantage of the
After an intense four days in NYC, followed by another 4 in LA, the farmer’s market was the perfect detox. Nothing like fresh air, fall leaves, strong coffee, and baskets of produce to welcome me back home. The Lent’s International Farmer’s Market near my house has shut down for the season, but the Saturday Farmer’s Market at PSU is still going strong. I arrived early
