Adventures of an urban homesteader growing greens, preserving the harvest and tending a backyard barnyard
It’s been fun the last week traveling around for work. I spent four intense days in New York City. I love that town, but I felt like I needed a week to recover from my trip. The energy is so high, people actually dress up, the food is fantastic… It reminds me of my bohemian days in Barcelona. The main difference being that I am
As the chiller nights set in and the rains begin falling, I start getting this yearning to make big pots of soup, drink some strong dark beers, and hole up inside our little house. It’s been looking like my garden feels the same way in general. I never even bothered picking the corn since it got such a late start, but I noticed the chickens
One Green World is a fabulous nursery located in Molalla, Oregon, which is a rural area about a 30-45 minute drive from our house here in Portland. They specialize in unique fruiting (for the most part) trees and shrubs that they have gathered from around the world. They carry the usual suspects, like apple, Asian and European pears, cherries, peaches, etc. But they have several
It has been a brisk, fairly dry weekend in Portland – the kind of autumn days when it’s quite pleasant to be outside bundled up. I took advantage of the fine weather by preparing the garden for winter. I pulled up the zucchini and broccoli plants, turning them over on the soil so they can decompose in place. The chicken coop has been cleaned out
Not gardening related. But what do you expect? It’s raining and cold and I have no gardening news! I swear I will get back to gardening stuff soon, but I figure it’s my blog so I’ll write about random stuff too. I had the opportunity recently to see an advanced showing of this movie coming out called “Into the Wild“, which is based on the
Radius Studio has now become Radius Community Art Studio, and I just can’t wait to get in there and start throwing clay again! The studio announced this past summer they were moving locations, and I had finally decided to bow out as a studio partner. Instead I planned to buy my own wheel and convert part of our unfinished basement into a home studio. Poor
Okay, back to gardening business… Has anyone else given up for the season? It started pouring today in Portland and I have pretty much thrown in the towel at this point. Aphids larvae is crawling all over my nasturtium. I chopped all the swiss chard off to the ground. The chicken coop door is wide open for the girls to free range and wreak havoc.
This is not gardening-related at all, but I just need to share two of the coolest music videos I have even seen. I love Feist and dear Jay bought me her newest album for one my birthday gifts. One of these videos is featured in the new ipod commercial. But I just feel like I need to share these with the world to make sure
My friend Erika mentioned this book to me about a year ago, called “You Grow Girl” by Gayla Trail. I was in the midst of my permaculture high from finishing up “Gaia’s Garden” by Toby Hemenway, so I didn’t really let her recommendation sink in… (By the way – just to pat myself on the back – I got “Gaia’s Garden” from Jay for Christmas
One of the great things about sharing your love of gardening with friends is pooling the harvest together. We have some friends in the neighborhood that have had great success with their tomatoes this summer. Last night we were taking a stroll by their house and they sent us home with a lovely assortment of homegrown tomatoes. Such a treat, considering mine are a pretty
