It IS spring. My knees are telling me so - as I've been digging and planting, my mid-age knees remind me that some days, they are older than the rest of me.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
They're up!!!
It IS spring. My knees are telling me so - as I've been digging and planting, my mid-age knees remind me that some days, they are older than the rest of me.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Rain & hail & March, oh my.
I'm dreaming of... the tiniest beet greens emerging... nasturtiums... carrotling leaves poking up through black soil... the first thinning of spinach! You?
Monday, March 14, 2011
Seeds!
Okay, it happened! I could not wait a moment longer, so despite the intense, side-ways, cold driving rain, My dear friend Cheryl & I planted peas, spinach, and icicle radishes yesterday afternoon. It was about 40 degrees out, and thank goodness for raised beds and compost. The bed was draining well; the paths, mud and muck. A darn good thing I had hauled a few loads of coarse fir chip mulch down for the paths on Saturday, otherwise I think we'd still be stuck in the mud!
Saturday, March 12, 2011
On the other hand~
Friday, March 11, 2011
Tomorrow...
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Weather, and then some more rain!
Monday, March 7, 2011
More pictures...
Pics!
Sunday, March 6, 2011
I guess I'm still a hippie at heart...
Saturday, March 5, 2011
Quick! Back to the garden!
I just dashed in the door from our *new* P-Patch to grab some cookies - I made oatmeal cranberry cookies last night - and see if the lumber store is open (the bed rails have disintegrated and need to be replaced before we can plant). Our bed is is the messy, grassy one on the left - the fourth one up, right next to one full of garlic. This is the 'before' pic. It's obviously not been cultivated in some time! I'm assassinating miles of English ivy along the fence-line while Michael is cleaning the bed out. I had to post an update... and photos tomorrow!
Friday, March 4, 2011
What is it... ?
Loathe as I am to cite Wikipedia as a source - I did spend some years parenting teens reluctant to use primary sources for their schoolwork - I found their definition useful when asked what a Smallhold is.
Just as Urban Homesteading is reclaiming the concept of Homesteading and turning it on its side for a 21st century urban application, so I am calling our newly turned and planted life of producing food from our urban yard a smallhold. Clearly we're not yet earning our livelihood from this adventure, or creating a rural lifestyle for ourselves.
As global populations shift from rural to urban contexts, raising food comes to the city. I'm surrounded by families who come from rural and subsistence smallholding traditions - from China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Mexico, the Res.
Tomorrow Michael & I head to our new holding; 100 SF of earth we will till to raise food. It's on public land - owned by Seattle Housing Authority, and managed by the City of Seattle. Our bed is one of eleven... soon we'll meet the other ten families who till these beds, as see what they grow.
"A smallholding is a farm of small size.
In third world countries, smallholdings are usually farms supporting a single family with a mixture of cash crops and subsistence farming. As a country becomes more affluent and farming practices become more efficient, smallholdings may persist as a legacy of historical land ownership practices. In more affluent societies smallholdings may be valued primarily for the rural lifestyle that they provide. Often, the owners do not earn their livelihood from the farm."
~http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallholding