My amazing husband, Michael, wrangling the weeds in the neglected P-Patch bed... and after his hours of hard work. Someone left a shovel to overwinter outside...
Bunly Yun is our area P-Patch manager. He works for the City of Seattle. He met us at our P-Patch - the 29th & Brighton Garden - on Friday. Outside the gates is a darling little kids playground- you know, the kind with bouncy critters on big ol' springs for 3 year olds to ride? Inside we found a strawberry plant still green after a long winter, and a squash husk going back to the Mother. I just cannot wait to sow some seeds... and to meet my fellow P-Patchers! Bunly showed me the list, and the majority are people from Vietnam, Cambodia & China. I'm looking forward to learning about what grows in my neighbors' garden... what's growing in yours?
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
