I love the idea of a “smallholding.” It’s a term still used in England, one I re-discovered while leafing through a favorite book the other day, The Freedom Manifesto by Idler editor Tom Hodgkinson (also love The Idler…). A smallholding is a modest parcel of land, usually just one-family’s-worth, that supports some farming and other [...]
Entries Tagged as 'garden'
Autumn Scenes from an Urban Smallholding
September 28th, 2011 · 7 Comments
Tags: chickens, food, fruit trees, garden, urban farming
Kitchen Table Seedlings: Watering from the Bottom-Up
May 18th, 2011 · 11 Comments
Wow. It is a cold cold cold spring here in Seattle. Record cold and dark. Nearly 200 days of sub-70 degrees in a row. Only five days since January 1 without rain. Today is finally sunny, but there was a light frostiness on the ground this morning. All of us have been getting crabby, and [...]
Bicycle Pea Trellis
March 31st, 2011 · 9 Comments
While loading bikes for the Village Bike Project (great folks!), Tom came across this old frame–a vintage Robin Hood stepthrough from Nottingham, England. Lovely bike, beyond reasonable hopes for restoration. So he took it home and hid it on the side east side of the house until he was brave enough to tell me that [...]
Eat More Kale: A Kale Manifesto With Recipes
October 12th, 2010 · 20 Comments
I have received more comments about this shirt than any piece of clothing I have ever owned: my spiffy, turquoise EAT MORE KALE t-shirt. People stare, laugh, turn their heads to watch me pass on the street, nudge their companions, make grimmacing kale-is-yucky expressions, and–best of all–stop to talk. I hear that folks love kale, [...]
Tags: canning/preserving, garden, recipes, urban farming
Chicken Tour: Not the “New Black”
July 12th, 2010 · 9 Comments
We had so much fun being one of the Host Coops on the Seattle Tilth City Chicken Coop Tour this weekend. It was a warm sunny day, and there was a very strong turnout, about 150 people came through our backyard during the tour hours. It was great to “talk chicken” with so many wonderful [...]
Tags: chickens, garden, urban farming
The Spring Garden: Lows and Highs
May 16th, 2010 · 7 Comments
It’s been a strange spring in Seattle, and all the gardeners I know have been a little off, including (maybe especially) myself. First, we had a freakishly warm late winter/early spring. While our biological selves still felt that they should be huddled by the fire sipping tea, the weather was telling us we should be [...]
Plan Now for a Late-Summer Pea Harvest!
March 8th, 2010 · 6 Comments
Here in the Pacific Northwest we say, “Plant your peas by President’s Day,” and though I wander about pontificating this wisdom, I never quite manage to follow it. As usual, I’m late with my pea planting this year, but now that I’m finally getting to it, I wanted to let ya’ll in on a little [...]
Tags: garden, seasons, urban farming
Upcycled Burlap Bags in the Garden (and Farewell to Grass)
February 1st, 2010 · 27 Comments
Last year we expanded our vegetable garden three-fold by converting grass into raised beds. My plan for last autumn was to sheet mulch the last row of grass that receives any sun, making it ready for spring planting. Sheet mulching is the great, labor-saving method of converting any grassy-weedy area into a nutrient-rich garden bed [...]
Tags: garden, permaculture, upcycling, urban farming
Coffee Chaff Chicken Coop Litter: Creative Upcycling for the Urban Farmer
January 2nd, 2010 · 32 Comments
My friend David Ruggiero is working on a new project called “Upcycling Northwest.” Upcycling, of course, is the in-word for smarter/better recycling, making use of the energy in the initial production of something, rather than using more energy to break it down into raw materials–or, as David puts it, finding “the highest and best re-use [...]
Tags: chickens, garden, upcycling, urban farming, waste reduction
Preserving Pumpkin (and 2 Recipes)
October 20th, 2009 · 12 Comments
It was time to take the pumpkin out of the pot and eat it. In the final analysis, that was what solved these big problems of life. You could think and think and get nowhere, but you still had to eat your pumpkin. That brought you down to earth. That gave you a reason for [...]
Tags: bread, canning/preserving, garden, recipes
