The Tangled Nest

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Entries Tagged as 'urban farming'

Plan Now for a Late-Summer Pea Harvest!

March 8th, 2010 · 2 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 [...]

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Tags: garden, seasons, urban farming

Our Urban Chicken Coop Plan

February 7th, 2010 · 13 Comments

Feed stores will be getting their chicks in the next couple of months, and if you’re pondering the addition of a backyard flock this year (we hope you are!), it’s time to start thinking about a coop.  There’s still lots of time–this year’s chicks won’t be ready to go outside by themselves until May or [...]

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Tags: chickens, urban farming

Upcycled Burlap Bags in the Garden (and Farewell to Grass)

February 1st, 2010 · 17 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 [...]

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Tags: garden, permaculture, upcycling, urban farming

Coffee Chaff Chicken Coop Litter: Creative Upcycling for the Urban Farmer

January 2nd, 2010 · 17 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 [...]

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Tags: chickens, garden, upcycling, urban farming, waste reduction

Seed Saving for the Faint of Heart

October 16th, 2009 · 2 Comments

It’s the end of the harvest season, and although a great deal of my mind and energy is turned to enjoying the fruits of this year’s produce (today I’m canning applesauce and freezing pureed sugar pie pumpkin) already I find myself dreaming of the spring garden.  Part of this impulse, I realize, is inspired by [...]

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Tags: Uncategorized, canning/preserving, garden, urban farming

Oddball Eggs in the Coop

October 8th, 2009 · 20 Comments

A guest post from my daughter Claire:
Have you ever heard of a wrinkled egg? An egg with 2 yolks? A gray egg with bumps all over? Well, neither had I until our chickens started laying.
On the first day of laying, my mom came out to me saying, “Claire! We’ve got our first egg!” And when [...]

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Tags: chickens, urban farming

Permaculture Happens: Adapting the Three Sisters

July 31st, 2009 · 1 Comment

While puttering in the garden the other day, I noticed that a couple of the Kentucky Blue Pole beans has escaped their proper pole, and were vining about the mammoth sunflower planted next to them.

I leaned over to gently unwrap the beans, and return them to the bamboo teepee I’d constructed for them and all [...]

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Tags: garden, permaculture, urban farming

Stubble Planting: Hidden Worlds and No-till Gardens

July 17th, 2009 · 3 Comments

I’ve been perusing a beautiful new book by Barbara Pleasant, The Complete Compost Gardening Guide. Pleasant invites us into the rich underworld of our backyard soil, asking us to see it as a living food web, rather than a simple input-output system.  In one of my favorite sections, she discusses the microscopic fungi that live [...]

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Tags: garden, permaculture, urban farming

The Summer Solstice Garden

June 20th, 2009 · 7 Comments

Remember the mounded earth raised beds that looked like a graveyard and made me cry?  After some sun, rain, and a fair bit of work, this garden is now one of my favorite places in all the world.
February above, June below:

Here’s today’s view through the chicken coop door:

We grow only what we truly love to [...]

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Tags: fruit trees, garden, urban farming

Raising Chicks: A Simple Biddy Box/Brooder (for first world chickens)

May 2nd, 2009 · 5 Comments

Last summer we spent two months traveling in Kenya and Tanzania, spending a fair bit of time in small, off-the-track villages.  There, nearly everyone keeps chickens, which roam free in the dirt roads, alleys, fields, and schoolyards.  Most homes have a shelter for their chickens, with a roof and a nestbox, but the hens and [...]

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Tags: chickens, urban farming