A novice's attempt to get 15 percent of his food from his suburban fifth acre
Posted in Uncategorized on Dec 29th, 2009
Despite winter’s rep as a food-less time of year, a season during which many home growers and their yards hibernate, waiting for warm weather and the common edibles that come with it — we’ve been having a good growing experience. Our cold season crop has been a windfall compared to the pest-devastated warmer months earlier [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Dec 19th, 2009
In the spirit of the listing that this season entails — the New York Times has no fewer than 11 book lists to guide what readers read and buy — and the good reading weather the cool season brings (though it is 77 degrees in San Diego as I write this), I thought I’d jot [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Dec 17th, 2009
The several storms that hit San Diego this past weekend left me little to do in the way of gardening but plan. So I fiddled with my designs for a living-roof chicken coop — designs that needed no fiddling. That will get built in January. Chicks in February or March (We can’t wait!). I flipped [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Dec 8th, 2009
We have been saving snow peas for three or four weeks, dutifully blanching and freezing them until a combination of preserved peas and fresh-picked measured out to two cups. We got there this past Sunday and made vegetarian split pea soup with our harvest. Our friends Paul and Amy, who are always game for a [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Dec 1st, 2009
If our production and consumption of calories had been even and steady throughout the year, then by the end of November we should have harvested and eaten 75,030 calories from our property, or about 5 percent of our annual calories. It would be friendly but false to characterize our effort so far as either even [...]
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