Eat The Yard

The orange tree out back of our kitchen announces spring for us each year with thousands of white buds and a citrus scent I can smell from across the yard.  It did so this past week, and it always surprises me in its timing because it seems like we just finished eating last season’s fruit. [...]

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Yesterday the farm-ish-ness of our suburban fifth acre took a big leap forward: Our shipment of baby chicks arrived.  Our first farm staple.  We ordered them in February from an online vendor, My Pet Chicken, that had an informative site and wide variety of breeds — despite the superficial name.  The main criteria for selecting [...]

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I have been dutifully waiting for the apple trees to go dormant so I could do a little grafting.  However, in my waiting for the last leaves to drop I forgot something that I have gloated about on several occasions this winter: the character of my hometown.  In San Diego we don’t really get frost, [...]

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So, the earliest of the spring-blooming perennials have barely had a chance to bud, let alone bloom and fruit and ripen — and the pests have already nibbled.  It feels unsportsmanlike, and I know sportsmanlike conduct is a human ambition, even further, a gentleman’s conceit, and that little is accomplished by measuring nonhuman animals against [...]

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With the end of January we reached the middle of our effort in terms of days, but certainly not in terms of calories.  The 7,568 calories we have managed to grow and eat from our yard since August 1 of last year represent .5 percent of our annual count, or about two days worth of [...]

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