Eat The Yard

Based on the last week’s blooms, it looks as though at least one of the Anna Apple branches I grafted to my Gala will take.  The buds cracked the protective wax coating and burst through with ease.
What an amazing ability: No organ/limb rejection, no immune-suppressing pill regimen — just, “Thanks for the new branch.”  And [...]

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As we prepare for the spring planting this month, throughout our yard there are several spots and beds still devoted to cold-season holdovers.  And some — like the broccoli, carrots, and beets — have a few weeks yet to go before the first round of harvesting.  I could intersperse warm-season crops here and there between [...]

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For weeks — even before our shipment of chicks arrived — I have been reading about the perils of being a chicken.  And there are many.  However, our brood will not face most of the horrors about which I have lately learned simply because of its size.  As with any animal, high population density encourages [...]

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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.
The [...]

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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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I have had this … pile in my yard for nearly six months.  It grows and shrinks, but mostly just sits there doing nothing spectacular — at least nothing I have been able to notice.  Six months is the amount of time I have most often read that it takes for a pile like mine [...]

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During a respite in the week-long storm that’s projected to drop 8-20 inches throughout San Diego County, I wandered our near-fifth acre, harvesting a few things for a dinner salad and surveying the damage.  The winds have been gusting hard and regular, battering our fruit trees and tilting the giant Silk Oak that tends to [...]

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