Eat The Yard

Egg salad and fried egg sandwiches, brownies, several batches of chocolate chip cookies, and lots of pancakes: Since our chickens started laying on June 28, we have collected 37 eggs — and for the last 11 days straight we’ve gotten at least two each day. It took a few weeks of fits and starts for [...]

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Getting to one percent feels like getting a point in a game that would have otherwise been a shut out — and despite the tasty food we’ve harvested sporadically in the past 10 months, there have been many times, even recently, that I’ve felt aced by the yard, certain that we’d come up not just [...]

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There’s little chance of growing 100 percent of anyone’s daily calories in a suburban yard.  It’s true for us, and our near fifth of an acre is a pretty good size as far as yards go.  It’s true for most people.  Beyond lot size, there are also light and soil quality concerns, not to mention [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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This past weekend I found myself with a free moment to finally trim back the Bougainvillea that has grown with abandon for some time.  This vine thrives along the fence between our yard and our neighbor’s, and I have hated it for years and avoided dealing with it.  But this plant had gotten so tall [...]

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When crops start small, they start vulnerable.  This was an essential weakness of my warm season crop: 90 percent of the loss occurred early in the plant’s development.  Birds pulled just-sprouted veggies from the ground to eat the seed off the bottom, leaving the first inch of growth to wither in the would-be garden.  Rabbits [...]

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I could have planted 125 square feet of Calabrese Broccoli.  And 30 square feet of Jiu Cai Garlic Chives.  And 25 square feet each of Correnta Spinach, Marvel of Four Seasons Butterhead Lettuce, and Q’s Special Medley Mesclun. Put another way, I could have grown 400 White Lisbon Bunching Onions, 300 Yellow Sweet Spanish Onions, [...]

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One reason it can be so hard to accomplish the ends of sustainable-small-organic-green-ecofriendly-slow-local eating is just that: It’s not clear what we mean when we mean it.  At least for those trying to live responsibly outside of an organization, group, club, or some other coordinated_activism.org.  This lack of clarity is part of the problem in [...]

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My wife and I moved into our first home about a year ago: A little 1950s Ranch that clocks in at just under 900 square feet and sits on an 8,250 square foot lot, which is right around the American median in terms of land.  Less than a fifth of an acre.  Great view.  Lots [...]

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