My current chicken coop
As an urban homesteader who owns city chickens, I get asked a lot of questions about the care and maintenance of my flock. I’ve noticed that I get the same questions over and over, so I thought today’s post in the 31 days of Homegrown Inspiration and Resource information should address some of those questions.
Here we go…
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This post is part of the 31 Days of Living Homegrown. Sign up for my newsletter (weekly or monthly) so you don’t miss any of the inspiration and resources I will be sharing for living local, fresh and homegrown!
I think as gardeners we sometimes forget that the general non-gardening public doesn’t always fully understand the importance of bees. I know that I spend so much time with like-minded people (who share my love of bees), that I am always caught off guard when I encounter someone who thinks, “the only good bee is a dead bee“.
But that lack of understanding is very, very real…and scary.
So today’s post is about an inspiring couple who are truly making a difference! And I am including some links at the end on how we can make a difference too.
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Apparently, bees can’t keep a secret. It seems the local bees have been telling all their little bee friends about my edible garden and organic flowers. Of course that is a good thing. We all want pollinators in our gardens. But for the second time, a feral swarm has come to visit me.
When the first swarm appeared in my garden a few years ago, they moved on without any intervention from me. But after they left, I worried they would be exterminated by an uninformed person who would only think of them as a nuisance. I never learned their fate.
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It happened a few weeks ago…
My neighbor Terry, invited some of us over to harvest onions in his backyard. Now, that may not sound very exciting to some people, but I know YOU (fellow gardeners) get it. Nothing is more exciting to an edible gardener than fresh-from-the-garden produce. Am I right? And the idea of getting together for wine, snacks and ripping onions out of the soil is…well, it’s a PARTY of epic proportions!
Yep. We knew we were “garden-geeks” when we spent the first 30 minutes at the party just snapping closeups of all the onions. Seriously! It was a crackup to see all of us pull out our iPhones and start taking photos…of ONIONS.
The Hipstomatic shots seemed to get the most oohs and ahhhs. [click to continue…]
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News FlashI have suddenly found myself transformed into an Organic Small-Scale Farmer. Well, I’m not starting a CSA or anything…yet. But, an unexpected turn of events have occurred and my family just bought a farmstead in Northern California!
Somehow, I have gone from managing 1/10th of an acre in the city to managing 14 acres of organic land.
Now this is not just any ordinary farmstead. It has been a fully organic farmstead since 1892 but fell into disarray about 15 years ago. The owner was elderly and had not used it for production for at least 15-20 years. And although she let the place go a bit, she always kept it completely organic with her homegrown food. It has an interesting history which I will go into greater detail in a later post.
The farm (14 acres) was probably going to be broken up into pieces and sold for home building with no regard for the orchards and lovely edibles growing there. We didn’t want to see that happen because we own the property next door. So….My family bought the farmstead…and now I am the acting farm manager – coordinating all efforts from afar with lots of trips up to the property.
It is exciting and scary at the same time. This place needs a lot of work! Serious work!
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Theresa Loe is the award- winning Co-Executive Producer & Canning Expert on Growing A Greener World TV. She blogs here about Living Homegrown®, local and fresh-from-the-garden. MORE >>
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