Surprise!

We've been eating homegrown potatoes fried in olive oil with other organic homegrown veggies and spices for the past two days. They are amazing and now that summer is in full swing it's easy living off the land. Already we are thinking about fall and winter and planning what to grow next in order to have a decent harvest year-long.

FIRST EGG!!!

Super good news, this evening as I went to clean the chicken ark I found a wee little egg in the nest box! Earlier today I noticed some commotion when one of our Belina's was busying herself in the nest box scratching away and clucking softly. Didn't really suspect much more than the usual chicken antics but to our surprise and amazement, its finally begun. What a HUGE day for a hen! (not to mention us too!)

Sourdough

I recently began my first adventure into the art of breadmaking and yesterday produced two loaves of French bread! Another experiment on the shelf is a sour dough starter. Im curious to see what characteristics the starter will pick up from the area and am thinking of trying out several batches. CG, aka Dad, suggested that I try putting one outside in the garden because that's where all the good yeasts live. I forsee many great loaves in our future. Time to experiment!

Did you know, a sourdough starter is a batter filled with wild yeast and bacteria that is kept in the fridge and "fed"? "Starters" are not always sour-tasting and the Amish have "friendship" bread that is such. The fact that I found amazing was that a carefully tended sourdough starter can live for centuries!

Unfortunately, the first recipe I came across was out of a copy of better homes and gardens which called for yeast to give it a "boost". Not exactly authentic so I have to start a new batch to get a natural living starter from scratch. I'm more interested in the wild yeast and bacteria that thrive locally. More sourdough bread updates to come.

Tough Decisions

Our first foray into urban animal husbandry is certainly becoming an integral part of our daily lives here on the homestead. Even so, keeping city chickens is not without its challenges. Its becoming clear that we overestimated the number of chickens our small (sub)urban lot could handle (easy when they are tiny adorable chicks!) and are now facing the job of "down sizing" our flock. Like I've said, its important to know the capabilities of your urban garden well in advance to avoid such a predicament! Fortunately for us, we have family friends who are also avid gardeners and are looking for some laying hens to add to their home.

The 11 standard buff orpingtons are close to laying and have grown into beautiful golden hens. We had originally purchased them as heritage meat birds but found the idea more and more disturbing with each passing day. In keeping with our views, one of our goals was to produce our own healthy meat for our omnivorous diet. Killing our "pets", however, proved harder than anticipated so we've opted for locally raised organic meat instead or cutting meat out altogether unless we can come to grips with the reality of going out back and killing it ourselves. Eating a vegetarian diet is a much more efficient use of energy resources and better suited to our goals of producing what we eat at any rate and its certainly challenged me to experiment in the kitchen now more than ever!

Luckily, these are good dual purpose birds which are also excellent egg producers and will live their lives as such. :) All the roosters and hens we found homes for will also enjoy such a fate. (Thanks Aunt Judith and Jeremy!)

Yesterday evening JC and I built a temporary coop from scrap materials for the chickens. While we restructure our backyard things are getting too hectic for 21 assorted chickies running about! A more permanent enclosure is in the works!

Vineyard Update:

Over the past couple weeks we have been busy getting the vineyard at our other family business, Green Family Winery, "suckered" and "tucked". Our family does all the work by hand ourselves and with the help of friends so we have a few rows left before were home free. Next we apply a natural foliar spray to prevent mildew forming on the leaves and check for leaks in the the drip irrigation system. The next big event will happen in August when harvesting begins. Its starting to look neat and orderly again!

LG

JC

BS

Jer

Milestones

our first giant fig

We've hit another milestone here on our urban farm. The little fig trees have begun to sprout fruit and yesterday we harvested our first ripe fig and it was HUGE. This morning I followed my Aunt Judith's recipe she used to make with wild figs in France and fried slices of it in butter and drizzled on some honey. If you've never tried frying fresh homegrown figs in butter and eating them with honey, you are missing out. I think everyone should grow a fig tree and try this homegrown recipe at least once. Yum!

In addition, some rather exciting news, the drip irrigation system is completed! The first time testing it out was fascinating to watch as small drops of water appeared like magic and so fast too. Its going to be nice trying to figure out how to spend that extra hour or so it takes to water the vegetable garden by hand. Perhaps a camping trip without worrying about crops drying out is in the near future :) Justin is the man for installing this awesome feature for us!

Its becoming routine for the whole family to gather here for get-togethers now that the weather is warming up and we have a new dining area on the patio. (Thanks to JG for all the help with that project!) Our Fathers Day family bbq was especially lovely with the weather being so amazing. The warmer days are finally sending the squash and beans running wild and the heirloom tomatoes and peppers are giving us some samples already of what july will taste like. Having a constant supply of fresh vegetables and herbs to experiment with makes eating together something we want to do everyday.

City Chicken Update:
Sprocket is loving his new home at Aunt Judith's place. We're still keeping a close eye on all FOUR of the roosters to make sure they aren't fighting and everything seems to be going well for. Sprocket, Sukio, Bob, and Oliver now live in spacious luxury with two of the Buff Orpington hens. Speaking of hens, our 9 remaining golden ladies are close to laying and we're all very excited about eating our own farm fresh urban eggs since its been close to 12 years since we've raised chickens. 

Next on the list is moving our growing hens into the new enclosure we're in the process of building for them. Hours of scouring the internet has proven fruitful and we have a good idea of how we want the finished coop to look. All this planning has us thinking that adding a few ducks to the family would be entirely possible. (not to mention exciting!) 

Urban Wine

In the vineyard we're halfway done with the "suckering" and "tucking" for the summer. All the small shoots are removed from the trunk and we train the branches to stay up on the trellis which makes working with them much easier. It's good outdoor work that makes life seem grand. Maybe its the clear air or the serene view that makes working in the vineyard so meditative. I'm hoping to get the trellising here at the Homestead up and in place for our Urban Vineyard. The cuttings we took last fall have rooted beautifully and are sprouting leaves now. Thank goodness the weather has cleared so we can maintain our Californian tans! (Farmer tans more likely) ;)

We had another addition to our urban garden today when a neighbor gave us one of their huge pumpkin plants in exchange for some heirloom tomato seedlings I gave her a while back. It is just what we needed to fill up some space where bugs and mildew had gotten to our squash patch. We chatted about plants for a while and she told me the tomato seedlings are doing well and I learned about a Mulberry Tree we have growing in the back yard. Swapping tips and information is vital to the well-being of farming communities. Its heartening to know that the community is still alive and well in most folks. 

Success!

SUCCESS! We've finally got the drip irrigation system installed for the raised vegetable beds. I can't tell you what a relief it is to be able to do all the watering that needs to be done! It was quite a lot of effort that JC put into and what an amazing difference it makes! To celebrate our new found accomplishment we made cooling wine spritzers and hung out by a small fire. Charles Green (aka Dad) even brought us some organic guda cheese which was amazing!

Not So Tasty Treat

Today was a success in getting rid of a pile of junk we've been putting up with for months now. Its a strange story, but somehow I was given a huge styrofoam dinosaur by a friend to use as an art project. Months passed and we eventually tired of moving the heap of disintegrating pieces all over the yard and finally took it to the dump.

 The straw that broke the camels back happened when I went to check on the chickens we had just moved into the backyard when I noticed they had been pecking at it and seemed to be EATING the foam bits! We removed it immediately. Still, we hate to see so much waste and when asked why we couldn't recycle it, the dump employees just shrugged and told us there wasn't a demand for the stuff. Then I wondered why they'd make it in the first place. Gross!

Since then we've been keeping a close eye on all the chickens and they seem to be doing fine. (Although one still seems to crow in the morning) We are now moving full speed in our attempt to rid the yard and storage of all toxic materials that might be lurking around from previous owners. This place has come a long way since we first moved here but it seems one never can be too careful when it comes to maintaining a safe environment for our free range city chickens!