Read This!

I stumbled upon this great book while looking through the "new book" section of my local library yesterday and was not able to put it down last night.  The author, Derek Fell, was a former seed catalogue manager for Burpee and another top selling seed catalogue in both Europe and the United States. This would seem to make him uniquely qualified to explain what to grow and what not to waste your time and effort on.

Backyard Breakfast

This morning's harvest of eggs and purslane

There is something deeply satisfying about eating a meal that came from your own backyard at a table made with your own two hands.  If you are reading this post, you are interested in the same things and probably know exactly what I'm talking about.  So we're sharing one of our favorite backyard meals in hopes that you'll

Where Have You Been All My LIfe, Ho-Mi?

The Ho-Mi - or Korean Hand Plow.

It was by sheer luck that I discovered the most useful gardening tool I have ever owned.  I was exploring a nearby wooded area with my kids this summer when my son spotted something on the forest floor that wasn't put there by nature.
 "What's this, Dad?" he asked, holding out the rusting implement for my inspection.  I had never seen a hand tool like this before.  It had what looked like a miniature plow blade attached to a bent handle.  It must have been left behind long ago by someone digging around on the forest floor for who-knows-what.

Ignorance Made You My Enemy But Knowledge Has Made You My Friend!

What a fool I've been!  I've cursed you while constantly pulling you from my garden and from cracks in my sidewalk.  I've carelessly stepped all over you without even knowing your name.

Planting a Fall Garden

We just planted a fall garden using the seeds in the picture above because that's all we had on hand.  I went to the nearest big box store to get more but I was too late. The seeds had already been moved out to make room for the next seasonal merchandise.  So I guess we'll have lots of beets this year, which isn't a bad thing since Mary makes an awesome borscht.

My Latest Carpentry/Gardening Project

I had to tear out the old, shallow raised beds I had in this spot because I needed to over-winter the portable chiken coop here and the beds were rotting out anyway.  So I decided to get serious and build something that would be functional, beautiful, and longer lasting.

Inspired By an Old Man

I had never heard of Scott Nearing until the other day when the librarian at the school where I work gave me the book you see in the picture above.  Mr. Nearing wrote scores of books and this was his last, written along with his wife when he was 95 years old.  He and his wife were true homesteaders who built their own houses (yes, they built more than one house and several other structures) from stones they pulled from the rocky New England soil where they lived.  They were strict vegetarians and lived almost entirely from their own gardening and fruit harvesting.  Upon further research I found out that Mr. Nearing lived to be one hundred years old and may have lived even longer had he not chosen to stop eating in order to control the time of his passing.  He attributed his longevity to his healthy diet and the physical labor required to produce it.  There are pictures in this book of him shoveling compost and gardening at age 95.

It's not the most well-written book and I would imagine the previous book entitled "The Good Life" is better as it is still in print and has good reviews.  Nevertheless, I enjoyed reading it and was inspired by my further research on his life and work.  There is much more that could be said about him but time does not permit me to do him justice here.  I hope this will pique your interest enough to look him up.  Here is a good place to start.

Thanks for the great read, Mr. Myers, and for introducing me to a homesteading hero.

Garden and Chicken Update

Just thought I'd post a quick update on our garden and chickens.

Our kale went crazy on us since going to seed. I had no idea they would grow such bright yellow flowers. 

The butterflies have been flocking to them every day, too. 

In case you're wondering about our vegetable boxes... they're designed according to the square foot gardening method found in Mel Bartholomew's book by the same name. It's great for small backyards like ours. I'll let Alan write about this method later since he's done the research and built the boxes. I just cook and eat the vegetables.

We inherited a large rhubarb plant from the previous owners of our house. It's almost ready to harvest. Our neighbors like to use it for making rhubarb strawberry jam and my mom and sister both take stalks throughout the summer to make pie and pudding. Yes, there is such thing as rhubarb pudding and it is delicious. I'm hoping I can entice my mom to post the recipe here.

As for the chickens...they are getting a lot bigger! They love exploring our back room and backyard, and they are even learning to read :-)

Chicago's Sustainable Backyards Program

Last year, I found out about Chicago Sustainable Backyards Program from a flyer I picked up at the North Park Village Nature Center. It was with surprise and delight that I discovered that the city could help us pay  for rain barrels, native plants, compost bins and trees. Imagine getting a check, instead of a bill, from the city! And for something that we were already planning on doing anyway!

I was already interested in planting native flowers before I found out about the rebate program, but it gave me the extra push I needed to get going. The previous year, I had dug up most of the plants left by the former owners of our home. I am not fond of tiger lilies or hostas and they had overtaken our garden space. Unfortunately, Alan had just found out that he was being laid off from Chicago Public Schools, so we didn't have the money to buy plants to fill in the empty space I had just created. Whoops! There's nothing like looking at dirt in front of someone's house, huh?

Anyway, that gave me time to research what plants I wanted to put there when we could afford it. I really don't like gardening that much, partly because it causes the eczema on my hands to flare up. Alan's more of the gardener, though he prefers vegetable gardening. So, I wanted to get flowers for the front of the house that would be both easy to maintain and tolerant of shade. Our climate is not the best for growing plants, which is why I decided to go with native plants. I knew they would survive here and require less work than non-native plants.

With the city's rebate program in mind, I looked for a few books on Illinois native plants: Rodale's Low-Maintenance Landscaping and Perennials for Illinois by Aldrich and Williamson proved to be the most useful by providing color illustrations and detailed descriptions of native plant care. While reading these books, I highlighted the plants I liked that would tolerate shade in our front yard.

After checking out the list of approved garden centers for the city's rebate program, I ended up going to Home Depot and Meinke's Garden Center in Niles and bought the plants. (This was after Alan had been re-hired at a new public school.) Since the receipts didn't list the names of the plants, I wrote them in next to the price. Then, I filled out the rebate form, put it in an envelope with the receipts and mailed it. A few months later, I got a check in the mail for $60. It was nice getting a check and not a bill from the city for once.

Here's a few of the plants I purchased:

"Monkshood"

"Blue Star"

The plants are beginning to bloom again in our front yard, though it's still pretty sparsely planted. I'm giving myself plenty of time to fill it out. I didn't know plants could be so expensive!

My next goal is to take advantage of the rain barrel rebate. Our basement flooded the first summer we lived here and I'm hoping that maybe the rain barrels will help alleviate that problem.

I'll add the link to the sustainable backyard program to this blog for easier access. If you're still sitting on the fence about buying a rain barrel or compost bin, now's your chance! The deadline for purchasing these items is Dec. 31, 2012.

Winter Kale

I've just gotta say something about the crazy weather we've been having here in Chicago this winter.  We had 8 or 9 days in a row of temps in the 80s in the middle of March.  That usually doesn't happen until June here.  Last fall I decided to leave the kale in the garden and throw some leaves around it just to see if it might survive the winter.  Well, needless to say, it survived, and when the weather started warming up in the beginning of March it had an explosion of growth.  In fact, it just bolted straight to seed.  I took a picture before harvesting it today.  Crazy, man!