Category Archives: random thoughts

Oh god, the chickens are really annoying! But also cute, and egg-producing, so I put up with them. Now that the weather’s warm, they wake up and start yakking around 6:30 in the morning. I usually get up, feed them, feed the bunnies, then go back upstairs. The chickens are living near the rabbits, now, and I wonder if the bunnies wake them up earlier than usual. Anyway, it’s a racket of clucks and calls that stops as soon as the food hits the ground.
Back upstairs, there’s usually a moment when I think, hmmm, I could just make some coffee and get a bunch of writing done, read the paper on-line, squeeze some grapefruits for juice…but that hasn’t happened yet. I’m not quite a real farmer. I jump back into bed with Billy who is the deepest sleeper I’ve ever met. We sleep in until 9, like a bunch of lazy city-living slackers.

Yup, I’ve been loading up the six-packs with dirt. No, not those kind of six-packs. Black plastic cells (six of them) stuffed with organic but sterilized soil. Just add seeds, water, put in a sunny window and watch the magic happen. I usually put mine in the laundry room window where it gets nice and toasty. Two weeks ago I had cabbage, dino kale, and onions sprout up. I fed them some stinky fish fertilizer, then planted them in the garden. This weekend, looking forward to summer, I planted tomato and basil seeds. In June I plan to do some gonzo gardening where I try to eke out an existence by eating only from the garden. I’ve already come up with my list of exceptions: butter, flour, milk.

The plum tree and apple tree are finally blooming! It’s beautiful, too bad I don’t have a digital camera. Today I worked in the garden: weeded the garlic, planted some cabbage starts, and planted carrot, beet, rutabaga, and parsnips seeds. I harvested a bunch of kale, chard, mizuna, and collards and brought them to school to share. One of the coolest plants growing is a variegated collard–it’s got white stripes and the leaf’s back is pure white. Wow. It got me to thinking about how far this squat lot has come. It provides so much food for humans, animals, and habitat for wildlife. Here’s a photo of it when we first started, 4 years ago.

Sunday after Chinese New Year in Oakland’s Chinatown. Billy and I trolled around for weird Chinese ice cream. He got a banana smoothie, I was tempted to try the red bean tapioca pearl but chickened out and got the hot cocoa with pearls. As we wandered around the desolate streets, as urban farmers, something caught our attention: boxes and boxes of greens. Bok choy, mustard greens, and only slightly messed up Asian Pears. We exercised restraint and only took two big boxes. This morning I dumped a whole box in the chicken area and they got very excited. The bunnies got more bok choy than they could eat in one, er, sitting. It may be the year of the pig, but these animals made out!

Let the navel gazing begin!
Inspired by my wonderful sister Riana, I’m finally entering the blog world.

I first started farming in the city of Seattle in 1998. At the time, I was a book editor at Sasquatch Books, and one of our favorite authors was Carla Emery. She wrote a book called the Encyclopedia of Country Living. One day I was flipping through the newsprint pages of the book (this is how editors procrastinate) and happened upon a section called How to Build a Chicken House. By that time, I was gardening a little bit. I grew peas and some lettuces, but I hadn’t thought of actually growing animals. Carla inspired me, and soon we had three golden-laced wyanndotte chickens and a little hen house. In a strange coincidence, we later found an old Chinese billboard that read, “Hen”. We immediately hung in on our porch. I loved the eggs and the chickens.
Eventually I moved to California. Now I live and farm in Oakland, CA. I can see downtown O-Town from my back porch, BART seems to run straight across my living room, as does I-980. It’s really spiraled from those early years in Seattle: to bees, ducks, turkeys, rabbits, geese, and I hope, one day, goats or a pig. A mini-cow, maybe?
Glad you’re here.