The Urban Orchardist

Urban Farm Tour and more…

Posted on March 1, 2011 | 6 comments

It’s the year of the tour. A fellow urban farmer, k ruby from the institute of urban homesteading is doing an urban homestead tour in June; the Bay Friendly garden tour is featuring lots of places with chickens, bees, ducks, and goats on their tour; and the Biofuel Oasis is having our first Urban Farm Tour on Sunday, April 3rd, 9:30-2pm. It’s going to be really fun–the tour group will meet at the Biofuel Oasis then board the biodiesel powered Mexican School Bus for a few hours of urban farming pleasure. We will stop and see a small CSA, a youth run organization, a goat farm, and end at my place to behold my new predator proof chicken coop from heaven. Along the way you’ll get to sample farm produce, ask the farmer questions, and learn about best practices for growing food in the cities. Tickets are limited, $40/each. Sign up here, and I’ll see you on the bus!

Als0–thanks to everyone who came to my Farmstand this Sunday, it was great to meet all you cool people, and we did raise some cash to pay for some of the farm expenses. The next Ghosttown Farm pop up farmstand will be Wednesday, March 23, 4-7pm. Please let me know if you are an urban farmer with produce to sell. I’m looking for urban east bay people who want to sell honey, eggs, fruit, or vegetables. No jams or processed items at this time. Send me an email with your specifics: novellacarpenter at gmail

Happy March!

6 Comments

Posted in Biofuel Oasis, field trips, pop-up farmstand

Sunday Gala: Details

Posted on February 22, 2011 | 12 comments

First: tumbler guy: gschalin at comcast dot net

The forecast calls for sun this Sunday, February 27. Good news for my little fundraiser/pop up farm stand/party in the garden. There will be rabbit pot pies for sale, made by Becky Fresh. There will be bundles of chard and kale and braising mix for sale. There will be chai made from Bebe milk and Ghosttown Honey. There will be nettle tea for those of us who are trying to be healthy, from nettles grown in the garden. There will be Ghosttown T-shirts made from organic American Apparel shirts, printed by Oakland’s own People’s Choice (they come in black with a red logo for girls, and army and yellow for the dudes). There will be (hopefully) goats in the garden so I don’t have to drag everyone into my backyard. And if all goes well tomorrow, a brand spanking new Hen House built by Just Fine Design out of recycled materials (think beautiful pallets). There will be copies of Farm City. We will celebrate near spring and the gifts that nature has given us. Hope you can make it!!

When: Feb 27, 11-2pm

Where: Lot next to 665 28th Street, Oakland

What: A party in the garden

What else: If you drive, park on MLK, not 28th, as it gets crowded.

12 Comments

Posted in pop-up farmstand

Poo Wrangler

Posted on February 11, 2011 | 27 comments

Howdy there, sorry about the lag. I’ve been, er, chasing poo. Animal turds, just to clarify. I feel like a spend half my morning scooping manure. Then I work in the garden–trying to get it in shape for the Feb 27 gala (u r invited: 11am-2pm at the farm: snacks and ribbon cutting)! The sunny, climate change weather keeps prodding me to get all my beds laid out and seeded even though really it’s too early for that.

But back to the poo. I had the pleasure of going to the ranch where they make Pt. Reyes Blue, and, to make the cheese, they have 350 milk cows. The location is stunning out there in West Marin. Of course I was there to cover the shit story–which is a compost company that is recycling the cow poo into black gold for your garden. Watch for it in the Chronicle, in the garden section.

Back to my animals’ turds, though. I don’t have a tool called a Separator like they have at the Giacomini’s ranch. Instead, I just lay down some wood shavings (scrounged from Wooden Window off of San Pablo–love them!) let the animals void, then scoop it up. But then what to do? At first, this winter (that’s when the shit really hit the fan because I built up my rabbit operation) I would lay the turds and bedding into berms and let it rest. Now these berms are mostly broken down and ready to be planted into. But the poo keeps flying. And I can’t make more piles of bedding and poo (no more room, rodent problems if the pile gets too big). What to do? I went to Dublin, Ca.

Because Dublin is where my tumbler compost hook up (thanks craigslist) lives. In the garage of their home, an adorable family builds these here contraptions:

This is where the angels and rays of sunlight come in.

Note that it’s made of plastic–recycled from sturdy olive containers. Note that a rat might have a hard time chewing on it, or getting into that screw on lid. Note that it tumbles around, so I don’t have to pitchfork it around all day long. The family is building them to make college money for their son. It’s really sweet. (We might start selling them at the Oasis–stay tuned if you want to buy one in the East Bay. If you want my tumbler guy’s email, just post a comment with your email and I’ll forward it to him.)

So far I’ve bought two, and all the farm turds from one week fit in one of these babies. It takes a month for them to break down, so I need to buy two more and then I can start the rotation. I can even–gasp–start food scrap recycling again.

Ok, gotta go to Arkansas now….I’ll be speaking at the University of the Ozarks. Can’t wait!

27 Comments

Posted in product review, random thoughts

Me and Joan Gussow

Posted on January 18, 2011 | 21 comments

I planted asparagus yesterday. It’s something I’ve been meaning to do for years at Ghosttown, but as a squat farmer, I hesitated, and hesitated, and hesitated. It takes three years before you get a sizeable harvest, and so I figured it would be folly to plant any asparagus. Looking back on it, if I had planted crowns when I started, we’d have had five harvests under our belts. Oh well.

In the perfect timing department, the crowns came in the mail the same day I got the property tax bill (shit!) as a sweet reminder of the pleasures and pain of land ownership. I bought green California Davis asparagus crowns from Peaceful Valley; and then a lovely fan (Stan!) sent me some gorgeous, huge, crowns for the purple asparagus that he grows up in Arbuckle.

Coincidently, I’m reading Joan Gussow’s book Growing, Older and just got to the part where she talks about planting asparagus, and what a pain in the butt it is, having to dig a two foot deep trench in the garden, soak the crowns in water, then shore them up with good compost. Joan’s 80 years old and has been growing a huge garden and writing about nutrition for over 20 years. She wrote This Organic Life: Confessions of a Suburban Homesteader over ten years ago, and has been called the matriarch of the organic movement. In fact, if you read some of her essays, you’ll see that she coined some phrases that other people have coopted for themselves, like “our national eating disorder.”

About asparagus Gussow talks about losing her beds from chronic flooding of her river-front property. Instead of giving up, she decided, in her eighties, that she would start again by planting some asparagus from seed–now that will take a long time to produce! She writes, “…if Nature is willing, I might have, one day, short of my nineties, an actual bed of asparagus.” If an eighty-year old is planting asparagus, you should too. Don’t delay, plant some asparagus today.

The exciting thing is: Joan’s coming to San Francisco! I’m the lucky little devil who gets to interview her on-stage at the Commonwealth Club. Yay! Here are the details:

Commonwealth Club

95 Market St # 2, San Francisco CA 94105-2885

January 25, 2011, 5:30 pm

Another thing not to hesitate about? The scion exchange! My plan is to bench graft a bunch of apple rootstock so I can make a Belgium fence with heirloom varieties! Should take about ten years…The scion exchange is in El Sobrante this year, Saturday January 22, 12-3 at 4555 Hilltop Drive. See ya there!

21 Comments

Posted in random thoughts

Getting my Sh*t together

Posted on January 6, 2011 | 22 comments

My vacation sucked. Baja was freezing. My old back hated sleeping on the beach. It snowed in Arizona. We did eat some amazing borrego tacos (lamb!) and soaked in the hot springs of Puertecitos, but for the most part I felt like I should have stayed at home or gone to Hawaii (never been) like the Obamas.

When I got home, I felt grumpy. Luckily, I cleaned my house before we left so the bed was made and Kuzzin was waiting with open paws for us. My farmgal Friday, Amy, did a great job taking care of the animals, so all was fine on that front. Still, I felt blah. I blamed it on 2011. I blamed it on my birthday (so close to 40). I blamed it on the fact that I just found out it’s going to cost me $20,000 to get a water meter on my abandoned lot. That’s almost how much I paid for the land! I freaked out that Blue Shield is raising my health insurance (i can only afford to have catastrophic in case I get hit by a bus…). I got my first bill for property taxes for the lot, and had to pay liability insurance for it too. Being a responsible adult is so lame and expensive. And I’m not even being that responsible.

That was my state of mind when I first faced 2011. I hunted some flies with my zapper racquet and felt a little bit better. Then I started thinking about little things that I could do to make myself feel better. I mucked out the rabbit area. I fixed the hay “barn” so it won’t fall over during a strong wind. I made some cheese. I mucked out the goat area. I did some weeding. I rearranged the goat milking room. I started thinking about how I want to do things differently this year. I want to streamline my operations so they are pleasurable, not a pain. One of the biggest problems has been with my hay manger.

The manger used to be two sets of window bars lashed together and set on a chair. I had the pleasure of having Gianclis from Pholia Farm over this summer and I asked her (goat expert) how I was doing. I mean, did she think the goats looked ok, had enough room, etc? She said yes, especially because of the stairs, and they looked very healthy. The one thing she said I should do is get a real hay manger. We looked at the homemade manger, hay spilling everywhere, and I realized she was so right. Contrary to popular opinion, goats are actually picky eaters and if hay falls on the ground, they won’t eat it. Even if it’s their fault it fell on the ground. That’s just goats. And my ghetto window bar manger allowed them to pull hay from the side where it would fall to the ground and make a big mess. But I can’t build for shit, and the hay mangers I’ve seen at the feed stores seemed overkill and expensive. Enter my birthday money from my mom (thanks ma!). I drove up to Larsen’s feed in Cotati and bought the Ruff Ranch feeder. It wasn’t cheap: $240. But look how happy this goat is now.

When I installed the manger, I sat and watched the goat enjoy using it. I think they like the challenge of reaching through the bars to get the good bits. And they are wasting 80% less hay. Organic alfalfa is not cheap, either, so perhaps the Ruff Ranch manger will save me money over the long-term.

This kind of pleasure isn’t cheap, but the pleasure of doing something right made me feel good and somewhat responsible. I realized that I just have to set goals, save money, and work slowly. So often I want things to happen quickly, but I realize that change is slow, it takes time to recognize how something can be easier/quicker/better.

So I guess it’s going to be a few years before I save enough money for a water meter, or building an outdoor kitchen, or a greenhouse but pleasure is often sweeter when you’ve waited and yearned. On that note, I’ll be having my first 2011 Farmstand and Food Fundraiser on February 27 (Sunday) from 11am-2pm. Stay tuned for details…And Happy New Year!

22 Comments

Posted in goats

Tools of the Trade

Posted on December 21, 2010 | 20 comments

I’m frantically cleaning the house and getting the garden in order. Especially after the storm, which knocked down my prized purple Italian fava beans (nooooo…). I actually mopped the floor of the milking room.

Maybe it’s the full moon, maybe it’s the eclipse, but probably it’s genetic. My mom told me she always cleans the house before she goes on vacation. That’s right, I’m going on vacation! Driving to Baja. I want to return to a nice tidy house, so I started cleaning, even though I’m not a tidy person.

It might be vanity, too, as I will have a couple people coming over to milk Bebe and feed the rabbits. How horrified would they be if they had to, as I do everyday, storm through a flurry of flies when they walk through the kitchen. I don’t know why I have so many of them inside my house, but it got so bad they were landing on me and Bill when we ate dinner. That’s just gross. I have fly tape. I started to hunt them with a heavy envelop from Geico. The couple of flies I killed with these methods were a drop in the bucket. They kept coming back!! Desperate, I went to the 24 hour Oakland Longs (AKA CVS). As I perused the aisles, I contemplated poisons and sprays, then I found it, the tool that would change my life! It looks like a tennis racquet, but with metal strings. You just add two batteries and suddenly, you are a fly assassin. I usually would never buy a plastic thing like this–I’m sure it’ll break immediately and probably won’t work. But I was desperate, remember? So I went home, added batteries, and started swing. It helps that I played tennis in high school. Flies started dying by the dozens. All I had to do was get them to touch the tennis racquet strings, and blammo–dead! And they don’t just die, they sizzle and burn. There’s an electric spark. It’s very very satisfying. I have lost the package, so I can’t tell you the name of the product. But if you have flies: get the electric tennis racquet.

My second tool of the trade in the Henry Milker. Henry called me and asked if I’d like to try out his milker. I said I don’t do product endorsements unless I love something, but go ahead and send her over. He did, and I tried it out. It’s basically a Mighty-Vac connected to tubing and some Mason jar lids. It was just okay. It did milk my goat, but it wasn’t any faster than I do it by hand, so I put it away.

Then I tried to go on vacation. Tried because I do have a goat in milk, I’m not very organized, and most people don’t want to deal with my cranky goat. Enter the Henry Milker. Many people don’t have the hand stamina to milk a goat; and with my goat, she’s got pretty small teats so it’s an extra challenge. But almost anyone can hook her up to the Henry Milker and get the milk out within 15 minutes. Thank god for the Henry Milker!!!

Ok, with that, I’m out of here. See you in 2011–may your holidays be bright, your critters content, and your gardens fertile.