I’ve had some people ask if maybe it wasn’t a wee bit overkill to enclose our chicken coop in 1/2-inch mesh hardware cloth. That stuff is expensive, after all. Here’s my answer: A few nights ago, as I was working on a blog post, Nick mindlessly said, “Hey, I’m going to go make sure the…
The Great Cover-Up: Carpeting Your Garden Floor
I have noticed that keeping my garden’s paths well-mulched does a ton for the overall appearance of my garden. This makes sense: if you walked into someone’s living room and they had tasteful, comfortable furniture, well-displayed books and artwork and walls painted in a stylish but personal hue, but the floor was rough, bare plywood, you’d probably notice that…
Big Batch Almond Zucchini Bread (Or, How To Use Up A Lot Zucchini After It Has Started To Irritate You)
Zucchini is like that friend who calls you just a bit too often. When the relationship first starts up, you’re so excited! New, cute little zuke, nice little chit chat…and for a while you’re thinking: wow, this is so great! This relationship is so rewarding. And then, after eight weeks of being stalked incessantly by an unending…
Coop Improvement Projects
The Chicken Coop, as I’ve mentioned, was done…well, done enough, anyway. But as all of our girls have come on-line in their laying, I felt like they needed a little reward in the form of a little minor coop improvement project. Besides, I needed something to do besides can more damn peaches. 1. We weeded…
Wifery, Money And Not-Work
Urban homesteading, householdering, radical homemaking….call it what you will, the world of glorified housewifery seems, perhaps unsurprisingly, to be dominated by the wifery. Certainly the world of blogging about all this stuff tends to be the realm of the gentler sex (though I’m not sure how much gentler I looked as I slaughtered that chicken or shoveled that…
Homebrew Husband's Top Ten Homesteading Surprises
Now that you are an urban homesteader, let’s talk about some of the surprises. Yes, I’m sure you knew how rewarding it would be, you expected that sense of satisfaction that only shoveling a quarter ton of fresh compost can generate, that pride that that comes with lacerating your entire torso in pursuit of just…
Negabucks – What's Your Hobby Time Worth?
I love food, gardening and economics, so it follows that I’m interested in looking at gardening from an micro and nano-economic perspective. As someone who gardens on a scale large enough to make a pretty significant dent in our family food budget, my gardening hobby is intimately tied to our household budgetary realities. Just another day at…
Walnut Lemon Pesto
This Walnut Lemon Pesto has become my go-to pesto recipe in late summer when the basil is huge and really needs to get cut back before it flowers. While I adore a classic pesto, this version has a few advantages over the traditional pine-nut & parm variety. First, it’s way cheaper to make. No $25-a-pound…
A Pantry Unburied
Let’s recap: two weeks ago the contents of my pantry were on the floor and fake catalog pantries were driving me to drink. Now, I am pleased to report, my pantry is not only usable again, but actually has a bunch of empty shelf space in it, just waiting for me to fill it up with…
Labor Pains And The Harvest
As I sit here writing this, both kids just tucked in, a slew of new little boy’s toys to find a home for, and half a brightly colored, overly-sweet, train-shaped cake sitting picked over on the dining room table, it is one year to the hour since my boy was born. His was a fast labor: 90 minutes…
Lacto-Fermented Salsa
Regular readers may have gleaned (gleaned – ha! harvesting pun!) that Homebrew Husband and I enjoy fermenting stuff. Right at this exact moment, the following is being (deliberately) fermented in our home: 5 gallons blackberry wine 10 gallons of beer (a carboy of pale ale and another of porter) 2 loaves bread dough homemade yogurt 3…
September Gardening Chores For The Pacific Northwest
September is a month of transition. Many of our favorite summer vegetables – green beans, cucumbers, zucchini – will continue to produce well through this month if we keep the plants picked, but the sheer glut of August will begin to give way to broccoli, beets, cabbages and chard as we nudge closer to fall. This is also transition time for the gardener,…