Andree's New Roost

Andree's new coop was finally finished this week so it was time to bring her chicks over













My chicken wrangling scheme didn't go too well in rounding them up . After we captured the first couple, everyone decided it was time to hide under the ivy. Thus I could only catch half of Andree's chickens. i'll have to make a second trip to Andree's in a week or so.

Yesterdy, our friend Jim from Green Faerie Farms gave her a silkie and a wyandotte. I have a Spangled Russian Orloff, 2 Americanas, and an egyptian fayoumi for her. Plus she was gonna house three of the male Buffs for our friend Ira to eat



Upon introduction, The two older chicks from Jim asserted dominance over the new four. But those girls and boy are smart. They flew way up into the second tier of the coop to hide. once the pecking order is established they should enjoy their new beautiful home.















and being eco-conscious, Andree's new coop design even included solar panels installed on top. Oh! You all should check out her recently redone California Golden Trout art project in richmond


As for our yard, now it is being eaten up a tad slower with four less chickens. We still need to finish the new fence. I'll be sealing the wood over this weekend. We have a garden bbq/potluck workparty planned for sunday august 10th. If anybody is interested in helping out please contact me. We're gonna try to make it a monthly affair.

The Birds

Fowl have overtaken our yard! We like our chickens to be as close to free range as possible since then they get a more diverse diet which make their eggs extra yummy. That was all fine and dandy when we just had four chickens.

In May, I placed an order of four more chickens and three ducks for myself. My eco-art teacher Andree also wanted four chickens for herself so we combined an order. If you dont know anything about chick mail-order, most places require you to get 25 chickens. There is a local place, Mike's Feed, in San Leandro but it's always random on what breeds they have. And I tend to like exotic chickens so i wanted to mail-order.

We ordered from Ideal Poultry which has a $20 minimum order instead of the 25 chick minimum. One of my chicks died in transport so that left me with 3 chicks for myself. They added 5 male buff orpingtons to keep the other chicks warm in transport...sigh....so now i'm raising those for my meat eating friends. I also lost another chick into the sea of ivy that lives behind our property . So that left me with 2 chickens and 3 ducks i was raising for myself and 9 chicks for other people.


After about a month we put them all outside which was fine when they were small but now they are consuming everything in sight. The ducks grew at an incredible rate. doubling size about every week. They've been eating everything that the chickens don't want. Notably the cucumbers, squash, pumpkins and this week it's the artichoke plants. We've been scrambling around trying to get a new fence put in but it will still be another week or two before that is complete.



our neighbors Laurette and Stacy love our eggs and wanted to sponsor a chicken so they could be kept in supply. So we picked up a rhode island red named Ruby from Mike's Feed to add to our bunch. She's still living in a box in the house until Andree's chicks are gone next week. Ruby is probably the most well behaved chicken we've had so far.

For all you urban homesteaders, I wouldn't recommend ducks. They are way more noisy and messy than I expected. They are beautiful and I'll see how their eggs taste once they start laying in a few months. But right now i'm second guessing that purchase.

VIP Victory Garden

Attempted to volunteer at the SF Victory Garden community planting day. I brought along my friend Dustin who I'm initiating into the local food realm .Got up extra early on a saturday to make it across the bay and to city hall by 9am. The area was so guarded. The line of "greeters" wouldn't let us in since Dustin wasn't registered. I understand if they had too many people to plant but not being able to even look around to see what is happening. Ridiculous! Thus began my frustration.

This exclusivity has been my issue with the slow food movement. Their events Always feel like a VIP affair while permaculture events are generally welcoming to anybody. I thought this combined effort would be different. Seems they were more interested in photo ops than community.

I give props to Gavin Newsom for allowing the garden. Even if the motivation was for more tourism, it is still a good symbol. and i congratulate all the designers and volunteers from city slickers, ploughshares, garden for the environment that helped grow the plants and dig throughout the week...

But how can you integrate social justice into the food and green movement if you aren't allowed access or cant afford access.....

Maybe someday I can afford to eat at Chez Panisse....until then i'm doing my thing in my yard with friends and neighbors.

Neighborhood Produce

Yesterday, I took another step away from dependence on oil. Scooter is instructing me on how to ride a bike again. I loved the freedom of it as a child with my little BMX mongoose but upon getting my 12 speed schwinn in junior high I became fearful. The machine was no longer part of me but an object that defied me. It was too tall for my little body with new mechanics to learn. And I was banished from the safety of sidewalks to the road. I gave up. That was in the suburbs of michigan. As I grew older and moved to bigger and denser cities, that fear grew. I've seen many car on bike collisions in san francisco.

But gas prices are rising, and I feel guilty every time i have to drive the car to our local market Farmer Joes or down to the library. I should be able to bike to these locations.

The hills by our house are too steep to learn on so scooter started me off on the flats of alameda which was fun. Hopefully step by step i'll get the confidence and strength to do more.


Upon returning from alameda, our mailbox was stuffed with a ziplock bag of apricots and zucchinis. A nice present. I was unsure who it came from at first. Maybe my friend Linda Jo, or possibly one of our neighbors. Turns out that it came from our friend Steve at Berkeley Signs. His family has a nice veggie garden and they are considering adding chickens after seeing ours! Anyways, this was the first time it really hit me that i have an abundance of friends who also have gardens and are working towards sustainability. What a perfect mystery

Our next door neighbors Stacy and Laurette gave us a huge bag of lemons from their tree a couple days ago as well. Once the heatwave breaks, it's time to bake some lemon bars!

Backyard Salad

Last night we had a backyard salad. Our lettuce greens are getting big so I began plucking the outer leaves. Scooter boiled some eggs from our chickens while I harvested some potatoes.

If you've never done potatoes before, let me just say that they come back year after year. I started with a small amount two years ago and now they volunteer since you can never get all of the tiny seed potatoes out of the ground. We also added some blue potatoes from seeds of change for a little added variety this year.

NOTE: New potatoes cook quickly so dont boil/bake as long as your typically do.





Our salad was pretty darn tasty. The only outside ingredients were olive oil, ground pepper, and some red peppers that I pickled last year [from farmer's market]

Plum Delight

Over the holiday weekend, we had some friends over for a bbq. Our guest aaron noticed from his seated vantage point that there were five plums dangling from our shaded tree.

We've pretty much given up on this tree. The back of our yard is lined with four overcrowded monterey cypress trees that block ALOT of sun. This plum tree that came with the house is pretty much shaded out. This year the aphids even begun their attack.

So we were quite delighted to spot unexpected fruit that even tasted divine! We've needed a little gardening suprise like this one since our ducks + chickens have pretty much devastated my pumpkin/squash patch [that's another post entirely]

First Time Garlic Success!

Many gardeners told me that garlic couldn't be done in the bay area. We have so many microclimates here, I am always hesitant to believe anything until i try it myself. In November, I spotted a garlic workshop held at the Garden for the Environment in SF so I quickly signed up. What I learned there was that garlic does well in the bay area. We just can't get the spicy heat of the heirloom garlics because we don't get a cold snap.

I was given some heirloom garlic bulbs from Peaceful Valley Nursery. I would have bought more from Seeds of Change but they were sold out by then. I did plant some store bought organic bulbs to see how they would do.


The general rule of thumb for planting garlic bulbs is to put in ground around Thanksgiving and pull up around Fourth of July. The leaves should be browning around the 4th which is an indicator.


I planted in both 1 gallon containers and directly into the ground. I've had problems with onions getting too soggy b/c of the clay soil so I wanted to hedge my bets by doing it both ways.

All of the container garlic turned brown so I pulled them up. The ones planted in soil still had green leaves so I only pulled up a few. As you can see in the picture, the container ones had much smaller bulbs than soil. Garlic appears to want to root deeply. The roots were hanging out the bottom of my containers. Next year everything is going into the ground!

I left about 1/2 of the garlic in the ground to see what happens if i leave in an extra week or two.

I didn't get enough garlic to last me through the year but I'll have plenty to make pesto with throughout the summer. I'm not too worried about curing this time around since it wont last into the winter. All I did with the fresh garlic is place outside on a table so the outer skin can dry a bit.

BTW, the garlic tastes just as good as what I receive in our CSA box! And I didn't notice any difference between store bought bulbs versus seed bulbs

Why attempt a Zero Mile diet?

My boyfriend Scooter and I have been getting a CSA from Terra Firma Farm for almost 10 years now. The seasonality has reconnected us to when local foods are available and the taste between in+ out of season produce. When living in the Mission District of San Francisco, we even became a drop host which allowed us to meet a bunch of other friendly people.

About Two years ago we moved to the Laurel District of Oakland into a tiny house [about the size of our SF Studio apt] but the winning feature was a 4000 sq/ft back yard. The experimentation began. We had to reclaim some area from the weedy ivy, oxalis,kikuyu grass, and vinca. We started small with two areas. One being an amended section of our clay soil and another being a raised bed. Those first tomatoes that summer brought me straight back to when I was a child in my Aunt Mary's vegetable garden. I was in love.

Since then I've added fruit +olive trees, two more raised beds, cleared a hillside for annual veggies, bought some chickens,ducks, bees, and started making my own saurkraut, pickles, cheese, and root beer

We've participated in the 100-mile diet which has become popular over the last few years. I was even inspired to help create a locavore reception as part of my eco-art class.

In the Bay Area, the urban homesteading movement has recently taken off as an expansion of the local diet. Chickens really shouldn't be an exotic addition to a backyard. We have lost touch with traditional techniques of food preservation and fermentation. Urban homesteaders look to reclaim these techniques in our current environment instead of moving far away into rural land as was done in the 70's with the communal back to the land movement.

We're also seeing a return of victory gardens with such highly visible ones as the garden being created at SF City Hall.

The one thing I haven't seen is documentation of a city person's journey to sustainability. I've found getting accents to my meals quite easy in my garden. However, creating whole meals has been more of a challenge. I think the benchmark of what I receive in my CSA box every week is a good goal to set. I want to see if it is obtainable from what I can produce in my backyard and trade with neighbors.

Not only do i want to gain a deeper connection to the land and my neighbors but also create an artistic protest against the war. Hopefully, others will be inspired by my trials to try new things in their yards. By creating your own, we reduce our dependence on oil while having yummy treats. A win win situation.


So my Journey Begins
Paul