I don’t remember how I found my way to Your City Farmer, a blog about farming in Oakland (SFGate.com?). I copied the url to the Word doc where I work on LuvSet posts. That was back in April. Since then the blogger has changed it. Just found that out when I put the old url into the browser and got whipped around to the new one.
Looks like the name has changed to Meaningful Pursuit. Hm. Better title? I don’t know. I think … no. But whatever.
Right now our backyard is at its farmingest, what with cherries ripening and lush tomato plants considering whether to turn their yellow flowers into tight green fruits.
The May 12th post starts out with a picture of weeds. Novella (yes, that’s the blogger’s name) says, “Weeding can be satisfying work. Passers-by say hello, chew the fat, ask me for a quarter. Because remember, I'm not living some rural lifestyle with baby goats and rabbits. I'm living some urban lifestyle with baby goats and rabbits. A reminder of my urban farm: gun fire. Two shots, very close. Somehow muffled. Now, it IS firework season, but I knew those were bullets.”
Police cars appear. She overhears one of the officers say a man was shot in the apartment across the street, not killed though.
She went back to weeding. Now & then a neighbor would stop and ask what happened. “I grew tired of telling the news,” Novella says.
4 comments:
Farmingest.
Nifty word, dude.
Farmy-est would work too.
I wish I had a farmy backyard.
Heck, I wish I had a backyard, period.
Thanks for pointing me to that blog. I just read the post about her taking her goat to work and now I want a dwarf goat. I wonder if my landlord would let me keep one on my terrace.
Urban farming is supposed to be all the rage right now.
If food prices continue to climb higher and higher (along with the price of everything else)(sigh), we'll all be growing our own produce and milking our own cows and stepping out back to the coop for fresh eggs soon.
Farmingedest maybe?
Whereas we would be at our farmingest.
We have a lot of bare ground in the back. Or a plot of bare ground -- not a lot of lot, actually. Our tomatoes are in pots. The ground sucks up water like it never expects to get another drop. Probably won't either. Not till November.
Guv Shwartzadummer says we got a drought.
My mother would always pour the dishwater on a patch of mint in her patio. All the grass would go dry but the mint would be lush.
I understand hens make pleasant pets, too.
You know, I've always had an irrational fear of poultry. Fowl. Maybe it's all those mean geese that used to chase me through the park when I was a child. I swear to god, they were killer geese hellbent on chasing anyone that crossed their path.
Too, even though I've never been pecked by a chicken, I always expect that a chicken would peck me. Weird.
Have you seen those hanging tomato plants? They're supposed to be really productive. I was going to get one for my terrace, but I don't have a green thumb.
Well, to go by stereotypes, chickens are, you know, chicken. They run away from you. Hens, anyway. Maybe if one is backed into a corner protecting her brood, maybe then she'll get aggressive. The rooster, he's the one you gotta watch out for. They can be scary. But if you raise a hen from a chick she'll snuggle in your lap. (So I'm told.)
Geese are aggressive. It's one of the reasons they are kept among the ducks. They're kinda like watch dogs.
Resourceful gardeners can put together amazing kitchens gardens in cramped apartment kitchens -- hanging pots & such. I think I wouldn't be capable of that.
I'm best at tending decay. I like my compost. I bury the food scraps or heap on the weeds and fallen leaves, then get the shovel and turn the whole thing every month or so. I like watching it all turn into soil. Everything does eventually. Except a stone.
The tomato plants seem very happy with their feet gripping my decay.
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