Eighth of an Acre Bounty

Canning season is upon us. In this house it actually never really ends since I find myself canning up big batches of chicken stock every couple months from the trimmings and bone I hide away in the freezer after we roast a chicken. But the preservation of summer’s gifts has officially begun. It all started […]

[Read more →]

Just a quick note in case any local people were unaware of the recently created Seattle Urban Farm Co-op. In their own words… The Seattle Urban Farm Co-op is a community-based project to start a co-op to purchase supplies for urban farmers in the Seattle area. Our focus will be on obtaining supplies such as […]

[Read more →]

I’ve been reluctant to write about this until it all actually came to fruition for fear of something going wrong. But as everything seems to be in the clear now I’ll go ahead. As many of you know (by virtue of the title of this blog) we are on a very small city lot here. […]

[Read more →]

AKA the great offal experiment. As I’ve mentioned before, we ordered half a pig from a local farm a mere 15 minutes from our house this year. In the course of making the cut arrangements with the farm I inquired about the offal. You see, I am a bit preoccupied with using everything. Especially when […]

[Read more →]

We just got back from driving up to Mt. Vernon to pick up the 1/4 beef we ordered from Prairie Springs Ranch. I weighed and counted everything both for my own edification and for anyone else who is considering ordering directly from a farm. In my travels round the blogosphere I have always appreciated when […]

[Read more →]

Gary and I had a field trip this weekend. We went down to Kent/Auburn to check out a feed store (horrifying political discussion between the clerk and another customer to be related later) and then stopped by a U pick pumpkin farm. I have been thinking about trying to carve a pumpkin again (as an […]

[Read more →]

Laura over at (Not so) Urban Hennery posted a pantry expose a few days ago that got me thinking. I dropped out of regularly posting for Independence days and have yet to do a full assessment of what we’ve managed to get from the garden this year. Now I don’t even have a pantry to […]

[Read more →]

With all of the cool and wet weather lately it seems we have a second spring going. Although it isn’t doing the tomatoes any favors, the rhubarb is loving it. I made a second harvest today of 7 1/2 pounds of cleaned and diced rhubarb. Some of this will go into the freezer for Blackberry […]

[Read more →]

I pulled the yin yang beans today. I didn’t plant nearly enough to make it worth leaving them on the plant to fully dry, not when garden space is at a premium around here. This is the first year I have grown these, and they are beautiful. The speckled surprise inside each pod almost makes […]

[Read more →]

Our neighbors just gave us two huge zucchini this morning as we were sitting outside drinking the first cup of coffee. We usually go through this exchange every year. They always plant zucchini, I never plant zucchini – I always plant tomatoes and they never do. So later in the season I can return the […]

[Read more →]