A little gem I found today

Check out African American Gardens Rooted in Tradition. It's a pretty cool multimedia thing the Pittsburgh Post-Gazett highlighted today about a book of photographs by Vaughn Sills titled Places for the Spirit: Traditional African American Gardens.

I really have no words to describe how real these gardens seem to me. I don't own the book yet, but I'm sure that I will soon.

Our seeds have arrived

We went strictly with Baker Creek seeds this year—there was no particular reason other than we dig their plant philosophy and we want to spread our business around. I believe the only plant items left to purchase for our garden this year are a pair of dwarf fruit trees. We will probably start some of our seeds in about five weeks.

I can't wait to try the black cherry tomato.

Variety vs Production

Something I learned last season is that a city garden designed for food production is pretty boring. We thought we wanted to plant a lot of a few things because it would allow us to put the excess by and eat from the garden through the winter. In some ways our strategy was a success, but without the variety to go along with it, we find ourselves wanting more of what we don't have.

We're putting together our seed order and the list is pretty long. Granted, there will be far more seeds than what could ever fit in our garden; but thankfully I'll be able to donate some to my school's community garden. To satisfy the volume lost, Meg has already set us up with a CSA that runs for a good portion of the year—and they also have eggs.

The garden will look different and hopefully it will invigorate our growing and eating inventiveness.

Blueberry

On Tuesday Meg gave birth to our son, Jude (aka Blueberry). He was born at home and everything went  well. For anyone out there thinking about home birth, or knows someone who is, we strongly recommend it. But this post isn't about home births, it's about Meg and...

Jude.

When I find the words to truly express how cool this is—that is words other than love, love, love, love, love—I'll be sure to share.

In the meantime, stay warm, and have a fantastic holiday season.

Hiking, the Community Garden, and a Request

Life is goin' good. Meg is in her third trimester and doing amazing. The photo above was taken about two weeks ago at Rickett's Glen. 

This past weekend we went on a full-moon hike on the AT. On this trip we hooked up with a local AMC hike leader and made the four mile trek to the Pinnacle to watch the moon rise. The weather was beautiful and the view was stunning.

Work on the Community Garden is still going strong. The sketch above is what we may accomplish in the next five years. Right now we're just focused on year one.

This is a sketch of what we may have going in the Spring. I have a detailed look of the hex plot below. What we're looking for is something small with a shit load of wow.

I've started a blog for our project and if you would like to follow our progress and give us your suggestions (please), we'd greatly appreciate it. The new site began as a place to keep the committee updated, but I told them, and they agreed, that our garden would benefit if we could get the input of a larger audience.

For the time being, I will be posting at the new spot more often than here, but I will keep the baby, hiking, and backyard garden updates on the future house.

We'll be around

Howdy all. The students are back and the semester has officially started. I've been in meetings for a while now, so spending time in class has been a great change of pace. 

The East 40 community garden is moving steadily forward. We've attracted a committee of over thirty people to help get this thing going and I'm feeling confident that we'll break ground in the Spring.

Meg is doing awesome (sorry for the goofy photo, but on this computer it's all I got). Blueberry (temp name for the kid) is at 21 weeks. We go to the midwife again on Wednesday for our next check up. I can't even think of a time that I've been this happy.

However, there is an unfortunate reality that has settled in—between expecting a child, teaching classes, planning a 4.5 acre community garden, and going back to school for my PhD, I have to understand that the blog posts will be few and far between. There was a while there that I could get a good post-a-day in, but lately...

We're still out there reading blogs and we will be giving updates when we can, but in the meantime please know that we'll be kicking asses mostly off line.

Philly Community Gardens (and some overuse of parentheticals)

Earlier this month Meg and I took a trip to Philadelphia so we could meet Era (from E.r.r.a.n.t) who is a community garden organizer and blogger. As many of you know I am currently gathering information for a proposal to have a community garden built at my school. Era was kind enough to answer some questions, give some advice, and show us some gardens; all on a day that exceeded 100°F.

The first garden she took us to is on a piece of property that is actually owned by the bank, but there are so many liens on the lot there is no chance anyone will buy it. I don't know if they got or need permission from the bank to garden here; she may have told us, but I was so blown away by the space, chances are I missed some bits of information. Whatever the answer may be, I do remember her telling me that some of the gardeners here have had their spots for something like ten years. So whether the bank said sure or not, I think is a moot point.

Each individual plot is 4x8 feet. You can see how they are divided with wooden raised bed barriers. I was surprised at how open each bed was to one another; I suppose that I expected fences. There wasn't anyone one there (did I mention it was hot?), but you could feel the communal effort (and that's not just the tree-hugger in me coming out).  

In the above photo is a plot from the gardener I mentioned who has been a part of this community garden for over ten years. Effing beautiful.

This is another community garden a little down the road. Like the first lot, the people who garden here do not own the land but they opted to take their chances and grow food as opposed to leaving it to collect trash. I think Era called them squatters.

Probably the most impressive garden we saw, Mill Creek Farm, is about half of a city block in size (not a New York City block, but an old town Philly block) and it is set up as half urban farm and half community garden. I forget exactly how they got the property (note to self, take better notes), but I seem to recall something about a grant from the city.

Their use of space was incredible.

—Oh yeah, before I forget, something I noticed when we got to this community garden (and after spending an afternoon with Era) is that the community garden scene has attracted the leadership of some very strong and kickass women. I'm not quite sure what the connection is, but I dig it and it's something I  plan to highlight in my proposal. The organizers (I think that's their title) of Mill Creek are two women, Jo and Jade, and it was obvious that they are why the farm/garden works so well. If our baby is a girl...

Something Mill Creek has done that I would like to see at my school is they have turned their space into not only a place for local food production, but a place for learning as well. They have honey bees, solar panels, a composting toilet, a living roof, and my favorite...

...a cob oven. One of the many services they provide to the community are tours to students from local schools.

After we left Mill Creek, the heat had gotten the best of us so we decided to call it a day. As we made the drive to Era's we noticed even more community gardens in spaces that would otherwise have been vacant. There are a lot of really good people out there.

Endangered Tomato

A while back we had a post about our Grandpa's German Tomatoes. My family has been saving seeds from these tomatoes for over 40 years (mostly from my grandfather). Last year's blight kept us from saving seeds, so the plants we have this year are from two years ago.

Sadly to say the seeds are all used up, on our end and my grandfather's, and that has us very anxious to harvest. What has us even more on edge is that I got a call from my grandfather and his plants again got the blight. He lives on the other side of the state, where we've heard of some folks getting hit; thankfully for us we have not.

We do have friends in the area who we gave plants to, so hopefully theirs are doing well. In the meantime, we wait. The two tomatoes in the photo are the closest ones we have to being ripe. With this heat we expect to pick them by the end of the week. We'll be sure to take some seeds to my grandfather when we see him mid-July.

The Summer so far (part 6)

[side note] This post is a very roundabout way to talk about something completely unrelated to the first little paragraph.

Soon after the Spring Semester ended I started a writers' group. Every Friday at 10:00 a group of friends and I meet at a park right outside of downtown to share our writing. I wish I had some photos to show you of the park, but they all must be on Meg's camera. Please take my word for it that the place is beautiful.

The park is close enough to home that I can walk, and on the way back I take a roundabout hike along the Monocacy Creek trails. Today on the walk home I was struck by a very pleasant and familiar aroma.

Garlic! Here, take a closer look.

There were big swaths of the stuff everywhere along various portions of the trail. I couldn't believe that I've never noticed it before. None of it looked orderly, but I cannot fathom how so much of it got there. Maybe several years ago someone planted a few cloves and it eventually spread; I don't know.

My guess is that it may have been this lady. Meg and I have seen her around Bethlehem quite a few times and always her walker is loaded down with food or flowers. She lives in a retirement community on Main Street, but she gardens everywhere there is unclaimed earth. If you're ever in the area, take Union Boulevard towards the 378 on-ramp. As you drive onto the ramp, go slowly, and peek over the guardrail to your right. What you'll see is her onion patch. It's about 2,000 square feet of tightly packed rows and the smell on a hot day is amazing.

The Summer so far (part 5)

Three weeks ago Meg and I started taking a class (I'm not really sure why they call it a class) called Five Local Hikes. The "course" is five weeks long and we do exactly what its title says we'll do. We knew there were a boatload of places to hike around here, but maps and info can be pretty hard to come by.

On our second hike, the group leader said something along the lines that some years back, Pennsylvania passed an initiative to ensure there would be a state park within 25 miles of every resident. I haven't done any fact checking to test the validity of what he said, but after three weeks of this class plus what I know about the rest of the state, I think he may be spot on. Pretty cool.