It turns out that the lofty goals of building a 500 square foot chicken enclosure, 250 square feet of raised beds, a 20 foot long by 2.5 foot tall rock retaining wall, while also roto-tilling the better part of 2,000 square feet of sod into mulched perennial beds [which amounted to about 14 cubic yardsContinue reading “2021 Growing Season: urban farming by the numbers”
Category Archives: Farm
Impermanence, OR how to act when the future isn’t coming
Reading [listening to] Terry Tempest Williams’s essay collection Erosion: Essays of Undoing while building my retaining wall [and maybe doubling down on irony]. It is a transcript of a conversation between herself and Tim deChristopher before his 2011 sentencing after being found guilty of violations of the Federal Onshore Oil and Gas Leasing Reform Act.Continue reading “Impermanence, OR how to act when the future isn’t coming”
Shoulder Seasons: lessons in non-attachment
I had been saving up lots of images and pearls of wisdom about gardening and permaculture in the inter-mountain west to write something about the Farm. Things had been going very well for over a month. Temperatures had been unseasonably warm, annuals were germinating on the their own from last year, the rhubarb was outContinue reading “Shoulder Seasons: lessons in non-attachment”
Animal Husbandry, OR Yes, I think we are going to eat these
On our urban farm we already have chickens, but these chickens are for eggs. Yesterday, we got chickens for meat. In some ways, thinking of the adorable balls of fluff cheeping under their heat light in our boiler room, it seems unthinkable that in September we are intending to turn them into chicken, the meat.Continue reading “Animal Husbandry, OR Yes, I think we are going to eat these”
Against Performative Productivism
Last Saturday, it was the weekend, ostensibly the time I get to rest from the trials of the week also known as the time of wage labor when I am unable to fully own myself. It becomes 5pm on Friday and I once again own myself. All the time that stretches out before me untilContinue reading “Against Performative Productivism”
Agriculture: we’re doing it wrong
Humans have very short memories and attention spans. This is by design [not intelligent design, but evolutionary design, which is to say natural selection by the environment for fitness]. Humans evolved as an upright hominid species that exploits technology [which includes both physical technology and complex symbolic systems like language, culture and religion] to inhabitContinue reading “Agriculture: we’re doing it wrong”
Our urban homestead, OR why this is not a lifestyle blog
One of my deepest passions is not only gardening, but urban sustainable agriculture. Our urban homestead, Wild Prospect Urban Farm, is a quarter acre residential lot within the city limits of Helena, MT, zone 4b. After buying the Prospect House in fall of 2019, we proceeded to begin the long [long] process of converting ourContinue reading “Our urban homestead, OR why this is not a lifestyle blog”
The Oracle of Z 