Your Backyard Harvest

I know it’s been a while, sorry for ignoring you world wide web. The world of Your Backyard Harvest has been so full of planting, weeding, harvesting, replanting, trellising and watering that there’s really no free blogging moments. So Here’s the scoop, short and sweet: the first season is off to an amazing start. Every week when I fear the worst (there’s not enough food for market) and then vegetables come in aplenty! Market goers are incredibly supportive and love the concept behind the urban multi-plot farm. YBH was featured on the front of Edible San Juan Magazine, with a hilarious picture of yours truly (I am not the biggest fan of being a target for a picture). So please come and check me out at the Durango Farmer’s Market, next week I’ll have lettuce mix, spinach, radishes, carrots, garlic scapes, cilantro, bok choy, braising mix and green onions.

By now you’ve all heard about the risks of eating GM foods and you are probably interested in finding out how to avoid consuming them.  The Center for Food Safety’s True Food Network is a great resource for finding non-GM foods and finding out how you can take legislative action opposing GMOs. The Non-GMOs shopper’s guide helps you make more conscious decisions even when shopping at City Market or other large supermarkets. These decisions are always a compromise depending on the time of year, for example right now it’s nearly impossible to eat all organic and local, so try to go for just organic (USDA does not allow GMOs in the organic program). If that’s not available it’s easy to use the shopper’s guide to avoid GM foods.

CFS Shopper’s Guide

After reading Michael Chabon’s book The Final Solution: A story of detection, I’ve been thinking about the relationship between a beekeeper and their bees. Although this book is mostly about an aging detective trying to uncover the mysteries behind a mute German boy’s missing parrot, it also focuses on the man’s connection with his bees. Lucky for us, this connection can also be fostered within city limits, it doesn’t take a lot of space to keep bees. The agricultural component of urbanism should and could include the production of honey and YBH would love to add a honey production aspect to our CSA. With a steady decline of bees, keeping a hive in town next to your vegetable garden would not only increase pollination, it would also increase biodiversity, bee populations, and your delicious honey intake! Read this NY Times article about our new brand of urban beekeepers!

NY Times article on Urban Beekeping

Well the season was slow to start and slow to end! It seemed like that killing frost may never come around, I’m thankful that it took it’s time. With only spinach, carrots, and brussel sprouts left in the ground, it feels like a successful year with an even more successful and exciting 2011 coming up! Thanks Durango for sharing your spaces and for your enthusiasm for urban farming! Just got a few new seed catalogs in the mail and I’ll be blogging throughout this winter, please subscribe for updates! If anyone is interested in donating a space or reserving a CSA please contact me through email!

photo by Kinsee Morlan

The Green LIving Expo has come and gone. We were more tired from standing and chatting at the expo than we are after a  long day of gardening. Which can only mean it was a success! We spoke with lots of people interested in Your Backyard Harvest, and exchanged many gardening tips and blunders. We give many thanks to Kristin Muraro, Carol Clark, the Sustainability Alliance of Southwest Colorado, and everyone else for helping to organize and build this expo.

My sister is wonderful about sending me articles that capture my interest. I am definitely not bias on where the articles from, because I can always tweak it to my style. She recently sent me a link to an article from Martha Stewart online. Martha Stewart has her magazine and website that is filled with DIY projects, fun recipes and, of course, home decorating tips. I am a big fan of DIY articles and, of course, gardening articles.

Recently, Martha had a slew of fun DIY gardening projects. The salad table caught our eye. A very simple design, very easy to build as well as very easy to elaborate upon. One idea that came to mind would be to add a fourth space for cleaning and mixing your greens allowing you to enjoy them immediately.

Brooke and I will be attending the Green Living Expo here in Durango, Colorado at the Country Fairgrounds, April 17th-18th. As we were thinking of ideas for our booth and the type of projects we want to be able to do for our clients, we decided the salad table would be a great display and could work for very different home environments.

Come by and check us and the salad table out at the Green Living Expo April 17th-18th. If you’re their early enough, there may be some tasty salad waiting for you.

Cheers.