Oakland is where it’s at: Apparently our peeps in Oakland (just across the bay from us here in Menlo Park) have got the urban homesteading thing down. The New York Times says so. And we quote: In Oakland, where backyard menageries and D.I.Y. charcuterie are the new garage band, the term “urban homesteading” doesn’t need an explanation. “It fits into [...]
Monthly Archives: July 2009
Hops 101
While team beer contemplates what style of brew to produce for the next One Block Feast, we are anxiously following the development of our hops that we planted last year. As we expected, the first year we achieved very little hop production but an abundance of plant growth. This year is quite a different story. There are plenty of hop [...]
Up close and personal with Africanized Honey Bees
I’m no stranger to Africanized honeybees.A few years ago my dad was attacked in Tucson while watering the plants in our backyard. Even after he frantically ran inside, more than thirty bees followed him, and my entire family had to swat for nearly ten minutes to get rid of them. He was stung more than thirty times. The year before [...]
Please don’t die before I cook you.
If there was ever a moment of ill-preparedness, this was it. Johanna Silver, test garden coordinator-extraordinaire, told me that I needed to cook the escargots TODAY, because they were on the verge of kicking the snail bucket, so to speak. The timing couldn’t have been worse. I was up to my elbows in recipe testing for the magazine and I [...]
