Warmer Days in East Bay
| 03 May 2010
Warmer days are here! I can finally plant tomatoes and some warm season staples like scarlet runner beans, basil, corn, winter squash, summer squash, peppers and a lot more warm season crops. This has been the most rain in 3 years and I’ve gotten word that its about 27” for Berkeley this year, with our average being 22”. With such abundant rainfall, it makes for easy weeding (and lots more than usual) and planting.
This weekend I finally got in my first early season tomatoes. I got the starts from Merritt College at the plant fair this weekend. That was a great event with lots of interesting and usual varieties of edibles, affordable prices and some great bands and food. I’ve been putting most of my energy into a garden tour that came by last weekend.
So last year I agreed to have my backyard opened for a school fundraiser for the Park Day School in Oakland, CA. On Saturday last week there were around 75 people that came to look at the garden. And on Sunday, there were over 600 people wandering around, snapping pictures and admiring the plants, the straw bale design studio and the chickens and duck and buying nursery plants. I’m sure a lot of people came away seeing the beauty and abundance of an urban homestead and were inspired to plant something they can eat.
Raising 36 baby chickens and 4 ducks has been a serious time commitment, with lots of filling and re-filling of water and food supplies for the little ones and making sure they are warm enough. I lost about 50% of the first batch of chicks possibly to some brooder pneumonia, which was a hard and trying time burying so many baby chicks. McMurray Hatcheries kindly sent me another replacement batch and I lost 3 of those in the first two days and have leveled off with no more deaths in two weeks. But that means my straw bale shed is still a brooder chamber for the little two-week old chicks and I get to use a desk in the laundry room. But I will be really appreciative around Halloween when I can get enough eggs for my family and friends and sell enough to cover the cost of feed. Then the 10 remaining 3-year old chickens will end up as soup stock. I’m also raising 6 for a friend, so I should end the year with 30 new layers, which should provide a lot of food.
