Sunday, October 27, 2013

Misty morning

A dripping misty morning at the farm, full of possibility :) my favorite.

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Hello, Grasshopper

A first in our garden! Can anyone identify this monster grasshopper? found on our (sadly crispy) grape vines, about 4 inches long!

or how about this one, sorry for the blurry pic, i think it was gray, with black stripes on its legs:


Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Before and after...

A quick taste of before (move-in May 2012) and after (summertime 2013). yep, we've been busy!



Howdy All!

Howdy All!

Welcome to Nicole and Michael’s blog - A Menagerie on the Farm!

We decided to start this blog to share with our friends and family our adventures in urban gardening in Los Angeles, California. We hope you enjoy our stories, our strategies, our recipes, and our
on-going battles with weeds!

We bought our house over a year ago, and found a large yard with nearly nothing going on. In fact, we bought it especially because of this massive yard. We had lots of weeds, two large birds of paradise (which we later hacked out), as well as a massive (and poisonous) Oliander tree (which we also hacked out). We found a large concrete slab, which we still haven’t figured out what it was for - a shed? a bomb shelter? we are takings votes :) We found an orange tree, and a beautiful yellow rose bush.

We did a lot of hacking and shoveling and digging over our first year here, spending many hours toiling away. But as always with gardening, things are never quite done!

Our goals for our garden are to maximize the amount of vegetables that we grow, so that we eat locally
and decrease our carbon foot print. We are moving towards organic vegetables, we never use pesticides or herbicides, although still **rarely** use fertilizers. One of our goals is to stop using fertilizers; we currently have 3 compost heaps which will replace our reliance on chemical fertilizers. In an effort to save money, we also want to decrease the amount of young plants that we purchase from home depot, and grow more plants from seed. Amazon and Burpee are great online sources for seed purchases! We also want to grow more heirloom plants. In addition to the veggies, we are also planting California natives, butterfly and hummingbird attractors - yay for native habitat!

Our goals for ourselves are simple: Get in shape by being more active (and eating healthier), and
get in better touch with nature.

In the future we plan to build a green house, and a hen house. Churn our soil to help break up the clay
and oxygenate future roots. Expand our veggie garden so that we have more room for gourds, squashes and zuchini. Eventually replace our water sucking lawn with California natives.

The adventure on our "Farm" (and with our menagerie of pets!) is just beginning...

We hope to see you in the future!

Mike and Nicky.