Guest Post – Defending Your Flock from the HOA

With chickens becoming more and more popular some people are running into problems with their HOA bylaws. Most of the time the problems stem from lack of knowledge about chickens that is spread through misinformation. Chickens are not any noisier, stinkier, or more likely to spread disease than the family dog. I personally don’t live…

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Getting a Head Start on Summer with Limoncello

There isn’t quite anything like sipping on ice cold limoncello after dinner with good friends on a hot summer night. It does take time to make so you’ll need to start now to have a good batch of it ready to go for those summer nights. Limoncello used to be hard to find but is gaining in…

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A Day in the Life

Another question that came up when I asked our readers to give us their burning questions was what our daily life looked like. They wanted to know just how much work we put into running everything. Of course our days vary greatly depending on the season, what we have going on, and even the day…

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Meet Your Farmer – Sunny Slope Orchard

Our meet your farmer posts feature a small family farm that we feel exemplifies the type of food system we all need to support. They show passion and dedication to raising and growing food sustainably. This month we got the opportunity to check out this awesome 4 acre certified organic orchard in Vacaville, California called…

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Lemon Souffle Revisited – with Limes

Awhile ago I posted a Lemon Souffle recipe that I thought at the time was pretty good. But everything around here is constantly evolving, even my go-to recipes. When I was a kid my mom used to make lemon souffle as a very special treat. We didn’t get it very often, but I always remember…

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How to Install Irrigation

Here comes the real fun part about putting in irrigation. The calculations! Doing these calculations is key in determining zones, how many times you water per week and for how long. The first thing you want to do is create zones for each basic type of plant. For us we have a zone for fruit…

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Watering – Hand watering vs. Irrigation

As promised, here is a repost of my irrigation series. —————————————————————— Some of you may not even need this post because you are blessed with summer rains. This is for those of us that live in dry summer areas. I live in the classic Mediterranean Climate. Cool, wet winters and warm, dry summers. It’s very…

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How to Layout your Vegetable Garden- Part 3 of 3

Yesterday I posted our plans for this year’s garden. This was last year’s garden if you’re interested in seeing how things have changed. —————————————————————- Today we’re going to wrap up the “How to Layout….” series with Companion Planting. The premise of companion planting is to confuse pests, create symbiotic relationships, and mimic nature. Some plants…

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