Garden Planning Workshop Sat April 11 - spaces still available

Garden Planning Workshop
Permaculture Garden Design
Sat, April 11 from 1-3 pm
Spaces still available!  Sign up here.

Take part in this early spring workshop to develop a great garden plan for yourself this year!  Using the principles of permaculture, our workshop facilitator will walk you through simple, ecological, nature-based garden design, that will create a productive, low-maintenance, beautiful garden space.  Sign up now to take part in this workshop!
Read more about permaculture gardening in this article here.
 

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New homestead projects & first Grain Share

There are so many new ideas brimming forth for our homestead as this new year unfolds - it is quite exciting to explore these new possibilities and start setting things in motion - but also a bit overwhelming.    This is of course the time for seed orders and garden planning, and we'll post our annual Seed Planting Guide here shortly.  We are also renovating and setting up that barn into production once again...we are reorganizing our eco bed and breakfast...we will be starting to offer organic non-GMO seeds through our Little City Farm store (more on that soon)...we have homesteading classes on the go...we hope to start keeping bees this summer...

We've also been trying to streamline our food purchases as part of our homestead focus - so that everything we can't grow/sprout/preserve/make/bake ourselves is bought either through our food co-op buying club, or from local farmers.  We'd like to avoid purchases at the grocery store wherever we can so we can instead support co-ops and nearby farms, and help reduce our food budget by buying in bulk.  And today, we received our first Grain Share - one of a five-part delivery of a variety of locally grown organic and freshly milled grains we are getting as part of a share program through Cedar Down Farm.  We are hosting the local in-city pick up for people interested in this grain share idea, and today is the first day.  Our farmer arrived with a van full of brown paper bags neatly stacked, sorted and labelled.  Our daughter helped to carry all the bags in eagerly, and then peeked into what our family had received.  Today's delivery included hard wheat, rolled oats, rye (5 lbs each, all freshly milled), and 2 lbs of black beans - all grown at the farm.  Cedar Down Farm is just over an hour away from here, and we are so happy to be supporting these local farmers and their new initiative.  We promptly made a huge batch of granola, and have bread dough rising (can't wait to see how the freshly milled flour works), and are anticipating next month's delivery surprises!

Online garden & urban farming resources

Here is a handy online garden planner suggested by one of our readers! They offer a free trial, and then it does cost about $25 to subscribe - but it looks like it's very useful and worth it if you want a handy online planting guide, reminder emails about when to plant each vegetable and herb, garden planning tools, crop rotation lists, planning ahead for next year, etc.  For those who like to do their garden planning in an organized manner on the computer, this looks like a great tool for you.  Go to: Grow Veg

While we're talking about online garden resources (garden planners, gardening forums, permaculture information, urban agriculture articles, organic standards information...) here are a few more.

Garden Web 
You Grow Girl 
Permaculture Activist 
Urban Farm Online 
Canadian Organic Growers 
City Farmer's Urban Agriculture Notes
Path to Freedom