[I can't figure out how to get pictures up here.]
We are doing well here in Zomba, with our permaculture education and research institute/li'l house in the ghetto. Don hooked up a rain barrel last night, and it works! We have a few more barrels, hoses, and concrete blocks. Now to dig some swales, hook up some kind of greywater, and dig better drainage/swales for street runoff (and plant it up with toxin reducing biomass!).
We have our annual veg and herb garden planted, and it's about 1000 sf this year. And we're a month ahead of where we were in planting last year, and made the garden twice as big. We also planted blueberries, elderberries, chestnuts and hazels this year. On our 1/4 urban acre, we have focused on planting edible landscaping, vertically as well as horizontally. We have planted fruit trees and patches, and now have (in addition to what is already listed): peaches, mulberries, pears, apples, rhubarb, cherries, plums, strawberries, raspberries, black raspberries, blackberries, currants, and grapes.
We're slowly taking patches of lawn and putting in flowers and all these yum edibles and helpful herbs. I entered the Springfield In Bloom contest this year, not in hopes of winning, but in hopes of getting edible landscaping into the realm of possibilities. (We usually can't keep it mowed to American Expectations, so I am not worried about winning a contest.)
We have a good lineup of topics with Food Not Lawns Springfield this summer: eating locally, diy urban homesteading, soils and compost, intro to permaculture, and our beyond sustainability forum this fall. I'm also working with a church down the street, helping to plant their food pantry garden. I'm also involved in the local foods task force, which is slowly but surely getting it together.
Don has been researching chickens, and seeing how feasible it is for us to have them here. We've started on the backyard chicken campaign to re-legalize urban livestock.
So, we've been busy, and happily not very employed this spring. It works out well.
carey
Urban Renewal Think Tank
Brainstorming community revitalization through urban farming, bioremediation, and DIY infrastructure.