My husband got the go ahead on our guerilla gardening project!  Yesterday we planted a bunch of seeds in cups to begin getting ready.  The strip of land will be getting a new fence by July 15th and then we are good to go with planting.  It’s a little late, but I think it will work out anyway.  My husband started a new blog on the project.

This week I learned about a grain and bean CSA – very cool!  Here’s what you get for about $300/year:

30lbs wheat (spring and winter hard wheat), 50lbs dried beans (10lbs White Canellini, Black Turtle, Red Kidney, Brown Boston, and Vermont Cranberry), 15lbs oats, rye, barley, and corn, and 5lbs flax and sunflower.

I’ve heard it’s sold out, but I’d really like to get on a waiting list for next year!  This would really close the loop for us to eat locally for most of the year.

Last night Pat and I saw Food, Inc. at the Kendall Square Cinema.  I loved it!  There wasn’t a lot of new information for us, but I could see how it’s a good treatment of the complexities of the food system for people who aren’t as familiar with the issues.

Pat and I talked about it for about an hour afterwards while sipping some local beer at the Cambridge Brewing Company – very fitting to do!

We both felt that it would be great to do more to exercise our consumer power to affect the system.  We could write letters to our government officials more often since our government has swung to supporting corporate interests more than the citizens.  We could try to spend a certain amount every week at the farmer’s office.  We could also keep working towards keeping processed food out of our house.   Without a doubt we’ll be encouraging friends and family to see the movie.

Early in the spring Pat had the great idea to start a garden along a strip of land with a chain link fence.  He did the right thing by trying to contact the property manager, but never heard back, despite several attempts.  We had almost given up on the idea, but we just learned that they have a new property manager, so Pat is trying again.  I’m keeping my fingers crossed!

We were back in the garden again this weekend and pulled out the following harvest (sorry for the poor photo!):

mid-June harvest

There’s a bag of lettuce, a bag of bok choy, some spinach, chard, and beet greens as well as radishes, green onions, and mint.  It was enough to fill a large grocery bag.  We also picked a couple of amazing strawberries, perfectly ripe.  Some day I’ll remember to bring the camera and take a picture of the garden.  It’s looking lovely!

We got an early start on the garden this year, starting seeds indoors and planting lettuce and spinach in March/April.  It definitely pays off, because we’ve already started harvesting beautiful baby lettuce leaves in addition to spinach and radishes.  Next week we’ll be able to bring home some bok choi.

This weekend we enjoyed all three.  The lettuce was perfect in our salads.  The spinach went into a spinach, chickpea and rice soup.  The radishes were grated into a carrot/radish salad.  Yum!  Lots of cooking this weekend and it was delicious.

Last week Pat and I went to a screening of the documentary, Fresh!, by ana Sofia joanes at Harvard.  It was an enjoyable experience in a full auditorium.  The movie discusses the industrial food system and it’s problems, but it also highlights alternative, healthy food systems represented by Joel Salatin of Polyface Farm (and of Omnivore’s Dilemma) and Will Allen of Growing Power in Milwaukee.  I especially enjoyed hearing the story of Russ Kremer, who used to be an industrial hog farmer, but after a life-threatening staph infection after being gashed by one of his hogs, he changed his farming methods to newer, sustainable ways.  These guys are all my heroes.

The best part of the evening was a panel afterwards that featured six people including the director of the film, Joel Salatin, and Will Allen.  It was fabulous to see them in the flesh and hear them answer questions live.  It was also inspirational to be in a room packed with people who are interested in all of this.  At the beginning of the panel they started by asking the audience how many people supported local agriculture and also how many people grew some of their own food.  Almost everyone raised their hands for both questions!

Spring is definitely here for our garden!  At home we have growing early seedlings for a number of plants – leeks, cauliflower, cabbage, oregano, basil, and chard.  Out in the garden we’ve sown seeds for lettuce, radishes, spinach, kale, more leeks, beets, and even more stuff that I can’t remember at the moment.  Only the lettuce is up right now.  Today Pat is sowing some more indoor seeds for some of the warm weather crops – cucumbers, for instance.

It’s exciting to imagine all that growing!

My husband has approached the managers of the property that have that bit of scrubby land on which we’d like to plant.  He presented them with a one-page proposal.  We haven’t heard back from them yet – we have our fingers crossed!  Pat’s going to check in with them on Monday.

The other day Pat proposed an idea for a bit of community gardening in our lovely town of Brookline.  There’s a strip of land, about 2 feet wide by about 200 feet long, bordered by a waist-high chain link fence on the way from our house to a nearby T-stop.  About 70 feet of the length could be a great bit of vertical garden – picture cucumber, squash, peas, tomatoes, green beans, etc. planted all along that fence.  It would look far better than the scrubby bit of ground that is currently there. We are thinking that it could be a free, gleaning garden – let people who walk along the way take what they want.  Maybe we could work with people who live in the assisted living housing next to it, or at least maybe they could donate water to the effort.

It sounds like fun.  Pat’s going to contact the management office of the complex this week to see what’s possible.