Life in Cleveland

Summer has been filled with lots of growth. Personal growth, well, that's questionable! But there's no doubt we've been a part of growing the most food we ever have before. From helping neighbors grow food, to helping at our community garden, to working in our own backyard, to going to my job everyday, we've seen the miracle of food up close and personal.

Lynea just started her new job teaching 3 year olds at a school that's just right down the road from us. We're happy to both be able to walk to work.

Then: The first day we planted with the youth at our community garden.

Now: The garden is thriving now!

This was just a normal day of harvesting at the community garden: varieties of lettuce, tons of tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots, radishes, and herbs.

Harvesting rainbow carrots at my job site, the city farm.

Purple beauty sweet peppers!

Lynea recently surprised me with a trip to West Virginia for Labor Day weekend. We went rock climbing and white water rafting 

Sister?

We repelled off this cliff. Our guide was telling Lynea to "please back up!"

A little nap at this view.

Our rafting partners.

Another harvest.

Our backyard chickens getting some free range time.

We've been getting 2 eggs a day!

Potato harvest at work.

Summer

Here's a few things we've been up to lately:

Weekend with friends at a cabin in the woods.

It was the same place we went to on our honeymoon, only this time I had a toupee.

Wild Chanterelle mushrooms (and a chicken of the woods)! It was gratifying to go by the store afterwards and see them being sold for $12/pound.

Chanterelle and egg breakfast

 

Blueberry pickin' with Lynea's dad.

 I know I look funny, but the mosquitoes were that bad!

Harvesting Garlic

We harvested about 8,000 garlic last week at my job.

“My final, considered judgment is that the hardy bulb [garlic] blesses and ennobles everything it touches - with the possible exception of ice cream and pie.”
Angelo Pellegrini, 'The Unprejudiced Palate' (1948)

Before and After

Summer is in full gear. Check out the before and after.

Carrots

Carrots. It all started with carrots. While we were teaching in India, one of my 9^th grade students came over and helped me plant carrots. I don’t remember why I was inspired to do so. Maybe it was because I had yard for the first time and some primal instinct told me I should have a garden. So we planted carrots. About three months later, I figured I should pull some of the carrot tops out of the ground. And much too my delight and fascination, the tops were attached to the most beautiful carrots I had ever seen, breaking up through the top layer of soil. It was magic. I threw seeds out on the ground and the tiny seeds had tapped into some sort of energy that turned them into huge, orange carrots. Miracle.

With one of my carrots back in 2009.

Fast forward a few years. I’ve had a couple years of farming experience under my belt and now have a new job (!) with Cleveland Crops. I work only a few blocks from where we live, and if you know where that is you’re probably surprised that there is a farm around. It’s an urban farm, close enough to ride my bike to everyday. One of the crops we have growing is carrots. Sometimes when I look at them, I remember how this farming journey began with carrots not so long ago. I’m once again excited to pull them out of the ground when they’re ready. I’m pretty sure that the wonder and fascination will still be there, even though I’m getting paid to do it now.

Carrot tops growing taller

A new site at my job that we're going to plant on.

Picked these zucchini the other day at our city farm.

Bees in every flower. That's a good thing. There's a striped zucchini growing underneath it.

Cleveland Backyard Chickens and Upstairs Worms

Having chickens and worms (not the stomach kind) has been one of our ambitions since we moved back to Cleveland, and one that I think will be a lifelong habit. It all came together in time for summer, and now we have both. Thanks to Lynea's dad telling us about the pallets and wood containers they throw out at his shop, we've got a worm bin and a chicken coop, mostly out of free, used materials. I had to buy the chicken wire and latches.

Here's a bit of the process:

The basic frame

Laying box to go in the coop

The almost finished product with our yet to be named hens. The top box will be a flower bed.

First egg!

Lynea did an amazing job with the garden beds!

Thanks to our friend Jeremy for gifting us with 2 Golden Buff hens. Our life with chickens in Cleveland has begun. I read that this breed is mostly quiet, and hence, good for city life. They've only been loud so far when a squirrel came close, but then they calmed down. In an effort to gain our neighbor's blessing, I gave her the first egg. Let's hope they stay chill.

Our worm bin is sitting in our dining room for now. I took this used container that was getting thrown out at my father-in-law's shop, drilled a few holes on each side and stapled some window screening over the holes. Lynea ripped up tons of newspaper for the bedding. Then we added a bit of soil, wet it all down, and put in 2,000 red wiggler worms that we ordered online. We've been burying our kitchen scraps and the worms have been been going at it, converting the organic material into rich, earthy-smelling humus (not hummus). Or another way of saying it is, "they eat and poop." Their poop (or worm casting) is like black gold fertilizer for the garden.

Fresh Camp Part II

This summer we're teaming up with Dee Jay Doc to help maximize his Fresh Camp. If you were reading our blog last year, you know that we collaborated with the students, sharing some fresh things we were learning in Panama, while they shared some fresh things going on in Cleveland (check it out here).

I'm on the screen holding a chicken!

This year, we're actually back in Cleveland and getting involved in a bigger way. We'll be teaching and training students to grow their own fresh food in our local community garden!

Doc has been crafting this kind of youth work steadily for 15 years and the Fresh Camp is the culmination of his life's work and experiences. You can browse the indiegogo campaign to find out what's going on. If you regularly donate money to a church or other organizations, consider supporting us this month. We're trying to raise $6,000 in 40 days. 


Please consider sharing this with anyone you think would be interested in promoting the Fresh Camp to their friends through email, facebook, or networking.

Here's summary of what it's about:

At The FRESH Camp students explore what's FRESH in our neighborhood by visiting people and places where transformation is happening, such as, urban gardens. They look for FRESH ideas and learn how to grow fresh food. By critically thinking about what makes our neighborhood unique, they create their own vision for our community.

Professional artists-in-residence help youth use a music style they enjoy, hip-hop, to craft their message into song. They make beats in Beatmaker 2 on the Ipad, write lyrics, and record professionally. Then it's time to hit the streets with their message by rocking live performances and spreading their music through out Cleveland.

- Listen to the song from the 2011 pilot camp.

- Listen to the 6-song EP from last year's FRESH Camp.

- Read a write up from Fresh Water Cleveland.

- Read a write up from Cool Cleveland.

- Watch a TV broadcast from Neotropolis on PBS.

Youth grow in confidence, creativity, collaboration, and community action.
They learn digital music composition, persuasive lyric writing, performance, promotion and hard work.