Growth is a double edged sword. Unchecked, growth can be cancerous and destructive. It is this type of ceaseless expansion that has put our society into the precarious environmental and financial positions in which we currently find ourselves. On the other hand, growth can be regenerative and life-giving. Following a forest fire or a bitter winter, the first green shoots to emerge from the earth bear witness to the earth's ability to restore life in the wake of disaster.

My goal for this blog is pretty simple and open-ended: I want to document and share with family and friends my efforts to incorporate an ever increasing degree of self sufficiency, voluntary simplicity, and environmentally-conscious design into my life as a would be urban homesteader.

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

New Growth in the New Year

Fun at home on Christmas Break

The Christmas/New Year's holiday rush is finally over, and now we can settle back down into the routines of regular life. I'll do a bigger post in the next few days looking back at what happened around the 'Burbstead in 2011, and what I'd like to see happen in 2012. For now, a quick update about a few random odds & ends.


Hoop House:
I got the hoop house covered with the salvaged plastic a while back. I knew that it wouldn't last more than one season, and the fact that the weather here has been remarkably mild up until this past week was certainly helping things. Since New Year's, the temps have been getting down in the 30's (which by itself isn't a big deal), and they've been accompanied by 40+ mph winds. That's started to test the strength of the plastic. I've repaired a number of small tears and holes. Yesterday I found a large opening in the back wall. I'm trying to keep in mind that this is an experiment and that we often learn more from failures than quick success, nevertheless, it's frustrating to have to continually break out the transparent duct tape. The plants have taken it all in stride thus far. I've pulled a ton of radishes, lettuce, and other greens out. The carrots and turnips are looking good, and I'm curious to see when the spinach that I planted in November will start to take off.

Swiss Chard, Black Seeded Simpson and Winter Density Lettuce, Beet and Turnip greens fresh from the Hoop House.

Cool Christmas Gifts
I had the good fortune of receiving a number of awesome Christmas presents this year. I'm not the sort of person who needs a lot of material things to be happy, but it's still nice to get some things that I probably wouldn't have bought for myself. A few of the "Burbstead related things I got were:

Food Mill with 3 different sized sieves.


A couple of books that I'm looking forward to reading


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1 comment:

  1. -Rob, Simple Circle StudiosJanuary 4, 2012 at 6:44 AM

    First, that is the dirtiest snowman I have ever seen. That is like a Bart Simpson stole a video game snowman.
    Second, let me know how that food mill works. I bought an old one at a garage sale but it doesn't work worth a shit. Either that or I wasn't using it right.

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