Thursday, April 2, 2009

Let's Start at the Beginning

If you told me three months ago that I'd be living in a an inner-city mansion raising chickens and becoming a "Certified Master Composter" I'd have thought you were hitting the sauce a bit hard but here I am. It's amazing what crazy twists can come from listening to what God has in store for you and then having the guts to let go of your raft.

The purpose of this blog is to record the process of creating a homestead in the city. So here's where we begin:

My family and I moved from the suburbs into an eight bedroom home in the city to do life with several others. While there are challenges associated with joining very independent lives under the same roof we are becoming a family of choice. Somewhere along the way we got the idea of raising chickens (I still can't remember how that one happened) and on March 22 we rather impulsively picked up our 6 "baby kiks" as our 2-year-old has taken to calling them. Now they are 2 weeks old and getting kind of fowl-like and it has me thinking that maybe we should have done some reading before committing to chickenhood. But regrets are pointless so I suppose we should just get used to the idea of being the neighborhood weirdos. On top of the mansion and the chickens I've gone head deep into organic gardening. The good people at Cincinnati's Civic Garden Center are probably sick of seeing me and I've only lived in town for 2 months. I've logged enough hours learning about compost to certify me as a "Master Composter". What is happening to my predictable little world that used to revolve around snacktime, playdates and trips to the park? Now my time is devoted to poop and worms. To make matters even more ridiculous we've started a square foot garden. Now, the square foot garden thing isn't all that strange but considering the recommended starting point for a beginner is 48 sq ft our 240 is rather lofty. The plan is to grow pumpkins and muskmelons 6 feet in the air. Our upper crust neighbors aren't going to know what to think. Most of the time I barely know what to think!

Thanks for checking me out. Welcome to my world.

4 comments:

  1. Yay!! Heidi!! Welcome to the blogsphere. Watch it, with a great voice like yours, you're going to be hooked really, really soon!

    Hey, don't worry about being the weirdos. Being the child of a couple of hippies, I can tell you its not really that big of a deal. I mean, look at how wonderful I turned out. Right? ;)

    ReplyDelete
  2. I think what you are doing is great. My mom has chickens so if you run into a problem call me. She knows a lot. Also we are moving in June when the kids finish school. We have a sale pending on our house.

    Looking forward to reading more of your bog.

    ReplyDelete