A chronicle of my ongoing adventures in parenting, gardening, farming, and technology.
Friday, February 13, 2009
A new challenge
Well, after the rousing success(?) of my Easiest Challenge Ever, I'm raising the stakes. In the words of frequent Presidential candidate Pat Paulsen, "I've upped my standards. Now, up yours!"
But instead of posting it here, I'm using a more credible platform. And so, my wise and brilliant readers, please click on this link and join the fun. Spring is coming up fast. Well, unless you're in the southern hemisphere. In that case, I guess you'll need to come up with your own challenge....
Okay, I thought the stuff below was interesting, so I'm posting it both here and over at Hen & Harvest. Yes, Hen & Harvest is back to life. I'm taking on more responsibility over there - which, for those of you who know me in real life, probably seems a bit preposterous. At any rate, I'll be partnering with Shasta from Seeking Simplicity to hopefully get that ball really rolling again. You can read more about that here.
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I often walk around our yard or pastures looking at weeds and wondering what they are. Identifying plants from a book is pretty hard, and I don't have an expert handy to ID them for me.
Well now I've got the next best thing. Apparently "Green Deane" at EatTheWeeds.com has been putting these videos out for a year now, but this is the first I've heard about them. There are 63 videos and counting, all about identifying edible wild plants.
Each video covers where and when to find a given weed, which parts are edible, how to use them, if there are look-alikes, and anything else he thinks is interesting, like how they got their name or what their history is.
I'm not necessarily after a meal when I'm wandering outside, so the plant identification is the interesting part to me. But even so, it'd be pretty sweet to walk out to get the mail and come back with a salad.
The videos get better over time - I guess if you do anything 60+ times you gain some new skills - but just to get you started, here is Episode 01:
For what it's worth, his web site, while not the prettiest thing on the web, is a treasure trove of articles and information. So if you have a slow connection or you're already a plant ID expert, there's still a lot of great stuff to be had.
Sorry for the unplanned hiatus from blogging. Life overwhelmed me a little bit for a time. And after that I got busy with something new that absorbed much of my blogging energies. More to come on that mysterious hint in a post very soon.
In the meantime, I've got a couple of posts up on Hen & Harvest. Green Fatigue has been up for a bit, but I had a good time writing it. I've heard from a few people that it really struck a chord, which is always a nice kind of feedback. And just posted is Black Magic, which may be familiar to readers who have been here for a while. I put a lot of time into that one, and I hop it can reach a wider audience over at H&H.
Hmm... Green Fatigue, Black Magic. I guess it's all about the colors. What color should I tackle next? Any suggestions? Raw Umber doesn't get much love.
Baby Owen has been a busy boy. Just since my last post, he's learned to sit up, mastered the art of sitting up, cut a tooth, and is getting really close on the crawling front. He can get up on his hands and knees. He can move backwards and turn. He just hasn't found that forward gear yet.
I somehow managed to finagle my way into an All-Star cast of writers, from authors Sharon Astyk and Aaron Newton to green blogging goddess Deanna Duke (a.k.a. Crunchy Chicken), to groovy dudes like Matt Mayer, Steve Balogh, and Chris Welch, and even the visual and linguistic stylings of Shasha. (Not bad for somebody who has not yet successfully grown a single carrot. But that's a rant for another time.)
After a lot of brainstorming and hard work and virtual planks and hammers and nails, I'm excited to invite you to the grand opening of our online pub: Hen & Harvest.
We'll be serving up good old-fashioned cask-conditioned pints of gardening, low-tech tools and techniques, permaculture, and sustainability. From beginner to expert, from container gardens to acreage, from seed to pantry, from worm bins to dairy cows. We'll have some big name visitors from time to time (including my long-awaited Gene Logsdon interview) as well as plenty of locals to chat & compare notes with. And plenty of garden porn, of course.
We'll be adding more features and functionality as time goes by. And adding more contributors, so if you have a story to tell or experience to share, let Sharon know.
Meanwhile, stop by and have an imaginary pint. Heck, have a real pint if you have one on hand.
And then feel free to fill out an imaginary comment card with the link below.
