Bees
OKAY, FOR OUR FIRST FORAY into urban agriculture, we wrote Backyard Farming, a blog about vegetable gardens and fruit trees. For those interested in kicking it up a notch, we brought you Backyard Chickens, a blog about raising birds right outside your house. I imagine that we’re already treading on weird and wacky territory here when we start talking about food-producing animals. You may know a couple people in the neighbourhood that take care of a vegetable patch, but you probably aren’t aware of anyone that’s providing a happy home for chickens and turkeys, ducks and geese. So I don’t actually expect anyone out there to take me up on what I’m going to talk about next. But in the event that you’ve already aced Homesteading 101 and you’re past the intermediate class, then we’ve got to give you something to shoot for: an entire menagerie of livestock, fauna of the land, sea, and air!
TWO DAYS AGO, I promised you a blog about clover lawns as an alternative to grass. Then I took you time-travelling into history to understand the back-story. In Part I, Clover the Hills and Far Away, and Part II, Clover and Over Again, I explained how the artistic imagination of the Middle Ages triggered a new paradigm for gardening during the Renaissance. You’ve got to know where you’re coming from, if you want to figure out where you’re going, right? So now in Part III, Clover and Out, I will talk about how this new paradigm has perverted our senses of space and society, our relationships with nature and culture, and left us with a chemical legacy of lifeless monoculture. And finally, I won’t only talk about the problem, but I’ll suggest some possible solutions. So, one more time, what’s wrong with our good friend green grass, and why would we want to examine any alternatives?
