Ashby Community Garden

Winter gardening

2012-01-08T19:46:00.000-08:00

The last Granny Smith on the tree in the slanted winter light I picked last month. Now I'm getting ready to manure and mulch all the fruit trees in the garden (11 in all). Most are pretty small, and only this apple tree and one of the cherries actually produce fruit, but they all made gains in growth due to our efforts to add compost around the base of each tree at least a few times each year. The apples made great pie. The cherries were deliciously sour and refreshing. We added another cherry to try to increase production through cross pollination. Here's to fruit, flowers for the bees, and the hopeful legacy of abundance to come, from our efforts in an empty lot on a busy street.

Reflections on Keeping Chickens

2011-11-06T07:50:00.000-08:00

Chickens will always have a "pecking order" and that's where the common phrase comes from--usually one chicken is dominant, and at least one is at the bottom. This isn't a problem, just part of having chickens. Usually the dominant one or ones are the older ones, and they claim the first dibs to food, etc. The others are "pecked" aside, and accept the hierarchy. They may get some benefits from the more dominant chickens by being led to tastier food sources, or being alerted to or protected from danger (my sense is the dominant ones are more intelligent, or at least more experienced).

Recently we sold two of our four chickens because the flock had developed a disturbing behavior--the dominant chicken was agressively plucking feathers from the others and particularly the one on the "bottom." Feather pecking can be fatal--chickens are attracted to blood, and if they peck another to the point of bleeding they won't stop. Luckily it didn't get to that point, but the other chickens didn't look good--bald patches on the necks, and a bald behind and back feathers all cropped on the one.

Our flock was a mixture of breeds and ages, and perhaps this contributed to the problem. We had a Rhode Island Red named Rita, and a Barred Rock named Thelma and two Black Australorps. The first two are 18 months old, and the Australorps are 15 months. I chose these breeds because they are supposedly good layers, dual purpose for meat if we wanted to go that way, (or later sell them when they no longer lay consistently) and the Barred Rocks because they are cold hardy and defend themselves against predators. Having raised them since 12 weeks of age, I now also know that the Australorps tend to be shy and don't relate to humans much, and the other two breeds have more personality. Not surprisingly, Rita, the Rhodie, was the dominant one--Rhodies tend to be aggressive as a breed. Thelma, the Rock, had the most personality, was the most curious about human activities, and was probably the most intelligent.

We suspected mites at first, but "rooster booster" (a sticky brown goop that contains pine tar) applied several times a week didn't work. Then we separated Rita from the others for two weeks (minus a few days when she was inadvertently reunited). When I reintroduced her, I witnessed the agressive plucking behavior, and that she ate the feathers.

Now I've read that feather pecking can be diet related--specifically a need for more protein. They do "free range" in a small yard during the day, and scratch and eat bugs and worms. But it could be that there are less bugs than they need, since they have consistently grazed in this yard for over a year (previously grazed for several years by other chickens) and the yard is maybe 600 square feet. We have added wood chips and straw to the ground, which helps the worm population, but maybe not enough. And both Rita and Thelma (but especially Rita) have laid almost an egg a day since January first, which is a lot of output! (And no lights on them, either). We feed them really good, expensive if purchased in the city, organic feed pellets that are supposed to have everything they need, so at first I dismissed the diet issue out of hand. We also give them fresh greens from the garden.

I don't regret the decision to sell them although I felt terrible about it for a few days. There are six of us who feed them; none of us live on the property where they are kept; everyone seems to have their own style of caring for them, and they don't get fed at the same time every day. In retrospect, I know I could have done better by them. I could have made sure they had "rooster booster" applied every day, for example. I could have fed them a high protein supplement like yogurt.

It is disturbing to witness a chicken you consider a pet and have named, terrorizing another chicken. It brought up strong feelings among some of the feeders about who should be sold, bad chickens vs. good chickens, victim/perpetrator dynamics, and even feelings about relegating a chicken to a large dog crate for "solitary confinement." I myself felt like a failure as an "urban farmer", selling the best layers and the ones with the most personality. But, after all, I would have sold them in a year or two anyway, since I do want eggs, and don't have the support or space to "process" them myself. I wouldn't want to eat them anyway, having named them and considered them pets.

One person said, who cares--they're just chickens! Why all the fuss? But I have witnessed that chickens have personalities, loyalties, and feelings. They witnessed one of the flock (Louise) be killed by a raccoon. That may have been traumatizing. I saw how they reacted to Rita's reintroduction--it settled them. Thelma in particular spent a lot of time in close proximity to Rita foraging for bugs. I added the eggs Rita laid in the crate to the hen house, and twice they moved the egg to be with the others in the nest.

I also witnessed one of our former chickens, after her cohort was killed by a hawk, lose feathers, stop laying, and become lethargic. We gave her away to a friend who kept old chickens, and who had received two of the same flock previously. But the new chicken, introduced alone, never was accepted and suffered.

For this reason, I sold Rita and Thelma together. May they live a good life in their new flock.

Our new garden gate

2011-08-06T17:46:00.000-07:00

Our garden entrance has a new look! At the work day today, we pruned back the overgrown grape vines, secured the entrance with a stronger overhead arch for the vines, and added a willow branch arch design on top of the old gate. We still want folks to visit--but prefer they come when we're there! The branches were donated by Jean Wheeler of Main Street Trees in Napa.

Some other things that got done--harvesting some giant zucchinis, preparing a compost bin for the next pile, and weeding and sweeping the front.

Thanks to everyone who showed up--Nora, Carrie, Jill, Debra and children, and Ben, a UC Berkeley undergrad who just wanted to learn. We enjoyed Jill's banana cake, my blackberry pie, and some fresh basil and tomatoes from the garden.

See you all at the next work party in September, if not before.

Our Black Phoebe friend

2011-07-25T11:47:00.001-07:00

I've noticed more wild birds visiting our garden this year--this one in particular, the Black Phoebe, is a flycatcher attracted to our bees. She used to come and just perch on the fence next to the bee hive, waiting patiently and swiping a few as they entered or left the hive. I wasn't too concerned, as I figured she was culling the slow ones. And she did also eat the dead ones. In June when I photographed her, she was focused on the insects living on the flowering fennel by the greenhouse. I saw her munch a few cabbage moths (they are white, and do some damage on brassicas).
Here is another shot of her on the apple tree. I learned her identity from a UC Berkeley student, Joanna, who came to the garden to do observations a few times this past spring.
When the garden is lush, many creatures find a home here--it becomes an oasis of life in an otherwise barren paved landscape. We too need this island of beauty...

Bee Swarm

2011-07-17T14:06:00.000-07:00

On June 11th, our beehive swarmed. I went to the garden to water and feed the chickens, as usual on a Saturday, when our neighbor Nema came out of her house and called to me. "Your bees SPLIT yesterday," she said, her eyes bulging. "They were everywhere, 50 feet in the air," she gestured. "Oh," I said, "They must have swarmed." "That's it! They swarmed. I was reading about this last night. The bees will be gentle as they look for a new home. Scouts will be looking around for a new place to go. I'm an expert on bees now!" Then she pointed up into the top branch of one of the plum trees. "There they are!" I looked up, and sure enough, a large swarm of bees hung to the upper branch.

Of course, I had somewhere to go right then, but first I stopped home to call Nora and Alice, a local beekeeper and someone who had helped us before. When I arrived back at the garden at 12:30, a small crowd had gathered to watch Alice, standing on top of a 15 foot ladder, knock the bees into a box. She then took them over to an empty hive box with frames she had brought over months before, and shook them into their new home. Later, I helped Alice as she deconstructed our old hive, pictured above as it looked in late June. The hive had been living in several boxes without frames, so the comb, honey, brood, and bees were in a very "natural" and difficult to manage state--pretty much it looked like chaos in there. Alice patiently cut the comb, put honey comb in a bucket, and reconstructed pieces of comb into empty frames, with rubber bands to hold them in place until the bees could secure them.

We got three bottles of honey from Alice, some of which we enjoyed at the last work day.

Ashby Community Garden Website

2011-03-15T17:19:00.000-07:00

The Ashby Community Garden also has a website for more static information on the garden, as well as an events calendar and members list.
The website is hosted on Webs.com.
The url is: http://ashbycommunitygarden.webs.com

Chicken salad bar

2011-03-06T17:01:00.000-08:00

Here are the girls chowing down on collard greens I'm holding. They're just like little dogs--begging for scraps, and eating out of our hands. They must crave the calcium since they're laying every day now.

Our laying chickens

2011-02-26T15:01:00.000-08:00

The newest layers

Thelma and Louise hoping for a handout

Rita in the nesting box

We have five chickens at the Ashby garden. There are two Barred Rocks and a Rhode Island Red who reached maturity (6 months) and started laying New Year's day. The Barred Rocks are a breed developed in Plymouth Massachussetts. They are cold hardy, defend themselves well, and have engaging personalities. Katy named them Thelma and Louise. Jill named the Rhodie after Rita Hayworth to bring up her self esteem since she seemed a bit shy at first. That's over now--Rita is the first one to fly up and perch on the can when we come to feed her. Her feathers are lovely shades of reddish brown and black.

The babies of the flock are two Black Australorps, a breed developed in Australia from Black Orpington stock. They're a few months younger than the other three. We got these chickens because I had read that they are excellent layers--almost as heavy as Leghorns. They tend to be shy--I don't know if it's the breed, or just these two. The other three boss them around and peck at them, so they stick together. Just today I noticed a small cold egg (it was a cold night) in the back of the coop where they tend to hide out. I made them their own nesting box out of a blue milk crate, so they wouldn't have to fight their big sisters, or lay eggs on the cold ground. We'll see if they use it.

Chickens are fun to keep, and pretty easy if you have a coop that keeps out the predators. They do cost money to feed, but we try to supplement their feed with sprouted grains, old bread, kitchen scraps and collard or cabbage greens. If you hold a collard leaf in your hand, they'll come and break off pieces of it. And, their poop is excellent to add to the compost pile.

Work day photos

2011-02-07T22:16:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Bonnie for organizing the Build On day. Several garden members attended, or helped with prep in advance. Here's Nora weeding, "Thelma" the chicken checking us out from atop the greenhouse, and Jill's healthy fava beans.

Build On Work Day

2011-02-07T21:32:00.000-08:00

This past Saturday February 5th we had an awesome work day with high school volunteers from Build On organization. We accomplished many things with their help--the blackberry was chopped into submission, the paths got mulched to reduce the weeds, a large bin was cleared and prepared for a new compost pile, the compost pile was started, with layers of material we chopped and added, two new sawhorses were built, the paths got weeded, and the fruit trees received some tlc in the form of finished compost. Here's Laura clearing blackberry roots from the new compost bin.

Here Serena, Asha, and Deveny survey their work on the blackberry.

Here Robby and Alyssa mulch the paths.

Way to go, Build On!

2010 update

2010-12-22T11:34:00.000-08:00

So much has happened in the garden since June. We've had several great work days, a bee keeping class taught by Charles and a soil class taught by Ellen, lost chickens and gained chickens. Dennis and Katy built a roof for the chicken coop and the toolshed, and a new fence and gate for the chicken yard, and made pizza in our cob oven. The Berkeley Project Day revamped the rainwater catchment system, and cleared a lot of river cane and blackberry. A UC Berkeley intern, Daniel Gumbiner, worked with Ellen and Jill 3 hours a week in the garden all Fall. Angie and Kaya decided to move on, and we welcomed Jeff and Beth to the garden.

Bonnie made a website for the garden, and we partnered with Slow Food of Berkeley to do a garden work day, and Victory Garden Foundation to get some new tools.

It's been a great year, and we look forward to 2011. We're going to offer more classes, and continue to improve our soil onsite, so as to increase the yield and variety we can grow, and demonstrate to others interested how this can be done in your yard at home. We welcome visitors when members are present--hours vary.

refreshing the chicken flock

2010-06-29T14:14:00.000-07:00

This past week the chicken flock received two new chickens. Two of the older chickens moved on to a new home with a friend in Ocean Beach, and two new poulets joined the flock. It's common for farmers to refresh their flock of chickens every few years--usually the older chickens end up in the soup pot!

Our girls retired in style. Here are some images of them, in the crate, feeling a little nervous, and then getting over their fears at the sight of their lush new home. The salad bar was apparently tasty.

Later, Lucia and Lucy came to check out the coop which will be their new home. They've got some growing to do, to catch up to the size of their big sisters. We'll be keeping them in the coop probably the first few weeks until they know where they are. Welcome, little ones!

2010-06-12T08:14:00.000-07:00

Sarah and I talked about planting an imaginary garden when i saw her last week in a dreamed up place..I have the vegetables and she grows the flowers.

So, I begin with Milpa,the Three Sisters…In this garden,the soil is deep and rich and brown and loamy from years of attentive gardeners who have enriched it adding layers of nutrients…I sit and dig my hands in it, its warmth, its life, its smell. it’s good enough to eat. It’s like holding life in your hands. It’s what we all become. I think about Sarah years ago at an ecology camp in the southern California desert singing a song about about how dirt made her lunch, her dinner and her brunch. I think about her planting a garden in the front yard of her West Oakland apt with friends helping doing the double digging method.

So, we begin. I want the corn to grow in a half moon shape, pointing down, no straight rows, with 12 stalks in the back arc, then 10, then 8. It will be Zapatista corn from Chiapas. I will build up mounds and flatten the tops like mesas with a kind of scooped up place on the top. Then 2 or 3 corn kernels go there pushed in with a finger. I use my hands so i can feel the dirt and see the seeds disappear into the earth. On the sides of the mounds, I plant beans, some scarlett runners for their beauty and some snappy greens and french greens, 4 seed around each corn and these will grow and twirl around the stalks and the stalks will hold them up perfectly. On the ground around the stalks I plant squash, different kinds; zucchini, summer, blossom to cover the ground around the corn and beans, keep in the moisture and keep out the weeds. In a matter of weeks, the Three Sisters grow together, all caretaking one another, like Sarah, Shane and Josh are, a food jungle yielding and yielding. And we will look forward to zucchini bread and fritters and bean salad and corn, corn, corn. The sun warms my back and I scoop water from a barrel of rainwater and give each seed its first drink. They start to grow—free.

2010-06-12T08:10:00.000-07:00

i have embarked on the next step of planning and planting in our imaginary garden. the lettuces! so, i see the lettuces sprouting up practically overnight,new and soft green and red hues. they love the water we give them and push their roots down to soak it up and begin their complex communication with the soil and its inhabitants,the mycelium,the microorganisms,the minerals,the higher forms of bugs. i love to touch their leaves,their edible,colorful and nutrient packed beauty. i have chosen different levels to plant them according to the ability and desire of those who would garden. some grown direct from the ground for those who love to get down and dirty,feeling the ground supportive and energetic beneath. some i plant in sit-down beds for those whose desire to mix it up with the soil may be inhibited by their limitations to crouch or kneel or squat. some i plant even higher up,like a stand-up counter bed for those who want to stand and stare and dance and move around their greenness..to each their own.i plant the old stand-by's and pore over the newly shipped packages of exotica:baby oakleaf;australian yellowleaf;bronze arrowhead;flame;gold rush;grandpa admire's; lolla rossa; mascara;red coral;red leprechaun;red velvet;rouge d'hiver; tango;webb'wonderful and tenderly drop the seeds side by side in shallow grooves etched out with my hands. i think of ruth stout and her lazy woman methods and feel my efforts need not be too strict or regimented but labors of love and hope and joy in the process. i am aware as the sun sinks lower of the robins lining up on the wires; the hummingbirds last dip at dusk; the chickens murmuring content and sleepy on their roosts;the light changing to a perfect hue and the breathe of the world slowing as the seeds settle down in the soil and begin the incredible process of growing,opening,yearning as we all do

2009-09-25T20:28:00.000-07:00

sept 25,2009--you'll know i miss the garden but i am busy every minute trying to get my own little sprout home safe and sound.. see you at the work party on sunday,the 27th.. love nora

Harvesting seeds in the garden

2009-08-28T14:31:00.000-07:00

Beautiful red amaranth plants are blooming in the garden--I just learned there are seed varieties and leaf varieties, which explains the different sizes. The seed varieties are the taller plants, which haven't yet set seed. The seeds can be apparently eaten like a cooked cereal. Most likely, people mix it with other grains, since the seeds are so small! Another reason to eat it with other grains is it provides a complete protein that way. A culinary adventure I'd like to try sometime...

The sunflowers did produce seed--here are two heads the squirrels didn't get. I roasted them, but the flavor was not good--too dry. Fed most of it to the chickens, who gobbled them down. There are more seeds to harvest, if anyone wants to try their hand at roasting them, or collecting seed for next year.

Summer Bounty

2009-08-09T23:33:00.000-07:00

Some pics of the garden.

Canning Plums

2009-07-15T22:30:00.000-07:00

Like Nora mentioned below, the plum canning process was in fact a storm! Nora, Karen, Bonnie, Ellen, Masina, and I (Chris) began at 4 pm on Monday afternoon and didn't leave Masina's plum splattered kitchen crime scene til about 10 that night! 6 hours of canning madness! From it all we made "Santa Rosa Plum Jam" from Bonnie's wonderful Santa Rosa plums, then plum jelly and "Plum Tuckered Chutney" from our bountiful yellow garden plums. Masina and I started jars of plum vinegar from the pits and scraps, and I packed up some to-go bags of pitted plums for freezer storage. As you can imagine, the whole wild plum affair left us all plum-tuckered out. See the beautiful pics above and below...

plum crazy

2009-07-10T21:50:00.000-07:00

the quiet before the storm- the storm being putting up some of the plums,canning,making some wine of them, whatever you can make with plums...we'll be picking plums for all this making on sunday if you'll wanna join.. on all other fronts ,things are greening alnd growing and we're still planting as if our lives depended on it.. hum?? nora

vegetables emerging

2009-06-24T19:42:00.000-07:00

can't thank casey enough for the topbar beehive hive. it used to be just a sketch on paper and now its real... bring on the bees,we've got a vacancy..and thanks to charles and magi for hauling away unnecessaries, there will be less and less of those when we're done. its looks like we are going to have buckets of tomatoes, and squash and beans and various and sundry other green things and the plums are pluming up .. who wants to make jam,or wine? tomorrow, compost day from the city at 10.30. come and shovel the sh** with us...we're open for a use for the grapes and the blackberries too.. its coming at us, fast and furious... chris, all that greenhouse fussing is paying off and sun and the chickens are both gestating beautifully...thanks to masina and truck for debris decreasing and some clapping for ellen for planting things new and mysterious, luffa? asparagus? and david's art is using the breeze and daniel, well we know you're there daniel...we have been asked to help organize work parties in our immediate environs, like a neighbor who wants to start a garden but needs a jump start or building a raised bed in someone's front yard for a victory garden or ? perhaps a meeting soon to see who is down with being part of such... nora

bombs away

2009-06-03T19:50:00.000-07:00

that lifted my spirits up...so much growing in the garden...we all have our own gifts at the garden... nora

old pics from the garden

2009-06-03T19:37:00.000-07:00

boy how time flys!

my family and i have only been involved with the garden for a bout a year and a half but we've seen so much change and so much develop here,and with our selves, it is truly amazing how mother nature breaks herself down and then regenerates enough to give to and nurture us all...

every action and creation in the garden starts with a seed figuratively and literally and i enjoy planting them and watching them grow

click on copper sun profile to the left scroll to the bottom and take a look at some of the old pics of our family working and enjoying the garden in my blog
family gardening in ashby community garden, and there will be more to come

"BOMBS AWAY"MUSIC VIDEO FILMED IN ASHBY GARDEN

2009-06-03T16:46:00.000-07:00

Ashby Garden has Sprung!

2009-06-01T12:29:00.000-07:00

Most of the garden is planted, the pile of branch debris near the Blackberry bramble is almost entirely hauled away (thanks to Masina, Nora, David), the broody chicken is finally, after nearly a month, off her eggs, and it has been gray and overcast for nearly a week. That means our Bay Area Spring is really here! The green house is also overflowing with tomatoes and if anyone wants some plants for their backyard and/or container garden at home please come by next Sunday and take some. They are an unlabeled mystery grab-bag of red and yellow cherry, tomatillos, and others.

I planted some seeds yesterday from my handy planting list (courtesy of the invaluable Golden Gate Gardening book). And if you don't want to pay $102 for a used copy on Amazon (what!?), I'll give you a short list of what seeds you should be planting in June:

Broccoli
Beets
Brussels Sprouts
Cauliflower
Cabbage
Kohlrabi
Lettuce
Celeraic

And, just to make you weep with joy, a baby Sugar Pie Pumpkin...

For more pictures click HERE!

2009-05-16T12:30:00.000-07:00

the plan is to show the dvd: getting started in beekeeping with the tophive beehive real soon-i will keep you'll informed as to when and where... blurb says: our primary focus is on improving bee ecology and beekeeping methods that respect the honeybee-our hope is that by introducing new hobby beekeepers to the rewards of beekeeping that there will eventually be backyard beekeepers world wide that will help bring back athe feral bee population aldn improbe the genetic diversity of the honeybee.

2009-05-11T11:15:00.000-07:00

garden day-david's art brings color,movement;the powderpuff girls moved in,one had a humpty dumpty moment but back together again by susan;chris started a new isolceles bed and caged stuff with green vinyl ;charles got a super for beehive,its 4 stories now ,very urban and what a story inside;we dug up a 8 foot weed we were ignoring and created a new patch of sunlight;messina planted the little apple tree near the front fence;we kicked around the possibility of new name for the garden something combining laid back and kick ass(more later);aisha brought christopher and azaria by and they planted some seeds and hung out;leah came by and gave us stuff from their house which will sadly soon be history;we took eggs from under the chicken who stubbornly refuses on being broody..oh,ponderous life.

Kick Fard Harm

2009-05-10T22:58:00.000-07:00

Happy Mother's Day! What a great gardening day, the Ashby Community Garden was bustling with activity and inspiration. I pulled weeds, "potted-up" (transplanted into bigger pots) some tomato and tomatillo starts in the green house, expanded the small triangular plot by the bench, then made some tomato cages out of plastic fencing to support the tomatoes planted in the new bigger plot (see below). Star, Nora, David, and I, in a moment of exhaustion and delirium, also came up with some ideas for a new garden name (an example of one of the more confusing ones inspired the title of this post).

Star and Nora dug up what we all thought was a giant Swiss Chard, but turned out to look more like a radioactive mutant beet. We were all quite awe-stricken by the huge root which tasted and bled like a conventional red beet.

There's still so much work to do to ensure a bountiful Summer and Fall harvest, but the energy of the garden/ers is so high right now I have no doubt we can all pull it off! For a constantly updated album of Ashby Garden pictures, see my photo album on Flickr.

Exciting New Book!

2009-05-09T11:18:00.000-07:00

Found my new favorite DIY reference guide at my new favorite magazine store, Issues, in Oakland. The handwritten and drawn 124 page book is divided into 3 sections, first aid, home and body beautification, and basic gardening. It contains the simplest, most nonjudgmental recipes for all manner of physical, emotional wellness and wellbeing, using easy to access or grow ingredients. The newish niche market for non-toxic cleaning agents can be expensive, confusing, not to mention deceptive, but the simple recipes in this book (most with cheap, friendly, and familiar products like castile soap, baking soda, and tea tree oil) will put the intention of a non-toxic body and home back in your own dirty finger-nailed (but naturally moisturized) hands.

what's up at the garden

2009-05-07T12:01:00.000-07:00

so this is what's up..we are going to build a topbar hive and start a new hive at the garden..perhaps as soon as sunday, thanks to a donation from a local communal house....we planted a bigger variety of stuff than we usually do this year and hope to share the harvest with the neighborhood...the chicken coop has new art suited to their temperments...