It's 4 a.m. and I'm staring at the ceiling. I cannot get my mind quiet. I had already spent about a half hour gazing at a spot above the bed thinking about how absolutely unrecognizable my life has become from what it was just a couple of years ago. Hazily my mind meandered to the progress of my book, the store, the move to start a real farm of my own. How did I get here? How did I manage to find myself in a place where people would think of me as someone worth getting advice from and spending their money to learn from? As I write, it blows my mind that anyone will read this. To be clear, I am not complaining. I'm just struggling with acceptance of it as reality.

I laid under my blankets with the warmth of cats at my feet thinking about some of the nasty things folks had been saying about me online. I haven't lost much sleep over it, but it admittedly bothers me that anyone would think that I moved here some privileged brat and that I don't deserve to be a resident of New York City. How ridiculous. I've worked myself to the point of near insanity for what little I have. I scrape by. I'm not getting rich and pricing people out. I'm fighting to keep my head above water like everyone else. When I'm broke, I work my way out of the financial hole I've dug myself. I sacrifice. No one has ever given me anything that I didn't have to hustle for.

So let me explain to the world who I am and how any of this came to pass. By "this", I mean someone like me being able to pay my way doing what I love. I don't have a college degree, I've never been thought of as accomplished, but I'm here now living the life I've wanted. I'm hoping that by explaining this, those of you out their bursting at the seams to get out of your day-to-day rut might glean some insight into how you can live authentically too. Some of you might question my motives for a blog post like this, but articulating these thoughts is as much about the process of connecting to who I am as it is about connecting with my readers. I'm just trying to figure it all out. So humor me, let me work it out here.

I'm going to take a risk and start at the beginning. I was born nearly 32 years ago in Baltimore, Maryland. My father was a troubled guy who worked at Bethlehem Steel. My mother, who had just barely graduated from high school when she had me, her oldest child, worked a couple of low paying jobs while my grandparents and aunt looked my baby sister and I. My parents had a very tumultuous relationship. Without getting into to many details, I'll just say that it was an unpleasant place for children to grow up and even more unpleasant for my mother. Things were pretty bad for the first decade of my childhood, but there were two constants in my life that always made me feel like everything would be alright: My great grandparents Myra and George and summer trips to the family farm in Virginia.

My great grandparents were both bootstrappers. They each came from humble beginnings, my grandma being raised on a farm just outside of Lynchburg, VA. She moved to Baltimore after a failed marriage with 3 kids and no savings. She was scared shitless but she made it work because she needed to. After demonstrating some serious hustle of her own, she ended up getting a fair paying job with the government. My grandfather was a plasterer with his own business. They met at a nightclub sometime in the 50's, got married and George took over fathering Myra's 3 children. He was a tough man, but fair with the kids. He liked to hunt for deer and rabbits and he loved to garden. He was hardworking and shrewd with money, even though he didn't have a great deal of it.

When things at home were at their worst, my grandparents home became a sanctuary for us. My granddad would let us play in the garden, showing us the greenhouse he built to grow african violets and tomato starts. He liked to building squirrel and bird houses and there were dozens of them in the trees around his yard. He liked watching critters go about their business and would sometimes feed the resident squirrel a chocolate kiss when he wanted to show off for us. He was a bit of a rascal and I loved him. My grandmother was rascally too. Between the two of them we got razzed a fair bit, but it was always a loving kind of teasing. My fondest memories are of staying at their place and waking to pancakes with faces made of strawberries and bacon.

When school was out for the summer, my grandmother would drive us 5 hours south to the place where she grew up. The old homeplace, nestled in a valley of the Blue Ridge Mountains, was one of the first places I remember feeling reverence for anything, or feeling a sense of awe. A sense of God. I'm not a religious woman. I never have been, but as I wandered alone on the worn paths made by the leisurely walks my uncles, aunts and cousins took often, I'd marvel at how many living things managed to exist in every square foot of soil. I was also shocked by the quiet. I'd wake panicked by the sound of a mouse crawling on the floorboards, a sound that resonated like a clap of thunder in dark quiet of my Aunt Joanne's country home. As a city kid, it was a hard thing to get used to.

(me on a recent trip to the Old Homeplace)

Aunt Joanne is my grandmother's younger sister and easily one of the most loving and kind people I've ever known. A religious woman, she liked to go to bluegrass revivals and would visit families she knew needed some help by bringing them some food or clothes. She'd look forward to our visits and as such, each morning she'd wake before sunrise to make an obscene breakfast for the whole family that included homemade buttermilk biscuits, peach preserves from her pantry, virginia ham, baked apples, fried eggs, fatty bacon (the more pork the better) and sliced salted tomatoes. Oh, and coffee. Lots of milky, sweet coffee. They never let me have any though until I was grown. Now I'm hooked.

We'd all sit around the table, the men would tease the kids and pile their plates high. When they had them adequately cleared of their portions, they'd go to tend to the things that needed doing. They'd check the tobacco drying in the cellar, for instance or to move the cattle to another bit of pasture. I got to ride in the pick up truck once when my Uncle Johnny would go out to move his herd to a different paddock. I remember him walking up to a big bull and patting him on the side like a dog (men in my family were show-offs) and I thought for sure he'd be killed. I knew little of livestock. I thought they were all deadly and would stop at nothing to avoid becoming hamburger. Needless to say, the man lived (for a while at least) and the bull presumably became hamburger.

To Be Continued.....

Hey folks!

I'm looking for a short-term intern until the end of July. I've been inundated with stuff to do and I could use an extra hand for about 10 hours a week doing stuff like responding to emails, starting seeds, weeding, transplanting, assembling bee gear, tweeting, entering email addresses for mailing lists, and organizing, organizing, organizing! This is an unpaid internship, but I'll do my best to make it worth it for the right person.

I'm looking for an individual who is interested in learning a bit about urban farming, self-employment and social media and is a quick and efficient worker. I'd prefer a person who is available on a weekday either a full 10 hours in one fell swoop or two 5 hour days dedicated to helping me tighten up my operation. The ideal person is well versed in Microsoft Office, WordPress and Movable Type. Someone with some interest and perhaps a little experience would be great, but I'm flexible. Brown-thumbs welcome as well. Please be able to start ASAP!

Here's what I can offer:

An opportunity to learn a bit about gardening, raising small livestock and beekeeping. This will not be the focus of the internship but you'll be brought into the loop and will be able to participate in classes offered at Hayseed's and will get to absorb information by just being around it. On days when there's no paperwork to be done, we will garden and clean rabbit cages and chicken coops and turn the compost. Farm work. So be able bodied! We lift 30-50lb sacks of feed and stuff often so if you've got a bad back, it might not be a good fit.

One paid meal for each work day...and coffee, plenty of coffee. We drink a lot of it around here.

A monthly Metrocard or cash equivalent. If we can't pay you, the least we can do is help get you around.

If you are interested and committed, please email me if interested with a paragraph or two about yourself and a resume!

I just got back from Farm Hack Intervale/Essex, which was a weekend-long gathering of farmers, engineers, designers, fabricators, artists, and other good-hearted folks on the Vermont, then NY, side of Lake Champlain, meant to continue the imagining, reimagining, and development of better farm tools and practices.

Festivities Saturday included a tour of the Intervale Center's community farm and the tools and toys in its infrastructure-sharing cooperative's arsenal, led by Rob Rock of Pitchfork Farm, followed by group "charettes" tackling farm challenges, followed by a ferryride to NY, amazing meal in the local grange hall, bonfire and dance party at Black Kettle farm with way too many bottles of lovely, potent Citizen Cider, and drunken crawl to the barn for some sleep in the hay. I can't tell you how comfortable it is to sleep in a spread hay bale, because I don't remember, but I did wake up to a sunlit barn without any aches in the ol' back. My head, on the other hand...

Sunday, we toured Essex Farm, a mind-boggling, draft-powered, 600-acre, year-round, full-diet CSA farm helmed by Mark Kimball and made famous by his wife Kristin's book The Dirty Life. Keep an eye out for this charismatic guy; I really think he'll be the next Joel Salatin. Me, I got some serious barnheartburn kicking through the cow pies.

Perhaps the most intriguing part of the trip was spending time with Andy Wekin and his fleet of pedal steeds. He owns Pedal Power Engineering, designing and building setups that allow folks to power electrical appliances by... pedaling. It's such a simple concept but really incredibly ingenious. A must for those of us homesteaders looking to get off-grid however we can. Check out his videos; he powers and charges laptops, kitchen appliances, and some more hardcore stuff. He's even working on small-scale hydropower and combining both hydro and pedal in some interesting ways.

To any homesteader out there with a farmy bent, you've gotta make it out to a Farm Hack. The inspiration and ideas and solidarity you take back with you are good and powerful. Keep an eye out for future hacks at the Farm Hack site. Even if you can't, or won't, travel, their blog and wiki are ripe for the pickin' for some great homsteady inspriation. Many of these large-scale ag ideas can be downsized and jigged a bit for the homestead.

I'm a mess right now. I've been a terrible blogger but frankly, I'm just too exhausted to know what to write about. My store, Hayseed's has been very busy...classes have been occupying what little free time I have and just being the go to person for everyone's questions is a big job. I love it, but it's LONG HARD WORK. As a result, my personal life is a total disaster. I've got dishes in the sink that have been there for over a week. My cats are bored and underloved. My garden is...well, it's looked better. I'm actually considering paying someone to clean my house. I feel horrified by the notion that someone else may need to do the work for me that I actually take pride in doing for myself. Instead of planting tomatoes, I just tossed a bunch of fast-growing greens and buckwheat into all of the beds to buy myself some time and get some verdancy going in the backyard. I feel like a fraud.

(Well, at least I look the part.)

I'm not happy about not being able to garden at home. I've been helping the gals at Domestic Construction with their garden (which is coming along very well), but it is not mine. I've put off doing much at Jewel Street because frankly, I am leaving and after the other landlord's freakout (which has been resolved) I just don't feel comfortable there anymore. I feel fragmented and without roots. I really look forward to August and my move to NJ. That lost sense of home has me feeling a little off-balance.

(The chickens promptly destroyed the beds I netted off so I gave up.)

But, I digress. Business has been good. I've never felt more confident in my abilities. My bees are in really fine health. My chickens are happy and robust, though not laying much anymore. I'm surrounded by kind, appreciative, helpful people. I feel really fortunate to be in a place where I can say that I am an urban farmer for a living but I welcome change. I'm ready to be transplanted to a place where I can set my tap root deep.

I've been dreaming of dairy goats thanks to Jenna's goat posts and I'm also thinking about the "B" word....babies. Who am I kidding though. I don't have time for babies!

The summery weather has me thirsty. For beer.

Yesterday I stopped by a favorite haunt, Brooklyn Homebrew, with one goal in mind: five gallons of hoppy, summery pale ale. I sometimes dream of cooking up something crazy in my cauldron, like a black ale, or a lager, but I always end up sticking to a good old IPA or, if it's dead-hot summer, a saison. This time around the Brooklyn Homebrew's house recipe pale ale sounded mighty fine, so I gave it a go. It's a partial mash, meaning some grain and some malt extract; I prefer these to all extract brews because they taste better, and they're a lot easier and less fussy than all-grain.

I learned to homebrew from the man himself, Uncle Charlie. Charlie Papazian's book, The Complete Joy of Home Brewing, is known as the homebrewer's bible. It's the perfect book for complete beginners, but it also includes more advanced stuff to delve into over time. Highly recommended. But there are lots of free resources out there online, too. One of my favorites is a forum called HomeBrewTalk, which has lots of info and lots of wisdom for grasshoppers.

In my opinion, one of the best parts about learning from Uncle Charlie is his mantra, RDWHAHB... Relax. Don't worry. Have a homebrew.

Believe me, it really comes in handy. There are lots of moving parts in homebrewing: temperatures to keep an eye on, time to keep an eye on, sanitizing to do to just about everything, did I just add the aroma hops instead of the bittering hops... it can be easy to get flustered, and something(s) will always go wrong-ish. But luckily, barring complete catastrophe, even if you make mistakes here and there your brew will turn out just fine. Trust me. I've had a carboy volcanically erupt in my bedroom... but what was left ended up being pretty tasty.

Why go through the trouble? HB'ing is a great hobby that pays dividends and gives good buzz. You can spend buttloads on fancy equipment or use pretty much all salvaged stuff, and either way turn out great beer. It comes in handy when you can't afford the good stuff as often as you'd like, or when all you've got for options in the neighborhood are InBev brands. And it's fun!

Well, without further ado, here's my home brew how to, photo-essay style.

Equipment and supplies...

Bring water to temp.

Soak grain.

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I feel kind of goofy getting all excited about it, since it might seem somewhat arbitrary, but today marks the vernal/Spring/March equinox. Even though we've been downright summery here in the city for the past few weeks (seriously... I saw neighborhood kids in a blow-up pool yesterday), I can't deny the bit of magic in the air today. We're springin' out!

Life is absolutely insane these days; I feel like one of Meg's bees. I may not be coming home dusted with pollen, but with the farm season picking up serious steam, a few family guests visiting me the past few weekends, and the rushed search for a new apartment, then subletter, then new apartment, then subletters for April 1, I'm empathizing with those little ladies.

But what would Spring's first calendar'd days be without a homestead update?

Today, I got down on some homemade crop covers. May seem pointless given our sunny warmth lately - and perhaps it will be after all - but with a last-frost date of April 10ish this season, there's still chance for a few freezes here and there.

Crop covers that are at least semi-transparent can function as mini-greenhouses, trapping in sunlight and maintaining a warm atmosphere inside even when the air chills outside. But even fully opaque covers can help in a pinch; if a hard freeze is predicted, throw them over plants to insulate and cross your fingers.

Covers can be made using scavenged or repurposed materials and a minimum of effort. There are truly a bajillion ways to go about it depending on your living situation and growing space. For those of us with smaller balcony, fire-escape, and rooftop container gardens, stuff like yogurt cups, soup take-outs, and milk jugs are awesomely sufficient.

Yogurt cups and take-out soup tupps
It doesn't get any easier than this. Take off the lid, remove labels to allow more light in (washing soda really helps with any stubborn ones), and turn upside down over the plant. Press the rim into the soil a bit to anchor it; weigh down with a stone or something if it's super windy. Le voilà.

Milk jugs
I learned this one from my be-bop on his farmstead in North Carolina. Remove labels and cut off the bottom of the jug. Set over plant and press into the soil a bit to anchor. The benefit of this system is the lid... it can be removed during the day when the sun is strong so the plant doesn't steam to death, and replaced in the afternoon to maintain warmth inside during the cooler night. But you can also make two covers from one jug by cutting in half; only one will have the lid of course, but you'll get more bang for your non-buck.

The materials you use can vary widely, but you'll want to make sure that whatever it is is at least semi-transparent; this will allow light in and warm the interior. Some kind of venting mechanism can help make temperature management easier, but it's completely unnecessary. For larger tracts of garden space, you can invest in floating row covers using Reemay or Agribon, weighed down with stones or bricks. You can use non-transparent materials like milk cartons and opaque yogurt cups too to help insulate on a particularly bitter night; just don't leave on for days at a time or your plants will suffer from lack of light.

Keep in mind that on warm, sunny days like today, no covers are needed. Remember, if you use a cover (unless it's floating like with Reemay or Agribon), and it's unvented, the warmth during the day inside the container can stress or, more likely, kill your plant. Make a few covers to have on hand and plop over plants before temperatures drop. Vented, transparent covers can be kept on all the time and just sealed shut in the mid-afternoon for night protection.

Onward, seedling soldiers!

P.S. One great way to celebrate the warm Spring weather is to make a tank top. Take an old t-shirt (I stick to crewneck) and cut a curve from around the neck to below the armpit on either side. Try it on and cut more if necessary. Once you have a good template, you can use it to make more by laying it on top of another shirt and marking where to cut. No need to finish edges, especially here in Brooklyn.

I'm one of those shoppers that makes grocery lists and then forgets them on the kitchen counter. Without a list I end up just grabbing what looks good and forgetting the essentials. This time around it was toothpaste. It's been a couple weeks since we've has a normal sized tube...the boyfriend and I have been going through all of the random travel-sized tubes hiding in the medicine cabinet.

Today, we finally ran out completely. I could have just walked around the corner to the bodega for some crappy off-brand stuff but I just opted to make some myself. It was super easy, worked GREAT and didn't cost me a cent because it was made with stuff I already keep on hand.

Here's the recipe:

1 Tbsp of baking soda
1 tsp of stevia powder
2 drops of spearmint oil
4 or 5 drops of water to paste-ify it

Mix it in a small bowl, scoop some on your toothbrush and go to town on those toofs!

It's worth noting that this stuff does not have the saccharine sweet of commercial toothpaste. In fact the saltiness of the baking soda may be off-putting to some. While this stuff isn't as "tasty", it works better than anything I've ever bought. My breath is fresh as all get out this morning!

So, next time you are in a bind and don't want to go out into the world with kitten breath, whip a small batch of this up. It's so easy, you may even want to completely switch over to the homemade stuff!

After waxing farmy and poetic with my last post, I was struck yesterday with inspiration for an actually practical update for y'all.

With the season officially commencing at Brooklyn Grange, there's lots of work to be done. I was up bright and early yesterday getting ready to head in to start some seed in our hoophouse, among other things.

Of course, the homesteading fairy bopped me on the head as I grabbed my bicycle for the morning commute.

I have been a devout cyclist for a while now. I tell everyone I can how great it is to ride a bicycle in the city: the sights, the thrill, the sovereignty over your transportation. But what still can throw me for a loop is a good ol' flat tire.

I feel kind of lucky to admit that in all my city riding, I've only had one major blowout during a ride. Knock on wood. But I have had more than my fair share of flats.

And it almost always goes just like this: I'd have been riding problem-free, a little pump here and there, for what seemed like ages. And then, on a day when I really need to be somewhere at a certain time, I go to leave with my bike and one of the tires is puddled on the floor.

My reaction inevitably is a quick runthrough of the seven stages of grief. And since I've got somewhere to be, it's especially heavy on the ornery. I call it the flat-tire funk, and it can last well beyond the fix and trip and just really ruin my whole darn day.

The good news is it can be a piece of cake to fix a flat, depending on the kind and severity.

Remove the wheel by loosening axel nuts. Back wheel is a bit harder due to powertrain stuff, but still easy!

Use tire levers to loosen and remove tire from wheel and tube.

Patch kits usually include sandpaper for roughing up the surface near the leak, vulcanizing fluid, and patches.

The finished patch.

There are a bajillion resources online - descriptions, photos, and videos - that describe the process in detail. If you haven't done it before, make it a lazy-Sunday afternoon project where you'll have time to spare. Remember, it's easy and you'll do just fine, so don't shy away from learning.

Here's a pretty good video from a bike shop down south:

Also, this crazy guy Sheldon Brown has pretty much a one-stop site for all things bicycle. I have it bookmarked.

Here are some extra tips for ye:
-Before you do any fixing, look for any obvious foreign objects in the tire: glass, metal, prickers. If you find what is probably causing the flat, put a piece of tape or something right near it on the wheel rim and/or tire to remember its location. It can really help save time when searching the tube for a hole.
-City streets are harsh. If you can, think about investing in strong, "puncture-proof" tires. My Gatorskins weren't cheap but have paid for themselves many times over and saved lots of tubes from the landfill.
-Don't feel too bad about buying a new inner tube. Sometimes it's just not worth the time and effort to patch, especially if you've made good use out of the old tube and there are several holes.
-If you're not in a rush, give the ol' hog a little extra TLC while you're at it: clean and lube your chain. You can never do it enough in the city.
-*Prevention prevents lots of unnecessary headaches. Try to get into the habit of very regularly checking your tires for any imbedded things that will eventually cause leaks and flats, and pull them out if you can (tweeze!). A small piece of glass might not hurt your tire today but can dig in over time.

*I am hereby promising myself that I'll be better about this last one. No more flat-tire funk for me. Please.

Special thanks to the great Steven Ma for teaching me about bike maintenance many moons ago. He is a superstar cyclist, bicycle advocate, and mechanic/designer/inventor, and he even comes down to earth from time to time to teach bike maintenance classes at 3rd Ward in Bushwick. If you don't know your way around an innertube, definitely do yourself a favor and learn from the best.

Like for Meg, there's lots of hustle going on over my side of the fence. Work at the farm I manage, Brooklyn Grange, is ramping up pretty quickly as the season approaches. Which means finishing up the hoophouse, starting and nuturing seedlings, finishing up crop plans and maps, organizing interviews for summer season interns... and we haven't even started tilling. But, it's the best kind of hustle in the world. I ain't complainin'.

Speaking of the hoophouse, here we are applying the skin... a gnarly (seriously) process involving a thin, delicate plastic sheet, a large metal and wood frame with lots of pokey edges and corners, and this ingenious but also devilish stuff called wiggle wire. Don't ask:

Anywho, I somehow managed to make a quick farm field trip last week to Maine. It was an experience I'll never forget.

Clara Coleman, a great CO-based farmer and daughter of extended-season (well, year-round) farming guru Eliot Coleman, invited Brooklyn Grange head farmer Ben, myself, and fellow farm friend Zach Pickens, up to visit her father's Four Season Farm.

Visiting a farm in winter, in Maine, in a foot and a half of snow. What the what?

Eliot Coleman is a pioneer and authority on organic/natural/sustainable and winter farming. His books, The New Organic Grower, Four Season Farming, and The Winter Harvest Handbook have a cult following. And they deserve it.

We headed to the farm expecting to help him build one of his famous movable hoophouses in exchange for some wisdom and ideas to take home...

Instead, we got to the house, peeled off our coats and boots in the mudroom, and were invited into the dining room where Eliot's wife Barbara Damroch (a master gardener in her own right, and amazing chef to boot) was cooking up a city-block-wide pork roast, which turned out to be from one of their own hogs. We ate more than our fair share of heritage pork, salad from their kitchen garden (also, under a hoophouse), and potatoes, and washed it all down with Eliot's own homemade wine from grapevines he trellised along the back patio. The only thing not grown on grounds was the vanilla ice cream for desert, but it was topped off with Barbara's homemade, homegrown grape conserve.

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(Photo by Alex Brown)

Get yr tickets before they are gone!

Ever wanted to learn how to grow, make and preserve your own food in a small space but need some hands-on guidance to do so?

Join Meg Paska, the "Brooklyn Homesteader", on her own turf as she teaches you how to raise chickens, keep bees, grow a garden, compost, forage, can, pickle, preserve and homebrew all from her tiny Greenpoint homestead.

Coffee and homemade donuts will be served in the morning before the class commences. It will tentatively go as follows:

-Building Raised Beds and Planning a Vegetable Garden
-Composting
-Chickens 101
-Food Preservation (Freezing, Drying, Canning, Fermentation)

LUNCH!

-Beekeeping 101
-Wild Edibles
-Homebrewing basics
-DIY Home and Body Care

WIND DOWN with local beers and Q&A

Attendees will get hands on experience in all aspects of the above mentioned topics and will leave with care packages of assorted goodies! (Books on the subjects covered, seeds, canned and pickled items from the class, etc)
Please email Megan@BrooklynHomesteader.com with any questions.

Students are expected to bring notepads and pens, dress in light color clothes, be able to climb ladders and are willing to sign a waiver, as we will be getting up close and personal with stinging, venomous insects, boiling hot jars of food and eating weeds from the nearby park.

All other materials are included in the cost of the class.