Sunset's One Block Diet Competition
by Gibsy Beckett
"The One-Block Feast, An Adventure From Yard to Table" are the words Sunset Magazine used to describe the competition my neighbors and I have embarked upon since late March of this year. We have miraculously organized eight families (15 adults, 16 kids, and 12 chickens) to plant, grow, brew, dry, grind, and forage our own ingredients for one meal in the fall of this year.There are spread sheets and timetables, planting deadlines and watering schedules. The word adventure implies a carefree foray into the unknown, a far cry from the truth when collaborating neighbors, families, schedules, and their gardens with mother nature!
My neighbors and I live on postage stamp-sized properties in the beach tract of Morro Bay. Ours are the low-lying homes along the coastline often blanketed in fog, infrequently visited by sun, and peppered with plenty of damp wind. In the last month we have pulled up our garden boots, tied on that cap of optimism, surveyed everyspare foot of dirt around our homes, measured the angle of Morro Bay's elusive sun, cross referenced, hypothesized, and extracted entire landscapes to make room for our promising gardens.
Several brave and enthusiastic families have literally seeded their front yards to make room for food production. Chicken Dave and his generous family took a rototiller to their entire front lawn, replacing it with wheat, the humble beginnings for our bread.
After observing this plot of wheat, one 10 year old competitor wisely asked, "But where is the mill, where we will grind the wheat into flour, mom?" My neighbors and I shall cut the wheat, thresh the wheat and yes, even mill the wheat as that Little Red Hen once did, all by herself. And we shall bake the bread and eat it all up!!
The Diodati family also replaced their front yard with fertile soil and seeds:
It's not much to look at now, but that chicken wire and lattice is working hard to protect the future of our neighborhood beer garden. Barley, hops and sugar beets will grow here in this protected patch of soil. Home beer brewers would simply order their ingredients online and await the UPS truck, but such is not the case in this do-it-yourself competition. The beer garden will provide ingredients for a timely harvest where we will malt the barley (a process we hope to learn more about), dry the hops, and process the sugar beets to create a form of sugar which will be used to feed the yeast in the beer. Yeast will eat the sugar and ferment to create alcohol and a necessary byproduct,carbonation, which will eventually result in the glorious bottling (need to learn how to do that, too!) of a hand crafted 100% local brew.
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This is Dr. Dave's yard, an exercise in a multitude of ambitious science experiments. Dr. Dave and his family began with the simple process of planting in carefully measured square feet, a method borrowed from the book "All New Square Foot Gardening" by Mel Bartholomew, to ensure a long and productive harvest season. Then Dr. Dave called on the neighbors for leftover LED Christmas lights to use in an inexpensive indoor LED light grow box experiment. The idea being that a rubber storage container hosts the seeds and soil, the lid punctured with holes where LED lights are inserted, and then concentrated over the seeds in a bright and warm environment to promote seeds growth. The most recent offering begins with giant plastic pretzel jars used as a cloche (Webster says this is a bell-shaped cover to protect plants from frost) to start melon plants, a highly optimistic venture for Morro Bay. I don't doubt Dr. Dave has a few more tricks up his sleeve to ensure a bountiful harvest (despite our local climate!).
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Another generous team member, Christ Hale, and her family have offered a portion of their yard to the children in our neighborhood group. "El Jardin Del Ninos" or "The Children's Garden" is a project led entirely by all 16 kids of our neighborhood (with some gentle management by Hale and Christine Johnson). Last week marked the initial planting of the garden where kids presented to kids the proper way to fill garden boxes, plant seeds and starters, and water.
Three and four year olds shoveled compost and soil into plastic trash bins half their size while the 10 and 12 year olds taught a lesson on removing a starter plant from its plastic container. The children decided early on to make their garden Using a Spanish English dictionary the kids translated the names of each vegetable, labeling each plant in both English and Spanish.
Our neighborhood blocks are brimming with change, landscaping extremes, and the promise of food and beer! We are tending our plots, learning together, and imploring mother nature to not only showerus in rain but also spill warm sunlight onto our gardensthis summer so that we may grow, eat and drink our fall feast together.
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