grow learn eat 2011 and 2010

The weekend of our one block feast had finally arrived and along with all the preparations and last minute details, our neighborhood team collaborated on a timeline of the many events leading up to Sunday's big gala. Sunset Magazine's photography team received our three day agenda and arrived early Friday morning to follow us on our adventurous weekend, beginning with photos of our team harvesting oysters in the bay. With camera crew in tow, we biked around the neighborhood exchanging ingredients and helping with wheat berry grinding for the honey wheat bread rolls, sea salt making, whipping eggs for the Pavlova dessert, and harvesting of all the ripe fruits and vegetables in the children's garden.

September, 2011 Garden Timing, Food Projects and A Very Generous Community

My tomatoes, heavy and plentiful, have hinted at red tones for three weeks. With just seven days left before our One Block Feast for Sunset Magazine, I'm seriously considering the use of a grow light or maybe that Cherokee Sun Dance Ritual to speed the process. Timing a food garden is next to impossible in my opinion. This feast may force some unorthodox gardening methods if the sun doesn't get serious in the next few days! Our entire neighborhood is abuzz with equal amounts of anxiety and excitement in anticipation for the upcoming event, the ripening of vegetables, and the preparations for our party.

August, 2011 Success, Failure, and Unfinished Business

The meat hens at The Burton Farm are gathering bulk beyond our expectations, and astounding us with their mortality rate. Of the nine hens, two were guaranteed to die off based on mathematical calculations and data, but lo and behold, success is ours as we are merely days away from slaughtering and still feeding and cleaning up after nine fat, lazy birds.

July, 2011 Community

Consider this picture a metaphor for the gardening project my neighborhood has embarked upon in the spirit of Sunset Magazine's One Block Feast. Here in Morro Bay, summer arrives not in the form of hot sunny days and warm evenings, but quite the opposite, making vegetable gardens a test of will and creativity. The menu boasts arugula salad with garden ripe tomatoes, herbed chicken, fresh caught lingcod and halibut, and a myriad of other mouth-watering dishes. But looking at the picture above makes all that seem fairly impossible and downright frustrating. A concrete garden beneath a cold gray sky screams "Raise your white flag, surrender now."

June, 2011 Sunset's One Block Diet Competition II

"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!

May, 2011 Sunset's One Block Diet Competition I

Kids, chickens, worms, beer, goats, neighbors, vegetables, and the promise of catching fish from paddleboards. These were the selling points my neighbors touted to win us a coveted spot in Sunset Magazine's latest "One Block Diet" competition. The rules seemed simple enough: grow, brew, forage, or catch all the food to serve our families (within a neighborhood block) for one big feast on or before September 15, 2011.