I am a wacky Urban Homesteader!

Hey, a blog post from the Green Grass House - wouldn't you know, it takes drama and controversy to get me to set aside everything else going on and take the time to write up a post over here! So, for all my non-homestead crazy friends, here's the scoop - a family is Pasadena CA has decided that they are the only urban homesteaders of worth in our 2011 world. They trademarked "urban homestead" and "urban homesteading" and are trying to make it stick by going after authors, bloggers and organizations that use those words. Honestly, they probably would have gotten away with it for quite a while, too - but they made the mistake of kicking a big fat buzzing hornet's nest by having Facebook yank down a whole bunch of Urban Homestead oriented pages, including the one belonging to James and Irina at  Denver Urban Homesteading .  Oooooo, boy, really, really glad I'm not in their shoes now because I have a feeling this is all not going to go the way they would like to see it go! I won't beleaguer it all here, partly because I'm supposed to be outside helping the boys and partly because I know I won't do it all justice, but if you are interested, here's the best place to go for more info: Take Back Urban Home-steading(s) on Facebook  - it has links to related sites, fantastic blog entries from everyone talking this up today and updates on where the legal battle will go from here.

So, what's my interest in this? Well, although we don't quite fit all of the narrow definition that the Dervaes' family, we are proud to call ourselves Urban Homesteaders. This crazy house and property with all of its time-intensive work is our labor of love, our livelihood and most of all, our HOME.  David and I were chatting over coffee a few mornings ago about this whole thing and one of the firmest conclusions we came to was that there is no way anyone can define, limit or trademark something as broad and encompassing as "urban homesteading".

What is Urban Homesteading? Well, to some of our acquaintances in the heart of Denver, it is growing their own herbs, eating homemade vegan food, creating art and goods from recycled and upcycled items, buying wind power credits and biking instead of driving. To some of our friends on the fringes of the suburban/rural border it is growing the vast majority of their food, belonging to co-ops for the rest, purchasing cow shares and raising their own chickens and goats.  For some of our suburban friends it is underground chicken raising, CSA delivery, solar power and motorcycle not car. For some the focus is on the health benefits of eating real food grown and raised by real people. For some it is on the sustainability of a lifestyle that gives back more than it takes. For some it is channeling grandparents and great-grandparents who were farmers as best as they can in a modern city environment. For most of us it tends towards home made, home grown, home baked, home cooked, home oriented.

For us personally it is a little bit of all of these. To my family's continual surprise and amusement, our 60 year old farmhouse on a sweet little half acre is a little bit city and a little bit farm. We are five houses off one of the busier highways through Denver, complete with the never-ending street buzz that comes with it. Our 18 bantam chickens live in a coop that is 1/4 Craigslist, 1/4 big box store and 1/2 recycled and repurposed. They are foraging the garden area while I write this, making a gigantic muddy mess out of themselves. They can do that right now because the garden isn't in yet - on the slate for this spring is an asparagus bed and more grape vines for our wine making aspirations in addition to requests from friends who don't have space to garden but want to help here.  I'm currently typing on my computer in the out building my fantastic dad and husband built from the ground up for my work at home business. Speaking of dad and the hubby, I can hear the bobcat skid steer they are using to make a level spot in the back yard for a loafing shed going in tomorrow (but that is another post all together!) to store some of the equipment we use here, and maybe, just maybe, goats in the future. My tiny funky storage celler downstairs has canned pears, spiced peach jam, pickled green tomatoes and dill pickles next to 50 pounds of flour and 25 pounds of pinto beans. I cook a mean potato breakfast dish in my grandmother's hand me down cast iron skillet with eggs laid by our hens. Ah, I could go on and on about the things we are trying to do, and all the things we want to do, and all the things we do completely wrong and all the things we should change and probably won't but I'll finish this for today with a few pictures of things that make me think of Urban Homesteads - oddly enough, not a single one of the things that comes to mind is related to a family's home in CA that I had never even heard of before this week :-)

 Peach jam - from yummy Palisade peaches bought from Ripe 2 U

 You think this slanted roof here is going to stop us from climbing on it? Nope!

 Biggest calzone we have ever made with fresh salads last summer

 Putting in the flagstone patio last summer and a shot of the herb garden when it was still in the ground clearing stage

 And to finish up...if you leave the backdoor open to get some fresh air in the middle of winter on a warm day, you just might come in to the kitchen to find a visitor - one that thinks our coop is nicer than hers

New Year, New Leaves...

Turning them over, that is. The list of resolutions for this year is too long to go into in a quick little post (I really just needed a quick break from wrestling with Flutterby's Quickbooks end of year stuff, which is making me a little more than bonkers!) but suffice to say, lots on the plate this year! Many changes, many goals, many challenges ahead - whew! More to come in the next few weeks!

Oh- on a side note, after writing the title above, it got me to wondering where that phrase "turn over a new leaf" actually comes from - of course, like many things in the crazy world of the net, there are lots and lots of opinions and very little facts, but closest consistent guess is turning to a new page - "leaf" - of a book and starting fresh from that page. Works for me!! 

Experimenting...

...with some changes I made - template stuff, picture sizes, etc.

Oh, my, it's been a while!

So sorry, we've been busy, busy and I have completely let this go for the winter! Thanks to the handy-dandy library, and a book about Using Blogger, I will be cleaning this blog up and making a few changes. For one, since I can't manage to keep up with blogs for different pieces of our life, and because they all just roll into one big fat ball of crazy anyway, I'm going to be expanding TGGH into an all purpose life, work, markets, farmin', schoolin', remodelin', jibber-jabberin' place to catch up on all things Zserdin Family. Woohoo!  For now, I'm off to walk the length of the ditch after we turn on the headgates for our area, check on a limping chicken and transplant seedlings into larger pots - sure sounds funny considering we live less than 10 minutes from downtown Denver LOL!

Before and Afters: Hidey Hole

When we were looking at this house, one of the things that stood out, both for the kids and us, was this funky cool attic style room jutting off one end of the house. The kids dubbed it "The Hidey Hole" the first time we looked, and the name stuck!

Starting painting - it was a dingy masking tape ivory and we wanted to brighten things up, as well as make it super easy to clean in here - high gloss white, here we come!


Sara helped quite a bit....
Voila!

The Hidey Hole today - we were going to use some of the "green grass" carpet from downstairs up here, but there wasn't a run long enough that wasn't also terribly worn. I found these wild shag rugs at Target - they fit so nicely they aren't even seamed - we intended to, but so far it hasn't been necessary. Mom made the curtains here, too - seersucker again, bright and FUN! David thinks the kids look creepy in this picture ..."Come play with us, Danny...."

The guard dragon - I just loved this guy and had to snag one for the kids when I put in one of our Melissa and Doug orders.
Storage, controlled chaos....
The tree house - remarkably cleaned up, since we are getting ready for the start of school and trying to turn over a new leaf (teehee) with keeping the rooms cleaned up better.

All in all, a fun use of a funky space - and it keeps most of the kids chaos contained to just a couple of rooms - kinda...

Before and Afters: Classroom

The upstairs here has the fun sloped ceilings and there was a fantastic built in desk and tile floors that remind me exactly of one of my classrooms at Lakewood High School (built in the 50's I believe, so fits right in with this house LOL!) It was just natural that this room become the classroom for our homeschooling - lots of light, next to the playroom, desks and storage - yay! I realized while I was working on this entry that we don't have good pictures of the before, darn it. Basically, we didn't change much here - repainted a brighter yellow and left the desk brown, the tile was fun, and is perfect for paint, clay and the other messes that happen here - so it was just scrubbed up. We installed a ceiling fan, partly for air (because, holy cats, it gets hotter than the hubs up here during the summer!!) and partly for better lighting. David ran cable lines in for the computer, I packed in a ton of supplies and books that had been all over the house before and voila, work space!

Before - just started painting


You can just barely see the floor in this shot - and one of my very old paint shirts - I think I have 17 different types of paints on there from previous houses and the apartments we managed...
Midway through - my mom made these beautiful seersucker curtains that perfectly match the brown and taupes in the desk, tile, walls and ceiling fan - yay, mom!!
Today - desk, computer, map, penny saver, growth charts, cupboard and drawers
These cool old desks were at my grandmother's house - super cool find! Bookshelves, posters, and of course, the easel with a scary forest Sara drew...nope, my kid's not warped AT ALL ;)
my ham of a daughter is in every picture I was trying to take in here, the little turkey...other side - bulletin boards, calender, more posters, rocking horse with two cheeseballs on it...and the door to the Hidey Hole - next entry!!

I promised to write about the girls...

so here they are! We took the crazy urban homestead plunge this past May - Sara had been wanting to have chickens ever since we looked at this house with our real estate agent and the print out with stats had "zoned for chickens and horses" listed. We knew we had so much else on the slate this year, so we planned on putting it off until next year, but every time I was on craigslist, I couldn't resist looking up coops, just in case. Lo and behold, a coop, chickens, feed, litter and other paraphernalia for sale, in one big lump! Pullets, already beyond brooding stage, it seemed like the perfect way to go :-) So, off to Littleton, with a bobcat trailer and the help of our dear friends Kristy and Byron, to load a full coop and the birds and bring them home.

The chickens in a dog crate - it was the only thing we could think of to transport them in

Charlie REALLY wants to know what is in that crate!!
So, if we just turn this baby over on its side, ya' think we can maneuver it over the ditch without landing in the water?

Alrighty, we got it over the ditch, now we really need to move it 3 feet to the south....mmmm....If all else fails (and you're losing light for this project before the girls need to be locked up for the night!!) get out the big equipment - a skid steer and a rope do a pretty nice job of moving it over!


We get the cutest eggs! Since the girls are bantam (half size chickens) they lay smaller eggs. But still average one a day, in pretty shades of green and brown.

It is COOL to have chickens!

Thanks to the mad breed id-ing skills of the amazing forum folks at Backyard Chickens, we are pretty sure this is the line up:
Snow - Easter Egger, Puff - buff brahma, Polka Dot - Mille fleur d'uccle, Shadow - Belgian D'Anvers and Ice - Easter Egger.

Shadow and Puff in the coop
All the girls together. Sadly, we lost Red (at top in this pic, the Belgian D'anvers, and also the chicken Sara is holding above) mysteriously a month ago. She was fine Saturday night, roaming around and roosting just like always, lethargic and miserable Sunday morning - she passed shortly after noon. RIP Red, you were Sara's favorite -and our little farmer girl was a trooper, she did the eulogy, helped dig the grave and made a cross to mark it. It was a bittersweet lesson in the circle of life!