With a Little Help From Your Friends
Leah with some of her favorite tools
You know how, when you want to try something new, it’s really nice to have friends right there – some body who has done it before and is ready with answers or to point out mistakes she made and ways you could do it better?
Well, if you’re thinking “I’d really like to raise some good, healthy meat and veggies, but I don’t know how to get started,” we’re those friends!
Reading a book by an expert is nice, but sometimes experts have done things well for so long they’ve forgotten what it’s like to be a beginner and how even the smallest steps are a little scary. We’re not experts, and we’re not quite beginners. We’re just a couple of gals who are willing to try new things, make mistakes, and move on to make things happen. And we want to make things happen for you too!
We Are On a Mission!
Kathy getting ready to build raised beds
We’re on a mission to make fresh, healthy, (mostly) organic food available from our own yards… WITHOUT making ourselves crazy! We’re starting our adventures by planting square foot gardens in our yards and raising chickens (and 2 ducks) for both eggs and meat. We know the idea of urban farming is daunting, so we’re making a point to document what works and what doesn’t, all right here at theUrbavore.com. Our hope is that by reading our posts, you’ll get inspired to try creative, local, sustainable farming at your house, whether you want to go all out on a couple of urban acres or if your yard is your apartment patio.
Our Guiding W’s
We didn’t plan it this way, but ever since we started working together we’ve noticed we have three guiding questions and one guiding thought that get us started and carry us through all our projects:
Why not?
Some days we’re sitting and talking and suddenly we get a picture of the way we’d like something to be. Should we try it? Why not?
We can do that!
We’ve seen it on TV, or read it somewhere. We figure, if someone else can do it, why not us? So we give it a try! Sometimes we modify the project to fit with our physical abilities or our skills, and along the way we learn we can do a lot of fun things.
What is the worst that could happen?
From long experience we know that with every project comes a problem. So, just before we get started, we imagine the worst that could happen. That way we can try to figure out ways to prevent the wrong outcome, or figure out if we can live with something that doesn’t go according to plan.
Work hard and be kind to people.
Exactly!
We Are Not Martha Stewart
This is what Kathy's office looks like when she's getting ready to head out to do a workshop on teaching cows to eat weeds.
We may be a little OCD about some things, but we’re not creating “home beautiful” or trying to compete by raising the biggest veggies and smartest chickens. Our offices get messy (and our houses too) because we live and work in them. We just want to have healthy food, and fun with our friends and family. And we want you to have that too!