It’s been over two years now since we took up the front lawn, mulched the entire yard and started growing our own fruits, vegetables and sundry other crops. Along the way I’ve looked for some good company. Novella Cartenper’s “Farm City” was close, in a satisfyingly grungy and carnivorous way. “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” by Barbara Kingsolver and family certainly inspired, if on another scale and at a geographical and practical distance.
But “The Quarter-Acre Farm” could have been written about my yard–if Spring Warren hadn’t already done so in such a charming way, it might well have been written about my yard. Now, thankfully, I can cross book writing off my To-Do list and go back to my latest Potato Project as I direct you to get your own copy of “The Quarter-Acre Farm”, complete with hypnotic illustrations and delicious recipes designed to be prepared by mere mortals.
Not only that, but it’s funny! And I can so relate. Spring Warren writes about gardening in her bathrobe without the “die-trying” seriousness of many other books in the expanding I-can-grow-more-food-in-hardly-any-space-than-you-can genre. Not only does the book leave you with the understanding that you do, in fact, need your own Quarter-Acre garden, but you’ll also want to set it down just out of goose-honking range of Ms. Warren’s so you can continue to enjoy her neighborly garden camaraderie and share the delicious produce excess it will surely bring you.
Run out now and get your own copy. I’ll be watering the potato patch, in my bathrobe. ;-)
From Dirt to Dinner 
Is that Tuscan Kale growing? We are going to try that in the fall garden when our KY heat wave starts to subside.
The Tuscan kale has done amazingly well this spring, when you consider that we planted it in November! It sat, pretty much at transplant size until March. I thought it was stunted and started to pull it out, but then it took off and has been producing like mad since then. It may be light sensitive? We had good growing weather for other kales this winter.