Urban Homestead Additions

So over the weekend and on Monday of this week Alyssa and I built two additions for our home. On Monday, after work, I finished up a small cold frame. What is a cold frame you may ask, well it's a super mini green house, usually touching a home. I first saw a cold frame in person at Darrel Frey's Bio Shelter with fresh mustard greens in February. His frame was completely unheated except for the radiant heat that comes from touching the outside of the bioshelter. Touching our house will do the same. It's simply built of scrap lumber and a window bought from construction junction. The window is actually double pained and probably insulates better than the windows in my house. The window itself cost $10, originally hundreds I'm sure. Now we'll have fresh lettuce, spinach and other greens all winter hopefully!

Just a few days before building the cold frame we worked with about 25 other folks at Lamppost Farm for a day (actually it all felt more like play for us city dwellers). Alyssa milked a goat and we both helped, along with our friend Meghan, to build this chicken coup. We'll be bringing the coup into the city for either our yard or Garfield Farm in the coming weeks. It still needs a few more finishing touches. We love the rough cut oak, harvested locally and milled by Steve.