Hot Homos on the "Prairie"

The kick-off tour of Homo Homestead was amazing!  Thanks to all the new and familiar faces that helped make it such a great event.  I'm including a little recap for folks to get a sense of what they missed.

We started off the sunny day at Dearborn Community Garden, where community gardener Bill Basquin was our charming tourguide.  He gave a seriously smartie-pants breakdown of seed saving plus a tutorial on how to homebrew ale (plus we tried his homebrew honey mead).  We got to tour his beautiful plot which i like to say is, forest gardened.  Meaning, it appears very wild and uncultivated but there is acutally a lot of cultivation and tending going on. A very pleasant way to start the day - gays, wine, sun and gardens!

The out little crew biked or walked on over to my house on the other side of the Mission.  Here most of us were a little HOT from the sweltering sun and were happy to lounge in my big ol' backyard being entertained by the chickens.  I showed folks my large container garden that i was in the process of winterizing.  Though it mixes medicinal herbs and flowers, the garden is mostly food based.  I had folks do some cover cropping for the winter of rye, clover and fava and plant some fall peas for eatin'.
This was our food stop as well and Rose of Apothocurious was there to fill our bellies.  She had a million pounds of grapes, two different hummus' - sweet and savory, a grain salad, cranberry pesto and a delicious fruity beverage.  Yumms.

We took off and made a quick stop to deliver all the produce from my garden that ppl harvested for the Free Farm Stand run by local garden legend, Tree.  He was a sweet host who LOVED our tour and kept telling everyone, "this is the Homo Homestead Tour" to mostly kinda blank looks:)  We got a private tour of the community garden at Parque Ninos Unidos and i took home a ground cherry to plant.

A short jaunt down the street to the Pink House rounded out the tour.  Our guides Ami and Amar (of Dirt Star, treated us to chilled teas and a leisurly tour of their gorgeous back yard paradise.  I was at their original garden party five years ago when the back yard was just a waste land and so its really special to see ho far its come.  They have spent most of this time building the soil and collecting an amazing array of native plants that make me green with envy.  They have a fair amount of food cultivation going and seed saving and shared both with the tour.  They are working on figuring out some less-intensive, simple grey water methods for watering and we all brainstormed a bit.

All in all, a marvelous day! Thanks to all the Homesteaders who helped make this a great start to a great idea. Stay tuned for the first East Bay Homo Homestead Tour!