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!

Homo Homesteading Tour - Oct. 25th

Hello lovelies!

As i sit and draw out my winter garden, i notice that my three little lady friends are swooping and jumping and generally performing daring feats of chicken madness. i also notice that my fig tree will just not ripen, the huge apples from my neighbors yard are conveniently dropping on my side of the fence, and that i have enough zucchini to make vats of relish to can for a year! i guess i notice that things can be and are good in the City. i'm noticing more and more as each year goes by that San Francisco is my home, that this is the place i want to make "my piece of land," my dream. i know many of us have had or do have visions of "some communal land with our friends" on which to do any assortment of things: art, farming, healing, educating, experimenting, living. This is a complex vision of course and for many of us just may not happen. However, we are all living here, in this Gay Bay NOW and some of us intend to stay around for while - so, what are we doing to make this area our "piece of land," how are we "getting back to the land" without leaving the city.

THIS is the focus of the Homo Homestead Tour that i am organizing for this Fall (and hopefully more). On the heels of the successful Queer Garden Bike Tour that DirtStar organized earlier in the summer, i am now wondering what are we fabulous queers doing in our lives, our homes, our kitchens, our gardens that make us feel more connected to eachother, to the dirt that is there, to our food...

I would like to showcase Gay(ass) Gardens and Witchy Kitchens on this Fall tour with an emphasis on getting our lives ready for Winter in the Bay Area. This could look like planning a winter garden, explaining how yr grey water system works, showing off the stockpile of perserves, ferments, and krauts you are setting up for the winter, teaching about winter herbs to be taking... This initial Tour will be three to four spaces in San Francisco (NEXT one is the East Bay), which will be toured by bicycle - but there will be driving/PT directions and times for those who wish not to bike.

The tour will be Sunday Oct. 25th
and kind of an all day affair (times TBA)