An Experiment in Subsistence Farming, Brooklyn Style

[bananas]

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/09/brooklyn_farm.php

An Experiment in Subsistence Farming, Brooklyn Style
by Jasmin Malik Chua, Jersey City, USA on 09.16.07



In this week's New York Magazine, Manny Howard chronicles his experiment to live off his land as his sole source of food for a month—in a 20x40-foot backyard in suburban Brooklyn—much to the wild-eyed glee of his two young children, the increasing consternation and frustration of the first-time farmer, and the chagrin of his wife, who grows increasingly concerned that her husband is turning into Richard Dreyfuss from Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

But just as Howard manages to wrest some semblance of sanity in his urban homestead, he miscalculates the due date of his pregnant doe and hastily puts together a nesting box a few sizes too small. The bloody result: The mother rabbit panics and begins devouring her offspring, moments before Howard's wife and 5-year-old daughter drop by the rabbit pen for a visit.

Then the tornado hits.

<snip>

[kestrel91316]

1. He would have fared better with a little more advance planning and

a few good books:

Eliot Coleman's Four Season Harvest

Mel Bartholomew's Square Foot Gardening

Carla Emery's Encyclopedia of Country Living

But overall it was a noble effort, and he really couldn't have anticipated that tornado in Brooklyn, lol.