Invitation: The Urban Conversion Launch Party!

Sunday, November 21st
5:00 - 8:00pm
The Tivoli Theater
900 Auraria Parkway in Denver
(free parking)
$15 -- portions of the proceeds go to benefit Feed Denver and Urban Farming

Click here to purchase tickets. Reserve yours now, because there is limited space available!

Come celebrate the completion of the pilot episode of The Urban Conversion and take part in an event highlighting local and national sustainable living groups.

5:00 - 5:45 --- Roll out the red (or in this case, green) carpet! If you'd like, you can have your photo taken. Also, talk with The Urban Conversion videographer about your thoughts and ideas about the urban homesteading movement.

5:45 - 6:15 --- Take a seat in the theater and hear from local and national advocates about how they are making an environmental difference in the urban homesteading movement.

6:15 - 6:40 --- Kick back and enjoy Episode 1 of The Urban Conversion. This will be the full episode of the program, where Rodman (our urban dummy) visits the home of Sundari Kraft of Heirloom Gardens, and tries his best to learn about gardening, milking goats and tending chickens.

6:40 - 7:00 --- A question & answer period with Rodman, Sundari, and Gina (Rodman's wife). You can ask questions about the program and the filming process. Tim Nyman (executive producer) and Colin Hartin (video/editing) will also be on hand to field questions.

7:00 - 8:00 --- Enjoy a social hour, and spend time mingling with the people who are making a positive impact on the environment. In addition, event sponsors will be on hand to answer questions about what they do and how they do it. There will be a cash bar.

We hope you can join us!

Live Interview on "The Everyday Show"

Thursday, November 11th

10:00 am

Channel 2 in Denver

The folks from the "Everyday" show will be bringing a camera crew to film an interview in our backyard (i.e. the home of Heirloom Gardens). Natalie Tysdal be interviewing Rodman about his new show, The Urban Conversion, and I'll be there to chime in as well. Expect lots of shots of the chickens and goats!

Click here to visit the Everyday show website.

Where Country Meets Yuppie

We wandered up to our local Sunflower Market this afternoon and noticed that they have straw bales for sale. Meant to be decorative, surely, as we're in that pumpkin-y, scarecrow-y time of year. Nice idea, right? Get a straw bale to dress up the front yard...

Ok, I'm sorry. $20 for a bale of straw?!? The same thing costs $6.50 at feed stores (one of which is located about a mile away), and even that price causes veteran farmers to guffaw.

Of course, Sunflower is free to sell their straw bales for whatever they'd like. If customers perceive the price to be too high, they won't buy them. However, I do worry about what the prospect of someone paying $20 for a bale of straw says about how out of touch we've become with our agricultural roots.

What do you think?

New 3 minute promo for The Urban Conversion

The great folks at The Urban Conversion came by again a couple of weeks ago to film a follow-up to their earlier visit. This time they brought the host's wife and children along to see the chickens and goats.

The premise of the show is that the host, Rodman, is a fairly conservative businessman who isn't all that interested in "going green." His wife, however, wants a more sustainable life for their family. Since they can't move out to the country, Rodman is setting out to see how he can "bring the farm to the city." Hence, The Urban Conversion.

They have filmed a full pilot episode, and created this 3 1/2 minute teaser for the show. The producers are currently pitching the show to the national networks, and if it's picked up they will travel the country looking for people who are living sustainably within a city.

Click here to watch the show promo. You can also visit The Urban Conversion website to learn more about the project.

Farmscape: Documenting the Changing Rural Environment

Sunday, November 7th
2:00 pm
Denver Urban Homesteading
200 S. Sante Fe Drive

Colorado Organic Producers Association (COPA) and Denver Urban Homesteading present Farmscape: Documenting the Changing Rural Environment, an innovative reader's theater on Sunday, November 7th, 2pm.

For one day only join Iowa Poet Laureate and Playwright Mary Swander, Director Karan Founds-Benton along with Colorado farmers, actors, musicians and chefs to add your voice to a conversation about America's changing rural landscape and how our country produces its food.

Local, seasonal tapas available for purchase at 1pm. The play is open to the public with a $15 suggested donation to benefit COPA. A talk back will follow the matinee with Playwright, Director and local farmers.

For reservations, call (303) 946-9212 or email COPAorganiccolorado@gmail.com

Midnight Gardeners

This post was contributed by Lindsey, one of our Heirloom Gardens farmers. If you'd like to read more of Lindsey's wonderful musings on life, visit her blog at Rhyme, Reason, or None of the Above.

It was all-hands-on-deck for the last CSA harvest of the season on Tuesday. We dispersed to each of the gardens with a mission of collecting every last bit of mature food available. As night fell to the point that we couldn’t see what we were doing, we gathered the final bounty and inevitably reconvened in Sundari’s yard. After a summer of endless evenings, the darkness made it feel like midnight as we cooperated to unload bins of springy chard and dense winter squash from our cars. Together, we soaked the greens, tomatoes, and eggplants with the garden hose to cool and preserve them. We moved around mostly in silence, having worked together for a full season and knowing what needed to be done.

With the soft bleating of the goats as our soundtrack and the porch light casting minimal light over the scene, the mood in the yard was one of mysterious stealth. We could have been prowlers, vegetables our prize. I felt engaged in a clandestine operation, full of power, past my bedtime. Actually, it was only 7:15. The evening was young, but cooler times are coming, and the season is saying goodnight.

Last year, the final harvest of the season took place in a sleety snow—the first of the season. It was heavy and insistent. When we called it quits, it only partly because we couldn’t see our fingers—more disturbingly, we couldn’t feel them in the cold. In retrospect, though, the reflective properties of the snow beat back the darkness. This year, our final evening was warm but black. This season has been so different from the previous is so many ways, the unpredictable whim of weather telling us when we can have lettuce (and for how long) and dictating the size of pumpkins. This summer was a new, fresh adventure. Is that part of the way farming feeds the soul? Each year an experiment. A compromise. A surrender. A reward. Before I began to garden, I thought of it as repetitive and monotonous. Now I see how it is constantly changing.

The close of this season is very definitely an ending of a particular combination of conditions and experiences that will never exactly exist again. In the coming weeks, as we put the gardens to bed (a euphemistic way, says another of the working members, of describing how we mercilessly wrench old plants from the ground to make way for the new), we will sow garlic seeds to winter-over for a head start in the spring. We are beginning the cycle anew, but we are also beginning a completely new cycle that will be defined by its own set of challenges and successes.

As we maneuvered around the yard on Tuesday evening, at what felt like midnight (but wasn’t), we were actually orchestrating an ending. Our furtive feeling: perhaps due to the knowledge that we can never resurrect the moment once it passes, and so must sneakily squirrel it away as a warming memory before winter sets in.

Graduation Day for the Baby Goats

Today was an exciting day for our little urban farm. Our 8-week-old baby goats, Willow and Kosi, got to go to their new home. They will be raised by a wonderful couple named Jamie and Lance. The best part (and least for Brian and me) is that Jamie and Lance live in NW Denver, just a few minutes from us. We've already made plans to take all of the goats on a hike together soon!

It was so gratifying to help settle the babies into their new home. Jamie and Lance have a great barnyard in their backyard, with a nice flock of young chickens running around and lots of room for the goats to jump and play. I love knowing that there are others in my city that are refusing to buy into the notion that they must be dependent on others for all of their food, and that certain things don't "belong" in an urban setting. Jamie and Lance have created a situation where they will be able to raise milk, eggs, and vegetables for themselves and their child right in their backyard. I wish them the best of luck on their journey!

Kosi with Jamie. She seems to be settling in nicely, doesn't she?

Willow and Lance. Willow was a bit more squirmy... anxious to jump around and explore her new home!

The whole family in the barnyard.