A Garden in my Kitchen

We picked up a couple of fun projects at the Mother Earth News Fair last weekend.  At the Mitsubishi booth, where they were featuring electric cars, we received a couple of starter gardening kits, one for basil and the other for zinnias.  And we purchased a mushroom garden from the Back to the Roots booth. 

The zinnia will be sent to Tommy, who's working out-of-state this summer and wants to "grow something."  The basil got planted and now sits on our kitchen windowsill, preparing to sprout!  No matter how often I've seen it happen, still it is amazing to witness a tiny seed planted, sprouting, growing, bearing fruit, and providing food, beauty, and pleasure for people!

On our kitchen counter we are now growing mushrooms in a box!  Mycelium (the vegetative part of the mushroom) is mixed in with recycled coffee grounds, packaged in a biodegradable box, and sold at Whole Food Markets across the country, where they are flying off the shelves.  One box can grow up to a pound of pearl oyster mushrooms.

The packaged product

The contents

Tear off the front flap and cut a + in the plastic soil bag.

Soak it for 24 hours.

Return the bag to the box, mist with water twice a day, and
watch the mushrooms grow!

Stay tuned for a mushroom report in about 10 days!  In the meantime, you might enjoy watching a video about the two young men who, in their senior year at UC Berkley began this product line that is growing even faster than their mushrooms.  It's a fascinating story.  You'll find it here.

Mother Earth News Fair

Back before it was fashionable to grow your own food, mill your own flour, and make your own cheese, my husband was doing all of that.  His garden in Ballard was the envy of the neighborhood, his pigeon loft full of well-fed, happy birds who kept finding their way home.  And he was an avid reader of Mother Earth News.

Of course, when Mother Earth News announced that they would be coming to the Puyallup Fair Grounds this past weekend, he wanted to go.

So we spent Saturday at the fair, sitting in on seminars and demonstrations, chatting with exhibitors, sampling goodies, and waiting in a very long line to buy our lunch!  We talked to the creator of FarmStayU.S., who has created a directory of farms around the country where travelers can spend the night and even work on the farm; we purchased a mushroom growing kit; we chatted with representatives from Solar Cookers International, who encourage and assist people around the world to harness the power of the sun through the use of solar cookers. All of these are topics for future blogs.

Tom spent a couple of hours in a seminar about grafting fruit trees.  He loved it and feels confident that with all his previous reading and this demonstration, he's now ready to graft some dwarf trees for himself.

From the moment we pulled out of our driveway till we got home again, we had a delightful day.  The weather was perfect, Mt Rainier was on its best behavior, and we laughed, dreamed, and explored together.  It was a glorious day!

Morning in our front yard

My chauffeur

Bring the whole family!

A couple of solar cookers

Trying out a "portable chair" that supports your back! 

Wood carving demonstration

Newly shorn alpaca

Spinning

Grafting an apple tree

Mt Rainier from the Puyallup Valley