The suburban homestead

I took in the garden the other day, on the last day of "summer" no less, right before a hard freeze. Let's look at the season's bountiful yield, shall we: lettuce, more lettuce than I or my roomates could ever eat. Unless we were vegitarians who ate salad at, like every meal. Tomatoes: dozens of tiny red tomatoes, these things did better than expected and would have done better yet with only a few more weeks. Peas: they actually came up, and then sort of fell over, but this in spite of the malicious mulching/shading efforts of a former roomate. I actually got several tasty pods from 'em. Misc: We got one beet, a few tiny radishes, an onion, a bell pepper, and a whole lotta lessons learned.

1: Don't plant your garden and then leave the country for 2 months. No matter how well your roomates say they will take care of things, it is just not good policy.
2: Plant earlier, they say corn should be knee high by the 4th of July, I had knee high by 4th of September.
3: Tell the other assistant gardeners what you planted and where, so they don't plant tomatoes on top of your cabbage, or build elaborate shade mechanisms on top of the rutabegas.
And so on and so forth... So the garden is all but done for now, on to the next adventure in suburban homesteading: Livestock!

Last year I noticed the grass in the back yard was a bit on the shaggy side and it was suggested I get a lawn mower. Now my back yard is no 18th green here, we're talking more like mini-golf size acreage. So, rather than waste the money on a lawnmower, someone suggested jokingly that I get a goat to eat the grass. Well I thought that was brilliant and proceeded to try and convince my roomates of the practicality of a lawnmower that, after eating the grass, we could eat ourselves. And maybe get some milk too, why that is a great deal! Unfortunatly, no one had goats for sale at that precise moment, and a series of distractions and whatnot delayed the goat aquisition, but now I am reading up on backyard livestock, in a book by the same name (thank you Mel!) and have settled on rabbitts. And geese. And maybe some pigs. The rabbitts will live in hutches in the garage and will be bred for meat, the geese get along well in cold and snow so will live in the backyard and supply us with eggs until such time as we descide to eat tham, and the pigs will be raised up from piglets to market weight being fed on resturant and grocery store surplus. It is a win-win situation. As long as the home owners association doesn't get wind of this. If anyone from the neighborhood nazi's shows up asking questions about the strange noises coming from the back yard, the roomates have been instructed to refer to them as Fido, Rex, Fluffy, and so on. No livestock here, only the family pets...