The newbie mind

I moved into this house in November, with my sweetie, excited to be in a new community and excited about having a yard. Somehow, as the economy continued to crash--and crash--and I started to read more blogs about sustainability, I become interested in doing more urban homesteading, following a diet closer to Nurturing Traditions and Weston Price's theories, growing vegetables and making more of our food, or trading for it.

At the same time, I became fascinated with permaculture, the study of environmental and agriculture systems. There are some great Yahoo groups around permaculture that I have been reading and I've tried to put some of what I learned into practice.

Here's what my goals are for this spring and summer:

• Recycle/compost food scraps
• Cut down on using bags and plastic of alll types
• WALK MORE, DRIVE LESS (this is a pleasure)
• Establish and maintain an herb garden we can cook with
• Develop a worm bin and keep it going to we can use the compost
• Build a series of container beds w/ fresh potting soil, manure, and gravel/stone(the bottom layer)
• Plant vegetables: sow carrots, radishes; plant tomatoes, squashes, peas and beans
• Keep the lettuce, chard and aragula happy; plant more of it
• Plant vines along the fence: japonica, jasmine
• Establish the lemon tree and keep it alive so it fruits
• Establish a pattern in trading for eggs--offer marmalade(it is coming out great), cake, soup, cornbread, all of which I make really well)
• Get involved  more with fruit foraging and with Forage Oakland-I love what they are doing.
• Start going to the East Bay Permaculture Guild meetings and learning more by doing with others
  
• Have fun with the above, this is a marathon, not a sprint, as we say in start up land.

Meanwhile, there is so much to read, and to learn; I have to remember this is change for the long haul, and it can't all happen at once.