The Urban Farm Handbook Challenge!
The Sustainable Eats’ Urban Farm Handbook Challenge is a yearlong project that focuses on learning more about where your food originates and how to take a more active role in growing, finding, and making what you eat.
I know that busy lives don’t leave a lot of room for an extra project, especially one that requires a year-long commitment, but this project seems manageable. You decide how much work to take on each month and the goal is to learn and hopefully make some small changes in how you live, not to drastically reinvent your life.
What I really appreciate about this project is the versatility of the monthly challenges. The Urban Farm challenge is not solely about gardening or creating a farm in your backyard—you don’t have to end up with a chicken coop and overalls if that is not your cup of tea. There are challenges that focus on cooking and baking, one month focuses on bartering (I’m thinking of organizing a small-scale food swap), and December’s challenge is all about holiday crafts.
I think the Urban Farm Handbook challenge is a good match for DwellWell with the focus on sustainable living, good food, creativity, and crafting, so I’m going to participate. I’ll take photos of my projects and write about them on the blog and also add information about local, Spokane-based resources I find along the way.
February’s challenge is soil building (I know, the month ends in five days). The challenge asks you to plan ahead, learn something about your soil, and decided how to best enhance it when it comes time to plant (after all, soil is the foundation of any garden—plants won’t grow well without good dirt). Sustainable Eats has several resources to consider as you plan.
If you’d like to join in, be sure to sign up with Sustainable Eats and also let me know; I’d love to hear from you. Sustainable Eats is also promising several giveaways through the challenge. Incentive!
Even if you’re not ready or able to take on the whole project, if you’re interested in one or two of the monthly challenges, let me know what you’re doing and what you’d like to learn more about.
I’ll post my soil building notes early next week. I hope you’ll join me!
