A couple of months ago Lori Eanes, a professional photographer in San Francisco who has done photography for Utne Reader, The New York Times, Sunset Magazine, and Parenting Magazine, just to name a few, contacted us to see if she could photograph our family and garden for a project she's currently doing. 

She came out at the end of July and photographed us for two hours, snapping away as we planted seeds for our fall garden, harvested squash, pumpkins, beans, strawberries, and plums, and the girls tended to the chickens. She came up with some incredible shots. We were struck looking at them by how lush and fruitful our small (only 750 square feet) and not-so-perfect garden came off looking. It really is amazing how much food you can grow in a tiny space.

We just got the photos today, which you can view in the slideshow below (or click on it to see the photos larger).

You can see some of the other photos from Lori's in-progress "Backyard Project" on her website under Portfolio > Projects.  We hope to see her collection of urban farmer photos in a local publication sometime soon!

Since we picked our first strawberries of the season on April 21, we've been keeping track of how much the garden has been producing. Now, just over 3 months later, we've passed the 100 pint mark for strawberries. Yes, that's 100 pints of strawberries from our tiny backyard and they show no signs of slowing down for the season yet. We pick strawberries almost every evening, but when we're weary of the job we call our neighbors and tell them to come and pick at our "U-pick Farm." We eat them almost every single day. Believe it or not, it is possible to tire of fresh, organic strawberries, so we're traded some for other garden produce from a friend a block away, taken them to every potluck or backyard barbecue we've gone to this summer, and used them frequently as gifts.

Our raspberry crop has been amazing too. In the last 10 weeks we've reaped 55 cups of raspberries, though sadly, they are about done for the season. Our blueberries have been much fewer and farther between. In June, we picked apricots from Paul's parents' three trees. Our plum harvest has just begun (we've picked 46 so far), our apple tree has about 100 apples on it, and our grape vines have some promising bunches fattening as we write this.

What does all this mean? Besides the fact that we don't have to worry about getting enough fiber or vitamin C in our diets, our farmers' market bill has significantly decreased this summer. Our total fruit purchases this season have added up to about a dozen peaches and one cantaloupe.

On April 25th we had 540 people trek through our garden as part of the 7th annual Bay Friendly Gardening Tour. We spent six straight hours answering questions about our chickens, rain barrels, bat house, beehives, and greywater system, probably in that order. After that came questions about many of the 33 fruit and vegetable crops that we've squeezed into our small back and front yards. 

We got many comments about the enormous size of the strawberries in our patch as well as the prolific raspberry and blueberry bushes, and lots of questions about our asparagus and fava beans ("What is that plant? And what is that one over there?").

Many of the people on the tour are novice gardeners, and it was wonderful to hear their excitement as they noted what can be done in just a small space. We were gratified to hear so many people tell us that they were going to go home to put up a bat house, set up rain barrels, convince a spouse to let them get chickens or bees, plant a fruit tree, or build a raised vegetable bed.

Overall, preparing for the Tour was a huge amount of work, but we are thrilled that the re-landscaping project we began a year and a half ago is finally finished (we think). Now that the weather is beautiful and we've begun to eat meals on our back deck, we can enjoy a yard and garden that is busy producing our summer crops without much effort on our parts.

(The top photo shows our Fuji apple tree in the foreground.  The photo below shows raspberries along the chicken fence, an apricot tree just in front and near the center, fava beans at the bottom and toward the center, and asparagus at the bottom and to the right.)

Our yard and those of three of our close-by neighbors will be featured on this year's Bay-Friendly Garden tour on Sunday, April 25th.  The free, self-guided tour is sponsored by StopWaste.org and includes over 40 gardens in Alameda County, grouped in geographical clusters.  Pre-registration is required.

Our yard is pretty well qualified, with native plants, rain water catchment, gray water, chickens, bees, food production, and landscaping with salvaged materials.  We've been told to expect over 500 people (and perhaps well over that, since registration has been particularly strong so far).  There's also a need for volunteers to help out, so sign up if you're interested.

Here's a fuller description of the tour from StopWaste: "The 7th annual tour continues to celebrate the diversity of Bay-Friendly gardens. Urban farmers grow abundant harvests of fruit and vegetables, and keep chickens and bees.  Native plant enthusiasts embrace the local flora. Salvaged material aficionados blend recycled art into the landscape. Bay-Friendly gardens offer something for everyone—come and discover ideas for creating your perfect haven.... Gardens range from professionally designed postage stamp-sized lots in Berkeley to exuberant one-acre market gardens in Pleasanton."

We're pretty excited, although we have a bit more prep to do over the next few weeks.

Now, I know this is a family blog and all, but this seemed like something that we needed to share here.  You see, Ann has been leaving bed in the early morning (at least for her) to have plant sex.

You'd think that having two bee hives in the immediate vicinity would be enough to get adequate pollination of our squash and zucchini, but Ann has been dissatisfied.  So, taking a cue from our next-door neighbor, she has been taking a small artist's paintbrush in hand and pollinating manually.

Squash, zucchini, and other vine fruit produce both male and female flowers on the same plant and pollen from the male flowers has to get to the female flowers for them to turn into fruit.  So the process is to "tickle" the stamen in a male flower and then "tickle" the tip of the pistil in a female flower.  This has to be done when you catch both of them open, usually requiring an early morning hour.

After she returns to bed, I usually only get a grunt in response to my query of whether it was "good for you."