review: one block diet blog

wow. how much more local can you get?!?!

i came across this blog today about a group who has decided to see how much they can produce on one city block. not only are they growing food, but they are also trying a whole host of other things: olive-pressing, bee keeping, chicken rearing, wine-making.

It’s quite cute. the various mini-teams trying the activities are called Team Bee, Team Chicken etc. and on their blog you can read about each one in-depth. these are not people who have tried these activities before – so you can laugh and cringe along with them as they figure it out as they go.

i found the blog really interesting. they have different people from each team blogging so you get a mix of styles and info. but you can also drill down into whichever Team interests you more at that time or search through the archives. they’ve also made it super user friendly, for example, Team Chicken has now created a simple downloadable guide to deciding if keeping chickens is right for you and how to go about it.

from what i can make out, the group involved is actually the employees of a magazine called Sunset in california. which is totally cool because it means most of them write really, really well… case in point:

One by one, our chickens are stepping up to their duties and beginning to lay eggs. Ophelia went first, causing much excitement around these parts. Alana started up a couple of days ago, producing a slender greenish egg that looked a little like a smooth kiwi. Both of them seem unfazed by this radical change in their physiologies. They just calmly deposit in the henhouse and then hop back out to the yard as though nothing’s happened.

Yesterday, it was Carmelita’s turn, the redder of our two Rhode Island Reds. No walk in the park for this chicken, I’m afraid.

Around noon, Jim, Team Chicken’s leader, reported that he’d seen her sitting in one of the nest boxes, shooting her legs in various directions and squawking frantically.

I popped by the coop an hour later and there was no sign of her—in the yard or, when I peered through its window, in the henhouse. Finally I saw a motionless bit of wing up in a nest box and went round to the latched door that leads to it. She was in there all right—scrunched up against the door in a frozen position, her head thrown back and beak open, like a figure in a Napoleonic war painting. Good God. I shut the door quickly. The poor thing clearly needed privacy.

What if that first egg is stuck, I wondered. Or breech or something. Does massage help? I blocked these thoughts and managed to get back to work.

here’s a photo from their blog of Carmelita:

this is the coolest blog i have come across for ages. a bunch of complete novices (mostly) feeling their way through some really cool projects in the art of eating locally. they share their mistakes and their triumphs and their sometimes very weird discoveries… i will be spending many happy hours trawling through here, that’s for sure!