Q &A

Q. What brand of roofing did you choose?
A. Even though we are very happy with the roof material we cannot make a recommendation at this time because we feel that it would be premature.
Why? Even though, after months of research, we did choose a brand of stone coated metal shakes [there are about1/2 dozen companies companies that make such products] we aren't at all pleased with the contractor in this area who is certified to install this brand of roofing.
We chose this brand because:
» the metal "shakes" are not too "fake Disneyish-looking," » has acrylic not Teflon or PVC coating» ENERGY STAR rated» contains recycled content» drinking water safe» energy efficient» end-of-life recyclability» LEED certified» good color choices» clean manufacturing process
There are still some issues we have with his service and oversight of the work going on. If the certified contractor they give is a reflection of the company, this has been a real disappointment. Because the other stone coated metal roofing brands are almost similar to the one we chose, the most important thing is the installation and service; and that's where we have a problem.
So, until those issues are resolved we are reluctant to name this company or brand of shingles that we chose.   We are expecting a call from a representative of the metal roof makers and if we don't here from him by Monday then we are going to ask to speak with their president.
We'll keep our readers posted.

[Update 1/16/2007: We incorrectly used the term “certified” to refer to the licensed roofing contractor who installed our roof. Through a series of misunderstandings, we came to assume that the contractor was specifically certified to install our brand of roof, and we failed to verify our assumption. The roofing company does not certify contractors. To date, the company has been very responsive to our concerns about the contractor.]

Q. Is the metal roof drinking water safe
A. YES! Our roof is considered "drinking water SAFE"  by World Health Organization’s standards.   This element was a major factor in what brand we chose.

Wasn't This Worth Waiting For?

Just in time for the rain storm tonight. Tonight's rain [hence the dreary looking photos - I'll take better pictures when the sun comes out] will fall on a new sustainable metal stone coated roof. Justin read that this type of process was developed in WWII. The reflective metal roofs on buildings were attracting enemy planes so folks put tar on the metal and over that ground up stone or sand.   Such stone coated metal roofs are commonly used in New Zealand.   Jules'first homestead in the rural South Island (NZ) had a corrugated metal roof which collected and diverted the rainwater into a huge cement cistern.     Now we have an "upgraded" metal roof and we once again plan to harvest the rainfall and it use to irrigate the garden.

For those of you who have been following the roof saga since summer you are probably glad you won't read about the "R" word anymore. Truthfully, this project wasn't as easy as you would think - believe me. We spent many sleepless nights and stressful days agonizing over this decision. Looking at the 4" thick folder of all the types of roofing that we looked at Justin would comment "choosing a roof is like getting married, the only thing is you can't get divorced if it doesn't work out."

Time for high fives, pats on the back and hugs all around - time to celebrate !!!!   A friend of ours dropped by yesterday with a bag of goodies to "celebrate your new roof."   How kind and thoughtful!   Of course he couldn't help but admire and question in amazement "that's metal?" Speaking of admiring these last few days you'll find us pausing as we work in the garden just to admire the roof.

I think it's a good idea, the guys are thinking about framing a piece of blue tarp that covered 1/2 the house for over 10 years. Why? So that we don't forget where we've been, the "cootie" looks and "snide" remarks that were associate with "a blue tarp."
Break out the homemade elderberry wine and dish out the soy ice cream and savor this accomplishment for as long as we can ... before we tackle another project.

One lesson that came from all this long and difficult journey, it's all about timing and patience. ... "good things comes/happen to them that wait."  Even though we were embarrassed to have to put a blue tarp on part of the roof years ago, if we were impatient and decided to fix the roof right there and then we would have just taken the easy way and put on a typical asphalt shingle roof which we would have had to eventually remove!  

Living a sustainable life teaches you that you can't be rash or hurried, it's all about being slow and steady. Baby steps.  Looking back it's been a long journey, but we are WHO we are and WHERE we are because of it.

::Sidenote:: Final inspection from the city is on Friday.  Also for those of you who have been following our roofing saga you may be interested to know that while we were at city permit office the other day we were told that if we'd had a plain "reflective" metal roof on our home we would have had to get permission from our neighbors and pull a CUP (conditional use permit). It was worth the extra time and money [not to mention all the headaches] to find a metal roof that wouldn't stand out and would have required us to pull such a permit.


BOOKMARKS
Your Home: Is 'going green' worth the cost? {CNN}

The eco-friendly house (and renovation) has gone mainstream. But is it really worth the cost?You can save energy - and money Given the astronomical rise in fuel prices in the past few years, it's no surprise that energy efficiency is the top reason consumers choose green building these days.
read more

He's still following the sun {LA Times}

Berkeley — IN the beginning, to explain the concept of a solar water heater, Gary Gerber toted a homemade graphic of a black hose sitting on a lawn.
"Do you ever go out in the summer and turn on the hose and the water is hot?" he'd ask potential customers. "Well, that's how it works." In those "stone age" days of the mid-1970s, there was no solar energy industry, Gerber says, only a small collection of "experimenters, forward-thinking people, inventors." Even eking out a living was an impossibility: Gerber survived, courtesy of a side gig selling cheese from his Volkswagen van. Three decades later, his Sun Light & Power can barely keep up. A frenzied demand for solar power, or photovoltaic, installations has eclipsed the water heater portion of the business, and since 2002, sales have ballooned by about 66% annually — to more than $11 million in 2006.Once the domain of hippies, whose off-the-grid escape doubled as an anti-establishment rebuke, renewable energy is now a pillar of California politics. In recent months alone, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed the California Solar Initiative, which aims to help bring solar power to a million rooftops, as well as a landmark greenhouse-gas reduction law.
read more

Today the "shake style" stone coated metal sections went up lickady split.   Honestly, all that hullabaloo the many contractors told us that we couldn't do it ourselves because we needed "special tools." Huh!  Now that we've been hanging around to see their work and how it's done the next time around we could do the job ourselves and sad to say even do a better job. Actually,  we caught a few mistakes they made!   Basically, all one needs is a special cutting tool and a few other simple tools; otherwise, it's practically dummy proof.  

This type of metal roofing is much faster and easier to put up than typical asphalt shingles and best of all metal roof is environmentally friendly and are supposed to last 50+ years.

So next time around we'll be able to install metal roof ourselves.

The workers are coming back tomorrow and should I dare say by the end of the day the roof job will be DONE!

The latest on the metal roof installation is that it's not done yet.   Thought we'd had a roof in time for the new year but, mother nature, and a phone call, postponed its completion.

The sand coated metal roof would have been done had it not rain last Tuesday night into Wednesday. Not only that, we received a last minute, unexpected call from a NY production company which is doing a prime time TV show for the Discovery Channel on living green.   They didn't give us much time and needed to shoot on Friday, the 29th.  

Boy, did that send us into a tizzy, trying to organize all the construction chaos and get this place 1/2 way decent.    They wanted to focus on the garden and have us "walk through the garden and pick tomatoes and squash." Even though we are in sunny California, the garden is in its winter hibernation mode and the nighttime temperatures of below 30 don't help much.   I mean, it's a decent looking winter garden for our needs; but for an eye -appealing camera shot of one of us picking a huge basket of sun ripen tomatoes, it is not going to happen in late December.

Besides the publicity that we've received with their coming out, what we like even better about such visits is that there's a deadline for cleanup and finishing projects. You now how that is. When relatives or friends come into town, all piles of "dirty laundry" somehow magically disappear! For so long, we were putting off cleaning up the mess that was in the garage, driveway and around the house because we'd want to wait till after the construction work was done. However, this deadline forced us to expedite our clean up time table a few weeks ahead of schedule and the place looks so much better for it! Now, we won't have so much clean up once the roofing guys leave.

Speaking of roofing, a city inspector came on Friday to inspect the battens. We passed.

So now you all know [some] of what we've been up to.  

Q & A Continued
Q. Thanks for doing what you do. I'm curious though, what is the zoning for your house? Do you have to have any special permits to do what you do? And the composting toilet...I didn't think cities let you use them. Did you have to get a permit for it?
A. We live in a low-income ("fixer upper") neighborhood - which was one of the reasons we could afford such a house in California 20 years ago when we came out here from our 10 acres in Florida so that Jules could attend a theology college.  
Our property is zoned Residential.   As with any city municipality, you need to pull permits for construction, and we did pull one for the roof.   Pasadena allows residents to keep certain farm animals as pets; however, there are a few basic regulations on distance from neighbors and how many animals you can keep.
As with anything that we do here on the urban homestead, we called the City and asked if there was anything against installing a compost toilet. The city employee said that there wasn't "anything on the books" so couldn't give us any regulations against installing a compost toilet and said to go ahead.
Q. You also probably stay pretty healthy through your diet and active lifestyle, but do you do anything special to keep fit and energized? What do you do when suffering from a cold, etc?
A. Yes, we are and have been blessed with good health. Such physical work on the urban homestead keeps us all in great shape for the most part. In fact, the head construction operator who is overseeing the roof job and who proudly said that he "spends hours in the gym each day" asked Jules if Justin "lifted weights" or "was a (foot)ball player."   Of course, the answer was no. Then, he asked,  how does he look so buff?  Jules's reply: "He [Justin] lifts plywood."
We like to hike and go for walks, which help keep us energized. As for colds (no sniffles yet!) we don't do flu shots (never have) so if we do feel a cold coming on, we take Echinacea, gargle with Swedish Bitters, drink lots of water, take colloidal silver or putperoxide in our ears - sounds crazy but it works!     Prevention is the best medicine (washing hands, eating right -- fresh fruits and vegetables, avoiding white and sugary starch foods) and if we happen to succumb, which very seldom happens, then we take Mega H and inhale steam with eucalyptus oil or take lots of elderberry syrup.
Q. I'd like to hear more about your water catchment plans. Do you plan to use the water for all your household needs, or just gardening? What's your catchment square footage? What's your average annual rainfall? Do you know how much water you use currently?
A. We are still in the beginning stages of this next step in our "water & waste" journey.   First, we plan on taking care of the gardening water needs.
Yes, we do have aWATER CHART (pdf) Unfortunately it hasn't been updated since 2004, but it certainly gives you an idea. During the 2003-2004 season, there was a flurry of planting activity especially fruit trees and berries. Now that the plants are established they require less water.   Even though we've been conscious of water and for decades have been practicing the "mellow yellow" flush rule, installed two low flush toilets, only washing full loads, wearing clothes until they are really dirty, taking weekly baths and reusing laundry water, these past two years we've implemented even more water saving practices (toilet lid sink,clay pot irrigation, outdoor shower, simple grey water reuse practices such as bucket water collection from bathroom and garage sinks). With the completion of the grey water system that will take care of our tub water, installation of the compost and dual flush toilets we should save even more on our water use.
We estimate that over 80% of our household water use goes into watering the garden, and that's where we want to concentrate the reduction measures.
With basic calculations we figured that we could catch over 30,000 gallons of water from our house roof alone (not including garage -- an additional 500 sq ft). Here's how:

For every inch of rain that falls on a catchment area of 1,000 square feet, you can expect to collect approximately 600 gallons of rainwater. To calculate the square feet of our house’s catchment area, we measured the area of the outside walls and then include the overhang of any eaves.. (L) x (W) = 3,000 sq ft Since one inch of rainfall provides approximately 600 gallons of water for a 1,000 square foot catchment area, and our house has a 3,000 square foot catchment area, multiply 600 gallons by 3. 600 gal x 3 = 1,800 gallons With an average rainfall of 20 inches per year (checkaverage rainfall totals in your area), we have the potential to collect 36,000 gallons of water in one year.
1,800 gal x 20 inches of rain = 36,000 gal

That's the easy part.   But what about cost and storage space?  With cisterns priced at about 75 cents to $1.00 per gallon, we are trying to figure out how many gallons (without breaking the bank) would suffice to reduce significantly our dependence on the municipal water source.
More about harvesting the rain
Round tanks are fine if you have the space. I wish someone in the U.S. would come up with more efficiently use of space square tank system. Some Aussie had the brains anddid just that - perfect for tight urban areas! America is so far behind in such useful eco-inventions.
Q. We follow the mellow yellow method too and I try to remember to flush all toilets before bedtime but sometimes I forget and the toilet stains like crazy, especially in the summer (we are a household of 7). I use only natural cleaners and nothing seems to remove the stain from the very bottom of the toilet. what do you use to clean your toilets? I've tried the borax/vinegar bombs, baking soda/vinegar combo and oxyclean. nothing seems to work.
A. You are right, stains can certainly be a problem especially when there's a lot of use and for those of use who live without AC - warm weather. So far, we haven't really had a problem, and I use the same natural ingredients to freshen and clean the bowl. As a last resort have you tried non chlorinated bleach. Also, it may sound weird (but it works -- I've seen it with my own eyes) a pumice stone. Works like magic.
I would suggest a preventive measure--perhaps have a little jar of white vinegar on hand to pour into the bowl after every use.

That's All Folks

And that concludes all the questions that were poised to us in the comment box. Hope the answers have given a bit more insight into our project.  
Anymore questions?


BOOKMARKS
Scientists get OK for engineered peanuts {Yahoo! News}

A leading industry group has given scientists the go-ahead to build genetically engineered peanuts that could be safer, more nutritious and easier to grow than their conventional version.
read more

After tampering with corn and soybeans they are at it again.
Easy Ways to Go Green {MSN}

You can be good to the earth--without giving up things you love. Plus, what those "eco" labels really mean.
read more

A New Year's Prediction - Irradiated Leafy Green Vegetables Are Coming {TreeHugger}

As sure as the spring of 2007 will be green, politicians and Think Tank "experts" in the US will increasingly suggest that food irradiation is the best way to prevent foodborn illness. If recent history is any guide, opponents of food irradiation will be accused of threatening the health of children
read more

Yet another reason why to "GROW YOUR OWN!"
Rooftop oases find growing enthusiasm {LA Times}

Plants take root on a college building in Pasadena and elsewhere as cities see economic and environmental benefits of going 'green.'
read more

Wasting Away {Times Online}

Allow me to introduce you to the greenest people I have ever known. They are paragons. If the world had only followed their example we might not now be facing the threat of either drowning in the floodwaters created by global warming or watching fertile land turn into desert. To what extent we’d be enjoying our lives is for you to judge. They do not own a car and never have. They have never been on an aeroplane. To get where they need to go they use either bus or train. Very occasionally — if they have a particularly heavy suitcase — they might use a taxi, but no more than once or twice a year. They do not shop in out-of-town supermarkets or buy fancy fruit out of season. They have never tasted a strawberry in January or a kiwi fruit or mange tout at any time of the year. Most of their vegetables are grown in the back garden or their allotment and the food they have to buy comes from local shops.They have no need for recycling bins because there is virtually nothing to put in them. Indeed, the very notion of recycling is alien to them. The woman uses a shopping bag, so there are no plastic bags to get rid of and she buys her milk in bottles that are washed and returned. Every scrap of potato peeling or old cabbage leaf ends up in the compost heap and there is no kitchen waste because, quite simply, there is no waste. Stale bread is turned into delicious bread pudding and leftover vegetables into a fry-up.They buy only what they need because they have no fridge. The larder stays cool enough year round and nothing goes rotten. Ever.They turn off the light if they are not in the room and if they had central heating they would turn that down too. But they don’t. They have a fire in one room and the rest of the house is as cold as charity.
read more

To EB for his continued support of our site. We are touched and humbled by your gift.

Roof Report

The roofing guys are back again this morning; however with a chance of rain on Wednesday they may have to skip a day and resume work on Thursday.  

Busy

Yesterday, with the help of a friend, we spent the better part of the day tidying up outside. With such an urban homestead life one has to keep on top of things or it can get a bit untidy and disorganized. No thanks to the months of ongoing construction and other garden and sustainable projects which made us fall far behind in certain aspects of urban homestead life. The "down time" from November and March are the months where we take stock of the year's success and failures and plan for another year - what we can do better, what changes can be made, what didn't work and why, etc, etc.

Anyhow, back to Monday. Monday was a perfect day for work around the urban homestead. In fact, it was warm enough to go barefoot and shirtsleeves.  

In the garden, the orange trees are laden with fruit, so we've been enjoying (and will continue to enjoy all winter) tasty citrus and homegrown green salads.

After a day's worth of work, a good home cooked and partially homegrown meal we took the goats for a walk in the Arroyo.

Today, will be another busy day with lots of phone calls to be made ( for weeks there's been whispers of a huge shake up that will more than likely affect the urban homestead -- details to come when we know more)

Q & A

Q. So I guess there's still going to be Teflon in the metal roof?  
A. Nope, we choose the lesser of two evils.  The metal roof has drinking water safe acrylic coating.
Q. 400 lbs of grain - I presume this is for human consumption and not for the animals? How do you keep it insect free while you store it?
A. Yes, it's for human consumption.  We are temporarily storing the grain in one of our clothes closets hoping that the insects won't find it there. While unprepared for inheriting all this grain one really should have sealed storage bins or buckets or Rubbermaid containers sprinkled with bit of DE (diatomaceous earth).
Q. I appreciate the info on your roof saga! What kind of insulation are you doing? I'm thinking about that more and more for my house, since heat loss is undoubtedly one of the biggest expenses for the winter. I'm trying to reduce my footprint, but there are so many things to be done! Baby steps, baby steps...
A. Glad that you brought that up because we are proud of the fact that our house has "recycled" insulation! Many years back the City of Pasadena had a energy program where they would come out an insulate the attic -- for FREE. Of course, with our "drafty ol'' 1917 house which didn't have a stitch of attic insulation we jumped at the chance. The City applied a naturalCELLULOSE insulation in the attic. Cellulose is manufactured from recycled materials - like newspapers.  

Thanks to the City of Pasadena, we have: recycled attic insulation, 12 solar panels, free fruit trees, two composters, energy star refrigerator, energy and water efficient clothes washer, efficient gas water heater, low flow toilets, and Energy Star compact fluorescent lightbulbs.

More Q & A to come. Stay tuned.

BOOKMARKS
Meat and milk from cloning are safe, 2 FDA scientists say  {LA Times}

A long-awaited study by federal scientists concludes that meat and milk from cloned animals and their offspring is safe to eat and should be allowed to enter the food supply without any special labeling.
read more

For you LA folks who are concerned over such news and the continued tampering of thefood supply you may want to join theNELA FOOD CO-OP (which we are members of) besides providing a resource for natural bulk foods, the organizer has also set up a raw milk buying club.

Last Thanksgiving we were jack hammering and removing (by hand) the slab of concrete in the backyard. This holiday season we are re-roofing our house.   Seems like all our big projects happen around the holidays.

Yesterday, the crew put up felt paper and battens (the metal roofing will "float" above the plywood) finishing 1/2 the house. The supplies were delivered at 6:30 am, the crew arrived at 7:30; however, the boss with their supplies didn't arrive till 10:00.   Folks in the neighborhood are curious as to what type of roof is going up because the batten grid sure does look odd on top of the felt.

The crew won't be coming today because they have to go to a funeral, so work on the roof won't start up again till Tuesday.

Supplies were delivered for the roof today and there's a crew here to start work.   Like I said the roof is going be be finished sometime next week. It'll be great to start the new year off with a new roof.  However, there is not much time to celebrate or for taking a break -- more projects await! Besides the major clean up after all this construction there's the compost toilet to install, grey water bed to finish, gutters put in to collect the rain and a cistern to store the rain water, permanently landscaping the driveway, partial permeable paving of the driveway, and more!   Cleanup and getting back to normal is going to take weeks. So many plants got displaced and went homeless during the roofing construction so we can't wait to get all this disarray back into order and ready for Spring.

Grateful

To all of you who supported PTF this holiday season by purchasing gifts and wares from the Peddler's Wagon.    We are indeed very, very grateful to you. Our family wishes you and yours a most blessed holiday season and new year.

As our longtime readers know, PTF started in December 1999 as a very influentialfamily advocate site in one of the most covered father-son saga (which, this month, we just finished putting up just a few of the manyarchives). After this 6 month saga ended, which included collecting over 21,000 signatures, PTF eventually morphed into an alternative, progressive news site which touched on issues like genetically modified foods, pesticides in food, the environment, Y2K issues and much, much more.

In 2001, after bringing such important issues to the public, we wanted to do more to fight against the corporations trying to trap us, making us slaves to their system. We could protest on the streets or make our voices heard on the internet, in print, etc. After much thought, what better way to protest against such injustice than by showing how we were, for years prior and present, trying to live the revolution: growing our own food, making a living with our hands, and practicing voluntary simplicity, cooking from scratch, eating with the seasons, using and building sun ovens, etc., etc.   Thus, the birth of what is now known worldwide as the Path to Freedom urban homestead model.   Since its small beginnings, we've journeyed through growing over 6,000 lbs of food on our 1/5 acre (1/10 acre garden), brewing our own veggie fuel (biodiesel), installing solar panels, building a cob oven (with the help from the community), raising a menagerie of farm animals, cutting our energy usage in 1/2 from 12 kwh a day to 6 kwh - the list can go on and on.

For more check out our 'At A Glance' page, view our 18 min"Music Video Brochure" or read the list of steps accomplished on the right hand side bar of this journal >

At this seven year stage in this leg of the journey, we ponder what will PTF become in the years ahead.

It's amazing what used to be obscure words like urban homestead, pioneers, path to, path to freedom, journey towards, are all commonly used and referred to now on the world wide web and blog sphere.   Since its humble beginnings, Path to Freedom has had more influence than we could ever imagine. The pebble that was thrown into the pond has had a tremendous ripple effect from what we ever thought possible.

Here's to all those who are traveling the path in what Jules refers to you/us as:
"the few, the humble, the new pioneers."

Comments

Thanks to the few (only 7) of you who actually took time to help with my case of posting fatigue. Thank you. You've been very kind and helpful with great suggestions and we'll be posting answers to your questions soon.

The Four Letter "R" Word

Seems like everywhere we go and everyone we meet these days, the first question folks ask us is not your normal greetings like "how are you doing" and so forth. Nope, instead it's "how's the roof?" I know many of you got an earful after asking that question! Not surprisingly,  some even told us that they were tired of reading/hearing about the roof problems and saga. Hmmm, like we aren't? That makes two of us!    You wouldn't believe the frustration, stress and all that went on. The back and forth dilemmas, the misinformation, one person says this, the other that, finding affordable wood to replace.

We have a file of papers 4" thick of sustainable and alternative roofing materials and 2" of business cards.   With such a sizeable and important purchase we wanted to make sure we got all the information straight. So, we studied and analyzed all of the options and looked over and over and over at the options for a roof. It is supposed to be the last roof we ever will buy for this house since it will last over 50 years.   Kind of like a marriage, well, sort of, but you can't file a divorce from your roof if you change your mind!! Believe me, it wasn't easy, especially with an older house such as ours.

For those of you who have been following this roofing saga, I won't go into all the details because it would be just too long. Instead, here's a brief outline:

When we started looking at metal roofing material, one of the problems we encountered was the issue that many metal roofs are teflon coated. A few months later, since we didn't like the teflon, we were seriously considering clay tiles (even more sustainable and beautiful than metal)and even lightweight cement tiles. After asking question after question, we found out that with the pitch of our roof being 8/12 and with the lightweight clay tiles only being held on with one nail we discovered something. With such a steep roof and the law of gravity, the nails (especially with an earthquake or if someone walks on them or the tiles get heavy when they are wet) could break and then one tile will slide under the bottom tile till you have an avalanche of clay tiles - not good, not good at all.

Even the lightweight clay tiles would have added over 18,000 lbs (just tiles alone -not including the plywood and 2 layers of 30lb tar paper) on our little house. On top of that, the clay tiles aren't water tight and expect the two layers of felt underneath to be a defense against any potential leaks. In addition, many roofing contractors that came out were very concerned of the weight that it would put on the house and said they wouldn't put the clay tiles on without a major inspection and reinforcement of the house. Well, if they were concerned about the weight then that started making us question it too.

Eventually,  this issue made us change our minds and go back to where we started - metal.

The roofing guy is coming this morning for us to sign the contract and work should start (delivering materials) tomorrow - meaning we are to have a new (sustainable) roof by the new year! Definitely time to celebrate! It's kinda of sad that we have now to hand it over to professionals, after having done all work up to this point ourselves: tearing down 7 tons of old roofing materials, putting up 100 sheets of plywood, fixing the sagging and or damaged eaves/rafters, and rebuilding a whole section (~400 linear feet) of eaves with brand new wood. If we'd been putting up an asphalt roof, we've done that before and could have done the whole re- roofing job ourselves.   But, metal roofing requires special tools and knowledge and why bother tracking down and buying tools we'll only use once?   We DIY'd all that we could; now it's in the hands of the professionals.

Stay tuned for the pictures to come.

Nighttime temperatures have been hovering near or below freezing. Last night it was a frosty 27 degrees. When I go out early feed the animals I dress warming with my hand knitted hat, fingerless gloves and scarf and a large second hand coat. Justin likes to tease that I look like a babushka from Russia - hey, to me it's cold OK?   It's officially winter and now the garden has gone into winter hibernation mode. The fruit trees are almost naked and stark looking, the perennial herbs dormant and the winter garden tinged with a bit of frost damage.

Roof

Could be? Yes! I expect to post an update soon, so stay tuned. 

Winter Fruits

Living So Cal one's diet is never absent of fresh fruit. Winter in Southern California means trees laden with citrus of all kinds and on the urban homestead it's tamarillo time.  

Having to use up these little red ornaments that dangle from our trees that line the driveway, I tried a new recipe from New Zealand calledTamarrillo Carob Pudding.    It was quite an interesting combination of flavors.   Of course to our palette we felt it would need some tweaking (bit more carob or chocolate for our taste) but it does have potential.