Eventful 2017

Quite a lot has happened in 2017.

We hosted our first Olive Festival in January, where we tasted pairings of our homegrown olives with cheeses and wines.

We have a new caretaker!  Cina and family moved in this spring, and she has helped tremendously to maintain and expand the edible landscape.  This year, we added 16 new trees (14 of which produce food) and many other edible plants.  We planted these moringas (on the right) in late May.  By October, they had grown over 10 ft!

We had new windows installed.  This was a big deal, because the old windows were, well, old.  And drafty.  We replaced all the windows with high performance dual-pane windows.

We held two olive harvesting and curing workshops.  The olive crop wasn't as large this year as in past years, but we had more new faces than ever, and really the whole point of these events is to share ideas.

Our food forest is gradually taking shape, starting in the east yard.

And finally, our first banana flower appeared this December.  This is a "Dwarf Namwah" - one of four varieties of bananas in our chunky monkey patch.

This year has been filled with learning by doing (I won't say learning the hard way, but I suppose that's the more common expression), and I hope to sit down soon to write more details about what went well, and what I'll do different next time.

And there will be a next time.