Flat Folks' Farm

You all will seriously miss out if I don't let you in on the inspiration behind this post's title. It just kind of came to me and I couldn't resist. When I was little I had this Playskool toy called Flat Folks Farm. It was great, actually considered vintage now, I think (am I old enough for my toys to be vintage?). Anyway, this post is about the "farm" I have right now at my flat...get it? Todd and I live in a flat, which makes us flat folk, and I have a little "produce farm" here, so that makes the farm flat folk's farm!

I should also mention that my youngest sister, Kimberly, couldn't quite get out the actual name of the toy when it passed to her, and therefore completely changed the concept by calling it Fat Folks Farm.

I hope my mom still knows where this is...and if not, I hope my dad gets on eBay and finds it :) 

I want to be a farmer. I’ve said as much for the last 12 days. My dream home is an old white farm house and I want it to have lots of land, a big barn, a garden, fruit trees and bushes, chickens, and, after I’ve gotten in some practice with these things, a cow or two :) My plan is to get my mother-in-law to teach me to can and my sister-in-law to show me how to plant strawberry and blueberry patches, and my father-in-law to build me a chicken coop. This is all after they stop laughing at me, the least likely of us all to do anything...earthy.

Before I can become a farmer, I need to get over my aversion to dirt and dirty shoes and hands. I should also probably try to grow something small. You have to start somewhere, right? Exactly.

So, to help push me in the right direction, I took up a little herb hobby. Our flat has a lovely “garden” (a.k.a., back yard), but it’s not really garden material. So, the next best thing in my situation is a collection of potted herbs in my courtyard! Todd and I purchased them last week and I have loved watering them, picking pieces off of them, and eating them! We went went with coriander, parsley, oregano and mint. Here’s an interesting fact you might not know if you’re not into herbs: coriander is another name for cilantro! You can imagine our delight when we learned this; it makes all the difference in homemade salsa! And homemade salsa makes all the difference in a nearly mexican food-less South African culture.

The tall one is the coriander, the one on the left is parsley, and the one you can just barely see in the bottom right corner is oregano! The planter was already here...we *ahem* removed a particularly ugly specimen to make way for our garden :) 

Parsley close-up. Say garnish! 

Did you know: mint needs to be planted separate from other herbs, as it is terribly aggressive.

In addition to herbs, we also got a modest and highly useful aloe plant! I was very happy about this. That is, untile I realized...

...we have an absolute aloe FOREST growing in the back yard. It would appear that the African breed even has little orange flowers. Had I known we have enough supply to bottle and sell our own brand of aloe vera, I would have skipped on my cute little potted version.

So, there's the farm! I'm not quite calling myself a farmer yet...I'm mainly just focusing on keeping things from dying.