Say Ha-ay! May!
Already flowers are falling over with their goodness, needing to be staked. Winter squash are going in as well as beans, the next round of salad greens sunflowers and zinnias everywhere. Now harvesting peas, raspberries, beets, leeks, lettuce and spinach. how about you? If you have yet to get your garden on, please jump in and join us for Organic Gardening 101 this weekend. It's not too late to register! Otherwise May is packed with classes on animal husbandry--goats, quail, rabbits, practical skills like knife sharpening, canning home miso making and how to cull a chicken. Plus our annual Memorial Day Weekend Cheesemaking Intensive. Jump on in and learn something new--a nice long summer for practice is ahead!

Urban Farm Tours
Just over a month away the Walnut Creek and Oakland Farm tours are shaping up and looking awesome. Please check out the updated sites, share and invite your friends on Facebook and get your advance tickets! This years ticketing scheme invites you to pay a little extra to benefit IUH and the farmers and in exchange we'll offer you a variety of farm fresh perks--eggs, honey and other value added goodies from our farmers and my book, EveryDay Cheesemaking.

Volunteer: We can still use a couple more people to help flyer both East Bay and Walnut Creek areas. We also need folks to help the farmers day of. People who help with flyers get day passes, people who help the farmers work a half day shift and attend the other half day free. Just reply to this email if you want to help!

Walnut Creek & Concord June 6, 2015 9am-3pm
Featured Sites: http://www.iuhoakland.com/uft2015wc.pdf
Tickets: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/1475038
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/696411770470832/

Oakland East & West June 13 10am-4pm
Featured Sites: http://www.iuhoakland.com/uft2015oak.pdf
Tickets: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/1475063
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/1618195728426245/

Rabbits: Unsung Heros of the Urban Farm Beastiary
All across the nation, the chicken craze is well underway. Far fewer people choose rabbits and while i do understand why, I wish more would consider them. Rabbits are the perfect small-scale urban farm animal. They make amazing manure for the garden, are relatively easy to care for and are one of the few animals you can raise in a city for a source of your own meat.. This does require looking your dinner in the eye, and learning to kill, things we as urban folks are removed from and recoil from.. There is a sentimentalism about rabbits because they are cute (though I wonder if you have ever met a cow or pig? They are pretty darn cute as well). And while rabbits dispatch is never my favorite chore, I am proud that i can do it efficiently, with minimal suffering. i am proud to be an omnivore that does not buy all my meat in a package, pre-killed and pre-cut to disguise the truth of what is really going on. I know exactly how my rabbits lived and how they died, and can ensure a quality of both unparalleled in any commercial operation. This is healthy for the animals and healthy for me, my body and my spirit. Below a list of 10 things i love about rabbits. I hope you will consider them, and join us for one of our two upcoming rabbit classes.

1. Rabbits are quiet
2. Rabbits prefer a shady spot in the yard, where perhaps nothing grows anyway.
3. Rabbits make great poo that can go directly onto your garden beds without aging.
4. Rabbits are tasty
5. Rabbits are a great teaching tool for learning about the cycles of life, birth and death
6. Rabbits can help us relearn what it means to look our dinner in the eye.
7. Rabbits are excellent at converting grain & green to lean protein.
8. Rabbits are great composters.
9. Rabbit care is minimal.
10. Baby bunnies are adorable!