Welcome to our families blog about life as Urban Homesteaders in Massachusetts. Laura, Romney, James, Alex and Arizona are working together to create our grand vision of sustaining ourselves, our community and the planet through, simplicity, community organizing, gardening, preserving and cycling or walking in the place of most car use.

We moved to Massachusetts just over two years ago and chose our home based largely on the proximity to a quaint downtown, local bike path, libraries, parks and much more. The large sunny yard would provide a great location for a garden and many fruit bearing trees, bushes and vines.

We decided on going with a large keyhole garden following bio-intensive and permaculture methodology. Nature helped us along with naturalized blackberries and black raspberries. In the first phase of the keyhole plan we started with a U-shaped bed of strawberries in the center and blueberries and raspberries closer to the sides of the garden with lots of room for more beds of strawberries to either side of the center "keyhole".

Year two in the garden brought much change and many backaches as we jumped in with both feet and went for making year two look more like year 5 on our garden diagram. Oh well, live and learn.

I cannot take credit for the beautiful peas in the photo, they were the hard work of Dave & his son Max, who are plot holders in the community garden we established in our side yard. But they did a lovely job of framing the view over the Oak Street Community Garden.