Julie Pritchard Wright’s San Rafael urban homestead is home to vegetables, fruits, flowers and chickens. (Photo by Julie P. Wright)
Julie Pritchard Wright grew up on her family’s two-acre property in the hills of Cupertino, where her father grew grapes and fruit trees, and kept bees and sometimes chickens, while her mother tended a large vegetable garden.
“Whenever I smell the scent of tomato leaves, I think of her,” Wright says. “She also grew many kinds of flowers, and I grow many of the same varieties.”
Wright considers her own 5,000-square-foot San Rafael garden as an “urban homestead” where she can cultivate a sustainable, organic and “locavore” lifestyle, and nurture plants that, in return, nurture her and teach her patience, observation and mindfulness.
In keeping with her lifestyle, Wright likes to line-dry her laundry, can and ferment her own foods, host sausage- or salami-making gatherings, practice no-till gardening and some permaculture principles, and plans to eventually replace her lawn with edibles and exchanges her homegrown produce with Marin neighbors at the San Anselmo Garden Exchange.
READ THE FULL ARTICLE: https://www.marinij.com/2020/09/11/an-urban-homestead-that-nurtures-nourishes-educates/
