Internet Farmer

Twitter gets many different responses. Some good, some bad. But first, a brief definition for those who have no idea what this means…

It’s like having a blog or website to write in, but you can only type 140 characters at a time. You might even hear it called “micro-blogging”, and it is to some degree. Some people “tweet”, random nothingness and it is more about friends, but others have put it to work for business.

Overall when it comes to business, it works if 1) your audience can and will use Twitter at all; and 2) if you can speak about something vital to your customers about your business.

A few weeks ago, I heard a story about a food cart guy in Los Angeles. He “tweets” the location of his lunch cart each day. People seem to flock to this guy no matter where he is, so they get the inside scoop by subscribing to him, and he gets the core of his business… loyal customers.

When texting or chatting, people say OMG(oh my god), or brb(be right back), or LOL(laugh out loud). It shortens things, but we understand. What if we could communicate even more complex information in just 140 characters?

The following article is what spurred this blog post. Not business related unfortunately, but a creative approach to communicating complicated instructions in under 140 characters. Read the article and you’ll see what’s possible.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/22/dining/22twit.html

What are your feelings on this whole Twitter thing? What might you “tweet” that could connect your business? Is this a waste of your time? Comment below…

Last year when I worked the first half of a season at Wealden Farm in Freeport, I fell in love with growing seeds. The attachment I had was amazing, and was only realized late in the summer when the harvest came and the little seeds I once planted in a tiny hole were bigger than me and could feed me many times over.

Living in Portland and not farming this year, things have changed for this year’s season. Thanks to my also-former-farmer partner Kate, we’ve taken on the city version of farming… container gardening. Our challenge? To feed ourselves with lettuce for the summer, and maybe the whole year. This means feeding 4 people who live at our two residences.

I admit, I did not give this much thought at first and nay-sayed it all. But after thinking it through, it was the only way I could do anything with no land and living in an apartment. And since lettuce likes colder weather and needs less sun, it was perfect for the low-sun backyard and apartment windows that will be our sun here in Portland.  So we’ll use my apartment as the greenhouse, and her backyard for when it is warmer.  I’ve always joked about farming my apartment and how my downstairs neighbor would be mad when I watered, and now it’s a reality.  Not quite, but I’m still using a shovel and dirt in my apartment, and that’s all I need to be able to say “I farm my apartment now”. (ha ha)

I’ve also ended up growing a beard the last couple of months. Somehow, I’ve ended up saying that I’m not shaving until I eat some of this lettuce. It will be good to eat my own greens, and be cleanly shaven.  Still a few weeks away though.  Mid-May is about when we can start eating.

Until my next post, here are some of the first photos of our home-grown-apartment-greens. We are growing flowers too, but I’m all about the food.  All of this was planted on 3/21, and we will plant new lettuce every two weeks to stay stocked with greens for four.

This is the first round of our lettuce and flowers spread out on what was my TV stand. Here is a few types of lettuce, flowers for pollenation and herbs like sage and thyme and rosemary.

A baby lettuce popping it's head out after 3 weeks.

Red Chard looking good, but a little blurry. I'm working on that!

Bibb Lettuce

Sweet Red Lettuce

My partner wouldn't be happy if I didn't give kudos to a few flowers. Here's her Sweet Pea. Pollenators are obviously a gift of mother nature once we move outdoors.