Piper is a Cover Girl!

If you’re local to the San Diego area, you may have seen this week’s reader with a rather odd cover photo. A beautiful and majestic fuzzy-butted silkie hen that my regular readers have come to love and admire. Alongside some random mustachioed schlubb that as no business being on the front of anything.

Photo by Matthew Suárez

as to the former, you are quite welcome. For the latter, my humble apologies, it will all be over in a week’s time so hang in there. If you plan on using it as a liner to your birdcage, or are getting creative with a Sharpie, I’d love to see photos! If you are not one of my local readers, you can see the story on The San Diego Reader’s website.I won’t attempt to re-writing the article here as it is already done by a far better writer than I, but it talks about the neighborhood community garden that I helped set up and all the amazing work they’re doing for the community. Something I’m so proud to have been a part of.

Although I am historically hell-bent on being a giant goofball, there are a few things that I’m serious about. Quality of food is one of them. In this article I talk a lot about this “fast food” society we’re living in and how destructive food deserts are to communities and the health of its populace.

This attention from The San Diego Reader is such a welcome shot in the arm for communities like mine that are surrounded by so many awful food choices. I truly hope that this resonates with everyone so that together we can fight these patterns and continue to find ways to keep our family happy and healthy no matter your income. That’s been my driving force in the last five years of writing Mind Your Dirt. To show that you don’t need to spend money to bring back a natural balance to your surroundings and the food on your table. Mostly because I’m broke as hell and necessity is the mother of invention.

Our community garden not only provides fresh and healthy free produce, it also teaches anyone who visits how to bring these techniques into your home gardens. Between Mind Your Dirt and the Ocean View Growing Grounds (as well as all community gardens), we will always be here to help you keep your family healthy and loaded with nutrients.

So a huge big Thank You to The San Diego Reader, Barbarella Fokos (writer), and Matthew Suárez (photographer) for taking the time to help this noble cause! To everyone else, get busy with that Sharpie! 

12 Replies to “Piper is a Cover Girl!”

  1. thanks for sharing…give me incentive to get back involved…you probably don’t remember me, but hopefully we’ll see each other more often minding some community dirt. 😉

  2. Hi James!

    It’s a wonderful picture and a great story! There’s something truly wonderful about connecting with people through good earth and food.

    I loved that you kept it real and admitted making the mistakes in your gardening escapade; I hope it inspires more of your neighbours to move away from the packaged crap and grow great food together.

    I love how will behaved Piper is for the camera, she was meant to be on the cover!

    1. I’ve been riding her coattails for years now! And, yes, I am chock-full of mistakes!! All the time. But they really force me to research and learn so I cherish them. They also make for funny blog posts so another benefit.

      My biggest goal here is to inspire people to try so I endeavor to show the ugliness as well as the pretty. Besides, sometimes I just need help from people.

  3. Inspire and serving other is beautiful. Have you joined the community of gardeners on YouTube as well to inspire more people too?

    By the way….I love how local papers that are not in Utah print the profanity. It made me chuckle 😊😊😊

      1. I never meant to diminish your efforts in the community garden–just that it surprises me when mainstream media foregoes its reliance on punctuation (f___ing, eh) to makes its point. The rest of the article was spot on.

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