Flushing Drinking Water, Not – and Toilet Cloth

Okay, I’m warning you. This one’s (perhaps) on the edge for this blog, but it was inevitable. It’s about our toilet flushing habits. So if you’re here to read about Amie’s drawings or how the carrots are doing (badly), proceed at your own risk. This is the one aspect of our homestead that I don’t …

Independence Days – Week… ahum…

So behind, it’s shameful. Forge ahead, anyway! Plant: Fall garden of spinach, kale, broccoli, purslane, various lettuce, chard, mizuna, mustard greens, all as seedlings, and in the ground peas, more green beans, chard and carrots. Harvest: chard, kale, cucumber, potatoes, various tomatoes, beans both green and dry. Preserve: apple* sauce, peaches* in syrup, tomato-apple* chutney, …

That’s a Bummer about the Berries

We were so keen on currants and gooseberries, all along the chain link fence that borders our backyard. But it seems they are still banned in the state of Massachusetts – because Ribes plants could be hosts to the fungus spores that causes White Pine Blister Rust. The ban used to be on the entire …

More Summer Harvest

Ah, so this is what it was all about! Finally the garden is giving up that abundance that was promised: beans of all kinds, potatoes, cucumbers, tomatoes and tomatoes, and our first eggplant (apple green). There’s enough to eat and put by. This is one day’s harvest. The tomatoes that weren’t eaten straight away were …

The Other in My Back Yard

I am reading Jerry Mander’s In the Absence of the Sacred. The Failure of Technology and the Survival of the Indian Nations. Many points are too loosely argued for my taste – as in, I doubt it would convince my DH, who is a total techno-optimist. As a confirmation for what I believe, it reads …

How Amie’s Summer Is Going

Math Tea Party Parrot … “Mama, when you see it IN your eyes, but not outside your eyes, it’s a dream, right?” “Yes.” “That’s why when you open your eyes it’s no longer there.” … “Mama, Peter Pan [movie] is made up of pieces.” “Yes, like Kipper: episodes.” “No, Kipper episodes are stories by themselves. …

More Canning, But It’s Hot!

Yesterday, on my birthday, I cooked and canned 4 quart (1 liter) and two half pint (500 ml) jars of applesauce with my new canner – I still used the hot water bath method, no high pressurizing as yet, it was simply the only pot that would hold all those jars. It gave me even …

Brewing Us Some Compost Tea

A friend lent me the Toolbox for Sustainable City Living, which has a recipe for compost tea.  He also dropped off all the necessary equipment for making it. 1 nylon stocking’s leg full of my best homemade compost (= the inoculant) 5 gallons of (non-chlorinated) rain water 1/4 cup of molasses (food) oxygen thanks to …