Been thinking about that slope: will the soil support what we ultimately want to plant there, and how do we best prepare it? This south-west facing slope, relatively sunny – somewhat shaded from the southeast and northwest, more so as you go further down the slope – will be a fruit orchard: we’ll plant blackberries and […]
Monthly Archives: January 2013
Applying the Pattern Language (ii): Inviting Entry, Making Connections
Back to patterns! Having a plan for the slope has re-opened my mind for the immediate front: the balcony, the level stretch of garden up top, the top of the driveway. This is what it looks like right now: I already analyzed one of the more general problems: the negativity of this space. There are some more specific […]
Soil and Water Works: Hugelswales
It cannot wait to get started in the garden, in particular to start the big Soil and Water Works. I want to plant stakes and dig dirt and maneuver wheelbarrows and roll rotten logs downhill. I even want to roll some of them uphill, that’s how desperate I am to get started. For today I […]
Goings On in January
Amie and the Fedco catalog Homemade rice pudding in one of my pots. Garden planning (in Plangarden)
Pouring Myself a Soda
Can’t call it ginger soda anymore. “Ginger champagne” is more like it, as it’s definitely alcoholic and tastes a little like champagne. Foams like it too! To your health! {Update 1/17} I immediately put all the bottles out on the porch, where it has hovered around freezing. That immediately squashed the fermentation. When I open […]
One Hundred Bottles of Beer on the Wall… Bottling Ginger Soda
DH’s buckets with the wine grapes had company: my ginger soda carboy. The trouble in our house is that there is no place where the temperature remains constantly warm enough. My 1 gallon carboy was being moved from next to the wood stove, to next to the radiator, to next to the gap between fridge […]
Neighbors
Discovered over the last couple of months: neighbor who can help me identify wild edible mushrooms neighbor who can help me dispatch a chicken to my freezer once the time comes neighbor who can darn the holes in my favorite ten-year-old sweater neighbors with whom to share seeds and gardening schedules neighbor who can take […]
Pressing Wine
Yesterday evening we took the next step in making our wine. We picked up the grapes in early December. They’re from Behm Vineyard in California and get shipped here as part of a wine club. We got a Cabernet Franc and a Merlot. The grapes come crushed – so with skins and pips – and […]
Garden Goals for 2013 (and Beyond)
Ah, it’s 2 degrees out, but bright and sunny and in between running out to swap out the chickens’ frozen water I am dreaming of the garden. My goal for 2013 is to do more work on the homestead, because I realized what an opportunity we have here, to build a place that is a […]