Bug to Beer. And Growing Ginger and Turmeric

Bubbles! The Ginger Bug is bubbling so I’m moving on to the next stage of brewing a good beer: adding the culture to the base (water, more ginger and sugar/honey) and letting it ferment away some more. I’m making a little less than a gallon,  about 6 wine bottles, I should say. DH made some …

Homestead Animals: Bees, Chickens, and Fish

Amie welcomes the first non-human animals on the homestead I signed up for Bee School (7 Thursdays and 1 Saturday morning) and while I was at it I also enrolled for a backyard chicken class (2 Saturday mornings, maybe Amie can come too). It took me so long to sign up because I know that …

Some Garden Maneuvers

Plangarden and Gimp are handy tools for moving things around in the garden without too much back ache. This is a preliminary map for the Spring 2010 Garden – not the veggies yet, but at least the structures. The hoop house will be moved from its present position (light blue) over beds 8, 9 (still …

Holiday Homeschool, Eggs and Solar

Amie plants her onion sign Our latest guests have left and Amie and I have settled back into the-two-of-us routine. What with all the commotion of guests and visitors and extended playdates we have seriously slacked off on our “schooling”. August, I’ve decided, will see some school every morning. Amie so far has been enthusiastic. …

Morning at the Farm

Taking a break from our construction – we were setting tiles till 4 am – and gardening Amie, her grandmother and mself ran off to our favorite place in the US (aside from our own Robin Hill, of course): Drumlin Farm. There were birds, wild (Eastern phoebe?) and tame: And farm equipment (defunct): And strawberry …

Researching Chickens

Friends are saving their egg cartons for us and we’ve been researching what breed and how many chickens we want to get, on the internet, in library books: And in the field, at Drumlin Farm: I was checking out their state-of-the-art chicken coop as much as I was the chickens (the photo shows only part …