Worrying Our concern for nature and, more generally, the state of the planet, has grown over the past couple of years, and I don’t foresee an end to our worry. Especially since having a child, we’ve been trying to make some changes. For instance, the day we realized we were pregnant, we switched over to organic, …
Search results for: The Road
Betelguese
They took a surface picture of Betelguese, only just, a couple of hours ago! Betelgeuse is close, only about 600 light-years away in the constellation of Orion. It is one of the largest stars known, a red super-giant with a radius around 1400 times larger than the Sun’s. It’s also pretty young, just about eight …
Jinxed: RIP Pebble
And just as I wrote how “my” creatures were doing so well, our little runt, Pebble, who had held her own and was doing so well, got a wing torn off, through the wire fence of the chicks’ extra run, in broad daylight. We isolated her, and I looked at the wound as best I …
Korean Natural Farming: FAA (i)
A month ago I attended a workshop on Korean Natural Farming (KNF), led by Aaron Englander, at the Natick Organic Community Farm, where they implement a lot of KNF techniques. I deeply appreciate many of the ground tenets of KNF: make it cheap (and so available for even the poorest), use as many inputs as possible …
A New Approach to Beekeeping
Both my colonies perished over the winter. When I opened them up in early spring I found only a handful of dead bees (no queen, that I could see), and quite a bit of honey left. It was too late, the bee bodies were too decomposed, to send off a sample to the Beltsville Lab, …
Hurt Chicken
A couple of days ago Amie and her friends ran inside in a panic: there’s blood, blood! I ran out with them and found a crazy chicken yard with screaming chickens and screaming children. Also a broad streak of blood on the roost. Imagine my relief when I found it was just one of the …
There is No Alternative, or Paul Shepard for the Twenty-First Century
If you would like some music with this post,  I recommend Isakov’s 3 a.m., from which comes the following lyrics: give me darkness when i’m dreaming, give me moonlight when i’m leaving give me mustang horse and muscle, cuz i wont be goin gentle give me slant-eye looks when i’m lying, give me fingers when …
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Precious Things in Transition
Watching Bill Moyers’  recent interview with Wendell Berry, it was hard not to tear up, because of the sheer beauty of this man, his poetry, his speaking, and his holding both grief and joy in equal measure and balance: It’s hard to think of any thing that’s precious that isn’t endangered. But maybe that’s an advantage. The …
Of Axes and Goats and Sumac
The purple loosestrife and the goldenrod are blooming (*), and the sumac is on fire (**). Life is good. I’m researching axes. I am sorely lacking in axe skills, which I think are the perfect skills to have: good for fitness through meaningful physical work, good for the mind as an exercise in mindfulness and …
Full House, with Seedlings
On this rainy, chilly day I find myself alone in the house for the first time in over a week. My in-laws are here, and over the weekend we had a crazy house full of friends and family – eight adults and two kids, all sleeping over. I love extending the dining table to the …