Living Foods

August is all about food. All the colors are coming in now: deep green collards and brussels sprout leaves, yellow squashes, red tomatoes, orange peaches, purple eggplants, and blueberries are holding in there. The bees are turning the orange and yellow nectar (over)flow into oodles of honey. At the end of the month there will …

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 …

Riot for Abundance – July 2013 – Month 57

ALMOST FIVE YEARS OF RIOT! This is the Riot for Abundance for July 2013  for the three of us. Edson fixed the calculator: all go tither to crunch those numbers! Gasoline.  Calculated per person. 15.9 gallons pp. 39% of the US National Average Electricity. This is reckoned per household, not per person. We cook on an …

Hulless Oats

I pulled the oats – Terra Hulless Oats, Avena nuda, literally “naked oats” - from their bed mid July. The plants were falling over (“lodging”) and still somewhat green (10%), which is when Logsdon recommends harvesting them. I stuck them, straw and all, in buckets to let them ripen and dry in the sun-filled protection of my porch. …

Introducing the Pullets to the Coop

We are in phase ii of introducing the little ones – three days shy of four months old, a month from laying? –  to the big girls. Their little coop has been sitting right next to the big one for over a week now, so the girls know each other. Because their run has screen …