Amie and the Fedco catalog Homemade rice pudding in one of my pots. Garden planning (in Plangarden)
Author Archives: kaat
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 …
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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. Â 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 …
Reading Together
Clarity, In Pieces (iii)
So I asked myself that: So what? So what if I feel that I need it or that I somehow deserve it? The dream of childhood, of  what we were “promised”:  a happy life that can only be better, faster, bigger than what came before. A world where problems (ecological degradation, economic shortfalls, social injustice, health problems) and …
A Pattern Language for Building for Life: Positive Outdoor Spaces
I got Christopher Alexander(et.al.)’s A Pattern Language from the library a few days back and am just blown away by it. This man had such humble, democratic insights into the task of the architect and a real feel for natural, beautiful,  human and humane living spaces. His book first proposes patterns for building cities, towns, neighborhoods. About …
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Riot for Austerity – November and December 2012 – 49-50
OVER FOUR YEARS OF RIOT! Four year summary coming soon (I know, I keep promising) This is the Riot for the months of November and December 2012 for, mostly, the three of us. My summary of our first three years is here. Edson fixed the calculator: all go tither to crunch those numbers! Gasoline.  Calculated per person. …
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