Be joyful though you have considered all the facts
After a couple of days of rain and chill (yesterday morning I even lit a fire in the wood stove) the sun has returned. I got a lot done what with all that pent-up green energy! I cleaned the chicken coop. All the veg beds (‘cept the hoop house ones) are now planted, the potatoes …
Continue reading “The Sun is Back and Hyper-Local Lovage Soup”
Brewing root beer and mead (with wine yeast, I’m not leaving it up to chance this time). The yeast at least is having a feast. It’s feasting on honey. Mead recipe (following this one but without the spicing): boiled 2 gallons of filtered tap water steeped one big of Tazo organic chai in it …
In the afternoon I picked a huge salad for a party we’re going to this evening. All of this is from our garden: Lettuce, mache, minutina, sorrel, claytonia (with flowers), radicetta, kale, chard, lamb’s quarters Amie will eat only greens from our garden. Yesterday after school she got to go with my friend M and …
Continue reading “Eating from the Garden Again and the Little Activist”
This Summer I’ll be growing food all over town. The black dots indicate where. The lower one is at the Ecological Food Garden at the popular Hannah Williams Playground, which we established last Summer. In the middle, the left dot is at my house, the one on the right is my daughter’s school’s garden, which …
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 …
Spring mode! It was 72 degrees today and sunny with a light breeze. I was in the garden as much as possible these last two days. I planted two paw paws in a corner of the garden that previously held a leaf pile. What gorgeous soil I found there! From now on: leaf piles all …
This, dear friends, is a massive apothecary! The beginnings of it. Some of these envelopes hold just 5 seeds. Many hold seeds that need scraping with sandpaper and intricate regimes of warm-moist and/or cold-dry conditions. Some will take years (years!) to germinate. Suffice it to say, these aren’t your average lettuce seeds. Each one is …
Amie and I planted the first seeds in flats. The heat mat is now fully booked. I’ll move the mache because it doesn’t need warmth to germinate and use that space for the leeks and onions, which I like to give a haircut so I can munch on the trimmings while working the seeds. This …
With the help of my ancient but working bread machine, which makes a hearty and very slice-able whole wheat  loaf, I now bake one bread every other day. However, the ends never get eaten, and by the second day I have to cut off the entire crust for Amie because chewing on it hurts her …
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 …
Continue reading “Fruit Orchard on the Slope: Soil Analysis and Amendments”