Hello, Autumn. Bright lights fading fast, blown hither and nigh. Twisted tale, simple sail, birth to end, a diecast in the green. Some mornings I lie in bed and can’t get up, the window shades close and tight, the sheets so cozy and warm, the day ahead unclear, a feeling it won’t go right, my…
Tag: homestead
How To Grow Tomatoes to Feed You & Your Family For a Year
Tomatoes are my very favorite crop to grow. I fret over them, baby them, cheer them on, and proudly serve them to friends and family as some sort of jewel in the green. As modern homesteaders on our old farm, we grow nearly all that we eat and store lots in our freezer, root cellar,…
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Part 1: How to Grow Food to Feed You and Your Family for a Year
Are you interested in growing enough food to feed you and your family for a year? It has been a goal of mine for years, and it is a milestone that I am excited to share with you. For me, it’s been an incremental process. I’ve been gardening for ten years now–from a couple of…
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Garden Prep Video: Building Rich Soil for Next Season’s Success
A traveler friend once told me that there are three main phases of travel: The anticipation, the travel itself, and the memories of the trip. I think this is true for many results-driven experiences in life, and for me gardening definitely fits right in–the planning, the planting, the harvest, the preserving, and the remembering are…
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What To Plant Now: A Sampling of Spring Seeds
I’m getting lots of messages and questions about planting and that makes me so happy—think of all the adults and kids digging their hands in dirt! And think of the truly immeasurable joy of giving and receiving a hand grown bouquet of homegrown food…It’s enough to make you cry, quite truly, during these times. So….
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Video: This Wild Life – A short story trailer for Eating Buckets
What do you wish for? What keeps you up at night? Where will your heart take you? Brian and I ask each other these questions often because it keeps us curious and alive, but we don’t often get to combine words and pictures and think about these questions the way we were able to in…
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Photo Diary: Buckets and Buckets and Buckets of Life.
Everything around us is bursting with burgeoning, blossoming, gorgeous, incredible, inspiring, life-giving, life-supporting, life-affirming, nature-built pieces of art. From the blackberry blossoms to the clusters of Italian plums to the Braeburn and heirloom and Fuji and Transparent apples and Bosc pears to the greens and peppers and tomato blossoms, to the first fire-orange nasturtiums, and…
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Endorphin blast.
We woke this morning to riotous springtime birdsong and sun–precious, blessed sun–blasting through our bedroom window. Our rooster was crowing his head off, surprising even himself with his bantam lung power, I am sure. The poor girls trapped in the henhouse were pretty grumpy when the kids finally arrived to let them out. We gathered…
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Making A Hugelkultur Garden
Hugelkultur (German for “gardening with mounds”) is a form of permaculture gardening that has been heralded as a way to end world hunger, because it offers sustainable gardening methods that require very little water: “Hugelkultur are no-dig raised beds with a difference. They hold moisture, build fertility, maximise surface volume and are great spaces for…
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Collecting seeds and planting dreams.
At the end of last year, I went to our local library and bought a huge stack of castaway magazines from their donation section for 25 cents apiece. I sat down with my husband, a couple of pairs of scissors, and a glass of wine, and snipped out all the images and words that called…
