We bought our land the weekend before Thanksgiving, and the next summer I walked around with big eyes watching to see what would come up. In a handful of places I saw a single tall, plant. On the edge of a meadow. By the side of our main trail where […]
I’ve been thinking about irrigating as we plan to sink cisterns beside the barn to store rain water. With precipitation starting to come in more intense episodes in the Midwest followed by long dry spells, it seems like the best idea. This press release from UW-Madison writer Jill Sakai takes […]
We’ve been spending about half our time out on our land this summer fighting invasives, finishing the barn and preparing to build a house next year. On a rainy day last week, I opened the door to the greenhouse, which had some overgrown herbs I intended to clear out. I […]
We came across some rough-sawn elm cut to 5/4″ that we thought would work well to make the loft floor in the barn, but it turned out to be only about half the needed number of board feet. Then a good friend kindly offered us some old white oak timbers […]
I went back to school a few years ago and got my masters degree in journalism from the UW-Madison. I graduated with an emphasis in science writing and burning desire to write about environmental topics. I was not surprised when Bryson,’s A Walk in the Woods was assigned reading in […]
A crew from Whole Trees Architecture and Construction spent Tuesday and Wednesday on our land and completed peeling all the trees that need peeling this summer to serve as the unmilled timbers we will be using to build our house next spring. Selected not only because they are the right […]
Guest Post by Doug Hansmann With daytime high temperatures staying in the 70s this week, we’re getting a much-appreciated reprieve from what’s been a roasting summer here in Wisconsin. And as Denise and I finalize the orientation of the passive-solar house we intend to build next year, minimizing all possible […]
This exciting news release from University of Wisconsin Madison offers another reason to like lichens! Lichens and mosses are well-known barometers of the environment. With no real roots, they literally soak up their food from thin air – living on water and nutrients extracted mostly from the atmosphere. They come […]
When we are trying to live more responsibly, consuming less, burning less greenhouse gasses – bikes keep popping up as an integral piece of the puzzle. There was a great article in Monday’s NYTimes on biking in the Netherlands. The Netherlands is bike heaven. Doug and I loved the more […]
We had a peeling party on our land this week. Monday through Wednesday there were from six to nine people selecting and prepping the trees that will hold up the house we build next summer. On Monday most of the trees were selected from our 44 acres. (See The First […]
Digging in the Driftless 