As we plan our farm, Doug and I often mull on whether it will include livestock. I’m not looking to keep animals for meat, but dairy seems so useful, sheep (to a knitter and spinner like me) just look right grazing on a hill. Chickens would be a great source […]
Because our little barn is a timber frame structure covered with slabs of oak weathering to a silvery patina, I like to think it looks like it belongs where it is. (See my post, Building our Timberframe Barn here . But when it was being built, the site looked like […]
What tastes better than fresh hot – almost-too-hot-to-hold – corn on the cob, still sweet from picking? Whether each succulent kernel is coated in melted butter, or my new favorite, melted blue cheese (I get an award winning block of Blue Paradise from its friendly creators Tony and Julie Hook […]
Books are portals to other worlds. Opening the cover is like opening a door for me. I walk through and leave what I call Reality Number One behind. (I number my realities because I am usually reading several books at once, and they all take me to different places. Some […]
I was caught short my first winter as a serious locavore. I did not know what any kid 4H would have known in 1950. I decided in the fall to depend on what area farmers could offer when it was too late to put any local fruits and veggies in […]
So, last weekend my husband, two grown daughters and I settled comfortably into our daughter’s Toyota Corolla (the greenest car among us as present) and motored down to Chicago to refill our spiritual cisterns from the wealth of cultural treasure only a city can amass and to check out some […]
If you love to cook, you will love Richard Wrangham’s cooking hypothesis. This British primatologist proposes that we humans stepped away from the other apes (who still spend most of their time grinding bitter berries and fibrous roots between their massive molars) when we tossed those tubers into a fire […]
When you decide to be a farmer, you have to start somewhere. How about a row of raspberries? Last April I drove an hour and a half to East Troy WI for the “Berrylicious Workshop” at the Michael Fields Agricultural Institute , which promised and provided hands-on training in pruning, […]
It’s energizing to see so many people blogging green! Here are 5 sites worth checking out. Blogs for guidance on gardening green, dressing green, eating green, housing green and the final blog, GreenStrides a compendium of green products and practices. I hope you will be as energized by these blogs […]
By now, five years into the relationship, I no longer feel it necessary to call my land Ms. Forty-four Acres. Sometimes I feel it’s perfectly appropriate to call her Forty-four, or even Dear old Double F – but that doesn’t mean I actually know her really well yet. Whenever I […]
Digging in the Driftless 