Every time I sprinkle baker’s yeast into warm water and honey, then see it bloom and rise to the surface like foam on a rich beer, I feel like I am witnessing life begin in a primordial sea. I am a farmer watching my microcosmic crop ripen in the space […]
Half of our 44 acres are filled with rows of strapping, teenage White Spruce and Red Pine planted by the previous owner. These trees grow naturally in Northern Wisconsin, but usually exist only by human intervention in the southern part of the state, where we live. The Red Pines in […]
Building a house is a big frigging deal! The Real Estate Blog says that 2.1 million houses were built in the U.S. last year, and that half of them are now sitting empty. I don’t even want to think about the cost to the environment and the boost in our […]
Cinderella couldn’t miss her glass slipper anymore than I longed for my Yellow Lady Slipper, and I’m glad to report that the Case of the Missing Lady Slipper has a fairy tale ending. Check out my earlier post, The Case of the Missing Lady Slipper. After several seasons of deer […]
If you made your living telling fortunes for evergreen trees, you would not read their palms, you would read the little brown nubs overwintering on the end of each branch. In spring those nubs stretch out to become the tree’s yearly growth. How long they will get is anyone’s guess, […]
I didn’t learn about Conifer sex till it smacked me in the face. Our land has 22 acres of teenage pines and spruces as part of a certified tree farm, so how did I fail to notice what was going on sooner? I have been walking among them, cutting out […]
As we fill in our mental map of this 44 acres, we tend toward descriptive names that don’t take too long to say: High Pines, Windward Spruces, Lloyd’s Lane, Westfallia, the Prairie, the Glade, Turkey Track Trail, Ridgeway. Most of these names came immediately to mind and stuck like glue. […]
So, there I was Saturday, crouching in the woods under the oldest oak on our land, squinting hard at the ground so I wouldn’t miss a single tiny white flower cluster, pulling them out by the root, biting off the top half of each plant and eating it on the […]
Hey, we all need things to be easy once in a while. The list of things we could/should do everyday to turn the tide of global climate change can be intimidating. Most of them are a big commitment to lifestyle change. But you can also make changes while lounging at […]
Who What When Where Why How The Prime Directive is how to take care of and live on this land with the smallest feasible footprint. Notice I say feasible, not possible. (We’ve taken living in a pup tent and farming with a machete off the table – only Cinderella can […]
Digging in the Driftless 