I’d like to share my second article that appeared recently in The Dodgeville Chronicle. I’m covering a 4-part series of evening presentations called “Floods, Droughts, Land and Energy: What Is Wisconsin’s Future.” (Check out the first installment How Will Global Warming Affect Wisconsin.” “We all have a role to play […]
Deer are the largest and most dramatic wildlife most of us see on a regular basis. This summer we enjoyed watching a mother and her two fawns regularly explore their botanical buffet within feet of our bedroom window. They were incredibly endearing at such close range, but a cloud hung […]
Gorgeous, delicious and toxic! Their nuts are super nutritious and a mouthful of earthy flavor. Walnut wood has vivid grain. When peeled, they reveal a muscular, sculptural beauty. Everything about […]
I’ve been given honey twice in the past few weeks. What a wonderful gift! It’s a gift that has been given twice. People gave it to me, but bees gave it to them. Some new friends, Amber Nicole and Paul, gave us a jar of Mad Urban Bees honey. http://www.madurbanbees.com/ […]
Last July, Doug and I joined the timber-raising of one the carpenters who helped build Underhill House. (Check it out in my post Timberframing with Friends: Sweat, Love and a Little Drama. ) Prairie and his partner Lindsey are restoring an old farmhouse. The back of the house proved too far […]
The making of Underhill House was also the destruction of all but the most rugged organisms living in the soil around it. We moved here in January, and as soon as the snow melted, I was counting the days till I could start to heal the earth outside our walls. […]
Saturday October 5, Underhill House will be part of the National Solar Tour — the world’s largest grassroots solar event. We are so thrilled to part of a coalition of over 5,500 home and business owners, volunteers, solar installers, public officials and grassroots organizations who conduct open house tours of […]
Doug and I have had several houses with shingle roofs and even lived in a house with a thatched roof in the Netherlands, but a living roof is a whole new beast. In fact, it seems a lot like having a pet. To learn more about our sodded roof, check […]
When Doug was hiking in Nepal years ago, he saw many examples of how the people in that steep land terrace the garden beds they depend on. We decided to do the same on our own slanty land. Fortunately, our rock wall builder still had a few more rocks that […]
This is a follow-up for a post I wrote in mid-April when we tried 3 different methods for planting Redosier Dogwood. The yard area carved out around Underhill House was a vast wasteland at that time. New construction, even when you are trying to be as green as possible seems […]
Digging in the Driftless 