Today’s guest post is written by Della Hansmann of Whole Trees Architecture and Construction , a young architect who is designing the house we expect to build in 2012. See more here. You don’t have to make a building more expensive or technologically complex to make it sustainable. Before entering […]
When I say we have a pond on our land, you need to realize it is a tiny, little jewel box of a pond. The former owner, making use of Department of Natural Resources grants available at the time, dammed a little ravine and created a modest water catchment basin. […]
Last Sunday, the sun was shining. The birds were singing. Doug and I were dipping buckets of water from our tiny pond and hauling them in our Powerwagon (learn about the tool that has turned us into superman and wonderwoman here) to all the places we started new plants this […]
I’ve read that pioneers called their wagons prairie schooners. If they crossed my acre and a half of restored remnant prairie today, they would be sailing over a sea of flowers. I can totally relate to the bees. I am drawn to this blooming bounty and am fueled by it. […]
I’m hosting far-flung family from Seattle, Houston and Albany this week, so I’m going to post a link today to an article I wrote for the July/August issue of The Organic Broadcaster It begins: We’ve all read the headlines trumpeting the destructive potential of global warming, filled with phrases like […]
Mom was right. We should eat our vegetables. Now even some insurance companies want you to supersize your salad (read about this below). But more than that, if we choose vegetables that are produced locally as much as we can, we will improve not only our own health but the […]
There is a long and continuing saga to the barn you see in my blog title up there. Our farm needed a barn — someplace to store the equipment we were accumulating to take care of the land. A place we could camp in comfort, and a staging area to […]
Because I don’t live on my land yet, I have to drive there, and I am painfully aware of the gas I’m burning up. It’s one of those shades-of-green things. I feel the work I’m doing on my 44 acres is good for the planet, but that good is sooted […]
Though I’ve already applied some of it, I’m still digesting the feast of info from 20th Energy Fair of the Midwest Renewable Energy Association (MREA) June 19-21 near Custer, Wisconsin. It’s a great gathering of people who are learning how to live more lightly, and it just feels good to […]
I first walked my land on Labor Day Weekend 2004. I was responding with a pounding heart to the topographical nuance of a protected hollow where a ravine and another, wider valley meet under a big bowl of sky. I was already bonding to the rows of toddler pine, spruce […]
