It’s déjà vu all over again. Last year we spent weeks watching a pair of geese nest on the tiny island of our pond. When we went out to our land at the time I calculated the young should be hatched – they were gone. Vanished. We feared predators. This […]
I always love the drive to our land, getting closer and closer as the highway skims the top edge of the long, high Military Ridge that shows up on every topographical map of Wisconsin till we turn south onto the country lane and drop into our little valley. It’s a […]
Yesterday was Doug’s and my 32nd anniversary. It is serendipitous that our anniversary is also Earth Day, but it makes a fantastic reminder of the values that drew us together in the first place. This year we celebrated by planting our raspberry patch. According to Growing Raspberries in Wisconsin, “with […]
Things are getting exciting in our mostly-finished greenhouse! Last year we raced to get the growing beds built and filled before the ground froze. This March we raced again to finish the top edge of the boxes so we could plant. By then the temperatures in the greenhouse were staying […]
I garden like I cook – using a mix of intuition, inspiration, opportunity and random readings. This system works better for cooking, where any totally “out there” idea produces just a single adventure for the taste buds rather than a failed crop for the year. This spring I finally enrolled […]
GUEST POST BY DOUG HANSMANN This month marks the first plantings in the greenhouse Denise and I built on the south wall of our barn. The first, we hope, of many productive growing seasons. The concrete footings for the greenhouse were poured in the summer of 2007 when the barn […]
The snow has receded to tiny patches on northern hill slopes. The plates of ice are floating on the mostly-open surface of the pond, and that has freed the Western Chorus Frogs, who began singing three days ago. These are tiny little frogs no bigger than the tip of a […]
Carol King was talking like a geologist when she sang, “I feel the earth move under my feet.” On our land, you don’t have to look very far to hit what I thought until recently was solid rock. When we dug the foundation for our barn, we hit pure white […]
When we first bought our 44 acres, our friends asked when we would build a house on it. They were surprised to here us say at least 5 years. It’s now going on 7, and we are planning to build in 2012. This time frame is being a great chance […]
Food comes from the soil, but where does soil come from? That’s what I’m learning in my first reading assignment of the Training Program for Master Gardener Volunteers. (The University of Wisconsin Extension Master Gardener Program provides extensive, free horticultural training to people,who in turnshare their training for gardening-related projects […]
Digging in the Driftless 