Our greenhouse growing boxes are almost complete. Seed is ordered, and temperatures of soil and air are getting into the growing range. In our completely passive solar greenhouse, the thermometer 8 inches below the soil surface never registered freezing once all winter long. The inside air temperature once got down […]
When you pay for organic milk, what are you paying for? I pick that bottle off the shelf imagining cows grazing in lush pastures, a breeze ruffling their top knots, as they gaze off into the distance thinking calm and cowish thoughts. Those are the cows whose milk I want […]
Everyone has heard about the dark cloud over bee hives. In 2006-07 beekeeping operations lost 45% of their hives, and 2008-09 was no better. Everyone has also heard about the birds and the bees. Pay more attention to the bees. 70 percent of the plants in the world need help […]
Sunday was one of the days (there are many more – all the days of winter, actually qualify) when I am very grateful to live in a town with a vibrant winter famer’s market. It is possible to be a well-fed locavore with the Dane County Farmer’s Market at hand. […]
It’s not a great time to be a grassland bird. Their numbers are diving faster than a hawk after a ground squirrel. Yesterday I learned more precisely how grassland birds are doing in my neighborhood (Southwestern Wisconsin). Mike Guzy did his Wildlife Ecology Ph.D. research just a few miles from […]
Geography is destiny, and I got both my geography and my destiny defined a little more clearly yesterday at the University of Wisconsin-Arboretum’s Winter Enrichment Lecture Series. Naturalist extraordinaire Rich Henderson shared his insights about the past, present and future ecology of prairies in Wisconsin. He was speaking from 34 […]
guest post by Doug Hansmann Our architect gave us his shopping list for 73 joists, rafters, posts and beams for our new house today. He could supply everything from his woods, but we hope to find most of them on our own 44 acres. Here’s what it will take: Trees […]
As soon as the first snow accumulates 4 inches, I strap on my snow shoes, and I live in them off still spring. (Well when I’m outside of house and town – and there’s a part of my brain which says that the only time I am really living.) Snow […]
For better or worse, the race to get projects done before the ground freezes is over, and I think we won. The temperatures around here have dropped. At the moment, it’s 17 degrees F outside, and a big snow dump is predicted today – the first serious snow of the […]
We reach Thanksgiving from a winding road through autumn and exit into winter. The time available to work outside on our land is truncated more with each passing day. Sunset comes earlier. Night lasts longer. And longer. That’s why of all the Christmas/Solstice traditions, I love trees the best. Our […]
Digging in the Driftless 