I love my winter garden right now. It is a place of brilliant color, where all the cares of the world fall away in the midst of the rows of singing green. These plants know me, they have known me since the whole of their being rattled around in my palm as I sowed seeds…
Author: toadstoolsfairyrings
January Chicken Pot-au-feu
The chickens are on my list lately. Not only have the bold, bad things been making raids on the kitchen, strewing the contents of the piggie bucket all over the place and devouring the cat kibbles, but they have also been getting into the garden. When I see them, plump and nonplussed with bulging crops,…
Roasted Radishes, 3 Different Ways
I guess it’s cold when you turn the tap on in the morning, and you get a cup of ice, and that’s only after it’s had some time to thaw. In some ways it’s hardship out here in the cold, but at the same time i feel much stronger and healthier than when we lived…
Return Of The Light Grain-free Lemon Cake
It’s been unusually cold lately, cold enough to snow although we weren’t so lucky. Hard frosts for several days in a row left everything sparkling with minute crystals in the early mornings, the ground hard frozen, and we marveled at the layers of ice on the water troughs that had to be broken through. The…
January Yarn Along
The very cold weather and hard frosts of January are upon us, completely taking everyone by surprise, as usual. The weather changes very quickly here. New Year’s Eve was almost warm. It wasn’t until we were sitting around a New Year’s fire that night that the first gust of cold wind blew down from far…
Thrifty Leftover Turkey Pie With Garden Vegetables
Cold weather and busy days. There’s so much I’d like to get done before the new year, but the short days run by so quickly, and I’m left wondering to myself how it’s so easy to stay up so late knitting by the fire when the nights are so long. There are lettuce and collard…
Happy Holidays!
Just wishing you a lovely holiday!
Holiday Madness
Everyone always tries to do too much for the holidays. Our version of that this year was an apparent fit of madness in which we decided to take advantage of the cool weather and slaughter a giganormous pig just before Christmas. Bee was actually our first Gloucester old spot to have piglets on the farm….
The Longest Night 2017
Today marks exactly a year since we left our house in town to live in the middle of nowhere with our garden and animals. I love the long, dark nights of winter, when you can wake up in the middle of the night and feel the quiet emptiness around you, and the soft breath of…
Old-fashioned Pumpkin Pie
I was lugging a wheelbarrow full of hay and manure into the garden when the weather changed. The air was warm and still, and seemed to hang like a muggy curtain around the pea trellis and rows of young cabbages, lettuce, and broccoli as i trundled clumsily along the narrow path. A sound almost like…
Building A Garden
I love, more than anything else about gardening, watching the garden grow. Even before the uncertainty of putting small seeds into earth, and waiting, there is the dreaming, where long straight rows of vigorous vegetables grow in the fertile imagination. I’ve tried different gardening methods over my seasons of gardening in the past 10 years, …
First Calf of Fall
I was just telling someone that Geranium looked as if she was going to calve any day. She was huge, and her udder had started to fill. Still, it was a bit of a surprise to walk up to the cows and find a beautiful new calf on the ground, already licked clean and shiny. …
Toadstools And Fairy Rings 