This really isn’t what it looks like! No, Clothilde is not locked up on bread and water (and breastmilk). When we got our first batch of pigs years ago, we didn’t have anything to transport them in, so the guy we were buying them from sold us this rusty old cage to bring them home….

With all the rain (FIVE inches last week!!  Well, at least according to our rain gauge) the garden is getting jungley.   I don’t think I will bother companion planting flowers with the melons next year – the pretty cactus rose zinnias look like they’re drowning in melon vines.  The melons didn’t trellis like the cucumbers,…

We found this cool fungus on the stump in front of the house.  It started out as a creamy, textured lump that I thought was cat puke.  It “bloomed” a few days later.  This fungus was at the farm and was being grazed by big ants.  You can see one on it near the bottom. …

Even though the tomatillo plants have been dying like flies from a suspected fungal infection, I do have two plants left, and they are loaded.  So there was a smidgen of salsa this year after all, which I am content with. The garden is so much work – seeding, transplanting, tending, watering, weeding, building, fertilizing,…

The big kids are off at the Firefly gathering in North Carolina.  Mirin is very excited to learn more about carving and flint knapping from the teachers there.  While they are off learning primitive skills, we are busy finishing up some big farm chores, like spreading the fertilizer and soil correctives and some building projects…

Unfortunately, we are having to buy a new fence charger.  The old one has been failing us and Ethan finally realized it was the problem after he bush hogged practically the whole forty acres trying to keep the resistance down on the fence lines, fiddled with the solar panels and batteries, and called the customer…

 Five years ago I bought a potted peach tree from an orchard down the road.  It was called “Snow Queen,” and the really nice guy who sold it to me told me it had no commercial value because it had a quality called “melting” which made it incredibly delicious, but unable to be transported. Our…

 I hope the piglets aren’t getting boring.  They are just so cute.  Little devils, I can’t help thinking when I’m watching them play.  They are almost as naughty as the goats, only they haven’t gotten into the garden and eaten the corn (yet).  They look like they’re up to something.  They’ll pause and watch us…

   We’ve been heading out to do the chores earlier than usual, to avoid the summer thunderstorms that always pop up out of nowhere every afternoon.  And so we’ve been seeing some of our neighbors that we don’t usually run into in the evenings.  This was a teeny tiny 2-inch long baby gopher tortoise.  Once…

I’ve had this amazing moment in farming recently where something really clicked.  When we got Matilda, she was obviously a very pampered cow.  The man who owned her was very kind, but she had stayed in the same small paddock her whole life, and was fed a GMO soybean and corn ration.  It was hard…

Rose’s preschool had an end-of-year outing to Blue Springs on Friday.I hardly spoke to my older children, they were so busy playing with friends and swimming in the beautiful, unbelievably blue water.  We found the Morning Meadow pavilion easily, despite the fact that no one was actually there at the time, because we spotted the…