Although Hurricane Elsa was not much of a hurricane once it reached us, we got a lot of rain. Lots and lots and lots of rain! Three weeks before the official storm, we were also pelted daily with rain, rain, rain. Every day was dark and cloudy, and the sun only occasionally shone silvery white…
Category: Homesteading
A New Herd
The goats have been keeping me busy – we slaughtered the three male bucklings from this spring, and suddenly we have lots of meat and lots of milk. Kefir, yogurt, cheese, too. It is such an abundance as we have not had in several seasons. It feels heady and happy – every meal is a…
New Milk Custard Pie With Mulberries
This post is not timely, unfortunately. A while ago the mulberries were finished fruiting, and the season for new babies is nearly over. But the truth is this post is a difficult one for me to write – because there was trouble this season, and people who don’t live with this kind of thing –…
Radishes With Miso Tamari Sauce and Sesame Seeds
The peach trees are blooming profusely in the orchard still. I’ve watched each of the ten trees one by one be ornamented with delicate pink blossoms, and then the slow, graceful dance of lacy green leaves unfolding. So quickly the flowers fade and are gone, but for these three weeks or so I am enchanted…
Three – A Birth Story
Two of my eight mama goats this year were due to kid last week. I didn’t write down the exact day I turned the buck in with them (a healthy goat carries her kids exactly 150 days. It isn’t like cows who have a 20-day window), but it’s easy to see when they are ready,…
Three Hot Sauces
Once again this season – this whirling, swirling season of new gardens and homeschool, birthdays and busyness and expectations, has picked me up and crushed me like a hurricane from the Gulf. Every day feels so, so busy – every moment so very, very full. I feel like I’m suffocating under all the work. Some…
A Garden Tour Spring 2020
Can I show you my garden? This is, beyond a shadow, the most beautiful, flower-filled, viney, better-homes-and-gardens, fairy dust, glossy magazine centerfold, rockstar, dreamboat, fairest-of-them-all, wish-upon-a-star, garden of dreams garden than I’ve ever grown before…. I took first-planted pictures to include, so you can see how it has grown! Here it is now: These are…
The Odd Bits: Blood Loaf
Just after we moved from my childhood home to a lonely neighborhood, i started having panic attacks. A month before we had moved, I got eight new silver amalgam fillings, triggering a severe kidney infection that didn’t respond to antibiotics, asthmatic bronchitis that i didn’t fully recover from for years, and a heart arrhythmia. I…
The Odd Bits: Fried Testicles
Despite the warmth of this winter, we at last passed through the frost-bearded days of our wintery spring, the dark, chilly nights pinpricked by the undying stars, when i wake up before light to sprinkle the frozen, rattling garden; crunching bucket-laden to the honking geese in the white dawn through the field of bright glass-green…
The Storm
The whole world seems to be swallowed by a wild sea as i sit here in my kitchen, listening to the wind of the storm crashing in the rocking trees, the leaves and branches rattling in the claps of ominiusly swirling hot wind, and then suddenly the quiet and the stillness. As the dark, eerie…
Grain-free Pecan Chestnut Ginger Cookies
I started with roots this time in the garden. Flowers, herbs and roots. It’s not like me at all. I usually like to get a healthy selection of greens going, and drag my feet on the radishes, carrots, beets, parsnips, and salsify. They grow slowly and need extra soil amendments, and it usually feels daunting,…
A Halloween Story
Something really awful happened yesterday. Our cats are great ratters, and one of them (I presume) had dragged a fairly large but scrawny rat out of the barn and left it on the patio.(Not the same rat in the picture). Because of the stored animal feed, we have a constant supply of rats and squirrels…
Toadstools And Fairy Rings 