This is the season of dry, whirling wind, of butterflies and ragged grass, tall plumes of dog fennel, yellow flowers, and change. Lime rock dust hangs over the country roads like fog, and in the quiet nights the almost cool wind stirs the mixing bowl clouds around the hesitating moon. In the hot afternoons, the…
Category: Homesteading
Harvest
This year has lacked a dry season, making the pastures already green and beautiful and filled with flowers. Walking through the cow-paths, the starry Erigeron flowers swirl past in a green galaxy of grass. It isn’t the usual hot, blue, open skies of May, but chased all over with piled up clouds shadowed with silver…
Loquat and Mulberry Cobbler (grain-free; Paleo)
We stopped in at my mom’s house in town to pick mulberries from the ancient mulberry tree in her front yard. The tree is huge and covered with berries, but the birds have begun to eat the ripe ones already and we mostly found berries which had just recently fallen. My mom tempted the girls…
Solstice – Birth and Barley
Erce, Erce, Erce Mother of all good green growing things. May the barley grow tall and shine like gold. May the milk flow in rivers, And the cattle grow fat in the marrow of their bones. Let the pastures grow tall and be filled with flowers, And the fruit trees be leaning and laden. May…
Treating A Cow With A Snake Bite Naturally
I have to give credit to my daughter Rose who took this lovely picture of me and Matilda at milking time. This is how our mornings always begin. It’s been a busy week, and it all started when one of my milk cows named Chestnut (because of her beautiful brown coat and prickly personality) came…
North Florida Pecan Pie
The first of the winter frosts came through last night. We spent yesterday chopping cassava stalks, making a shelter for the goats, and moving flats of tiny lettuce into the cold frame. It got later and later in the day and by the end of the afternoon we realized we didn’t have enough cover or…
The House of The Garden
I’m so lucky that I have such a big, sunny garden, but I’ve also come to realize that not being limited by space can be more difficult than having to squeeze things into a small area. Ethan called my garden plan this season “masochistic” after he offered to help and i told him what my goals were for the day.
The Best Pumpkin Dish Ever
It’s amazing what comes from one tiny seed, one small spark of life given at the end of the season, a hope for the next one, waiting in darkness until the light and rain call forth the potential. And the patience of those seeds that wait for years, maybe centuries, for that moment to unfurl. …
Cheese, Chicken, and Spinach Pie
Every day for so many days I have been finishing my work of milking and chores as soon as possible and rushing into town for various reasons. It is such an intense world out there in those places of asphalt deserts baking off heat and trampled every minute by the mad monster of traffic, where…
The Freezer of Darkness: “The Horror, the Horror”
The awful truth is that behind pretty blog pictures, homesteading isn’t all just flowers blooming…. Or new twin babies…. Or fresh-from-the-garden veggies…. Or misty mornings…. Sometimes it will be all those things for a while. And then suddenly something happens to shake you away from blissfully kneading home made freshly ground sourdough bread or tying…
Sick
Everything has been taken up this week by sickness, sore throats and snot. With Ethan out of town, and my teenager off at middle school instead of homeschooling (I tried to talk him out of it), it has been a fevered blur of sipping huge steaming mugs of ginger tea, struggling through dew-soaked grass hauling…
The Wild Garden
{Deep breath……} Right now, this is the gate to my garden, the division between what is (sometimes) cultivated, and the completely untended. It is the barrier that protects my beloved plants, mostly from the bad goats. The pumpkin vines have curled and wound their way through, pouring into the outside. And actually, because of this…
Toadstools And Fairy Rings 