Ethan uncovered this adorable little rabbit when he moved the chickens through a thick patch of Spanish needle in the garden. It tried to run away, but he caught it again easily, and it squeaked loudly. It had a litter mate that he unfortunately stepped on by accident, before he even realized there were rabbits…
Category: Organic Gardening
Experiments with Fermented Cassava
We stopped by our friend PJ’s house the other day while we were on her side of town looking at a chest freezer we found on Craigslist. She loaded us up with more grapefruits, showed us her chickens and her garden, and insisted we take all the pablano peppers that loaded the five or so…
Digging in the garden
Climate change has been on my mind this strange autumn. Not that I can do much about it. But it’s the time of year when the antlered reindeer fly in the midnight sky – coming to us from the old myths of Cernnunos and Deer Woman – the old ones who lead the sacred…
Golden Abundance
It’s been a particularly abundant week this week – not only because there are finally things to eat out of the garden at last (hooray for turnips and radishes!), but also a friend of ours gavee us bagfuls of lemons and grapefruits from her trees. The girls pulled some daikons from the garden and helped…
Goats is Bad
Clothilde said the funniest thing to me the other day. She said it right after she had handed me the tiny cob of stunted dent corn that she found in the garden, so she could bear-hug our great pyrenees farm dog, Belle. Belle rolls in stinky stuff, loves frolicking in the rain, and usually…
Some Growing Things
It is a bumper year for the roselle. Yes, this basket is entirely full of it. I didn’t show the gallon milking pail, also full-to-the-top. And we only managed to pick half the bushes. The ones we didn’t get to were so laden, they were falling over. Beats me what went right this year. They…
Roselle, Early Cassava, and Eggplants
I am feeling a little overwhelmed by the roselle this year. Despite the serious neglect this year, there wasn’t the usual mortality rate on the transplants, and we ended up with six enormous bushes. They are all flowering at once. I picked the whole gallon pail full off of only one side of the row. …
Fall begins with Leaves
I used to laugh sarcastically when anyone mentioned September being autumn here in Florida. It always seemed to me that we never quite had anything but autumn, starting in November, and ending in February. Some years there are a few weeks of actual “winter” in January, but autumn certainly didn’t start in September. I remember…
Perfect Gardening Days
Ferocious squash vine Saddleback caterpillar on the old hammock I’ve been having writer’s block. Everything seems so rainy and boring – hardly worth writing about. I get my kids fed, and chores done, and then I escape into a Diana Wynn Jones book. I am in the middle of The Dark Lord of Derkholm,…
In the Jungle
This is a picture of the garden. I know, I can’t see it either. It’s a massive jungle of weedy plants, with some yuca poking bravely out. The roselle is there, too, somewhere. I’ve been working on my fall/winter garden now, fighting the jungly chaos with scythe, wheelbarrow, and pitchfork. I have four of the…
Rain and Wild Pumpkins
This is one of our wild pumpkins the pigs planted. They are all different shapes, but this one looks like a pure Seminole pumpkin to me. Other ones have longer necks, and you can tell they are also something else…trombocino? Tahitian melon? It’s growing, loving all the rain we’re getting. The past week has been…
Little Pumpkins
We hardly got any pumpkins from the neglected garden this year. The squash vine borers really got them badly while I was away. After last year’s harvest of over 40 pumpkins, I am disappointed. I like pumpkin – it is wonderful baked, in soups, or sliced up with radishes and pickled. Even pumpkin on the…
Toadstools And Fairy Rings 