I didn’t mean to skip this past week’s blog post, but the weather has been so wonderful, and we have been so busy in the kitchen, in the garden, wandering the beautiful pastures, and celebrating spring that the days slipped by, days full of fun, sun, work, and beauty. The natural dyes turned out very…
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2017-2018 Lettuce Trials
You will have to bear with me for this post, if you aren’t also a gardening nerd, but i am so excited to write up the results of the lettuce trials from the fall/ winter season! I grew 15 kinds of open-pollinated lettuce, some were varieties I know I like and always grow, but most…
Recovering
Last week was rough. On top of all the new babies, Ethan was out of town for work, and we all had a really nasty illness, possibly the dreaded flu that’s been killing everyone. I have no idea really, since I only go to the doctor if I’m actually dying, and obviously i made it…
Spring Fertility Madness
It’s been the craziest week ever, and nothing seems to be slowing down in the least. Nearly every evening finds me exhausted and covered in some sort of birth juices, dirt, milk or all three. It all started about 3 weeks ago, when I had just finished creating an email to send out, offering acorn-fed…
Pumpkin and Broccoli Casserole
The dreamy blue-skied spring weather, so warm it is almost hot, has called forth the flowers of all kinds. There is a narrow definition of flower in our minds, the colorful, the beautiful, the many-petaled ones, but there are so many more, such as the scaly dimorphous cone flowers of the pines, or the catkins…
Wild Chickweed Salad with Ranch-Style Dressing
All around the earth is greening. The forest looks lacy with new leaves, and the pastures have begun to grow. Not only have the summer grasses thrown off their winter sleep and have started to poke up their heads and send out new shoots, all the pretty weeds of spring decorate the ground between the…
Women and the Land
I’ve been thinking lately, and one idea I have dwelt on quite a bit is the connection between women and the land. Not long ago (and in some places even now) women were seen merely as property, a form of wealth and resources. We generally like to think those days are in the past. All…
Blooming
Since the first frost that killed the last of the summer zinnias, there have been no flowers in my garden. In the fall I seeded snap dragons, chrysanthemums, linaria, and poppies. They have grown slowly between the hard frosts, at least bringing the green of plant life to the empty flower beds, but no flowers, …
February Yarn Along
This project has been driving me crazy, especially since I’ve knitted the beginning of it 4 times, and it still doesn’t look anything like the sweater in the picture. (Yes, the extra-large mug of chamomile tea was necessary for the nerve calming properties). I knitted on it all through the cold weather, during hours in the…
Garden Love
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…
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,…
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…
Toadstools And Fairy Rings 