The Sacred Mother

Being in this new place, I am still getting to know this new piece of earth, and all the plants and the animals that live here and were here before us. Starting over all fresh, I can see the way the land shifts to me with how I live, the ways I walk, the things…

Pork Meatballs With Persimmon Barbecue Sauce

I always feel a rebirth this time of year here in Florida – the winds come through and blow away the heavy, moldy, damp, boiling hot summer and bring fresh, cool mornings and bright fall skies. The crushing vines the ruled the garden wither back, and tender new things grow in neat rows in the…

The Threshold

“My barn having burned to the ground I can now see the moon” I did it. After all these troublesome months of so much frantic driving back-and-forth, and the heartache, and the struggle, it’s over. I feel so much relief, but I also feel like I’ve come through a war, still with sword in hand, stalwart…

HARD Work

“It’s been so hot and wet it’s not sticky – it’s drenching. I wake up and go outside and am wet with sweat the whole time I’m not in a cold shower or soaking in our big water trough.” I found this old draft of a blog post I had written recently for last July…

Counter-Top Sweet Potato Slips

If there is anything that farming and homesteading have taught me, it is that you must never give up. Death and loss and horrible things happen, but giving up is the only real mistake, and abundance is always there, if only you can find the creativity and inspiration to use it. The magic of the…

Here and There

I wish that I had something better to say, but I am living in a war. I am still at my old place here in Alachua, working and working like the girl with brothers turned into seven swans, toiling like she toiled over that last shirt to try to get out and get away and…

Struggle

“Life is never so bad it can’t get a little bit worse.” –Calvin and Hobbes Life has felt so stressful lately – there is so much for me to do. Ethan and his girlfriend (a woman who once told me I was “her best friend ever”) announced they are having a baby, which leaves me…

Spring Violet Soda

Here is my little goat named Violet – an overly-tame bottle baby that we had kept too long in the kitchen while it was very cold weather. Her mother is a young yearling goat, and didn’t know what to do with her baby. At first Violet slept in a little bin by the wood stove,…

BOOK ANNOUNCEMENT

I am so, so excited to share this! I have been working so hard to bring this to a physical form – it has felt like a real birth experience, where the laboring is harder than you realized, and you aren’t sure if you’ll make it! This is the book I have dreamed about and…

Marking Boundaries

There are so many things I am learning on this new journey. I am learning now to mark the boundaries. The corners are the most important things to make strong. Posts must be level. Fencing is really hard work. Machinery is amazing. Friends who help you with fencing are real friends, no doubt about that. Measure more than once. Don’t be stingy. I am…

A New Beginning

Over this past difficult summer I spent a lot of time away from the land I love, visiting friends and people whose company I enjoy. My friend John took me on adventures when he was in town visiting. One day we went all the way to the gulf, to the end of the day and the end…

Roasted Butternut Squash With Peanut Satay Sauce

They went on, and farther on, and they waded through rivers above the knee, and they saw neither sun nor moon, but they heard the roaring of the sea.… It was mirk, mirk night, there was no starlight, and they waded through red blood up to the knee, for all the blood that’s shed on…