The big kids are off at the Firefly gathering in North Carolina.  Mirin is very excited to learn more about carving and flint knapping from the teachers there.  While they are off learning primitive skills, we are busy finishing up some big farm chores, like spreading the fertilizer and soil correctives and some building projects…

Unfortunately, we are having to buy a new fence charger.  The old one has been failing us and Ethan finally realized it was the problem after he bush hogged practically the whole forty acres trying to keep the resistance down on the fence lines, fiddled with the solar panels and batteries, and called the customer…

 Five years ago I bought a potted peach tree from an orchard down the road.  It was called “Snow Queen,” and the really nice guy who sold it to me told me it had no commercial value because it had a quality called “melting” which made it incredibly delicious, but unable to be transported. Our…

 I hope the piglets aren’t getting boring.  They are just so cute.  Little devils, I can’t help thinking when I’m watching them play.  They are almost as naughty as the goats, only they haven’t gotten into the garden and eaten the corn (yet).  They look like they’re up to something.  They’ll pause and watch us…

   We’ve been heading out to do the chores earlier than usual, to avoid the summer thunderstorms that always pop up out of nowhere every afternoon.  And so we’ve been seeing some of our neighbors that we don’t usually run into in the evenings.  This was a teeny tiny 2-inch long baby gopher tortoise.  Once…

I’ve had this amazing moment in farming recently where something really clicked.  When we got Matilda, she was obviously a very pampered cow.  The man who owned her was very kind, but she had stayed in the same small paddock her whole life, and was fed a GMO soybean and corn ration.  It was hard…

Rose’s preschool had an end-of-year outing to Blue Springs on Friday.I hardly spoke to my older children, they were so busy playing with friends and swimming in the beautiful, unbelievably blue water.  We found the Morning Meadow pavilion easily, despite the fact that no one was actually there at the time, because we spotted the…

Mirin worked for hours and days carving and planing down a piece of mulberry wood to make a bow.  He has a regular from-the-store bow that he gets out occasionally, but he really wants a wooden bow.  He’s made a whole lot over the past few years He put a lot of work and effort…

While I’ve made other ferments, this is the first time I’ve attempted dill pickles.  Usually I get too many cucumbers and just make relish by dicing and salting them with a little onion.  I am growing a kind of pickling cucumber called Parade.  Supposedly they all get ripe at once, which solves the common problem…

A lot has been happening in this garden of ours!  (I take no credit for Ethan’s wonky owl “scarecrow,” just so you know).  Man, it’s a big garden.  I can’t even photograph it.  What was I thinking?  The first casualties have begun to appear: Most of my beans and a few squash and cucumbers have…

 The blueberries and blackberries are in full swing.  It’s a good year and the bushes are loaded.  We are busy picking for eating fresh, and also for the freezer.  The chores have slowed WAY down as everyone can’t help but stop for the luscious, ripe berry near the path.  That was Clothilde eating an “Akba,”…

The spiders are appearing more and more now that the weather is warming.  I think this is a Golden Orb Weaver.  I’ve read research that was done at Archibald Biological Station in South Florida that suggests the fancy white designs in spider webs are to keep damage from birds and larger animals to a minimum….