Toadstools And Fairy Rings

Everyone always tries to do too much for the holidays. Our version of that this year was an apparent fit of madness in which we decided to take advantage of the cool weather and slaughter a giganormous pig just before Christmas. Bee was actually our first Gloucester old spot to have piglets on the farm….

The Longest Night 2017

Today marks exactly a year since we left our house in town to live in the middle of nowhere with our garden and animals. I love the long, dark nights of winter, when you can wake up in the middle of the night and feel the quiet emptiness around you, and the soft breath of…

Old-fashioned Pumpkin Pie

I was lugging a wheelbarrow full of hay and manure into the garden when the weather changed. The air was warm and still, and seemed to hang like a muggy curtain around the pea trellis and rows of young cabbages, lettuce, and broccoli as i trundled clumsily along the narrow path. A sound almost like…

Building A Garden

I love, more than anything else about gardening, watching the garden grow. Even before the uncertainty of putting small seeds into earth, and waiting, there is the dreaming, where long straight rows of vigorous vegetables grow in the fertile imagination. I’ve tried different gardening methods over my seasons of gardening in the past 10 years, …

First Calf of Fall

I was just telling someone that Geranium looked as if she was going to calve any day. She was huge, and her udder had started to fill. Still, it was a bit of a surprise to walk up to the cows and find a beautiful new calf on the ground, already licked clean and shiny. …

10 Things I’m Profoundly Grateful For, And Some All-Local Recipes To Make Your Holiday Extra Special

This year was a difficult beginning. Ethan had been out of work for months, and no opportunities for a living wage seemed to present themselves. At times it felt as though darkness had swallowed up the happy life we had, and we were adrift, every day heading towards an uncertain future. In the midst of…

All-Raw Eggnog

There was a raccoon raid on the chicken coop last night. We had seen the scoundrel lurking around the barn earlier in the evening, and in retrospect we should have dispatched him then. But everyone was tired and chilled, and Ethan felt really ill. Much later, long after the restless teenager had ceased to flick…

Radish Salad With Roselle Dressing

Radishes are one of my favorite things to grow, although they weren’t always. They are very easy and reliable, some years the only vegetable we could manage to grow in the early years of gardening, before we had cows and goats to enrich the land. I’ve pickled them, served them with butter, chopped the roots up for salad, …

Misty Mornings

In the summer time I always try to wake up early to finish the chores before the heat of the day sets in. This season the beauty of the early mornings has drawn me outside into the pearly air and dew-drenched grass. Mists have crept out of the forest and settled in the low places…

Hallows Eve

I love celebrating, and Halloween is especially fun with costumes and carving pumpkins. But this year the everyday work of keeping a farmstead going and homeschooling three children alone while Ethan is far away working crushed all hopes of a leisurely celebration. There were pumpkins carved, and costumes made, but these celebrations were done mostly…

Callaloo Curry With Flatbread

The cold weather is here at last! Sweet-smelling woolens have been taken out of the cedar chest to air in the beautiful dry air, and we are enjoying the last of the summer garden’s offerings…. spinach-like amaranth greens. Amaranth is really more of a weed than a garden plant; indeed, the spiny, weedy amaranth torments…