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…
Tag: farming
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…
Holiday Madness
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….
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, …
Pigeon Pea, The Elusive Chicken
A few months ago our neighbor unloaded five defective chickens on us. His old mother had gotten them as a bunch of straight run laying chicks, and they had already unloaded the dozen roosters they had ended up with on us the year before. Now she was going on vacation and the five chickens were getting…
Hurricane Days
This season always brings uncertainty and shifts in weather, and with that, the hurricanes. Here in the North and the middle of the peninsula, we are usually sheltered from the worst of the winds that devastate the coasts. The last really intense hurricane season I’ve experienced was the fall and late…
Cloudy’s Kitten
A new kitten showed up in the middle of a rain storm at the beginning of the summer. We heard a small mewing outside, although it was so squeaky, I kept telling myself it was a strange-sounding frog. In the morning, however, I saw a little white-and-tabby blur streak away from the barn…
Disappearing Goats, or Adventures With Fencing
I’ve been trying to think of this summer of just me, the children, and the farm while Ethan is away as an Adventure. I have, as much as possible, tried to make adventures a part of my life, thinking that they will give me something to look back on when I am too old and…
A Garden Interview With Tom Wootton
I recently met Tom Wootton at a Grow Gainesville meeting, and was so excited to meet another person who has actually read Masanobu Fukuoka’s book, One-Straw Revolution, (so many of my non-garden friends sort of glaze over when I talk about this book) and has been putting ideas into practice! We connected over a…
Forgetful Mothering
Over the years I have witnessed so many different mothering styles among the animals. Just like people, there’s a big difference between mothers, from over-bearing mothers, to those who take things easy. They can range from: Psychotic Killer Mother: We’ve never had any like this on our farm, but a friend of mine with expensive…
Toadstools And Fairy Rings 