Unlike most beekeepers who are having fun in the southeast, I am the World’s Worst Beekeeper. I am not a retired Navy man or engineer, so I do not have the camaraderie I would in a circle of midwives or herbalists. Oh, well. I love honey with a passion. And as a Wonder Woman fan, I […]
Jasmine with Cici the chicken, who provided love and eggs for years. Ten or eleven years ago (now 25 years ago, Ed.), shortly we moved onto our own acre in the country. I began to hear the phrase “chicken tractor.” If you do not know what this is already, the image it probably conjures up […]
This is an ode to all women who live in the country, and chronicle the exciting and the mundane, and entices the rest of us to raise a lamb, plant a bed of asparagus, aspire to grow an entire meal’s worth of food, or at least eat locally for a year. These women have been […]
This is where I turn off the honey and step onto the soapbox. I may sound and feel like vinegar, but it is a reality here in Farm Country: how to survive drought. Very few places where agriculture is the main commerce escape it. The area we left (Virginia Beach) for Scottsville was 2-4 feet […]
This year (Back in 2007, Ed.) Michael and the girls asked me what I wanted for Mother’s Day. Since we’d fenced the front garden in, I could no longer see the big pond. If you read my post on Drought, you’ll know it had been pretty low anyhow. I wanted a smaller, more aesthetically pleasing […]
I had no plan to be farming flowers in Virginia early in 2007. However, on a gorgeous day last Fall, my youngest daughter and I took a trip an hour south to Farmville. This was for an open house at a large, diversified farm. There were pastured chickens, a petting zoo, spinning and weaving demos, […]
The first natural medicine I recall growing and using probably was the Aloe Vera plant. While my mom grew all manner of succulents to surround our patio in Norfolk, Virginia, once we moved North, the only plant succulent we grew was the aloe. It didn’t live outside in Michigan…it lived on the top of the refrigerator. I never […]
What IS ‘gleaning’, anyway?! Cover of a Va Beach Master Gardener newsletter, art by Ajah Courts, c.1997. Somewhere in the Bible (Deuteronomy 24:19-21, Leviticus 19) and other ancient histories, there are references to the act of gleaning. For definition sake, gleaning is basically taking leftovers in a field or garden after its initial harvest. Someone […]
Everywhere across the world when dusk begins to cast shadows, the unprepared parents and caretakers all begin to ask: What’s for supper?” The joy resides in vegetable soup…straight from your garden. I detest the word ‘supper’. It conjures an underwhelming meal. For some reason, it also brings to mind smacking lips and hungry families, hunched […]
A bit about sheet mulching…I am about as addicted to it as you can be, for something you don’t do all the time. I wait patiently for the materials, but as soon as they end up at our house, I am already thinking about the good soil they will one day turn into. I love to […]
