Our new woodstove was installed today! Yes, we went ahead and bought a woodstove insert. When we got our chimney cleaned for the first time this year, it turned out it was badly cracked and needed about $5000 worth of work done to it. We already knew that our fireplace didn’t put out a whole […]
Cold season is in full swing, and poor Josh and Sofía have been sick on and off for about three weeks now. (I seem fairly unaffected, though my nose is stuffy today!) It’s hard especially for poor Sofía, who’s not allowed to go to playgroups if she’s been sick – so we’ve been doing a […]
“Mommy, I’m going to drink aaaaaaall my milk and I will get bigger and bigger and BIGGER and then I will bonk the sky!” And a few days ago: “I will eat all my food right up and it will go in my belly, and then I will go HHHRGGGNNNNNRRRR and a baby will come […]
We “inherited” several children’s toys from the previous owners of this house. One of them was a Blue’s Clues memory card set; a collection of about a hundred little cardstock squares with pictures of characters from the show. Steve in a yellow sweater. Blue (the dog) with a magnifying glass. Steve in a green sweater. […]
I love reading other gardener’s blogs for so many reasons. I enjoy seeing their gardens and the designs of their beds. I especially appreciate that all the gardener-bloggers together form a kind of intellectual community not unlike a village; we all tend to have similar problems at similar times and everyone posts tidbits of information […]
(aka Bog Hollow, Swamp Flat, or Soggy Bottom.) This whole area was pretty much untouched all this past year. Initially I sowed some rye, which failed to thrive. Then some buckwheat in a few spots, which did grow but struggled. Then I decided the soil was too impoverished for tender crops, and I just let […]
I finally started on extending the pathways from the Fiddlehead (left) through the untouched swampy expanse towards the pond. I was making good headway until freezing weather returned, and now my mulch isn’t really spreadable. It’s hard to mulch a path using chunks of ice the size of your head. I’m contemplating raised beds vs. […]
Not when you have a pressure canner, it’s not. Because I make roast chicken often and save all the bones, I always end up making more stock than I need for several meals’ worth of chicken soup. Before, I often ended up having to throw out the tail end of a pot of soup, or […]
There are chickens loose in our woods. (Don’t worry about the road there; it’s really much farther away than it looks here, and heritage breed chickens like these don’t stray too far from their coop. I’m also going to put up a “Chicken Xing” sign). For a long time now I’ve been trying to resign […]
It’s almost time to put together my seed order for the Spring – in fact it’s pretty much been time to do that, because some varieties are already selling out! First, though, to review what I already have: I saved a few varieties of seed produced from the garden this year and also frugally hoarded […]