For three years, we have been promising ourselves a couple of fruit trees. And each year the chore list is long. Tree-buying, for which we would have to actually venture away from the farm, slips to the bottom of our priorities when we’ve got so much that keeps us here. When’s the best time to [...]
Archive for the ‘garden’ Category
True to our word
Posted in around the farm, garden on June 3, 2013 | Leave a Comment »
Hot tub tomatoes
Posted in around the farm, garden, sheet mulching on June 14, 2012 | 2 Comments »
In the 1970s, it was a wood-heated hot tub. It was used a handful of times, deemed to be too inefficient, and then became a place for storing random objects. We cleaned it out last year, and Nathan of the dead-tree-and-random-animal-poop raised bed affiliation (see the squash growing here) started piling organic matter inside it. [...]
The return of the green
Posted in around the farm, garden, spring on May 3, 2012 | 1 Comment »
It always seems to arrive here so late, but it does return eventually. At first it is just a tinge of colour in the dead grass, but in just a few weeks, you can make out the leaves and stems of new growth. Before long there are actual sightings of plant life, the cheerful ta-da! [...]
April means…
Posted in around the farm, chickens, fibre fun, garden, goats, spring on April 28, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
Pussy willows: Chickens helping us work fresh nutrients into the garden: Fencing for goats (something tells me this will be an infinite task): Sorting the wool harvest! I think this is Clementine: And, because this IS Alberta… the occasional snowstorm.
Around the farm
Posted in around the farm, garden on July 24, 2011 | 3 Comments »
Our tomatoes are flowering! We started them from seed in March, but they were still pretty puny as of a few weeks ago. So puny, in fact, that we feared our summer would be tragically home-grown-tomatoless. They’ve since shot up admirably, and the blossoms are a hopeful sign that we’ll have at least one jar [...]
Around the farm
Posted in around the farm, garden, sheet mulching, spring on May 28, 2011 | 1 Comment »
Spinach is coming up in our sheet mulch bed! I’m so glad we planted early. Should be able to harvest the first batch in a couple of weeks. We are taking old things to the dump! It’s part of our front-of-barn re-purposing project. This was part of a wood-fired hot tub built a few decades [...]
Sheet mulching with old carpet
Posted in garden on May 7, 2011 | 2 Comments »
I first learned about no-till gardening via my hero, Farmama, in a lovely post about the way it’s changed their whole farming method. Mark was pretty pumped about it too. I think he read Masanobu Fukuoka’s book in a week. The premise is mind-blowingly simple: humans try to turn growing food into an ordered, scientific [...]
Closer and closer
Posted in chickens, garden, let us give thanks, spring, winter on March 31, 2011 | 1 Comment »
“One swallow does not make a summer, but one skein of geese, cleaving the murk of the March thaw, is the spring.”–Aldo Leopold, Sand County Almanac I saw my first geese of the year two weeks ago, on our way home from work right before the awful March blizzards. They were flying high above the [...]
Giving winter the ol’ heave-ho
Posted in garden, let us give thanks, spring, winter on March 27, 2011 | 1 Comment »
This is what it looks like outside: The snow is crotch-deep and we haven’t seen the sun in days. Dreary? Yes. Eternal-seeming? Yes. But this, THIS is what is going on inside: Happy little sprouts–tomatoes and spaghetti squash–poking their way out of the soil. A reminder that despite the world of white we still live [...]
Making borscht with Grandpa Frank
Posted in cooking from scratch, disapproving russians, garden on September 19, 2010 | 4 Comments »
My great-grandfather left Siberia in 1926 with his wife and offspring and–luckily for me and the rest of his descendents–his journal. In it, he speaks of travelling through places with magical-sounding names: a sunrise over the Ural mountains; changing trains in Sazrjanj, the Dvina river with its “forests and woods suitable for making butter vats,” [...]
Sink yer toes in.
-
Recent Posts
-
Recent Comments
- Susan on Mark’s sweater
- Colleen on Some words about a man
- renn on Happy spring!
- wendy on Hello, Charles
- kathy on Hello, Charles
Categories
- around the farm
- autumn
- bunny
- chickens
- cooking from scratch
- disapproving russians
- fibre fun
- garden
- goats
- harvest
- helpful advice
- let us give thanks
- mark
- meat growing
- morning chores
- nathan
- observed
- observed & appreciated
- overheard
- sheep
- sheet mulching
- small town
- spawn
- spinning
- spring
- standing still
- stick shift
- summer
- the story of gay
- Uncategorized
- weaving
- weekend top three
- wildlife
- winter
- with child
