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Return to Print Publications
I was happy to read today that 2.9 Billion People are Still Offline. (Of course, I had to see that tidbit online because that’s the only way I’ve been able to get news regarding world events these days.)
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Soylent Green in 2022
Served at your local fast-food restaurant and major grocery retailer. Really. I will not buy at Wally World but do buy at Aldi. I do hope that isn’t a mistake. I would not trust a single national chain fast food restaurant that much is certain. After this January I will never need to buy packaged beef again. I’ll be growing and packaging my own into the foreseeable future.
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I’m Not a Cow Person
I’m not a cow person, but we have cows — a lot of them. In fact, we just had one born on the homestead last week. Check out this momma & her calf. If I had my druthers, I’d get rid of most of our herd because we have too many for our land to support them all. But my husband keeps reminding me that we need them because they are doing precious work for us that would otherwise take decades for us to do. They are bringing fertility to the land. A lot of it.
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On this Election Day, I Abstain
There was a time when I participated in the American election process because I thought it was the right thing to do. I thought voting was a privilege and that my vote mattered. But that time is no more. I have come to realize several things, which now cause me to entirely abstain from the process.
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Crazy, Yet Not So Crazy
For years, I think people have seen me as crazy & wanting to opt out of society. My husband and I have neither worked “a job” nor voted in any political elections for the past 10-15 years. Our kids haven’t gone to any public school and our family doesn’t attend church anymore. We don’t have a cellphone or use wi-fi, and I haven’t gotten involved with much social media online beyond Facebook. (And I’ve grown to despise Facebook.) For a long time now I’ve been seeing something wrong with the mainstream society, and I realized years ago that the problem stemmed from the System in which it operates. It’s not…
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Finally Answering the Call
I’ve been debating back and forth with myself over the past year as to how to best carry out my calling at this moment in time, particularly as it relates to this website. It seems the phone has been ringing for a while now, and I feel a sense of urgency welling up within me to answer it already. I believe those who have wakened in the last year (2020-2021) either to the wicked agenda of the powers-that-be, or to the realization that the powers-that-be shouldn’t even be, are likely going to need a bit of direction going forward. And, I believe, there are those who may have already been awake…
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What is a Food Forest Garden?
Here’s our personal definition of a food forest garden. Discussion and tour includes layer design, edible landscape, self sustaining, resilience, abundance, prosperity, creative mandate, land stewardship, hills and valleys, tips, free nitrogen, passive irrigation. How do you define a food forest?
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Unique Keyhole Beds Video
In today’s video we show part of our zone 7 garden design, inspired by keyhole beds, and also go into more detail as to why we recommend Rototilling as permaculturists. Included are some tips for bringing in pollinators, and our favorite tools and machinery for being the most efficient without causing harm to the land. Along with that, we discuss our method with using weeds, or wild edibles, as cover crops.
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Cow Gone Fishing
My husband decided to go fishing in our pond last week on his day off, and I thought a nice little picnic lunch would be in order. Evidently I wasn’t alone in that idea. I just brought us a few humble PB & J sandwiches, some potato chips & sour cream, and a rare bottle of apple juice. And our guest brought the entertainment. Then the bait bucket got overturned, and it was time to bid farewell to our neighborly beast. Homesteading on the land with a pond comes with its perks: Dinner and a Show, featuring Surf & Turf-in-the-making. Wish you were here.
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Propane Flame Thrower Weed Control Video
Clearing the weeds out of our gravel parking lot for the Homestead Stand. Using a propane torch is an easy and more natural choice to kill weeds. No pesticides required. No weed eating required. Burning broom sedge is a good way to add bio-char (charcoal) to low humus soil. It seems nature has been designed to heal itself. Broom sedge has no grazing value so it grows in large dry stands on the thin soils of ridges and overused land in Virginia. It sits there just waiting for a ignition source. This is a rugged pioneer plant than is early on the ladder of natural succession back to forest. Any…
