Home and Garden

How to do Things Thursdays

I don’t know about you, but it’s been on my mind to learn how to do more things for about …. oh…. maybe decades. At least since I lived here in this tumbledown farm in 1976. Well, actually, I did learn plenty of  things back then, but as you can […]

On Matters of the Heart

    Valentines Day is nearly upon us and I can’t help but sing this enchanting holiday’s praises. I get that it can be a tough day for those who are lonely and have experienced loss, but it’s also the one time of the year when we somewhat restrained Americans […]

A lantern-lit life

Evidently, there are a LOT of folks out there who dream of living a simple, self-sufficient life in a rustic log cabin perched on the side of an Appalachian mountain. Water from the springhouse, a lantern-lit vintage farmhouse, food foraged, farmed, & fished. For some, it’s a longing, and for others it’s a matter of being prepared […]

Make a hobo tin-can portable rocket stove + class

If adorably quirky perky BBC gardener Alys Fowler can scavenge veggies to throw in her various garden allotment  campfire contraptions, well then, so can I. My bigger garden is a bit of a walk from the house and sometimes I get a hankering to make a cup of tea or herby stew before I’m […]

Vintage Portable Ovens and Girls with Axes

Last weekend, girls were weilding axes at our log cabin next door. As in “handling a weapon or tool with skill and ease.” You must do that in order to cook on a wood cookstove, and that we did at our Ladies cookin’ on a wood cookstove class. Most of […]

fig ripening trick

Emergency Miracle Fig Ripening Trick

Here’s what your September figs ought to look like. This is a Celeste fig. I’ve had the tree for 10 years and it’s just now producing yummy figs. But, if your fig tree is full of little green knobby figs that will surely succumb to frost before ripening, I have […]