We've been mucking out

So, you're 62 now and the farming is giving you more aches and pains, or you're just noticing them more.1. Take about a pound of flax seed and sew it up in a spare scrap of flannel, say from your kids' pajamas (that's what's good about the Empty Nest, yes?)

The garden is at

Properly wintry weather at last -- though the robins, who seem to ha

Eggses, it

It's 84F in the greenhouse,

Now, it's like this: there are better cooks and there are better gardeners than I, and goodness knows better recipe writers, and better writers for that matter, on any topic you could name. I am, by heritage and disposition, a peasant wife, on my better days a bonne femme (good user of

Friends are coming over, originall

As the nort

A repost from 2007. I've spent the day hanging around the woodstove

We do have a living tree this year, in a very heavy pot, and Suzy, whose story is told below in a two-year-old post, reigns at its top.Repost:

We all know, from a glance

The target audience for this post is that downwardly mobile demographic formerly known as "middle class Americans." Many people in other places or circumstances already know how to live, and might wonder what the fuss is about.I have written over 700 posts here, mostly about the joys o

So, here's an idea I had, don't know if it works.

Latest in the series of annual farm summaries. Some seasons are missing as your blogista was away much of the year. For more videos see: http://www.youtube.com/user/risasb.

The ducks and th

Here are links to a set of galleries I've built on Flickr. They serve to me as reminders about my views of how to live. I look through them and rededicate myself to my goals of low-impact, healthy, beautiful living.

Back in the summer, our beans looked like this:

Okay, you're out beyond the city

About this

Snow on the hills again, a little lower.I've been processing squash for the poultry -- about one fruit every two to three days. There's plenty of winter squash as well as pumpkins this year, unlike last year -- our worst garden summer ever here -- but also we have a lot of zuke-kins.

The hills around us are white today, but we've only gotten the one flurry so far -- bit of a "snow job." But because we expect a relatively severe freeze, I'm moving smallish fall-garden plants to the greenhouse. There's room to do this because while I was away, the greenhouse was necessarily unat

Planted two camellia sin

The mulberry trees are tran

When you want to serve pick

Would love to just sit inside and sip cider while contemplating the fall foliage and the newly put-to-bed beds:

So, it is time to get caught up a bit.Frost hit the garden while Risa was away:

Four thousand mile Amtrak trips. Coach.How to get there is, you have your laptop, a batch of favorite DVDs, a book you're writing, tons of food, and a water bottle (not that kind) to refill at every opportunity. And a blanket. (unle