Making Amends with Your Soil: The Final Chapter (fixes and fertilizers)

With more evidence pointing towards illnesses linked to pesticides, I find it important to teach people how to naturally (preferably organically) take care of their gardens. Instead of a hefty shot of “Wonder Grow” ::cough::, I prefer to use fixes and fertilizers that aren’t so caustic – some that will treat the problem instead of [...]

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Trouble in my Garden Paradise

When walking through my gardens all seems so lovely… Blueberries are blooming… Spinach is up and thriving… Chives are a bloomin’! Yet there is trouble in paradise, let’s go over to the pea patch… I have critter issues…I’m presuming the are field mice, which would be appropriate since we live in the middle of a [...]

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Goldilocks and the three bears

Compared to previous years, it has so far been a summer free of bears here in the valley. Friends visiting have been disappointed to see none on the hour long drive from the foot of the hill down the valley to our community, and I’ve heard of no home or chicken shed invasions since late [...]

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Permanent Solutions…

I have a friend, she has a lovely garden with blooming flower borders, lacy trees for shade, a darling garden house, a huge play-set for her grandchildren, and this… A vegetable garden that has taken many of her gardening issues and solved them…permanently! You see as a teenager she broke her neck, she has had serious [...]

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Here Comes the Sun…solarizing your soil!

Use the heat of the sun to kill noxious weed seeds before they even have a chance to sprout…easy, cheap and effective, solarizing your soil!

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Pinkeye

Fly season has begun. They are always a challenge when you have livestock. Fortunately our animals don’t spend much time in the barn when it’s warm and the chickens do a pretty good job cleaning up the pasture and eliminating the flies. They still make me a bit paranoid. Growing up we were obsessed with [...]

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Seredipity

Some time in March, while brainstorming about how I could make a living off my land where there is such a tiny population based (and a fairly economically challenged one at that), a friend of mine suggested that I work towards making the place an education/demonstration farm. While talking about the idea he proffered that [...]

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To Throw or Not to Throw,

Originally published at Women Not Dabbling by emphelan On the last episode of the Survivalist series, I was asked to talk a little bit more about the throwing knife. I picked up my first throwing knife when I was 15 years old. When I was a young Goth girl, I was fascinated with knives, swords, [...]

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Season of Shoo

Originally published at Women Not Dabbling by Gina How do you know when peak canning season has commenced at my house? No, it’s not the 8-quart pressure canner parked permanently on the stove. It’s not the navy blue enamelware water bath canner constantly steaming up the already hot kitchen. Look beyond the stacks of quart, [...]

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