They will rebuild the ruined cities and live in them. They will plant vineyards and drink their wine; they will make gardens and eat their fruit.
A few months ago I watched a video in which John Lovell (a.k.a. the War Poet) interviewed a local farmer who has developed a method for keeping his farm productive with minimal water in the middle of an historic Georgia drought. The video is worth a watch, not because it has anything truly groundbreaking in… Continue reading Hugel beds
The Asian plums are coming in strong right now. Our golden yellow plum is having its best year ever right now. Mommy took a peck of plums up to Swiss Kids Kamp every day, and still we have only used about a third of the plums on the tree. We need to make some jelly… Continue reading Plums
Last week was Swiss Kids Kamp. This was Ellie's first year going, and Evie's second year. Ellie was not at all sure she wanted to go, because she heard that they serve soup for lunch. Like, every day. That sounds like a fate worse than death! However, she braved through it, took her "no-thank-you" bites… Continue reading Swiss Kids Kamp 2026
Finally got to harvesting the wheat last week, on Friday. This was a few weeks overdue. It really was ready in late June, early July. The optimal day, with that magic combination of nice weather, not too hot, no rain, and time to get to the job, with nothing more pressing that needed to be… Continue reading Gleaning the Wheat
The quest for the perfect variety of pickling cucumber for our microclimate continues. This one (Wisconsin SMR 58, from St. Clare Seeds) doesn't seem to enjoy the heat very much. It has started to become quite wilted. Still producing a few small cucumbers though, but nothing like the volume we had hoped for. By contrast,… Continue reading Cucumber, Hubbard and Crabapple
With the summer drought well under way, the grass has pretty much gone dormant for the season. But you know what hasn't? The weeds! (Although borage is a bit too useful and pretty of a plant to be called a weed in an unqualified sense). A quick trip into the food forest area to pull… Continue reading Thank God for Weeds?
We are actually a couple of weeks behind on these. Comes of being too busy. Photography brought to you by Ellie-Belle! We tried something new this time. Instead of planting the seeds in dry potting soil and then watering them in, we started by soaking the potting soil in water, before putting it in the… Continue reading More Brassica Starts
With the arrival of the Hold Fasts from Grammercy Tools, our work horses are now complete! As others have said in online forums, we had to rough up the shaft a bit with sandpaper to improve the friction in the hole. I also had to plane the bench top a little flatter, but once we… Continue reading Hold Fasts
The pasture looked like it was pretty much done for the summer. Then, out of nowhere, we got a rain storm on the 16th, and got a couple of tenths of an inch of rain. This may have given the pasture a new lease on life. We'll see if this bulks up the north pasture… Continue reading Separating the Young Stock
Not everything can be woodworking around here. There are too many other things that need to be done. For instance the raspberries are coming on fast, And when we checked on the blackberries, some of them were ripening. They always ripen from the end of the branch first. In every cluster the most distal berry… Continue reading Garden and Orchard Update.
Little Farm in the Big City 