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.
Everything is homeschool. Even a muddy former driveway that the pigs rooted through for a couple of months. This becomes a vehicle for talking about healthy and unhealthy soil with the kids. Think of it as a "before" picture. The "after" picture won't be for a couple of years, but ideally that same former driveway… Continue reading Spring Buds
It is that time of year again. Spring is intermittently springing. It is February. Time to prune our trees for Summer. We started with Raspberries. Those should have been pruned in the fall, before the leaves dropped, when we could still have figured out which canes had fruited and which had not. We did the… Continue reading Pruning 2026: Part 1
Earlier this year we put plant protectors around a bunch of our orchard shrubs and pasture trees. This was in order to facilitate letting the sheep and cows pulse through the orchard to mow the grass down for us, without letting them browse all the leaves off the figs, mulberries and currants (I'm looking at… Continue reading Protecting the Orchard Plants… more.
Here in the good ol' Pacific Northwest, getting ready for winter is more about getting things ready for rain than it is prepping for snow or ice. This means cleaning out the gutters (before and after the leaves fall). We had gutter guards, but found that we grew too much moss under them and the… Continue reading Winter is Coming
This was the first year we have gotten a decent crop of elderberries from the farm. So far we have only been harvesting from the black elder shrub, and have already gotten a huge haul. These are the elderberries we pruned back to the stump in early 2024. They grew out shoots in 2024, and… Continue reading Elderberries.
Our Hollywood plum tree produced like crazy this year, unlike the past two years (the tree is only three years old). It is the earliest blooming plum we have, and as such, is subject to late frosts, while the other two plums have a tendency to miss the late frosts. This year, however, we had… Continue reading Plum Juice
One of Ellie's favorite Christmas presents last year was... "The Redwall Cookbook." https://www.amazon.com/Redwall-Cookbook-Brian-Jacques/dp/0399237917 She and Evie have both been into reading the Redwall Series ever since Daddy read them "Redwall" "Mossflower" and "Mattimeo" last year for bed time reading. She has now read thirteen of the 22 books in the series. (She wants everyone to… Continue reading Cheerful Churchmouse Cherry Crisp
Squash is continuing to grow up the sides of the trellis, while buckwheat grows up against the other side of it. And kids wander through the middle of it. That color on Seppi's face is "war paint." A.k.a. cherry juice. It helps him be more fierce. Very small raspberry harvest this year, but we are… Continue reading Garden Update
Last Tuesday, we managed to get into the garden a little bit during the day. Winnie and Daddy put twine on the bean trellis. They beans are starting to come in quite nicely, but we actually ran out of twine with two trellises left to go. We have more twine now, but haven't gotten to… Continue reading Garden and Orchard work
We are a little behind on blogging. Holy Week and the Triduum were busy, plus the kids decided to start a little Strepidemic running through the house. So what can we say, it's been an off week. Happy cows are tasty cows! The willow and witch hazel in the pasture are starting to leaf out.… Continue reading Catch Up
Little Farm in the Big City 