It's a gray day in January, and I'm thinking about the fine perfect details of the beech leaves still hanging in the trees in the woods. And I'm thinking about the thousand-year-old bristlecone pine trees holding tightly to a certain cliff I know and have visited so many times in Southern Utah; and I'm watching a fire burning in the woodstove. Dead trees warm me.
So we dropped our first really big tree the other day: an old, dead elm along one of the walking trails through the woods. We had been eyeing it since…
Months ago, the meditation tower (or the deer-hunting stand) toppled in a raging storm. Tornadoes tore through the Midwest, and the tower was uprooted. Now, in mid-winter, the tower is…
We've been burning wood in the old Buckstove for a few weeks now, warming the old farmhouse up to a comfortable 68 degrees or so. And yesterday Paula and I…
The light's changing. The days are shortening and cooling, and yesterday was such a windy, gorgeous day, with a few leaves coming down, and hawks soaring in the sky, catching…
Okay, it's a deer-hunting stand, according to my brother John. He took the initiative to design and build it, and Paula and I helped out at the end when he…
Well, it took 133 days for one of "the girls" to present us with our first egg. This appeared two days ago, and the next day there were 3 eggs.…
At the end of the day yesterday, we took a break from all of the demolition and the garden work, and we sat in camp chairs on the back hill.…
Amelia, one of our chickens, who have yet to lay eggs! As Paula would say, "Come on, girls! You have a job to do here."
We're pretty sure this was a broad-winged hawk on the barn the other day.
The garden is bursting with green growth now: the cucumbers are twined around the cedar poles and producing super-cucumbers; we have too much zucchini, as usual, and the pole beans…
Paula constructed a simple chicken shelter the other day, assembled from left-over plywood, wood from demolition work in the house, and old metal barn roofing from Mike M. It has…
Paula built some wonderful pole bean structures (sculptures) from cedar branches the other day. And there are a few bean sprouts poking through the earth now. It will be interesting…
Paula discovered the secret to finding morel mushrooms yesterday: try mowing the lawn. We had been looking for them in the woods, without success. Then, mowing the lawn by the…
The chickens got a little taste of the outside world the other day. We're working on the "interim chicken coop," and hope to put the finishing touches on it in…
Paula and I were working on the "interim chicken coop" in the barn, and when we took a break and stepped out onto the lane along the ravine, Paula saw…
The Jack-in-the-Pulpits have made their appearance in the woods. A search on the web tells me some other names for the plant: Parson-in-the-Pulpit, Lord-and-Lady, Cuckoopint, Aronskelk, Indian Turnip, Iroquois Breadroot,…
You can tell by the look on Lilly's face — Lilly, the growing Silver-laced Wyandotte pullet — that she overheard us talking about the fox I glimpsed as it strolled…