Top 10 tips for enjoying -or at least surviving-winter.

I’m pressing pause on the sustainability posts for just a second.  Winter seems to have settled into our little corner of the world, and it’s not even Thanksgiving yet. In the last week, I’ve had a lot of conversations punctuated with complaints about the weather. So here’s my confession: I Love winter.  A lot. Yes,

Let it snow! A little sustainable holiday help.

The unthinkable has happened. I missed the weather window and did not get my garlic in the ground in time. Seriously, a week ago we were still in the 60s and I was worried it might be too warm, and now there’s an inch plus of snow and ice on my garlic plot.  I’m devastated

Sustainable Shampoo

If you’re just here for the recipe, here you go, as promised. Basic Sustainable Shampoo recipe: ½ cup Bronner’s  ½ cup water 1-2 t of baking soda (optional: 10-20 drops essential oils or 1t coconut oil) So what’s the problem with store-bought shampoo? Well, a lot of it is full of junk that is pretty

A Halloween Treat

It’s a rainy and blustery Halloween in our part of the world. This means our Halloween plans have been put on hold and I may actually get another post up this evening while my husband and son watch Coco and gorge themselves on candy. In the meantime, however, I wanted to share this with you

The sustainability project…finally

Well, this post is more than a bit overdue, but I have had a good time playing around with sustainability over the last couple of months. The phrasing may sound a little irreverent, but it’s important to remember that sustainability is defined as “the ability to be maintained at a certain rate or level.” The

Letting go of summer

For a last day of summer, this is one for the record books in term of perfection. There’s a gorgeous warm breeze populated by dragonflies, thistledown, and the spicy smell of aster. The bees are ecstatically hitting all the late summer blooms and the chickens are enjoying a lazy dust bath and leaving their summer

Lost and found at 40

The garlic is in, the tomatoes are starting to ripen, and the herbs are threatening to flower if I don’t hurry up and do a second harvest. It must be August.  In Maine, the beginning of August generally means that the older maples start sending up warning flags that fall is approaching more quickly than

Which should you get, chickens or ducks?

So I have been mentioning for a while that I intend to do an actual homesteading post and it seems rather overdue. The question I want to address is one that I see on a lot of different homesteading blogs and I really wanted to put my two cents in.   Which kind of bird

So I think I have a zombie chicken…

You may remember the story of the chicken who lived, waltzing back into the yard after my son and husband saw a fox carry her off. She’s been at it again. Hedwig seemed no worse for her experience with the fox, though halfway through the winter she started having difficulty laying. Her eggs were rare

I’d love to, but…

A few weeks ago, my husband and son were on their own while I was off working on one of my many projects. Often times the lad likes to help my husband cook, but lately, he’s been really into doing puzzles on his own. He was about halfway through putting one together when his father