Our new front yard: history

...adapted to hot dry lands. Still, we kept hanging on, giving the trees more time, hoping they’d find their way to health. Our waiting turned into denial and avoidance. The truth was the yard was not happy or healthy, and we just shut our eyes to it every time we came home, and tried not to think about it. The indomitable Mexican sage and lantana reasserted themselves from root bits left in the soil and threaded their way among the straggly trees. T...

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Erik’s 2012 New Year’s Resolutions in Review

.... Increase running distance. Organize bug-out box. Backpack more often. Camp on Santa Rosa island again. Return to biodynamic practices in the garden. Learn how to sharpen knives and tools. Create an iPhone or iPad app. Check email only twice a day. Take more time to cook. Keep the kitchen spotless. Ferment vegetables more often. My New Year’s resolution this year is to have a much shorter New Year’s resolution list. I’ll post that list tomorrow....

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Plastic or Wood?

...these are the new rules. We are going to phase as many plastics out of the homestead as we can. We won’t toss what we have in the landfill right now, but when it is time to replace it, this is how it’s going down: Wood and metal utensils instead of plastic Glass storage containers instead of Tupperwear Wool blankets instead of Polarfleece blankets Down filling instead of polyester filling (even for allergy sufferers)* Silk and wool fabrics for ath...

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That ain’t a bowl full of larvae, it’s crosne!

...n, justifiably, gives me a hard time for growing strange things around the homestead. This week I just completed the world’s smallest harvest of a root vegetable popularly known as crosne (Stachys affinis). Crosne, also known as Chinese artichoke, chorogi, knotroot and artichoke betony is a member of the mint family that produces a tiny edible tuber. While looking like any other mint plant, the leaves have no smell. The tubers look all too much li...

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Security

...a hat, or the visit of the particularly hated UPS deliveryman. At the same time, fireworks and sprinklers can send him cowering. Now, we strongly advice against running out and getting any kind of big protection dog. So-called “working dogs” like Dobermans and Rottweillers require a tremendous amount of training and are a great responsibility. We would have been in big trouble raising this beast without the assistance of a friend who is an experie...

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