A dog’s aging process happens gradually, but it may become apparent suddenly, as he’s no longer able to jump onto the couch or navigate the home as easily as he used to. In my own home, I’ve been making changes for my dog Leo who just celebrated his 14th birthday. I wish I’d made some…
Category: Daily Life
How I Remove Wasps from Our Farm Home
On our farmstead we have a pro-wildlife stance, and that includes smaller types of wildlife too. We don’t kill bugs outdoors without good reason, and we have the same philosophy for bugs that end up inside our home. If we find a bug in the wrong place (according to us), we try to investigate to…
A Look Back at the Last Decade – From Paris to Utah
I missed an important anniversary last year – 2021 marked the ten year anniversary of my leaving Paris, France for a return to life in the US. Essentially, I transitioned from being a “city mouse” to my current situation, “country mouse.” As you might imagine, my 14 years in Paris were very, very different from…
My Experience with GABA as a Sleep Aid
Me and my sleep have been through some rough times in the past few years. My troubled sleep has ranged in severity, from months of insomnia so bad that I would go for days without sleeping at all – to waking after just three or four hours and being unable to fall back asleep. For…
How I Dress For Cold Weather: An Ode to Wool
Life on the homestead in NE Utah is thrilling in many ways – gorgeous sunsets, seedlings emerging dramatically from the soil in spring, or the surprising call of sandhill cranes flying overhead in summer. But in other ways it can be a harsh environment, especially in winter when the temperatures plummet to sub-zero levels. To…
A Natural Way to Remove Skunk Smell from Dogs – Apple Cider Vinegar
Living in a rural area means we have lots of wildlife visitors. Loads of friendly pollinators visit our garden, deer come to browse at the apples that fall from our apple trees, and skunks make themselves at home here too. For the most part the skunks tend to stay out of our fenced in back…
Why We Grow Our Own Food
Sometimes in the middle of summer when it seems like all our spare time goes to the garden, both Chad and I can start to question our commitment to gardening. It doesn’t take long though for us to remember why it is we spend time and effort planning, seeding, tending, watering, and harvesting our much-loved…
How to Be Less Reliant on Heating and AC
As I write this it is the middle of summer, and like many of the recent summers past we’ve experienced hotter than normal temperatures. And yet, in our household we are surviving without any air conditioning, our roof has not exploded, and so far, no one in our household has passed out from heat stroke….
North, South, East, or West: Determine Your Direction at Home
I did not grow up thinking about the cardinal directions. Although I was a Brownie (translation, “pre-Girl Scout”) for about one season as a child, all I remember from that experience is singing Kumbaya during a camping trip, and the mime that once came to entertain our troop. I didn’t use a map to get…
Homesteading: Creating and Keeping Routines
When we’re on the road, Chad and I like to listen to Great Courses CDs, and one of them we listened to recently was on decision making. Chad wasn’t excited about it when I first told him the title, but he gave it a chance and we both quickly became enthralled listening to it. One…
Yoga: My Home Practice
I live in a very rural location with no access to regular yoga classes. But yoga is one of my great joys in life, so I’ve had to figure out how to keep my yoga practice up, despite my location. When I lived in Charlotte, with access to several yoga studios, my teachers regularly reminded…
Living With Less
Howdy friends, Lately I’ve been trying to recenter the framework for this blog. One of the things that keeps coming up is that life here on the homestead is so often about making do and accepting a humble lifestyle. A long period of underemployment has recently broken (yippee!), but during those months, watching our savings…
Hearthwilde 