There’s nothing delightful about carrot roots that have bolted. Yet, I’m here to sing their praises. Carrots are biennials, and are supposed to wait until year two to produce flowers. When they bolt in year one, instead of sending their energy into root production, that energy gets moved into reproduction, aka flowering, leaving the root…
Category: Nature Care
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…
116 Ways to Connect with Nature
I believe that connecting to nature can bring joy, satisfaction, and meaning to one’s life – because it has done so for me. My husband, Chad, who is a certified wildman, provided some suggestions of his own and I added them to this list as well. So here you go, over one hundred ideas for…
Welcoming Barney – Transitioning a Feral Cat into Our Home
For a while it was a running joke between Chad and I that we didn’t need any other cats – but, we didn’t have an orange one yet, so maybe if one showed up…? Last spring, shortly after we moved our formerly feral feline, Owlfie indoors, a new cat did show up on our farm….
Showy Milkweed – Weed or Wildflower?
When it comes to differentiating between a weed and a wildflower, the answer lies in one’s perspective. Many farmers find that milkweed gets in the way. I wouldn’t exactly say that my husband and I qualify as farmers. Though we do live on a small farm and keep farm animals, we earn our living from…
Watching Our Pollinator Neighbors
Once the days are warm and the flowers in bloom, one of my greatest and most simple pleasures is watching insects – and our garden affords many opportunities to do just that. Actually, harvesting food from our garden makes me quite happy, but honestly, not as happy as watching these little “neighbors” of ours buzzing…
We Grew It From Seed – Plains Coreopsis
Coreopsis is a plant I’ve been fond of back since my high school days when I had an afternoon job working at a family owned garden center. There’s something reassuring and cheery about this plant’s bright, bobbing flowers. So when I noticed some seeds for plains coreopsis (Coreopsis tinctoria), a native of the Great Plains,…
We Grew It from Seed – Lauren’s Grape Poppy
I’m not sure why, exactly, but I decided to grow several different types of poppies from seed this year. Lauren’s Grape poppy was one of my favorite varieties. With deep purple flowers, this poppy variety was pleasing to the eye – but also to our local pollinators, affording me many pleasurable moments snapping up photos…
Peter Wohlleben’s The Hidden Life of Trees
Have you ever hugged a tree? And have you wondered if it might be aware of you hugging it? If you are the type of person who might entertainment such a question, I have a book recommendation for you: Peter Wohlleben’s The Hidden Life of Trees. After hearing an interview with Wohlleben, I hurried to…
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…
Wildlife: Painted Lady Butterflies
Last summer we had some borage come up as volunteers in our garden. Did I say “some”? I meant thousands of plants. We didn’t have borage plants, we had borage patches. This was our first year with a borage explosion, so we thought we’d let some of it live, not realizing just how hardy it…
Native Plants: Milkweed
Milkweed is one of the loved, cherished weeds we have growing on our property. The plant is very important for monarch butterflies and may be edible (this subject gives rise to much debate!). And they are beautiful! We were wondering, though, if this was the RIGHT milkweed for monarchs in our area of the country. So I…
Wildlife: How to Attract Birds to Your Backyard
Last weekend I took a class on birds. It was a great crash course in ornithology and I was delighted to learn all sorts of interesting things about our feathery friends. The main purpose of the class though was to learn how to attract birds to our backyards with native plants. Because I love to share, here…
Hearthwilde 