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…
Category: Sustainability
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…
Gardening: How to Grow a Survival Garden for Beginners
Growing your own food must be sounding pretty good right about now, eh? And you’re not alone, based on the current run on seeds. The seed companies can’t keep up with the demand and are having to close for days at a time just to catch up on backed up orders. I have received emails…
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…
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…
Food Issues: Vegetarian – To Be Or Not To Be?
Why I Embraced Vegetarianism… And Why I Gave It Up One evening as a young teen I was babysitting for some family friends. The baby was safe and sound in bed and all I had to do was eat my dinner and peruse a pile of magazines. I happened upon a blurb about Madonna being…
Quotes: Allowing Nature to Return
“Although it would be highly arrogant of us to think we could actually design ecosystems, we believe that we can create a balanced ecological agricultural landscape by allowing nature to return to the land.” – Darrel Frey in Bioshelter Market Garden
Celebrations: Alternative Christmas Traditions
Even those of us who don’t celebrate Christmas for religious reasons might still choose to enjoy the festivities of the season. At this time of year I enjoy taking some time to read about the pagan roots that lie behind our Christmas traditions. Since these roots came from rituals honoring Nature, it seems like a…
Foraging: Why Eat Wild Food?
Getting to Know Plants My first gardening experience came when I was a teenager. Back then “gardening” for me was an after school job at a small, family-owned garden center, lugging around a heavy, interminable garden hose to water, section by section, the herbs, the perennials, the shrubs, and the flats of annuals. Out alone…
Foraging – Why Eat Wild Food?
Getting to Know Plants My first gardening experience came when I was a teenager. Back then “gardening” for me was an after school job at a small, family-owned garden center, lugging around a heavy, interminable garden hose to water, section by section, the herbs, the perennials, the shrubs, and the flats of annuals. Out alone…
Gardening: Composting in the Desert
Anyone who gardens or simply cooks a lot of vegetables quickly finds out – you must have a compost pile! Vegetable waste translates into useful fertilizer and soil very quickly if you compost, so it is a huge waste NOT to create some composting system – not to mention the cost of buying bags of…
Gardening – Composting in the Desert
Anyone who gardens or simply cooks a lot of vegetables quickly finds out – you must have a compost pile! Vegetable waste translates into useful fertilizer and soil very quickly if you compost, so it is a huge waste NOT to create some composting system – not to mention the cost of buying bags of…
Homekeeping: The Affordable Organic Sofa
If you’re interested in creating a healthy, healing natural environment in your home, don’t overlook the sofa. Conventional sofas are made with petroleum-based foam and have added flame retardants. It may be somewhat easier to find a conventional sofa without adding flame retardants now (Ikea carries some), but a sofa made with only natural ingredients…
Hearthwilde 