Blog

I woke up this morning with the vague sense that dawn was unfolding outside. The birds were starting to sing, and I could hear the vibration of the swifts that have nested in our chimney, thundering up and out to start their day. Our border collie was scratching her collar and the rattle of the dog tags sounded distinctly like the rattle of a can of spray paint being shaken. I’m not sure what dream all of those sounds interrupted, but my first thought was that I needed to get the spray can away

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For whatever reason, four of our hens became broody last month and since then our chicken coop has been a veritable carnival of crankiness. Each of the four occupies one of our nest boxes, sitting on an imaginary clutch of eggs, staring vacantly into space. As the other hens line up for their turn to lay, the broody ones refuse to move. If left to themselves, they will remain there for 21 days – which is how long it would take, in theory, for their imaginary eggs to incubate.
Frustrated that

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Years ago, I found a newspaper advertisement from 1920 underneath some floorboards we were removing. I’ve kept it ever since. The ad depicts a woman declaring “I gained 15 pounds in 6 weeks and enjoyed every minute of it! Anyone can be plump, write to find out how.”
Wow we’ve come a long way! With cheap processed food, everyone who wants to, can be plump- and those of us who don’t want to, need to work hard not to be.
100 years ago, most Americans ate food that they or the

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We built our itinerant bee swarm a very nice home of their own.
We opted for a “Horizontal Hive”, which is a bit different than the ubiquitous American “Langstroth” hive. The horizontal hive is popular in Russia, Ukraine, and the northern parts of France, and is designed more with the bee than the beekeeper in mind. Its proponents advocate a hands-off approach to beekeeping, allowing the bees to live as naturally as possible. It appeals to my inclination to let nature be my guide, instead of c

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Hügelkultur is the practice of creating garden beds on top of berms made of rotting logs and woody debris. The decaying wood provides nutrients and heat as it decomposes, and the porous logs act like a sponge allowing the berms to retain moisture. It’s a centuries old technique made recently popular by an Austrian Regenerative Farmer named Sepp Holzer. Lots of people swear by it – but perhaps they have better behaved pigs than I.
Our pigs would consider any carefully constructed berm an affront

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When grass begins to grow in the spring, its first mission is to grow more surface area with which to collect as much of the sun’s energy as possible. As if the grass is unfurling its very own solar collector, the blades of grass collect the sunshine, creating energy for the grass to grow. The more surface area it grows, the more sunshine it can collect and the more additional surface area it can grow…. It’s a wonderful thing!
When our sheep graze the grass, the cycle starts over again as the

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In the spring as temperatures rise, a wild honeybee colony will shake off its winter’s lethargy when the trees and plants start to bloom. The queen, reinvigorated, begins to lay thousands of eggs a day, once again. New workers and drones are hatched, replacing the ones lost over the winter. The workforce expands and soon outgrows the existing hive, so preparations for “the swarm” begin.
The queen, triggered by the overcrowding, will lay several new queen eggs to replace herself, and then she an

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We have been weaning our bottle-fed lambs, which is a long, loud, and annoying process. We have them in the pasture closest to our house so we can keep an eye on them, and make sure they are making the transition okay. The lambs happily go about their independent lives until they hear our voices, or see us walking by, then the bellowing and the hoof stamping begins. They clearly have no intention of being weaned.
Watching their histrionics, we could easily be convinced that they were on the

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Sheep, like all ruminants, can extract everything they need to flourish and thrive by eating grass. Their four chambered stomachs ferment and extract nutrients from plant cellulose, which for the rest of us is indigestible.
Every summer, pastures absorb carbon from the atmosphere, and sequester it in the ground, and unless the pasture is plowed to grow grain or vegetables, it stays there forever. Grasslands aren’t static, though. Unless they are grazed, mowed, or burned they will eventually

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In the late1600’s the frontier town of Farmington was connected to Hartford by way of the Clatter Valley Road. It was the clattering of the horse drawn wagons making their way over the rough terrain that gave the road its name.
By the time my great grandmother bought the property the road was no longer a public right of way, but they kept it cleared and used it as access to the pond, pastures, and woodlots. It was still technically drivable when I was a kid, but no one ever did. My mom walked

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