OtherSpeak: Homesteading in Alaska
Tabitha writes: “For being off grid, we live pretty normal lives. I do my laundry on sunny days when there is enough solar power to run the well pump…”
homesteading
Pictorial review
Confession: I don’t often do it this way, but to bring you up to speed on the last few months I’m going to just this once. In brief then, here’s a photographical run-down of our summer. Let me start with breakfast. When you have half a dozen children, the simple pleasures of life such as …
Herb gardens
Confession: I am obsessed with herbs. Gripped. Infatuated. Besotted with herbs. Last year we dug up a patch along the south side of my house and I started an herb garden, with flat slabs of limestone for edging and paths, and a handful of starts from my aunt and a few friends. Thyme. Sage. Rosemary. …
On the naming of cats
So much depends upon the naming of small furry ones. They will be fundamentally altered if I call them Muffin and Pudding or Tiger and Panther or Solomon and The Queen of Sheba. He is small and black, the baby of the litter. She is feisty and golden, and leads him around. If only their …
White butter
Today I made my first butter ever. I am absurdly proud of this little pat. I blended and rinsed and squeezed and rinsed. Well well. And it tastes not so bad as I thought, after the smell of the ripened cream prepared me for the worst. But it’s doughy white. Like Ma in Little House …
Telltale
= ! = He < thinks > himself undetected nibbling popcorn on my pantry floor but I know he was h e r e ! . . . .
On gardening and imperfection
Part A Confession: Almost I would give up writing on any issue I care about, for the way in which I am tested in that area immediately afterwards. I wrote about seeing work as play, and immediately began taking my own so seriously I could hardly stop to breathe. I wrote about grace, and started …
Little Sal, Mk2
Introducing our new goat, Little Sal Mark 2. She’s four days old and darling! I’m no believer in reincarnation, just relieved out of my wits that she looks nearly identical to the one we lost so painfully last year. I feel like I have my pet back. And I still love bottle feeding. We would’ve …
The second year
In [amazon_link id=”0440414806″ target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ]Holes[/amazon_link] by Louis Sachar, Stanley Yelnats is sentenced to eighteen months at a boys’ penitential camp, where each boy must dig a five-foot hole in the desert every single day. Five feet across in every direction, five feet deep. “If you take a bad boy and make him dig a hole every …
The tenth best thing about April
Please meet our new puppy, Penny. She looks to me like one part beagle, one part spaniel, and one part UFO. We are overcome. Completely overcome. What do you like about April?