You may have made from-scratch buckwheat pancakes or used a mix. Or you may have ground your own buckwheat flour. But have you grown buckwheat? Our field of buckwheat serves many purposes. It improves the soil's fertility as a natural alternative to chemical fertilizers by 1)adding nitrogen to the soil as it grows and 2)providing compostable material when…

It happened sometime Saturday, June 9. A milestone. Phoebe laid our flock's first egg… on the ground outside the chicken coop. We placed the egg in one of the coop's fourteen, straw-lined nesting boxes to show Phoebe, as well as the remaining five hens in our flock, the proper location to plop their eggs. Human intervention proved unnecessary, as our hens' innate nest making…

To prepare for the arrival of a flock of hens, that a local farmer raised from baby chicks for me, I loaded our shop vac and an extension cord into my wheelbarrow and headed to the chicken coop. Cobwebs daintily draped every corner. So very pretty glistening in the sun streaming through the windows, but…

I plant seed potatoes on May 20th, my father's birthday. It's what I've done since I began to garden. Because as kids, May 20th was the marker that gauged when our parents began garden planting here in central Minnesota. Seedlings were not transplanted into the ground until after Memorial Day due to the risk of a late…

Over the years, our wooden fences have begun to return to the earth from whence they came. One such fence had stoically held its place in time well beyond what one can ask. It was weary and pleading for a replacement. Also, the bittersweet vines that the fence supported had become entangled and dead branches prevented…

The final days of October… Most leaves have fluttered to the ground, but the maple trees bordering my veggie garden are ablaze with color. I have cleared away the dried vegetation from my veggie garden, but the Swiss chard continues to produce brilliant green leaves that add mega nutrients to the vegetable soup that I make…

My completed stone walkway… I love it very much. Yes, I do.     The stones take me home… to my front door.   After Tom Dix from Wood Spirit Gardens in Backus, Minnesota completed the walkway, he trimmed two Dwarf Korean Lilac Bushes that had grown well beyond their "dwarf" status and were blocking the…

I hired Tom Dix from Wood Spirit Gardens in Backus, Minnesota to tighten up the stone walkway leading to my front door. He moved chunks of stone closer together and filled in smaller spaces with rocks. As he worked, my hens were becoming a nuisance. The freshly dug soil was an invitation to scratch. That's…

On this first day of June, I cut a bouquet of blueberry branches from a bush in my yard to adorn our kitchen table. Click on the photo to enlarge it. The blossoms are so very pretty.  

On this final Monday in the month of May 2011, I am a proud mama. My daughter, Heather, wrote a post on her blog about teaching children that, yes… Memorial Day is picnics and parades, but what is the meaning behind these traditions? Too often, Memorial Day is just a three-day weekend… an extra day off from work. Heather's sharing memorial…