Spring is the time to look at the “seeds” or intentions we’ve been gestating over winter, to choose those with the best chances of surviving and thriving, and to let go of the rest of them. As in the garden, so in our inner lives. Otherwise, your coming “growing season” may be filled with too much stuff, or with stuff that isn’t serving you. And if it isn’t serving you then it also won’t be serving your world, which is an extension of you.
August 1, 2022
This post shares lots of pics and a few tips on growing and harvesting ginger, and making ginger honey to settle coughs and for colds, flu, and general immune support. There are also some pics and tips on arrowroot harvesting and replanting, since we sometimes grow these two plants together.
June 26, 2022
Our “story,” of how the world works and who we are, is like a script that prompts our choices and actions. There is a new story available to us that prompts cooperative and life affirming behaviors rather than competitive and exploitative ones. Indigenous peoples and eastern spirituality have been indicating it, and the newest sciences are finally now “discovering” it. It’s a story that would put us on an entirely different trajectory.
May 25, 2022
Sometimes change asks more of us than we have to give, and we break. Sometimes we recover, but whether we recover or not, there is no going back to what we were before the change. We’re transformed us, forever, into something different than we were before. Here’s why I feel that this degree of change is upon us collectively now, and why I feel hopeful even in the midst of all that’s happening around the world.
April 25, 2022
An earth-floor, deep-litter system has big benefits for the health and well-being of chickens, and it’s also the easiest way I know to build an ongoing compost creation system in which most of the work is done for you. This article shares what we’ve learned about deep-litter composting since we built our new earth floor chicken shed in 2019.
March 28, 2022
The Equinoxes – the time of balanced light and dark at the midway point through Autumn and Spring – provide an opportunity to examine how we’re managing the balancing act between doing and resting. This short post shares an uncommon idea for our culture and our times: “It is safe to rest.”
February 21, 2022
What is “happy meat?” Is meat-eating inherently destructive, or can we have “happy ecosystems” along with happy meat? What does meat-eating mean for human health on a more-than physical level? And what about avoiding eating animal products because you care about animals’ welfare?
February 14, 2022
This super-short post has some commentary on home-dairying, a tongue-in-cheek recipe for raw-milk banana milkshake, and something easy and useful to do with your egg whites when you only need the yolks. There are also a few links to related resources that I hope you’ll find helpful.
January 31, 2022
What gardeners do is somewhere on a continuum from controlling the life (and death) cycles in the garden, to managing them, to interacting intelligently with them. We tend to default to control because of our culturally ingrained assumption that without control there will be chaos and anarchy.
This has implications far beyond the garden. How do our assumptions about the need for control shape our world?
January 17, 2022
The best way to get more effective at growing your own food is to make it super easy to eat something directly from your garden on a daily basis. Here are 5 categories of low-maintenance food plants (or plant parts) you might have been overlooking, and strategies for using them to build more food sovereignty into your life.