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.

Home Dairying, Banana Milkshakes, and Spare Egg Whites
February 7, 2022

​​Pictures and commentary from our garden​, ​a super-simple recipe for banana milkshake (simple only if you don’t count the steps that bring the milk to the kitchen)​, and a brief mention of one useful thing to do with your egg whites when you only need the yolks.

Farm Update: In the Garden
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?

Moving from Control Toward Intelligent Interaction, in Gardening and in Life
January 24, 2022

The possible uses for bananas–the fruit, the foliage, and the trunks–seem almost endless. In this article I share lots of images and ideas for using banana patches as mulch producers and for an erosion control project.

Bananas for Mulch Production and Erosion Control
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.

How to Make Home Grown Food Simpler and Easier
December 28, 2021

Examine and learn from the year gone by, to make your New Year resolutions far more effective. Or use this process during any kind of ending and new beginning.

5 Questions to Help You Learn From Last Year and Make the Most of This Year
December 16, 2021

An index of all the “Empowered Thinking” posts written on ARealGreenLife in 2021.

All “Empowered Thinking” Posts for 2021
December 7, 2021

Where those difficult emotions might be coming from, what might be amplifying them, and why it’s important to be gentle with yourself when they show up.

Difficult Emotions are Allies in Disguise
December 6, 2021

Ginger has thrived at our place since I learned to think about what it gives and what it needs in terms of its connections to the other plants around it, to me as the ginger-grower, and to me and my family as the ginger-users.

Ginger in a RealFood Garden
December 6, 2021

The success of your food garden depends on the connections between the plants and each other, and between the plants, you, and your kitchen (and also your medicine cabinet).

How to Plan a Food Garden
November 15, 2021

The “bus” I’m talking about is entire populations of people all gabbling without listening to one another and without thinking clearly. The bus is hurtling toward a cliff, with no-one in the driver’s seat. ​The opinions, the conflict, the angst, are all fueling the bus. Here’s how to understand what’s going on, and how to disengage from the insanity.

Get Off the Bus
November 8, 2021

You have a limited amount of mental space and its up to you to choose what to fill it with. In this post, I’ll share 3 practices for using our thinking to “bring ourselves home.”

3 Ways to Bring Ourselves Home
November 1, 2021

We’re so in the habit of controlling each other or being controlled that we’ve forgotten how to think for ourselves. We’re so overwhelmed by the challenges we face that we assume there’s nothing we can do (and it’s all our fault). And we assume that controlling each other is necessary and failing was inevitable because humans are just basically bad.

​Let’s explore how we might replace ​these habits and assumptions with more empowered ways of thinking.

Empowered Thinking for Deep Change
October 18, 2021

Loofahs are easy to grow. You can eat them when they’re small, and if you let them get big they make great bathroom sponges. They also make pretty good kitchen sponges. Best of all, when they wear out you can compost them to feed next year’s loofahs.

Loofah – Grow Your Own Sponges
October 11, 2021

Yacon tubers are sweet, crunchy, and delicious raw or cooked, and are a firm favorite in our family. This post is a quick introduction to yacon and my experiences with growing and eating it.

An Introduction to Sweet, Crunchy Yacon
October 2, 2021

The moon influences the ocean and its tides, the flow of sap and the life force in our gardens, and the behavior of many different birds, animals, and crustaceans. If we choose to pay attention, it can also indicate ways that we humans can align ourselves with the rhythms and cycles of life in our efforts to bring ourselves back into harmony with nature.

The Dark Moon – Realigning Ourselves With the Rhythm of Life
September 26, 2021

The Equinoxes mark the two points in the year round of the seasons where the number of hours of daylight and darkness are roughly equal, and so they are a good time to invite balance into our lives. This post introduces the Wheel of the Year and shares my Journaling practice for the Equinoxes.

Spring Equinox – Journaling to Invite Balance
September 20, 2021

Pesto can be made with any herb or combination of herbs and even leafy vegetables. When all you see in your garden is edible leafy greens, pesto is a great way to serve up all that nutrition in a form that’s easy and appealing to eat.

Herb Pesto (and Mulberry Milkshake)
September 13, 2021

The kids’ll be up soon and looking for breakfast. The cow needs milking and the calf pen needs cleaning. I just have time before all that starts, to show you some pics of the new calf, our recent veggie garden harvests, and the chickweed in the lawn that we’re putting into salads.

Farm Update: New Calf, Chickweed Salads, Veggie Harvest
August 30, 2021

21st century science now finally agrees with Eastern philosophy and Indigenous wisdom that we share a common field of consciousness. It’s hidden in plain site, all around us all the time. It’s even more under-appreciated and under-utilized ​than ​the other forms of “the commons” that we share.

The Commons, Common Sense, and a Common Field of Consciousness