"Five Apple Farm: Growing It Larrapin"
Geek adventures with honey bees, gardens & more on a Blue Ridge homestead
Time, And Turkey Stock
It takes time to live in a way that feels good. I was pondering this as I turned off the crock pot this morning. The beginnings of turkey and wild rice soup bubbled inside. Overnight the turkey carcass from Christmas dinner simmered along with our last carrots from the garden, chunks of celery and big slabs of onions transforming into the kind of rich stock you can only get from making it yourself. It takes time.
Read MoreThe veggie garden: Year One
Take “before” pictures! This is the advice I give to anyone buying a house or starting a garden or homeplace. When you are working on it day by day, it’s very easy to forget how far you’ve come. There is a deep satisfaction in looking at the spot that inspired the garden (or plantings or pond), then seeing the realized vision (or a step toward it) in a photo. It’s as if your handiwork stepped right out of your imagination and into the world! We all know that’s not how it happened. Still, before and after images celebrate your creative work.
Read MoreDifferent Worldviews: Local Economy and Global Economy
“One of the most joyous things we can do is to find our place, the land we fit into, the land where we belong. Having found our place, we snuggle into it, learn about it, adapt to it, and accept it fully. We love and honor it. We rejoice in it. We cherish it. We become native to the land of our living.” —Carol Deppe in The Resilient Gardener.
I read Deppe’s quote and realize how different it feels compared to the imperatives of a global economy, such as the one below…
Read MoreGood Link: Scouting for Microclimates by Ruth Gonzalez
You’ve heard me talk microclimates here at Larrapin Garden Blog before! This is a great article by Western North Carolina gardener Ruth Gonzalez on how to read the microclimates on your land. Winter is a great time to find out both about the chilly and warm spots on your land or in your garden…
Trees in a cloud at Five Apple
Our homestead is at about 3000′ elevation in the Blue Ridge. Some days the clouds roll right onto the land and create a quiet dreamscape.
Read MoreNew Roots of Louisville: A nonprofit model that helps families AND farmers!
While New Roots of Louisville tied for second place at the Slow Money 2014 conference showcase, this organization’s approach and innovative model won me over by a country mile.
After my post last week about the event and how impressed I was at all the entrepreneurs giving business a good name, I was a little surprised that my personal favorite is a nonprofit. But when a nonprofit manages to solve problems in the community while also helping local farmers earn a fair living—you have my attention and unending respect. This organization rocks! Best of all, they are teaching other communities how to do the same.
Read MoreSlow Money 2014 — First Impressions
Slow Money founder Woody Tasch started off the 2014 conference with three questions:
—What if we invested 50% of our money within 50 miles of our home?
—What if there were a new generation of businesses that gave away 50% of their profit
—What if there were 50% more organic matter in our soils 50 years from now?
At first they might seem an odd assemblage of questions. The first makes sense given Slow Money seems to be, from my first foray into it, focused on investors large and small, turning their attention and money to local farm and food-based biz. Which makes sense as Slow Money seems to have arisen from Slow Food, the organization that champions unique regional tastes as well as the idea of slowing down and returning food to the nurturing, relationship and community building role it has played in human history till lately.
Read MoreThe Joy of Planting Trees: Try this at home today!
Some people have a bucket list of things to see and do. I’ve never made a list but do have a bucket goal of seeing how many good trees I can plant in this lifetime. Planting trees is one of the happiest things to do in a day and I highly recommend it to lift your mood for years to come.
Read MoreNewsletter post: Wild turkeys, cover crops, yard art with chickens and rainy day walks
Greetings from Larrapin Garden and welcome to the newsletter post.
Let me start with a tangent and say that “Cutting Celery” is something I will definitely grow again next year. It’s a celery usually grown for leaves rather than stems and unlike the celery that we get at the store, will grow well here. I picked it up as a pretty seedling at the farmers market out of curiosity. Since then I find myself going out to snip stems and leaves whenever I need some celery in the kitchen and there is none. Which is often for me for some reason. Cutting celery came in as a surprise workhorse in the garden this year.
Read MoreRainy afternoon walk in the field
This time last week, we’d had a week of near daily drizzle even though there were sunny spells in between the showers. It added up to an impressive 8.25 inches over seven days, so needless to say when I decided to walk down to the field and look around, I put on my rubber boots…
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