#livesustainably

source In Western Massachusetts where I live, the soil has been continuously farmed since the 1670’s. In most places where soil has been farmed, it will have been severely depleted of basic minerals and

The last fishing trip at end of September As of Monday night they had not decided on surgery and he’d had a full spine MRI to determine if surgery was even possible. The decisions about surgery are to

We got the diagnosis for my husband today. His L2 vertebra has shattered and the pieces went into his spinal cord. The L3 and L4 vertebrae have cancer. That’s all we know right now. He has been taken to

On Saturday it was to be warm, so I got out there and started moving mulch. I needed to mulch around the garlic in the Small garden, but because I was working alone, I didn’t want to mess with whole leaves.

Besides peeling shallots for a long time, I’d also decided to get the oil lamps we use ready. We’d had 2 power outages in the last week, and there were people in town that still didn’t have power from

When my helper friend and I planted the shallots on Thursday, we took as many of the big ones as we needed. I had a lot of shallots left for cooking, properly cured too! Friday was to be pretty cold and

Thursday morning my helper friend was here, and good thing too! I had a bad night with the power out as my sleep machine didn’t work. First thing we did was get more wood and go up and fix the minor damage

My intern was here on Wednesday and the first thing we did was clean up the huge sheets of plastic and fold them up. Next we got them and a huge pallet over by the driveway, ready to be loaded into the

On Tuesday morning my helper friend was here and I wanted to get the inoculants moved out of the Big garden and spread as much as possible in the Small garden. So we did that first thing. I occurred to

I had planted 4 broccoli plants but it would not be enough for a year. So I ordered a 25# box from our farm store Market Share. It was beautiful broccoli, organic, and I only found 1 cabbage worm and a

You may recall back in 2019 we discovered the waterline from the road to the house had broken. We never knew because it was before the water meter. After replacing it for about $5000, we discussed replacing

I did something I’ve not done before: bought mulch hay. In the past I scavenged from area barns and farms. But with my husband’s back so bad, that wasn’t an option this year. So I resorted to Craigslist

I got out there at 7:15AM Thursday morning and started prepping for planting garlic. My helper friend was here to assist. I got him started in the north end of the Big garden then had to leave to catch

Drawing the New Herb garden for 2021 by oil lamp light I have to get the garlic planted before October 15th. Actually I like to have it in the ground as close to October 1 as I can, but it HAS to be done

On Tuesday my helper friend was here and I wanted to tackle the other garden beside the steps so I could plant the other mum. I took the topsoil and compost off that my intern and I had put down weeks

When the front porch was done in August 2019, I was up in the barn prepping for Freezer Camp. I did not know they were doing it. They ended up putting 18” of packed gravel in many of what would be flowerbeds.

On Sunday night when my husband went out to do chores in the pasture pen (which had not gotten moved) he found this. We couldn’t measure it but a guess is about 14” – 16” long. The fence is set up so the

We’d missed our anniversary trip to the Fair this year. Last year I had gotten a Fair t-shirt, one of the older style ones. I was messing around on the internet and went to the Fair’s FB page. They’d mentioned

Friday morning my helper friend was here and he set about finishing the Anne raspberry bed. He put down some of the amendment for the Small garden, then mulched. The raspberries are much happier and have

On Thursday he headed out fishing, to a place 30 miles offshore. He checks the forecast to make sure there aren’t going to be rough seas. Thursday looked like a good day. He actually ended up on a different