The importance of edge is one of the best gardening tips I took away from Gaia’s Garden, Toby Hemenway’s excellent permaculture guide. Loosely defined, “edge” describes all the parts of the garden that we don’t always think of as useful, especially for growing edible plants. Over the years, Ma has done a great job of using [...]
They tell me spring doesn’t start “officially” until March 20th, but I think that most people feel spring more than they mark it off on the calendar. Between alternating heavy rain and lengthening sunny days, Humboldt is coming back to life with undeniable vigor. And while this place stays green pretty much year-round, there’s a [...]
These “dirt” journals are a place for me to celebrate successes and keep a record of how I learn new skills that are different from the kinds of academic skills I’ve cultivated in the past. Part of this process includes admitting defeat. And while my winter garden hasn’t been a total failure, it definitely has [...]
I’ve made some notable progress since my last journal, but the most important recent development has nothing to do with my personal efforts: the rain has finally returned to Humboldt. In two weeks, we’ve had more rain here at the house than in the entire time since I began keeping a rain log in November [...]
My family and I are preparing to build a small house next to the existing one. Jessie and I will live there at first, and then it will become my mother’s place late in her retirement. It’ll be roughly 1000 square feet, just one story. Not a big place, but big enough to require the [...]
Experience has taught me that any writing enterprise, if neglected for too long, will begin to suffer from an excess of mental material. This tends to reduce both the quality and frequency of specific details that typically characterize clear and informative prose. I sit down today knowing that I crossed into such territory at least [...]
I used to have a great view of the garden from more than 100′ up, but now I am only 18″ tall, 3.5′ wide, and 14.5′ long. Metal ligaments now penetrate my soft redwood––impositions of the two bipedal creatures who chose my new form. One of them lives here; I see him poking around all [...]
Give me level earth, and there I shall build my home. There is something hopeful and also mulish in this sentiment, which embodies our noble determination to shape the world according to desire as well as our failure to live wholly within the natural systems that contain us. Such was my thinking when the carbon [...]
I think it’s a fair assertion that anyone willing to eat the meat of another animal ought to also be willing to participate in that animal’s death. The experience of killing animals for sustenance, which has been commonplace for most humans throughout our history, is now just one item on the long list of productive [...]
Last week, I experienced something that could only be considered “special” by someone from a generation out of touch with food production. It all began with Polly the goat. Polly is a beautiful and affable nanny from Tule Fog Farm; I milk her first thing when I arrive every Wednesday morning. When I first learned [...]