Eating locally

Our lasagna gardening project is producing food in abundance! This past Sunday, Tom and Peggy trooped out to the garden to harvest tomatoes. We had to whack our way in, mainly because the 2 squash plants have decided to take over. You can see from the picture that some of the broccoli has gone to flower, but we have been able to harvest quite a bit of it first. The broccoli made a delicious cream of broccoli soup, and with the tomatoes we were able to make a fantastic spaghetti sauce. Yum.

Summer Reading

This summer I read'' Animal, Vegetable, Miracle'' by Barbara Kingsolver and I was quite impressed with the book. The author and her family moved from Arizona to an inherited farm in western Virginia and decided to 'live off the land' for a year. This means that they grew their own fruits and vegetables, and even raised their own chickens and turkeys for consumption. They also agreed that to supplement their diet, they could buy organic foods grown within a 100-mile radius of their home. The book is arranged sequentially, from April to the following March, and tells about the process of growing, raising and finally eating foods seasonally. Many of us have joined CSA's (Community Supported Agriculture groups), and reading this book has been a great affirmation of that decision. I have the book to loan out if anyone would like to read it.

Using Organic Fertilizers

We are beginning our second year of organic fertilization, and thought we'd show you that the lawn looks just as good as when we were using a chemical fertilizer. We put corn gluten on in the spring and chicken manure on in the fall. We do have to pull out a few dandelions at the beginning of the season, but that's the only difference we have noticed so far.
Learn more about organic lawn care