Shaker Bench
We’ve been working on the kitchen, slowly perfecting it to match our every day habits. The first big change was a new fridge, a small SMEG fridge that is a foot and a half shorter than our old one and…
Reclaimed Wood Boxes & Frames
Our driveway is long, so long it shows up as a road on Google maps. Along the length of the driveway is over 300′ of wood fence. It’s finally come to the point it where it is so rotten it…
Savoring Ramps: Pickles and More
Ramp season is upon us, and our patches of them seem even more dense and lush than the past two years. Because their season is so short, we tend to harvest more ramps than we can possibly eat before they…
How to: Building a Cold Frame
It took a bit longer than I expected, but our cold frames are complete. I wrote about our idea for collapsable cold frames two months ago, with the overly optimistic notion that it would be a weekend project and I…
Forced Blooms: A Bright Spot Amid the Late-Winter Gloom
Yesterday, when, for the second day in a row, I spent several hours outside doing yard work, I was heartened by the sense that Spring had finally arrived. Today I awoke to 4 or 5 inches of snow and despair…that…
How to: Protecting a Log Splitter
Between the last few hurricanes and storms there are a lot of fallen trees, and the wood burning stove is our primary source of heat during the winter, so splitting wood is a pretty regular activity around here. No matter…
How to: Making a Lamp and Felt Shade
When we originally toured our house with the real estate broker the dining room was lit by a magnificent chandelier of deer antlers. The lamp was unfortunately an heirloom and explicitly excluded from the sale in our purchase contract. So,…
How-to: Black Walnut Dye
As we mentioned in a previous post, we found a Black Walnut tree on the farm and harvested the nuts. We prepared the nuts and saved the hulls to make dye and ink. There are a lot of ways to…
How-to: Black Walnuts
Coming home late a few nights ago we stopped the truck at the bottom of the driveway to close the gates. When I came back to the truck Amanda pointed to the embankment, highlighted by the headlights were tons of…
How-to: Apple Cider
Nothing reminds me of fall more than the smell of apple cider. We discovered half-way through the summer that several of the trees on our property were apple trees. Apparently, way back in its past, our land was an apple…