Last week I brought my chain saw out of hibernation and walked around downhill of the house, snipping off sundry little dead trees to tidy up the property. I worked my way down the trail to the garden, and then I found myself looking up at this tree.
It’s a lodgepole pine, 70 feet tall and …

I posted this post from home on Friday, when I had the day off (and back when my internet connection was working). Looks like it didn’t stick to the post. So I’ll try to replicate it today.
(Sorry for not catching it sooner. My life is already so full as to strain credulity, but last week …

Just like last year, Jess has started this year’s garden indoors, in the window-seat just off my studio, in a sunny south-facing window. Out of the window you can see down our steep driveway to the Forest Service road, and the long slopes of mountains beyond with their heavy cape of trees. But inside, we’ve …

Yes, it’s a pun. Not as good as some, of course; but perhaps no pun ever is. This egg is  a surprise to us since our little pullet (young hen) laid this egg on the same day that Honey attacked her and ripped out some of her feathers. (Rough day, huh?) We were surprised that …

Long ago, when these mirror-like office lighting grids were born in a Chinese factory, they sighed and said, Well, we’re off for a boring existence. We’ll hang for thirty years with fluorescent lights above us and underpaid employees below, reflecting lights cheerfully, swinging down every year or so to have our bulbs replaced, gathering dust, …

We finally have high-speed internet, and we didn’t have to use a satellite to do it. So far we’re still in the testing stage, but this is a good thing. I have heard from very few rural dwellers who are desperately in love with satellite internet (two reasons: speed, latency and weather interference. Oh, wait, …

Well, it’s the 2nd week of March and I’ve burned less than four cords of wood since the season began last October. The cost to me? Oh, a lot of entertainment last summer with chain saw and maul. The thrill of assembling the most Dr. Seussian wood shed in the county. The delight of a …

Out at our place I find that we have to jury-rig things a lot. That is, figure out a way to make stuff work. (Or is it jerry-rig? Or rerry-jig? Depends who you ask, I guess.) Making do makes for a lot of ugly stuff, but maybe that’s the reason homesteaders build their hodge-podge empires …

I promised you Homemade Week last week, and I made good on that promise by staying home on Friday. So no post. Actually I wasn’t home much that day, having accepted an invitation to spend my day off first at the local high school career day, talking up my career (such as it is), and …

Well a few months back I mentioned my homemade laundry detergent and bragged about what a great job it did getting our clothes clean. There was only one problem: it was lumpy. This must be because I used half a bar of Fels Naphtha soap ( which I completely forgot to use this time). I …