As my regular readers know, last week was kinda icky around here. My son was sick and super cranky (but without losing any of his trademark energy of course), there was a backlog of laundry, a sick kid crawling into bed every night meant sleep was a rare luxury, and nearly every surface of the…
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{Giveaway} Mother Earth News Fair Weekend Tickets
I’m heading to the Mother Earth News Fair in a few weeks. This is a four-year-long tradition now – I think I’ve attended every Seattle-area Mother Earth News Fair since it started. I always come away from the Fair re-energized and re-inspired about what we’re trying to do here on our own one-third acre. I…
Things I've Said In The Past Week
Hello darling readers, I just wanted to check in and let you know I’m calling a mulligan on this entire week. We will get back to our regularly scheduled programming on Monday. Until then, here’s a few actual things I’ve said this past week that will give you a sense of how I’ve been spending…
Chocolate Mint Mojito
Mint isn’t just mint. There’s peppermint, spearmint, ginger mint, apple mint, pineapple mint, chocolate mint, lime mint and on and on. (Anyone ever seen Best in Show? Yeah, varieties of mint are kinda like the “I can name all the nuts” scene.) Different mints have different levels of super potent compounds that give them their…
Does Solar In Seattle Work? {Reader FAQs}
In early April, after about five years of deliberation, we had solar panels installed on the south and west facing portions of our roof. On April 15th our panels “went live” and since then we’ve had a chance to evaluate what it means to be solar powered in Seattle. We’ve been sharing moments of our…
To Do In The Northwest Edible Garden: May 2014
May is a month of promise – amnesia about last year’s failures has taken hold and it’s easy to convince ourselves that this will be the year everything goes right. Weeds will never germinate, pests and diseases will not visit us, perfectly ripe produce will leaps forth like Athena from the forehead of Zeus and…
Dos and Don’ts for Cheapskates
I recently heard about a show called Extreme Cheapskates that sounded like it might be full of interesting money saving tips. I watched a few episodes on Netflix while I was washing dishes. Man, some of the folks profiled on that show aren’t just frugal – they’re nuts! They are stealing from restaurants, embarrassing people,…
How To Feed Baby Chicks
So you’ve got some new little chicks-congrats! Now you have to keep them alive. First job, warmth. Check. Second job, water. Check. Third job, food. How To Feed Your Chicks Ok, chick food. Here’s where it get’s interesting. Layer, starter, grower? Organic, or not? Medicated, or not? What the heck? Do you just buy the first bag with a…
Eat From The Larder Challenge: Week Four Wrap Up
They say it takes 21 days to form a habit. As it turns out, “they” are totally full of crap, but for the purpose of this post that doesn’t matter. We are at the tail end of this Eat From The Larder Challenge, and I feels like I’ve found my groove. It feels like the…
Bitters and Soda: A Refreshing Mocktail
I know this might come as a shock, but most evenings I don’t actually want a boozey drink. And there are plenty of afternoons when a true cocktail would be inappropriate anyway (I prefer to be sober when I pick my kid up at the bus stop.) But sometimes I want…something. That’s where this easy,…
Permaculture Parenting
Note: this is a super long post, and much of it is personal story and observation stuff. If you want to just skip to the bottom for the take-away lessons on combining Permaculture with parenting, please feel free. For a while there my son and I were really butting heads. I’ve been at the end…
DIY Non-Toxic Weedkiller That Works
There are situations where you want certain plants dead, but hand weeding is difficult or counter-productive because it will bring fresh seeds to the surface to germinate. This may be a situation for an herbicidal spray. I approach this topic with hesitation, because some of you stopped reading at the second sentence and are right…