In the face of ecological crisis, it doesn’t matter about my front entrance, no. But all of us lucky enough to have a front door, we live each day in impactful ways. We can share knowledge to shift into attunement with a living, thriving earth. Our designs, habits, actions, our stories matter when we share and learn from each other.
biochar
Conceiving of ourselves as wasteful and exploitative, a pox on the planet, really, depends on daily systems that reinforce this story through linear waste-streams. Extract, manufacture, ship, sell, consume, throw away. Yet the compost toilet captures human ‘waste’ nutrients in the ‘waste’ product of sawdust and transforms it through nitrogen-powered heat and microbial alchemy into rich soil to nurture a thriving, water-holding garden. We are always making organic matter. Whatever else I did today, I made more life. So it is with biochar.
the resilient pantry
Panic-buying on the one hand and rationing on the other only multiply a crisis. Yet there’s a practical solution that meets a primal need in one classic, simple pattern. Yes. The pantry. The ills of a pandemic are exacerbated by overbuying and by repeatedly returning for trickles of supplies, causing multiple exposures. Like takeout deliveries […]
life with chickens
Picture, if you will, the things we hold dear in this world, only on a slightly different trajectory. Picture them well-supported by a principle of following natural patterns, of meeting needs the way nature does. Take, for example, keeping chickens. We like to keep a flock in our garden. Now, they require shelter, safe from […]
life with geese
We were surprised by the young geese urgently knocking at the front door. They had a great deal to tell us. A moment later, a delivery van pulled up to the farmhouse. A rare event. They’d raced to the front door to tell us the news! What kind creatures. If we listen well, all of […]
green walnut nocino
If there is art in an agrarian practice, it’s in humble solutions that close the loop. Allow the freshly clasped jar of nocino to illustrate. Nocino is the infusion of young, green walnuts in alcohol, hull and all, plucked, sliced and submerged before any evidence of a shell forms within. The young walnut is more […]