One of the fun gardening experiments I've indulged in this year involves seeing what dried beans / seeds -- that I love to eat -- will sprout! So far, organic popcorn, dried green Edame soy beans, and lentils have sprouted! And all of them are a few years old! #HomeGardening#Gardening#Seedbanks#Homesteading
I'm Lily, a proud trans lesbian from Denver, a mom of a 13 year old, and a perpetual instance migrator.
I'm a neurodivergent woman in tech working as a Senior SRE at Writer.
I like to run around the farm, hang out with my kiddo, play guitar, snowboard, go camping, play videogames, hang out at the local lesbian bar, and see whatever kind of trouble my wife @deb and I can get into on the weekends.
I thought I had lost one hive but today discovered all 4 of my hives are alive. The one I thought didn't make it has a mouse in the bottom, the bees have moved up under the lid. My next bee task will be fashioning mouse guards for all the entrances. I fed them all good quality pollen patties today, and did another O. A. treatment. 2 of the 4 are very strong, 2 weaker but hanging in there. Considering the absolute clown weather we've had, I am very encouraged.
The Encyclopedia of Country Living, 50th Anniversary Edition by Carla Emery
The Original Manual for Living Off the Land & Doing It Yourself
For more than 50 years, this homesteading classic is the essential book of basic skills and country wisdom for living off the grid, being prepared, and doing it yourself. Keep your family healthy, safe, and independent--no matter what's going on in the world.
The Color of Food: Stories of Race, Resilience and Farming by Natasha Bowen
The growing trend of organic farming and homesteading is changing the way the farmer is portrayed in mainstream media, and yet, farmers of color are still largely left out of the picture. The Color of Food seeks to rectify this.
Daffodils preparing to bloom in a few weeks. These are later varieties and they always come later than the little yellow early ones. As "mulch" you see the shredded feed sacks we use as animal bedding and weed control. They are biodegradable and help with carbon sequestration.
All of you reading this in the Northern Hemisphere - if you want to grow food in your garden this summer, or if you want to grow more food, start planning now! Plan well, buy seeds, read about it, and have dreams!
Sometimes it's hard to live out here, and winter is especially isolating. As we all retreat and focus on inner work and reprieve from the often constant movement of other seasons, we tend to reach out less, travel less. This is true for both us and our friends we see often, usually, and so since the Solstice it's been quiet here at the Ranch. We've really not gone anywhere, and no one has really come to visit.
However, I'm reading "The Independent Farmstead" by Shawn & Beth Dougherty, and feeling renewed and inspired. Sometimes this path feels too difficult, and I reminisce on the period of my life where I was ignorant of the depth and multitude of the issues that plague our species and where I just lived in the way that society dictated. In a way, ignorance really is bliss. In a way, it was just easier.
But I think back on the suffering I experienced then: the suffering I experienced at jobs, at the hands of others abused by our society, the suffering I experienced feeling like I was drifting along without a purpose, and the suffering that came from seeking purpose in careers that I could never attain because of my chronic inability to engage in personal politics. In a way it was easier to work many hours a week, eat out, go to parties, and move through life unthinkingly chasing the next thing that made me feel alive, connected, loved, despite that those experiences never lived up to my memories of them and despite that they were always so fleeting.
So it's not that we don't suffer now, of loneliness or of hardship or of our own interpersonal shortcomings. But we feel guided by purpose and by duty, and in so many ways that eliminates suffering. Though we don't always have other humans here to feel connected to, we do often, and in their absence we are connected to place, and to other living things that help sustain us and which we sustain in return.