Busy Hands Homestead

I don't consider myself to be an experienced gardener.   Every year is new and every year new lessons are learned.  This year cabbage, broccoli, Brussels sprouts and Jerusalem artichokes were new additions to my garden.   The cabbage needed more sun.  The broccoli provided us with a nice dense head of green followed with crisp little side shoots for the rest of the growing season.  The Brussels sprouts resulted in cheers when I served them to my kids.  And the Jerusalem artichokes - well they did great, but dominated the sad row of tomatoes I planted next to them.  While the sturdy stalks of the sunflowers reached preposterous heights, the tomatoes barely survived.   I know now to not plant anything close to these vigorous plants.  Rather than having the abundant harvest of tomatoes I had hoped for, beautiful fall bouquets brightened up our living space.  After a few light freezes, a serious cold snap was p...

At this moment Adam is driving across town with a door strapped to the top of our tiny car. We bought this door at Home ReSource a while ago, but as my house plan has been developing, it turns out that the door handle is on the wrong side and opens out rather than in...  oh. the details. This is the wrong door..  the new door has identical carving except that the holes for the door handle and lock are on the opposite edge.   This door is intended to be our entry door someday.   But while were were digging through the stacks of doors, I found an identical door.  Well, it is almost identical - except for one important feature: It has an opposite swing and is therefore more ideal in the grand scheme of what our house will become. The new door as a few more dings and scratches so we are exchanging it for the door as well as handles and a dead bolt.  Great trade, right? Our stockpile is up to: 9 windows 4 doors (with some hardware pieced together...

This week we have awoken to beautiful skies, a bright sun, and a day full of possibilities. It is Spring Break. We are taking a break too.  We are avoiding our usual routine, and all the places filled with crowds of people - well - on their spring breaks.  We are avoiding the YMCA, the Children's Museum, the library.  We are home.  We are outside. We are in the sunshine.   The garlic I planted last fall is greening the brown surface of the garden bed.   Still invisible rows of radish, spinach, and calendula are nestled in between the green.  Today I dug my hoe across the surface of my giant "raised bed".  It really is a filled in foundation of a shed. ( Visible in the old picture I found of our house .)  I am thinking, planning, dreaming and sketching out the succession of plants I hope to grow this year.  I pounded stakes into the ground and strung yarn from post to post, marking a path.   Last y...

I remember from one of my college classes that the highest biodiversity is found on the edges of bio-systems - tide pools, the soil surface, where the forest meets a meadow.  We are living an edge, the undulating line between winter and spring, warm brilliant sunshine followed by flurries of snow, and it is filled with activity.  When we can, I try not to leave the neighborhood or even our yard and we just stay put.  The car stays in the driveway.  Bikes, helmets, toy trucks and shovels are pulled out and we play and we dig. We move rocks.  We tuck away seeds.   We dream of flowers, and because we are to impatient for our plants to grow, we make our own. We raid the recycling bin. We paint, we cut, we fold, we glue and we sort through the buttons for just the right colors and sizes.  We hang our final project, a colorful paper and cardboard wreath on the front door - to welcome home Adam from his field work, to we...

After many, many more hours of work and a treacherous fall that put me flat on my back with this thing on top of me the clay component of my sculpture is finally built.   It is slowly drying, covered in plastic and hopefully no cracks develop.  This sculpture will be my first attempt to combine the many hand crafts I enjoy.  I hope to incorporate fibers -  sewed, knitted and crocheted - in the final piece.  (I like this form so much it will be hard to make myself take that next step.)  

I make lists: to do lists, shopping lists, pro and con lists, why I love Adam list (I made it a few months after we met), I even have a what I will do and not do with my children list that I made the summer after my junior year of high school (and I know exactly where it is).  Maybe this is part of the reason I have always looked forward to making a list of New Years's Resolutions. I love the feeling of starting over, doing better, of the last year being past and a new one just beginning.  When I was younger my New Years's Resolutions were simpler:      I will make straight A's.      I will apply and be awarded enough scholarships to pay for the next school year.      I will do my crunches every morning.      and on and on.. I knew I could attain these.  It was all so much easier when I operated in world that consisted of - well - mainly me.  The only resolution I never managed to fullfill was to ...