Self-taught farmers confidently raising chickens, ducks, geese, and pigs. Our focus is on practices that are environmentally harmonious and respectful to our livestock. We appreciate the beauty around us, clean eating, fermenting, and responsibly utilizing the bounty of the land. If you like thinking for yourself, continuous learning, and connecting with the homesteader lifestyle, check us out.
I see this view of the barn every day, but it captured my interest (and merited a photo) on Thursday, when the light caught these bowls in an appealing way. Though largely monochromatic, dirty, and worn, it said “homestead” to me…where I often find myself dirty and tired, but where the adventure never ends! 😉
What does the image (or the haiku) say to you?
It’s a special time of day: I’m sitting in the breakfast “nook” in my kitchen in early morning, sipping chai tea, listening to Yaz (and wondering if the song “Only You” reminds me more of The [British] Office or Fringe) and letting the creative juices flow. I luxuriate in the quiet and solitude, knowing that – right now – the Oxford comma rules supreme here. After years of trying different professional roles, I’ve finally come to the point where I realize that I am, first and foremost, a writer…and everything else will be inextricably interwoven with that identity.
Nature’s at it again with a fanciful display of hoar frost…how appropriate to usher in the (recent) official start of winter!
So maybe they’re not technically fossils yet, but the descendants of the dinosaurs clearly left their prints in what, the preceding evening, had been soft mud. Aged a few thousand years, they might become an exciting find for some future paleontologist.
It snowed yesterday. Just a dusting – but for a while, the sodden landscape was transformed into something peacefully beautiful. To me, snow is one of those arguably ordinary events that is rarely fully appreciated: what other natural occurrence can transform unappealing objects, like rusty old gates, into something worth capturing? When it snows, really snows, the world’s frenetic pace slows and it grows quiet, as if there’s a reverent hush. Watching the snow is a bit hypnotic, too – as it swirls gracefully to the ground, it’s easy to engage in a bit of reverie: snowball fights, patiently rolling big snowballs to make a snowman, dogs cavorting in the snow…cherished snow memories.
May the wonder of snow be with you this holiday season!
Watching the motion of waves has always been meditative for me, soothing and comforting. Is it because I’m a water sign? Perhaps…or perhaps it’s some faint memory of being in utero. Regardless, I could sit and stare at the water all day, thinking deep thoughts and wondering about the life in that environment, a world inhospitable to me but perfectly suited to them. Are there really two worlds, one on land and one in the sea?
Thinking about ocean life means thinking about how humans have impacted the denizens of the waterworld, like the fact that there are estimated to only be around 400 North Atlantic right whales alive now. Having been hunted to the brink of extinction in the beginning of the 20th century, banning the hunting of this species allowed their numbers to very slowly recover…until this last decade, which saw unusually high mortality, attributed primarily to human causes (ship strikes and entanglement in fishing gear).
On this trajectory, one day, there may be no more North Atlantic right whales. And the planet will be poorer for it.
Read more about the plight of the North Atlantic right whales here.