Secondhand Power Tools are Full of Win!

Secondhand Circular Saw

SKIL 7&1/4 $19.99 Needs a Blade Guard Spring

I dislike power tools as a rule. The don’t do very many things, they cost too much money, and they break. Plus, any tool that’s designed to cut, abrade, or scrape wood in any way conjures up images of just how [...]

links for 2009-04-09

Simple, Green, Frugal Co-op: Food safety at home Very thorough post about food safety — manure & produce, etc. (tags: safety foodsafety manure cleanliness farming) Dandelion Greens at The Ladybug Letter Culinary dandelions, some of which we are growing — how to harvest and cook them. (tags: dandelions greens chicories recipes) Field Report [...]

Suspicious ameraucanas are suspicious

Suspicious ameraucanas are suspicious, originally uploaded by laurenipsum.

We got some new chicks today. I can tell I am getting used to this because I am not captivated by their cuteness — in fact, I keep forgetting they are there.

They will lay blue/green eggs, though, which is [...]

How to make a hoophouse on a raised bed

We have been meaning to write about this for a while, and today friend and blog-reader Melinda provided the impetus when she emailed to ask how our hoophouses are constructed. I know they are working with a raised bed, so I took some photos to illustrate how we have ours set up!

It [...]

It’s April

It’s April, originally uploaded by laurenipsum.

1. Tomato seedlings (we’re behind), 2. Swirly egg and speckly egg, 3. QUACK, 4. Garlic and mustard greens, 5. Impending artichoke, 6. When we pulled back the sheet on this hoophouse, it was like opening a present

Created with fd’s Flickr [...]

I appear to have committed us to growing hops

We were recently interviewed for the newsletter of the Trust for Working Landscapes, the land trust that is leasing us some land. The article came out yesterday, and apparently we managed not to say anything too dumb!

“From Stacks to Starts” — A story of Dropstone Farms By Christy Carr

After meeting in [...]

It’s not a baby elephant, it’s a FARMAL CUB!

Now I love Craig’s List. I love what the site does, I love the architecture/usability of the site, and I love that the founder has stayed true to the vision of an accessible community site. And a measure of the success of Craig’s list in being an accessible community site is the number of [...]