Tomorrow morning, I’m taking a road trip up to Whidbey Island in the Puget Sound to visit the first farm I worked on. I started working there back in the summer of 2009 and have been farming in some capacity or another ever since, though with a couple winter breaks. It’s a bit amazing to [...]
Author Archive
The Farmer Within 17 comments
Photos: Oregon Coastal Cliffs 5 comments
The weather here this week has been beautiful. It’s been sunny and warm, which is a real blessing this time of year as it can just as easily be cool and rainy. I’ve been glorying in it and getting some work done on my long-delayed garden plans. I’ve also been socializing and working otherwise, so [...]
Why I’ll Pay $10 for a Gallon of Milk 16 comments
When I lived in Portland, I paid $10 for a gallon of milk. This wasn’t store bought milk, of course, but raw milk. It came from a farm south of the city—a piece of land leased by two wonderful women, Karyn and Carissa, who kept a couple milking cows and a small flock of chickens. [...]
How To Make Raw Butter 23 comments
An entry in The Household Economy I love butter. I grew up eating margarine, but those were dark days indeed and I try not to think about them now. Instead, I think about butter, and I eat it. I slather it on toast, on cornbread, on pancakes, on pretty much any sort of baked good. [...]
Photos: Glacier National Park 10 comments
I’m in Portland for a few days of fun and may not get a chance to write a new post until next week, though I’ll see if I can find a few hours at some point this weekend to make something happen. For those who check into the blog regularly, though, I figured I could [...]
Considering Butter: A Philosophy of Homesteading 24 comments
An entry in The Household Economy A few months back, I read a Sharon Astyk post in which she wrote about a new cookbook of sorts, Make the Bread, Buy the Butter by Jennifer Reese. In the book, Reese engages in a wide variety of food-centered homesteading activities, like making butter and baking bread, making [...]
The Cult of the Expert 14 comments
An entry in The Household Economy — ∞ — “A system of specialization requires the abdication to specialists of various competences and responsibilities that were once personal and universal. Thus, the average—one is tempted to say ideal—American citizen now consigns the problem of food production to agriculturalists and ‘agribusinessmen,’ the problem of health to doctors [...]
Good Friday 8 comments
An entry in the Encounters series I keep staring at the moon. I only noticed it perhaps an hour ago. Granted, I saw earlier in the day on my wall calendar that it would be full tonight, but I’ve become so conditioned to cloudy nights that I feel like I haven’t seen the moon in [...]
Failing Others 8 comments
The Desert Tells 12 comments
An entry in the Encounters series Six weeks ago, I walked amongst the red rocks surrounding Sedona, Arizona. I was in Sedona after having driven my mother there and was able to take a few days to enjoy the local landscape, to sit in the sun and read, to walk in the desert and reconnect [...]
