These hand forged iron and walnut handle garden tools are made in the USA.   Beautiful and pleasantly useful, these tools are well cared for and stored carefully, too. Reading The Founding Gardeners by Andrea Wulf, I come across this quote by Benjamin Franklin:  “I do not know a single article….that the colonies couldn’t either do […]

Gardening is both utilitarian and pleasurable.  We know it and our founding fathers knew it, too.  Andrea Wulf’s book, The Founding Gardeners,  is a story of two countries, the gardens and the gardeners/statesmen.  The story moves from America to England, and back again, just as the plants and seeds of Philadephia farmer and plantsman John […]

The dairy barn where we gather as a community.  Sometimes it is a community of beekeepers, family, friends,  UGA students, historians.   This was a lunch meeting occasion.  The cow painting, created by local artist and friend Chris.  She painted a cow that she saw in a pasture.  The flowers are bachelor buttons grown by friend […]

The Jacob Sheep of Hedgerow Farm are raised on pasture with no grain feeding.  The lambs remain with their mothers until 4 months of age.   We name our sheep, knowing them as individual creatures who belong to the farm community of sheep, cows, horse, chickens, and livestock guardian dog.  We shear them once a year, […]

Lovely package from California friend arrived this week.  Its contents, a book:  The Artist, the Cook, and the Gardener  The author leads painting workshops in her gardens in Bonny Doon California and the recipes come from lunches served to her students. It will be my pleasure to read this book, to cook from it, and […]

Backyard chickens.  We all know people who keep them.  Accountants, Nurses, Dentists, Teachers, Children.  There are books, magazines, and plenty of blogs about chickens. Information, Misinformation and Musings. We recommend the following two books  for chicken keepers who are as diverse as the birds themselves. Free Range Chicken Gardens  The Small Scale Poultry Flock                                              […]

Avid Bookstore recently hosted author Tamara Staples signing copies of her book, The Magnificent Chicken.  Beautiful portraits of  world class chickens.  Cover photo is a Silver Laced Wyandotte, a breed admitted to The Standard of Perfection in 1883.    Get to know the standards:  “Combs are conspicuous features that can make or break a chicken’s championship […]

The kitchen desk has now been claimed to organize our family’s recipes collected for years.  Hand writing them on recipe cards 4×6 size.  Trying to write at least one recipe a day, this project may still take several months.  Noting where and when the recipe was found. or who passed it along to us.  when […]