Feathers and Flannel

As we mentioned in a previous post, we found a Black Walnut tree on the farm and harvested the nuts. We prepared the nuts and saved the hulls to make dye and ink. There are a lot of ways to do it by boiling the hulls in water, but we opted for the lazy way, [...]

  One animal we never expected to find in our little pond is a Grey Heron. The pond is only about as wide in diameter as the heron is tall, so he looked a little ridiculous hanging out there. He spent a few hours, so I can only guess that he found the few goldfish [...]

Another creature for the menagerie. We were cleaning off the deck, and when I came around the corner I was surprised to see a little baby possum seated on our rain barrel. It was odd to see a possum out in the middle of the day, and also strange to see it so close to [...]

Another new animal sighting, this time it was hard to miss. Amanda noticed a few mornings ago a young Coopers Hawk (at least that is what we think it was) perched on top of the remains of our gazebo. Its not surprising, since that is where we hang our bird feeder and Coopers Hawks like to [...]

We’ve been busy with the holidays and haven’t been able to do much around the farm, and consequently haven’t been able to post much. However, we did manage to plant 20 trees, hopefully someday they will grow to replace the ones we lost in the snow storm. When I say we planted trees it is [...]

One of the benefits of being in the country is getting back in touch with our food sources. Towards that end we went on a couple of farm tours last week, courtesy of the Oblong Land Conservancy as part of their series “Agribusiness in the Harlem Valley: Conservation in Action”. One of the two tours, our [...]

Amanda was recently at Isa in Williamsburg and they served up what she thought were Wasabi peas, only to learn they were Nasturtium capers. Nasturtium are amazing, we planted them as companion plants next to our Kale and cucumbers. They ward of some pests and are supposedly great companion plants. We only found out later [...]

The October storm hit us pretty hard. We thought the hurricane was bad, but this was a lot worse. At least a foot of heavy wet snow, and despite shaking the trees free of snow around the house every couple of hours the shrubs and trees were pretty traumatized. Our huge mulberry tree is gone, [...]

Bill A07400, proposed by Assemblyman Robert Sweeney, Chair of the Environmental Conservation Committee, would suspend hydraulic fracturing in New York State. It passed in the Assembly, however the Senate has not yet acted on this legislation. MoveOn.org has put together a petition to the NY State Senate and Governor Cuomo to express citizens opposition to [...]

Coming home late a few nights ago we stopped the truck at the bottom of the driveway to close the gates. When I came back to the truck Amanda pointed to the embankment, highlighted by the headlights were tons of bright green balls, it looks like someone had tennis practice in our lawn. I hustled [...]