Each year when we visited my grandparents for three summer weeks in their rural home in New York, we’d spend our time doing essentially nothing. It wasn’t exciting, it wasn’t exhilarating and it wasn’t elucidating. Sometimes it was boring. The funny thing is, however, that now I look back on those days with a rosy, [...]
No knead sourdough bread is super easy on the arms and the Kitchen Aid. All it takes is time. After the dust of the holiday festivities had settled, I still had a refrigerator full of food needing immediate use. This bread began with a little bit of leftover oatmeal from the morning’s breakfast and became [...]
People say that the memory of smell is one of our strongest and when I smell my mom’s Spaghetti and Meatballs I am transported. Suddenly, I’m looking up at my elders, hanging onto pant legs, bickering with my brothers and feeling unbelievably wrapped in home and love. My mom and dad are here for a [...]
The new nuc of bees arrived last week and they are all in organized, frenetic and purposeful movement around our property. I can see that they’ve done a good job of cleaning house by the pile of debris just outside of the deeps. We’ve one super on right now, but that’s just so that we [...]
I pulled into my driveway to the sight of this HUGE pile of wood chips! These are for yet another garden expansion with the chips layered over newspaper or office paper to become the pathways in the free form beds. Last year, we installed about 500 square feet of free form garden space which held [...]
The Rockland Farmer’s Market opens today and through no fault of my own, coincides perfectly with this weeks column in the PPH about salads and greens. With all of the micro and baby greens available to us this time of year, the old stand by of tomato, cucumber and lettuce salads dressed with ranch should [...]
The things that I use everyday that give me a moment’s pleasure are some of the best gifts I’ve ever received. When the kitchen faucet handle came off in Jon’s hand the other day and I turned to see what his sound of ‘uh, oh’ was all about, I almost jumped up and down. Being [...]
While I have not experienced all 50 states of our country as yet, I do find that Maine is the home of my heart and where peace wends it’s way to me far more often than not. The news wires today just echo what I feel everyday as Maine was just voted the most peaceful [...]
The intimidating, knee-deep snow has given way to a spring-like path smelling of dirt, fermenting apples and ever so faintly… of honey. Not a good sign actually, as we want the bees to have eaten all of the honey. Our first peek at these slumberous ladies of the white hive showed us real hope for [...]
Our two hives struggled this summer with a swarm, mites and robbing each other of honey, yet they still managed in their first summer to draw comb for two hives, both with two deeps (the lower boxes) and one super (the upper box.) While we were able to harvest only a disappointing pint… total, it [...]
