Blog Feed: The French Country Challenge

Dogs (and Cats) Looking for Good Homes!

Published on 2011-03-15 04:25:35

No, we're not getting rid of Maya and Kali. But there are over 320,000 pets waiting to find a good home on Petfinder.com. Today is Petfinder's 15th birthday, and they are celebrating with Adopt the Internet Day. If you are looking to bring a pet into > read more

Big News

Published on 2011-03-09 05:09:52

I have to confess there has been another reason for my relative silence here on the blog. You've probably been wondering about the lack of posts detailing my plans for this year's garden plot, or crowing over the first seedlings poking through in the > read more

Life is Good!

Published on 2011-02-14 06:16:27

It is with great joy that I humbly accept the 'Life is Good!' award from my friend Heiko over at Path to Self Sufficiency, despite the fact that I've been rather quiet on here. Apologies for that, by the way, dear readers, but with very little happen > read more

New Beginnings...

Published on 2011-01-06 01:34:51

January. A new year. Well, a new calendar year anyway. For me, milling uselessly about the muddy garden, it still feels like the old year, though with that antsy feeling of excitement and restlessness combined, like when you're waiting for someone to > read more

Winter Wonderland

Published on 2010-11-30 03:02:25

It seems I had just gotten used to fall when winter descended upon us rather precipitously. Something seems amiss with the seasons when a half-raked pile of leaves I had intended to return to is buried by a sudden snowfall. Last Thursday the snow beg > read more

Experimenting with Fennel Root & an Identification Challenge!

Published on 2010-11-18 04:06:56

In the course of clearing out the summer plants from the garden, we took out our remaining fennel plants (one of which we had cut already in order to dry the feathery leaves to be used later - apparently if brewed as tea it is good for the digestion! > read more

Black Bean Burritos with Homemade Flour Tortillas

Published on 2010-11-11 07:24:36

Sorry it has taken me a few days to post this! But here is the recipe for the burritos from the last post... This was my first time trying to make flour tortillas, and they were actually suprisingly simple (and they make the store-bought kind seem li > read more

A Day in the Slow Life

Published on 2010-11-07 08:37:23

This blog entry is actually taking up a meme passed on to me by Heiko at Path to Self Sufficiency (and before that Mr. H at Subsistence Pattern), that of "A Day in the Slow Life". (I highly recommend these blogs to anyone interested in the > read more

Fall: Heating, Eating, Trick-or-Treating

Published on 2010-11-01 07:47:21

While we had nearly a week's cold snap of frosts, this past week has warmed back up a little, and has been several degrees above freezing, but still far from warm. This has upped the stakes in our house-heating challenge considerably, but so far we h > read more

Changing Seasons

Published on 2010-10-21 02:07:19

I had a feeling it was coming, and sure enough this morning we had our first frost. I don't presume to pretend I can predict the weather as well as some of the hoary villagers around here, but it does seem as though my gardening activities have me mo > read more

Catch Up!

Published on 2010-10-19 01:09:20

This year was more or less a bust, garden wise for us. Weeds took over while we were on vacation in California, and we were never really able to gain control again. Sigh. This makes me sad, but it is the way it is, so onwards and upwards. After think > read more

Trash day

Published on 2010-10-12 07:31:17

Normally, trash day isn't something to get excited about, gathering all the rubbish from around the house and getting it all in the bin and remembering to put the bin outside the night before because the garbagemen come at 7 am. But tomorrow is a spe > read more

Chestnuts & Meatless Shepherd's (Gardener's?) Pie

Published on 2010-10-06 01:40:36

I seem to be doing a lot better at my goal of foraging for some of our food these days, perhaps because the fall forest is providing some easy pickings. In addition to the mushrooms, it is the season for nuts, and the forest near us has an abundance > read more