4 Great Gardening Books
An editor once asked me if I was interested in writing a book about gardening. I replied that I didn’t see the point, since everything there is to know about gardening had already been written in great gardening books. At...
Garden Produce Wash Stand
Root crops harvested from the garden invariably have soil sticking to them. Soil needs to be washed off before the vegs are brought into the house. In searching for a comfortable solution for a garden produce wash stand to rinse...
Space-Saving Corner Nest Box
One of our chicken coops is constructed in the back half of the last bay in our barn. The total size of the coop enclosure is 75 square feet. Once we installed a feeder and drinker, a portable nest box,...
Gender Ratio of As-Hatched Chicks
You would think chicken eggs should hatch 50% pullets (females) and 50% cockerels (males). Anyone who has hatched or bought chicks knows that the gender ratio of as-hatched chicks, otherwise known as straight-run, is rarely 50/50. One year I hatched...
Automatic Chicken Doors
Remembering to go out every night to close the chicken coop door became a huge chore after we moved our chickens one-eighth of a mile from the house. And then we built another coop even farther away. In winter it...
Bella’s Triplets
Our Nubian dairy goats typically give birth to twins. Only once in a great while do we get triplets, and long ago one of our does gave birth to quads. Our doe Bella has given birth twice, both times to...
Spotting a Keeper Isn’t Always Easy
When I told my husband I was thinking of not keeping Bella, he asked, “Why? She’s a nice goat.” I wasn’t so sure about that. The Nubian doe was a little more willful than I like to see in my...
How Not to Prune a Tree
When I moved to Tennessee I was appalled to see the way trees are pruned here, especially the practice called topping. In yard after yard I saw trees with their crowns lopped off, leaving ugly stubs. These trees are pruned...
Asian Ladybug, Fly Away Home!
When ladybugs first appeared inside our house, my husband and I took it as a sign of good luck. Little did we know that they were Asian ladybugs, and the Asian ladybug is bad news. The ladybugs that showed up...
Goat Manure, a Bonus Resource
Whenever my husband and I wear ourselves out cleaning one of our goat barns, we console ourselves with the thought that we’re not cleaning a barn, we’re making compost for the garden. Composted goat manure is high in fertilizer value...