I've been playing around with my blog, as you can see. I'll be updating the look and content over the next couple of days, archiving my 2008 lists and making those for 2009.
Happy New Year to All!
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Farm Photo:
Part farm journal, part spiritual journey, Touch the Earth Farm blog chronicles one family's adventure of living with the land.
Farm Photo:
Enter Summer
Intro:
We are a family of five: myself, my husband and our three children, ages 11, 10 and 9, homesteading on 5.25 acres in the Northwestern Mountain Region of Maryland (zone 6b). Our land is home to many creatures, and our goals are to farm sustainably, to preserve biodiversity by growing heirloom plants and raising rare breeds of livestock and poultry, and to foster native habitats. The kids and I run a small CSA, which keeps us busy learning and playing.
July:
- seed starts for fall √
- continue succession planting √
- transplant seedlings √
- weed market garden √
- sell calf
Post Perusal:
- Ahimsa, or the ethics of meat eating
- Confronting My Own Hypocrisy
- Crude Awakening, or Preparing for Peak Oil
- From Foodie to Farmer
- Please Pass the Bubblewrap
- Food Security Series:
- Part I, pantry
- Part II, freezer
- Part III, growing
- Part IV, seed saving
- Sustainability series:
- Consumption
- Food
- Gasoline
- Electricity
- Waste
- Water
- Low Carbon Diet:
- Dumping on Garbage
- Reducing Hot Water Usage
Nightstand Reading:
To Do 2009:
blurb blogsbuy CSA bags- buy buck
- buy ram
- community outreach
- composting toilet
- continue making more hard cheeses
- fence in yard
financials for 2008- finish basement rooms
- learn to graft fruit trees
- keep better records
- learn to make goat's milk soap
- learn to tan hides
- learn to make tinctures and infusions
- make Navajo spindles
order more beehive equipmentorder seeds- organize saved seeds
- pasture water source
- plan cover crop and garden rotation
plant front medicinal garden- ramp up piglet marketing
- save seeds
- shear sheep √
- start seeds
- upload and order photos
- well pump
Tools for 2009:
aquarain water filter- bike
- candle molds
- canoe
- compost tea bubbler
- dutch oven
- Foxfire series
- garden tools √
- generator
- hand-pump or solar well
kill-a-watt- incubator
- livestock trailer
- mortar and pestle
- Nutrimill grain mill
- sausage stuffer
- soap molds
- tanning tools and guides
Pipedreams:
- 100 acres
- Biodiesel: tractor and farm truck
Cookstove- Jim: work from home flextime
- Solar hot water heater
- Solar panels on south-facing barn
- Strawbale home
- Yurt
Index:
- awards (2)
- bees (2)
- book reviews (4)
- bread (1)
- cats (4)
- cheese (2)
- csa (16)
- dark days challenge (19)
- family cow (9)
- farm to table (37)
- food for thought (48)
- food security (5)
- garden (43)
- giveaways (2)
- goals (29)
- goats (5)
- hubris (2)
- independence days (21)
- kitchen (10)
- library (1)
- livestock (46)
- low carbon diet (2)
- miscellaneous (13)
- one local summer (12)
- ongoing education (8)
- pantry (3)
- pigs (5)
- recipes (12)
- sheep (5)
- sustainability (29)
- to do (4)
- weather (10)
Information:
Web Resources:
Email Lists:
Catalogs:
Blogroll:
- 12 Happy Chickens
- A Homesteading Neophyte
- Achorn Farm
- Adventures in Farming
- Amlo Farms
- Apifera Farm
- Are We There Yet?
- Barn-Raising
- Blue Skies Urban Farm
- Boulder Belt
- Casaubon's Book
- Children in the Corn
- Confessions of a Pioneer Woman
- Crunchy Chicken
- Crystal Organic Farm
- Dancing in a Field of Tansy
- Dirt Under My Nails
- Farm Dreams
- Farmgirl Fare
- Fast Grow the Weeds
- Free Range Living
- Going Whole Hog
- Green with a Gun
- Green, Blue, Brown
- Grow the Change
- Home Is...
- Homesteading Hickory Hills
- Ironwood Farm Project
- It Blows Here
- Kale for Sale
- Living the Frugal Life
- Living the Liquid Life
- Milk My Cow
- Mommymommyland
- Moon Meadow Farm
- Mountain Mama
- Naturally Natural
- No Impact Man
- Northview Diary
- Organic Schmorganic
- Pile of O'Melays
- Raining Sideways
- Riot 4 Austerity
- Savor Culture
- Small Meadow Farm
- Sugar Creek Farm
- Sugar Mountain Farm
- Thane's Neck Farm
- The Contrary Goddess
- The Ethicurean
- The Purloined Letter
- Throwback at Trapper Creek
- Tyler Farm Homestead
- Unusually Unusual Farmchick
- Urban Hennery
- Wisdom of the Trowel
- Woody's Rocky Ridge
Independence Days Blogs:
- Casaubon's Book
- Chile Chews
- Crunchy Chicken
- Dog's Little Acre
- Eat Close to Home
- Farm Dreams
- Golden Acre Lives On
- Happily Home
- Hedges Happenings
- Justice Desserts
- Kaleidescope Living
- Life in the Lost World
- Naturally Simple
- Perry Hill Farm
- Red State Green
- Seeking Simplicity
- Stepwise
- The Potager
- The Zahn Zone
- Waste Wear Daily
- Where's Your Line
Causes:
5 comments:
Looking forward to following you for another year.
Although I'm afraid this one will be quite brutal and harsh, I know that many of the people I follow on blogs will be able to survive. And for that I'm thankful.
Love the blog's new look--earthy colors are my favorite :-)
Have a safe & Happy New Year!
I like your new look. Look forward to another year of learning from you.
Totally off topic, what breed of cows do you raise?
Happy New Year!
Thanks for the kind thoughts.
MeadowLark, I too am apprehensive of what 2009 will bring. It will be an interesting year indeed.
Kim, I wouldn't say we raise cows—at least not in the same way we do with other animals. We have our one family milk cow, which we'll need to breed to keep in milk. So at most we'll have just a cow/ calf pair at any one time.
At any rate, I looked into a couple of rare breeds, especially the Dexter, which seemed like such a good fit in so many ways. Ultimately, however, we decided to go with a Jersey because of their size, their productivity, and their butterfat for cheese and other dairy products. I blogged about our decision here.
I haven't regretted our decision for one second though it's been a big transition. We just dried Bella off, since she's due to calve in February. The kids tried store bought milk for the first time since Memorial Day weekend—they said it tasted like water. lol And I skim our milk but buy whole milk!
Hey, is the Maine Outdoorsman your cutie? I loved reading about your hunting adventures.
I love your new look!
I hope the coming year is not as shaky as it appears to be shaping up to be.
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