Well, spring arrived here in Iowa…and then it quickly slipped back into winter. The last couple days temps have plummeted back down to the high thirties. It was seventy-five last weekend, just to give you perspective. And while the rain is keeping us out of the fields, it is a necessary blessing. The radish, carrot
I sat down with a local agronomist to go over soil samples he pulled from both of our fields. I was encouraged, but not necessarily surprised by the results. For the most part, our soil is pretty healthy. Nitrogen levels are good, which is to be expected after years of conventional soybean and corn rotation.
So we’re starting to figure some things out. When we first started this adventure last year, we only had a vague idea of what we wanted to do with our acreage. We had a vision, a dream, but the details of how that dream would evolve into reality were pretty soft and vague.
It’s January and the temps are plummeting again outside. The last couple mornings here have been below zero, something we’re still getting used to. The land is still frozen, there’s left over snow in the fields, but I’ve got my mind on spring. I’ve been flipping through the seed catalogs, trying to put together our
A couple of years ago, we found a tick behind our Aussie’s ear. The sucker was hidden well and had been latched on for a while. The only reason we found it was because Oscar’s eye had begun to swell, which caused us to take a closer look at what would be causing such
I was cleaning out my dad’s garage last summer, and I came across a container of crushed eggshells. Now, my dad was a borderline hoarder. He called himself a “collector” but that’s really a soft way of saying he just didn’t throw anything away. Newspapers, old stamps, coins (he had coins of all
This morning started out normal. Pretty much the same as every morning has started this week. Eyes open to a semi-kind of-daylight leaking through the window. Coffee downstairs followed by the pattering of little feet and impish giggling in the hallway. Cartoons on the television, cereal pouring into plastic bowls, the house suddenly coming awake.
When we first told our family that we were moving to Iowa, my grandpa asked me if I knew that Iowa gets “weather”. That wasn’t the first time we were asked that question, nor was it the last. Even when we finally did make the move, well-meaning Midwesterners asked us if we’d experienced Iowa winters
I’ve wanted to come up with a creative way to display the kid’s artwork they bring home from school. Anything would be better than it sitting in a pile on the kitchen counter. This project didn’t start out as a solution to this problem, but in the end I think it works well. So what
Maybe you’ll remember the junk pile at the edge of our property? (Click here to see what I’m talking about) Well I pulled a bunch of wood from it a while ago and set it aside for later use. Old door jambs, window headers and such. It had such a cool chippy look to it I