Pastures at Vermont Shepherd in Westminster West, VT One of our readers asked if we’d considered leasing land instead of owning it. When we first started down the mental farming road a little over a year ago that was one of the first things I researched, and I can’t say...
My wedding present from Scrapple - a farm board for our future home! He worked with a great artist on Etsy to make a custom farm "skyline" cutout black board for me. For now I can dream up our future farm in chalk and someday we'll use it to leave notes...
Grafton Village Creamery and Storefront Weekend of Cheese We’re up in Vermont for a three-day, cheese-filled weekend, who could ask for more? Sweetbreads is attending a cheesemaking workshop with Peter Dixon, the man behind Consider Bardwell's glorious cheeses, and consultant to many others. Saturday through Monday, Sweetbreads' sessions are 9am...
One thing we haven’t found a lot of information about online is the operating costs of running a small, homestead farm. Instead, we’ve visited a bunch of farms, thought long and hard about what we spend money on and slowly put together our own operating expense budget. We thought it...
Our Sweet Birch Homemade ToothpasteI may have crossed the line this time. We were in the drugstore and remembered we were almost out of toothpaste. I bent down to grab some AIM (cheap and effective) when something clicked and I decided to take a look at the ingredients. When I...
Caciocavallo (basically aged provolone) hanging in the hard cheese cave at Murrays Last Sunday we took advantage of a special weekend where Murray’s Cheese opened their cheese caves for hour-long tours and tastings. Each session included a tasting of six cheeses, a glass of champagne and a guided tour of...
Meet the Stacked Goudette. She's no baby gouda! I didn't want to part with the many pennies it would take to get gouda or baby gouda molds so I formed the curd inside the same small sized hard cheese mold I used for my first farmhouse cheddar. Sometimes beautiful things...
Soil Comparison courtesy of permaculture.org Now that's a pretty presumptive title given how little I know about soil! How about this: Understanding Your Soil - From a Distance - for Beginners. Yeah, that's more like it.
