114 Will of The Weekend Homestead on Fire Safety

On the podcast this week I talk to Will of the The Weekend Homestead about fire safety and life on his rural Wisconsin getaway. Will is a former firefighter and avid YouTuber and reached out to me to respond to a post I did on open floor plans and fires. During the podcast we talk about: Christmas fire safety–keep that tree watered! Smoke detectors Fire extinguishers and how to use them Common causes of residential fires What it’s like to be a fi...

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105 GardenNerd’s Tips for Organic Gardening Success

..., who returns this week to discuss her new ebook 400 Plus Tips for Organic Gardening Success. As you might guess we touch on a lot of topics and tips including: Monarch VR CropSwap Time Banking Homestead Hamlet Repair Cafés Sandflex Almanac.com Epic Seeds Baker Creek Seed Savers Exchange Renee’s Garden Summer Spinach National Heirloom Expo Aunt Molly’s Ground Cherry Keeping tomatoes healthy mid-season Powdery mildew When to harvest tomatoes Extend...

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Straw Bale Gardens

...drag a straw bale up the hill rather than bulk or bagged soil. Straw bale gardening is an old and tested practice. Straw bale gardening comes with the endorsement of horticulture professor and noted garden myth debunker Linda Chalker-Scott. The practice has been tested in dry climates like ours. After the bale has decomposed you get compost you can use elsewhere in the yard. I suspect that skunks will be less interested in digging in a bale (plea...

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Ian Hamilton Finlay’s Gardening Wisdom

...ught I’d intersperse excerpts from his prose poem Unconnected Sentences on Gardening with a few of my disjointed reactions, A garden is not an object but a process. I need this sentence tattooed on my forearm as I tend to want the garden to be “finished”. A garden is never finished, never complete, never the same. A garden is like the ever unfolding novelty of the divine logos; it’s never static; it’s always in motion. As Heraclitis says, “You can...

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