Spring has sprung in my kitchen

March 21, 2013.Reading time 3 minutes.

By Amanda Cleary Eastep Last week, I filled out a planting schedule I found on Mother Earth News and started my two varieties of tomatoes, hot peppers, kale, and chamomile. I scheduled what to start indoors and when to transplant, and what seeds to plant directly in the soil and when. I would have posted […]

Itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny homestead (by that I mean condo garden)

February 23, 2013.Reading time 5 minutes.

By Amanda Cleary Eastep Sometimes you just have to change your perception of a thing. This isn’t the same as changing your perspective. I mean, no matter how I view the garden space off of my condo patio, it is what it is. A small plot of clay-filled soil, a few pots, and a lot […]

Rise, rise, rise, let it rise!

January 25, 2013.Reading time 3 minutes.

The title is a play on the Bachman-Turner Overdrive classic from the 70s, that decade when we packed Wonder Bread in our school lunches every day. But this is a new decade in my life…the pre-homesteading one in which I bake my own bread and take another step toward a future life on five acres […]

True Grit is under your fingernails

December 30, 2012.Reading time 5 minutes.

By Amanda Cleary Eastep The bunny is looking at me with black eyes from it’s fuzzball face. My heart begins a slow melt that seems to move to my mouth, which turns down at the corners, the lower lip protruding in a “that’s so cute I could cry” pout. My daughter and I have wanted […]