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Monthly Archives: May 2012

The Winston-Salem Journal steps up

One of the frustrations we’ve dealt with in fighting fracking in Stokes County — and in North Carolina — has been getting the attention of the Winston-Salem Journal. The potential fracking areas in Stokes and Rockingham counties are right in the Journal’s circulation area. We’d been trying for weeks to get the Journal to tell […]

Road trip

This building is in Alleghany County near Sparta. I’m not sure if it was a church or a school. My sister and I made a little road trip to Ashe County yesterday to go to a funeral. It was the perfect day for a road trip — sky busy with heavy, fast-moving clouds, pleasant temperatures, […]

If there are day lilies, it must be May

[Click on image for high-res version] Each year, there are more blooming things at the abbey. I’ve decided that it’s impossible to have too many wildflowers, even if some of the blackberry patches have to be cleared. Next year: More wildflower patches. I also saw the first finch yesterday. They were attracted last year for […]

Corn and beans

I’ve mentioned before that, this year, for the first time, I’m growing green beans from seeds that have been in my mother’s family for four or five generations. They came from my mother’s family farm in the Yadkin Valley, and I ate them — both fresh and canned — when I was a child. I […]

First time canning: Pickled beets

I shouldn’t act as though it’s some kind of feat to can food, because of course people have been doing it for years. But today was the first time I’ve ever tried it. It also was the first time I’ve ever had a good enough garden to support canning. These were red beets, mixed with […]

Where to start?

The garden, this morning It’s been over a month since I posted. The abbey has been caught in a whirlwind of spring projects, spring farm work, and community organizing. I really appreciate the emails from those of you who have written to make sure everything is OK. Retirement is not supposed to be like this. […]