The City Mouse in the Country

 Sometimes I think I'm more in love with the idea than the actual practice. I'm basically a lazy man, more in love with the concepts of homesteading and building an edible lawn/food forest than actually putting in the hard work to make it happen.   Sometimes however, things happen that present you with unexpected opportunities....if your smart enough to take advantage of them.   Recently we had a series of wind storms move through the area, the winds toppled trees, caused several electrical outages and even managed to damage roofs and homes in the area.  Luckily no one to my knowledge was hurt and the damage was minimal.  We did lose power for a few hours but never once considered running the generator as we were tucked in all cozy and warm. A decent sized maple tree did came crashing down in my yard on Saturday night and proved the old adage that if no one is there to see it, it does not make a sound.  Neither Sue or myself was aware of the problem till Sunday morning.  It was

           What makes you fall in love with a house?  Is it the layout, the square footage, the way the sunlight dapples the floor?  Susan and I fell in love with our house for a lot of different reasons.   We loved the wood burning stove and hard wood floors.  We loved that we had roughly 2.5 acres of mostly wooded land.  Sue loved that the kitchen, although small, had original Amish handcrafted wooden cupboards.   However I fell in love with the house when I was walking through the backyard and realized that the small "creek" that flowed between two hills and away from our house was not a natural feature at all.   It was a drainage ditch that looked natural and drained the water into the sewer system out by the road..     It was man made, I could see where the cut for it began at the top of the hill and had been obscured by some underbrush.   I would trace its path down along the hill and how closely it followed the lay of the land.        Someone long ago dug it to keep th

 " We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.” - Winston Churchill.      Winter isn't officially here yet, but we seem to be getting up in darkness and going to bed in darkness.  The nice weather we were having last week had disappeared and been replaced by...let's call them brisk...mornings and cloudy sky's.        Frost warnings and snow flurries are not on the agenda yet, but the days are counting down.        Up until this point, Sue and I had a vague idea of what we wanted to do come spring.  We knew that we wanted a garden; we knew that we tomato's, onions, a few herbs (Cue Simon and Garfunkel ), garlic and a few other things.     We also realized that, since it was just the two of us, any excess would either be canned or given away to family and the local food bank .  Sue was thinking that we might want to plant an abundance of pumpkins so that families that couldn't afford them would have something for their kids.  Which is jus

            When I attended Slippery Rock University, which as luck would have it is south of where I currently live, I had a professor who taught Philosophy named Robert A. Macoskey.   He influenced me in a lot of ways; not the least of which was giving me a lifelong love of Philosophy, which I often credit as allowing me to succeed in nearly everything I’ve done in my life; because once you learn to think clearly and logically, you can do anything.                He was very interested in Sustainable Architecture and permaculture, or “ Perma nent Agriculture” which would influence me even today although not in the ways I expected.     Perma cutlture defined is “The development of agricultural ecosystems intended to be sustainable and self sufficient.”    Or to put it another way, “live with nature” or “sustainability.”              Today the Robert A Macoskey Center stands in his memory.    This center sits on 83 acres and is dedicated to teaching and promoting sustainable liv