The City Mouse in the Country

Without getting into much detail, I was sitting in a doctor's office  recently waiting on my appointment browsing through "Bon Appetit" magazine.  There was a recipe that caught my eye, which at the time of this writing; I have not tried.   I'll be sure to include the recipe for Tomato Roasted Onions with Paprika on the recipe links page of this blog.  What caught my attention was not only were they using onion as the main dish, but the ease and simplicity of it as well.  It also feeds into something that I've been thinking about recently (pun intended).  That is the very real threat of food scarcity in the near future due to climate change. We are only a super storm or a drought away from disaster and a few years ago some food and other items disappeared off the shelves due to COVID.  Costs for other foods skyrocketed and came down slowly over time.   This food scarcity issue was mostly a temporary one, but it did serve as a wake up call f...

  Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature -- the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter. Rachel Carson     This past week or so, I've been stuck for a topic.  Not much has really happened as I've dealt mainly with leaving one job and searching for/accepting another.     Several quiet anniversaries were celebrated (we moved into our home 3 years ago this month) and I volunteered to man the Odd Fellows booth at the local Stoneboro Fair several days last week.    Months ago I had applied for a Master Gardener class through the Penn State extension program.  I promptly forgot all about it as I have only done container gardening in the past, and I saw this as an opportunity to learn more. ...

  I t's easy to think that we are living in the proverbial end times.  Smoke pours across our borders from unchecked Canadian wildfires, across the world the temperatures continue to rise and records are broken daily.  Deaths due to heat related issues are reported in monotone voices by our news anchors.   Nearly everyone admits that climate change is real and that we are experiencing it.  You have many that think it's to late, and see no reason to change their lives.  I used too be one of them.  Change however is inevitable and our species has a knack of getting itself into trouble only to find a way out of that trouble. For example in this week alone we learned of reclaimed coal mining land where 1 acre is feeding 2000 people , while it is certainly a green washing piece for the company - I'm going to concentrate on the positive.  The fact that 1 acre of land is feeding 2000 people and that restoration is occurring at all.   Ther...

A few days ago we had a series of very hot days, where the record for the hottest day was set and then broken the very next day.  Here in the United States we have various parts of the country that are under Heat Domes and other weather conditions have resulted in temperatures in the triple digits. One of the reasons that my wife and I moved to the country was to avoid increasing heat and humidity that we were experiencing in Florida.  However in moving to the country we bought a home that did not have central air or heat.  We were lucky enough to adapt to both extremes in a variety of ways and have adopted many of the concepts discussed here.  I have covered the topic of staying warm without central heat before in this blog and decided that I should talk about staying cool without central air this time around.  As the temperature rises in the future it's going to affect how we work, play, eat and even the decisions that we make .  It's also going to affe...

I started this blog for a few reasons and I never intended it to serve the purpose it does now.  I'm trying to pass on information in a variety of ways to help others.  I'm trying to help others learn from my mistakes. While my blathering may seem trivial.  It's not, for we have to put ideas and concepts out into the world so that they are be built on, improved, discussed and debated.  That's how we make progress.  That's how we build a better world.  Currently I'm still recovering from one very bad day when deer rampaged trough my garden and ate or destroyed roughly two-thirds of it.  I had invested a bit of money into it when it came to soil, fencing, containers and what not; only to lose part of that investment to deer. To deal with the deer, I'm going to have to possibly invest more and buy electric fencing or a variety of chemicals. I'm reminded of William Alexander's semi cautionary tale of gardening from his book The $64 dollar Tomato . It...

  This is a true story.   Years ago when I was a young man studying Evolutionary Biology as part of my teaching degree; our professor told us this story.  His professor at the time walked in, dropped the textbook into the trash and said something to the effect of " The discovery of complex life developing in deep sea vents changes everything we thought we knew." In other words....the biologists at the time were surprised to discover multiple colonies of complex animals with completely different biochemistry living in a very hostile environment, at that time it was believed that only small organisms evolved in the extreme temperatures and high pressure of the deep sea vents.    Suddenly there were advanced forms of life (worms and crabs) whose biochemistry was unlike any thing else on the planet.   Evolution, at least the way it was understood at the time, changed.   This story has stuck with me all these years because it teaches a v...

 To be honest I don't consider myself a homesteader or even a gardener. To be blunt about it I could have easily spent the rest of my life in Florida with a small container garden on our back porch.  I would have been happy to have had a few beers at my favorite bar, enjoyed good food at my favorite restaurant and fade into the background as the fat and happy hedonist I am. The One with glasses does look like me Life had other things in store for me.   Now I find myself; perhaps not in the proverbial boondocks but with enough distance and space to force the "City Mouse" into considering how to do things differently...and not really having a clue about how to do it. Living in the country does change your viewpoint and your habits.  It's very easy to fall into cliche's and all cliche's have a kernel of truth to them...but country life does change you. Don't misunderstand me, I'm always had an interest in things like permaculture and self sufficient liv...

                   No, I will not apologize for the pun in the title.             Now that it’s February, I can start thinking about what trees I want to plant in the spring.  Last year I received two Kousa Dogwoods from the good folks at Tree Pittsburgh.   Well these were technically not native plants, I’ve always loved dogwood's explosion of white or pink flowers and the fruit of this particular dogwood is edible off the tree.            They are going to get some mulch and fertilizer come spring for sure. Last year I pick up some flower and native grass seeds from the Mercer Country Conservation district although for a variety of different reasons didn't get to plant them last year.   If I am serious about creating an edible landscape for the future, then I want to work with the resources that they and the Macoskey Center provide.  T...