Now we finally have a start with chickens. Four pullets - part Plymouth Rock and part Ameraucana - in a storebought coop. But hey! We're underway. The birds are fine; the. problem is our dog Oddie and his powerful predatory instinct toward them

We spell out what we think most people would need to construct a happy life in subsistence farming. How much land do you need? Does it need to be paid for? Do you need to have grown food before? Do you need a partner? Do you need people skills?

We're constantly experimenting, looking for ways we can reduce the time we spend controlling weeds. Sometimes we welcome them to hold our sandy soil, but more often we're looking for ways to eliminate them. And we've tried so many!

Tuesday night the temperature hovered below freezing for nine hours and reached a low of 26. The strawberries, plums, apples, muscadines, and all the vegetables came through fine. The pears, figs, and blueberries took it on the chin

It's surrounded on all sides by earth and reinforced concrete and seems thoroughly safe in a storm. We've used it to store wheat berries, wine, jam, pepper sauce, pickles, and sweet potatoes. The temperature does change slightly with the seasons

When we designed and built our 16 raised beds last year, we omitted what we now know was a crucial step. We should have installed hardware cloth to exclude voles. Now we're retrofitting the beds. Big job, but we had no choice

Economic growth is pretty much done in the US. The mainstream media keeps saying the economy is bouncing back, but most of us know better. The more we can produce for ourselves, the happier we can be while making little or no money

Our focus is on growing food, but in February we prune ornamentals too. This program covers the importance of plant hygiene in pruning and basic principles about ornamental pruning. We even talk a little about how to recover from "crepe murder"

February is our big pruning month. I love it, working quietly using no noisy equipment. And pruning is a time to think about the future, trying to guess where the tree wants to grow and deciding whether I want to let that happen

We welcome my brother Dave Borden. He's the smartest person we know about longleaf pines. He describes why he loves longleaf pines, how he prepares to plant them, and why and how he works so hard to keep their competition in check