Spiritual journeys in tending the living earth, permaculture, and nature-inspired arts
I had a recent conversation with a friend who lives in the town where I work (and where I used to rent a house). I had commented on how “nice” her lawn looked, as it was growing tall full of …
How many times have you seen your neighbors getting tree work done or had tree work done yourself? The landscape company often comes with the big wood chipper and truck and then, after cutting up the wood, hauls that beautiful …
One of the greatest blessings of gardening and growing things is the deep energetic connections that you can develop with plants. When I grow a pepper in my garden, I have developed a relationship with that plant from the time …
In the druid wheel of the year, we have three “harvest” festivals. Lughnasadh, the first harvest. So much of the garden produce starts to be ready at this time–and also at this time, the garden is still at its peak, …
As a practitioner of permaculture and as a druid, I am always looking for ways to work with the land to create sacred and ecologically healthy spaces. That is, to create self-sustaining ecosystems that produce a variety of yields: create …
I have always longed for a greenhouse. As a homesteader in MI, I only had small hoop houses that I moved over crops, and while they worked great, they did not afford the flexibility that a larger greenhouse has. When …
The spring is a wonderful time to begin starting your seeds–and here in Western PA, we just crossed the “eight weeks before last frost” threshold, so it is a bit of an urgent matter! This means that this weekend is …
As a follow-up post to last week’s discussion of how anyone, anywhere can live a sustainable life, I wanted to share some of the sustainable living things that I am doing here while I’m renting a small house (with terrible …
In my last two posts, I shared the philosophy of wildtending–the idea that we can nurture and regenerate the lands around us as a spiritual practice. In this post, I wanted to share the start of a new garden–a refugia …
Over the course of the last six months, I’ve been discussing in various ways philosophies and insights about helping to directly and physically heal our lands as a spiritual practice, weaving in principles of druidry, permaculture, organic farming, herbalism, and …
A number of people have asked me for ceremonies and activities that help facilitate sacred work on the land in various ways. Why would we want such ceremonies? Quite simply, we can get the most effect by combining actions out …
As I’ve mentioned on this blog many times before–the spaces where we live and work each day are prime places to begin the regenerative work and rebuild our relationship sacred connection with nature. For many, the land nearest to us …
As I’ve discussed recently on this blog, one way of rebuilding and deepening our relationship with the land is through the intentional act of regeneration. This regeneration work, in many cases, starts with the soil. The soil is the web …
Over the years, I’ve done quite a bit of coverage about lawn issues, as I really do believe that the lawn can be one of the primary sites of transformation and change for ordinary Americans and others in the Western …
Once in a while, you encounter something that is truly extraordinary. Something created by a unity of human effort and ingenuity and natural processes that is a sacred and inspirational place. I want to share one of those places with …
A trip to the local farmer’s market has become one of my very favorite activities. Here you can sample a variety of locally-produced, high-quality goods, meet interesting people, and come home with bags and bags of fresh veggies, meat, eggs, …
So its the end of the season, a very hard frost is on the horizon for the week and several lighter frosts have already occurred. You look out across your garden with its overflowing abundance. There are still beans, swiss …
I’ve had a few people in the last few months ask me about starting a homestead or a small organic farm. A “homestead” or, if you are in the UK “smallholding” refers to a personal or family plot of land …
With all my discussion of everything else, I have failed to do any reasonable update about the homestead in the last few months. So here’s an update of what’s happening around the homestead! The Druid’s Organic Vegetable Garden: Veggies, Pests, …
The Spring Equinox was a mere week and a half ago, and today, for the first time, it felt like spring. The snows are melting and the warmth is coming. I think its been a long, hard winter for many …
Its that time of year that if you haven’t already started your seeds, and you live in say, a zone 5 or 6 climate, you really need to start thinking about starting them! This blog post will talk about what …