This will seem hopelessly elementary to many of you, but you need to understand just how much we have to learn, so I’m telling you blow-by-blow what we did to plant our first garden, blunders and all.

When we first started shopping for a tractor for Longleaf Breeze more than a year ago, my brother Dave Gray told me to make sure it had a front-end loader. I complied with his instructions, even though I didn’t understand why it was important. Now I know.

Here are the words no subsistence farmer wants to hear about something he’s already done: “Youdonwannadothat.” That’s what I heard from the nice guy who often helps me at Verbena Farm Supply.

As promised, here’s an update on the injury to my knee that I told you about in February and again a couple of weeks ago. The news could hardly be any better than this.

I hope we will have a composting toilet one day, even if I’m the only one who uses it. Amanda has made it clear from the start, however, that she will not feel comfortable inviting people to Longleaf Breeze to use a composting toilet. So we’ve known since the earliest […]

The rolling global one hour blackout that is Earth Hour has begun. As I write this on Saturday morning in Alabama, the lights have been turned off and are already back on in Sydney, Australia. Darwin and Manila are in the dark now, as the darkness moves westward across the […]

I’m an avid reader, if not an active poster, on the Yahoo! Gardening Organically group. And it won’t surprise you that the Gardening Organically folks are all about compost. So what do we do if we want to start a garden this summer but haven’t lived on the farm long […]

It was sunny yesterday morning at our home in Vestavia Hills, Alabama. I knew it would rain for the next several days, though, so I got out and did a good bit of yard work that Amanda needed me to finish before a gathering this weekend. I knew it would […]

Amanda and I are finishing a week away from our respective jobs, during which both of us focused on the farm. If this is a foretaste of our lives on the farm, we will enjoy this next phase in our marriage.

This started out as a post about our morning routine. But like our routine yesterday morning, it changed when the coffee maker stopped working. Now it’s about stuff that breaks.