Could you do a good job subsistence farming on just an acre or two of land? Yes, and more land would give you more flexibility. It would also reduce the money you must spend off-site for things like feed ...
Read more »What kid growing up in the south didn’t at some point get offered a native persimmon? It looks for all the world like it will taste delightful, then turns your mouth inside out with an astringency ...
Read more »You won’t save money installing your wood stove. For our professional installation, we paid about as much as we would have paid for a heat pump. But aside from a little gasoline for the chain saw ...
Read more »Our first experience with chickens has taught us much about their behavior and needs, and that’s a good thing. It has also sharpened our focus on how many we want to keep and how we want to bring them along.
The Longleaf Breeze Podcast is taking the week off and will return September 18 with a new program. Thanks for your understanding.
Our normal expectation about the end of the summer is a bunch of fired up tomatoes, squash consumed by squash bugs and squash vine borers, and a resolve to get the beds cleaned out so we can plant for fall. This year, we’re getting a surprising – and gratifying – […]
As transplanted suburbanites, we’re still figuring out what tasks we should hire professionals to help us do and which ones we should do ourselves.
We love growing vegetables in the fall. It’s more pleasant to be outside, the weeds and bugs slow down, and we get to grow vegetables like collards and kohlrabi that just don’t work in central Alabama in the summer.
It gets hot in Central Alabama. We haven’t crossed the century mark yet this summer, but we’ve seen plenty of highs in the 90s, and it’s routine for the heat index to run up to 105 or so.
Longleaf Breeze regulars know that Amanda and I have divided responsibilities; she focuses on vegetables and I keep up the fruit trees.
We were blessed this year with a surprisingly abundant crop of crisp, sweet apples, in stark contrast to the normally reliant pears that succumbed to a late-season frost and produced almost nothing.
In any average year in central Alabama, pears will produce more fruit and withstand pests better than apples. But not this year, at least not at Longleaf Breeze.
Notice this is not “What We’ve Learned.” Growing squash – particularly after the first year you grow it – is a great antidote for the bighead.
