By Roberta Bailey Cider is an extraordinarily versatile beverage that can be enjoyed in its many forms, sweet, semi-sweet, dry, sparkling, still, apple brandy and apple jack, as well as in a staggering number of hot and mulled drinks. Recently, the United States has rediscovered this beverage that quenched the thirst of its founders. Interest
By Ellie MacDougall If parsley is the workhorse of the herb family, chervil is its refined, sophisticated cousin. A native of Europe and western Asia, and naturalized throughout North America, Anthriscus cerefolium is a member of the family Umbelliferae, as are carrots and parsley. It features lacy leaves that echo the shape of parsley but
By Roberta Bailey Close to 2 acres of the Common Ground Country Fair’s permanent site is being planted to an experimental orchard. Another quarter acre or so will be a tree nursery. Both sites will be test plots for soil amendments, cover crops, rootstocks, and new and old fruit cultivars, hardy and tender. A portion
By Roberta Bailey About 15 years ago, I wrote a column entitled “What is Tofu?” Tofu was just hitting the market shelf in individual, one-pound containers. Until then, it was only available at co-op storefronts or health food stores. You brought your own container and ladled out blocks of it from a 5-gallon bucket. If
By Roberta Bailey Seed saving is rapidly becoming a national craze, hot on the heels of football and baseball. Well, not quite, but it is gaining popularity. It’s making the newspapers, and when it gets its own section, I’m convinced that it will have a place before the sports section. I’ve stated it before but
Johan van Achterberg, a farmer in Easton, Connecticut, worried every time he and his wife went out in the evening. Would an animal get into the hen house and decimate his layers before he got home? Even when he stayed home, he would find himself waking up in the small hours and saying, “Barbara, did
By Jean English Last summer, some 500 Rambouillet wethers enjoyed a fine cuisine of brushy vegetation under power lines on a 13-mile, 460-acre strip of Public Service Company of New Hampshire (PSNH) right-of-way in Nottingham, Barrington, Lee, Durham and Madbury, New Hampshire. Little did they know that they were part of an experiment to control
By Jane Lamb “It doesn’t make sense for us to have a big garden when we have Dad’s right across the street,“ says Rebecca Haines, who grew up on her father’s, Austin Moore’s, Uncas Farm in North Whitefield. Instead, she and her husband, Fred, have put their environmental concerns into building a self-sufficient solar-powered home
Georgian Fire garlic. Nason photo. By Roberta Bailey The late psychologist James Hillman once said that our duty is not to rise above life but grow down to it. He believed that each of us has a purpose or calling in life that reveals itself at an early age and reappears until we heed it.
