Our farm and garden produce stores the summer sun, enabling us to thrive on these crops – frozen, canned or otherwise preserved – all year. English photo By Roberta Bailey In a few of the essays in her collection “The Faraway Nearby,” Rebecca Solnit explores the long cycles of light and darkness in Iceland. I
The author’s mother in a field of buckwheat at the author’s grandfather’s farm in Canaan in the early 1900s. Photo courtesy of Joyce White Buckwheat grown as an alley crop in a young orchard at MOFGA’s Common Ground Education Center. English photo By Joyce White When a neighbor extolled the health benefits of buckwheat, I
Illustration by Toki Oshima By Roberta Bailey Kimchi, kombucha, sauerkraut, fermented vegetables, kefir, yogurt, sour beers and ciders – live probiotic ferments are all the rage these days. Add hot sauces to that list as well. As a condiment lover and, particularly, a fan of hot peppers, I am excited. I love the full pepper
By Roberta Bailey Lately I have been focusing on connections. I have been reading about mycorrhizal relationships between plants and fungi and thinking about the deep connections between our ecosystem and our mental and physical health. Our culture tends to isolate things in order to study them, from insects attacking a plant to an animal’s
Toki Oshima drawing By Roberta Bailey Every spring, along with the usual house cleaning, I sort out the freezers and the canned goods in the pantry, making room for the first bags of spinach and fiddleheads, and for the new jars of strawberry jam and pickled snap peas. Nothing makes last year’s canned goods look
These prize-winning eggs shown in the Common Ground Country Fair Exhibition Hall by David Mansky of Bar Harbor came from four breeds of heirloom chickens. English photo By Cheryl Wixson Now that the longer days of spring are almost here, we are enjoying a surplus of local farm eggs. Considered one of the world’s healthiest
Fresh asparagus – a top reason for mucking about in the garden. English photo By Roberta Bailey Last summer my husband and I spent seven days a week building a post-and-beam house. Our old house had burned the February before, and we were under a tight timeline with the insurance company. It all worked out
By Roberta Bailey My husband is more of a house person than I am. He can visualize what a project will look like, and he has strong opinions about what he likes. I know what I like if I see it but rarely put thought into interior design. My focus is the farm and fruit
Ginger is an increasingly popular crop to grow and store in Maine. Polly Shyka and Prentice Grassi of Villageside Farm in Freedom grew this ‘King Yai’ ginger, which earned a Judges’ Award in the Exhibition Hall at MOFGA’s Common Ground Country Fair. English photo. By Roberta Bailey I have lived with a root cellar my
‘Happy Rich’ gailaan. Photo courtesy Johnny’s Selected Seeds, Johnnyseeds.com. By Roberta Bailey “What is your favorite vegetable?” I never used to be able to answer that question. When asked, I would think of tomatoes, and then the need for basil or cilantro, or the spicy zip of arugula, and before I knew it, I had
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