by Mary McDonald Best Investments in Sustainability My first encounters with baking soda happened, of course, in my mother’s kitchen. Whenever my mother was getting ready to bake, it was my job to help her gather all of the ingredients. Cinnamon, cloves, sugar, vanilla, baking powder,baking soda. I had no idea what baking soda did,Continue reading “A Love Letter to Baking Soda”
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Fire and Ice
By Laura Parker Roerden I hate spring. It feels freeing to admit that. When you live in a cold clime, there is too much social pressure to triumph spring’s return as if it were the 2nd coming of Jesus Himself, sliding in on a gaudy skateboard wearing a magnolia wreath and tossing chocolate coins toContinue reading “Fire and Ice”
The Quest
by Laura Parker Roerden You can find just about anything you could dream in an ocean. Tiny horses holding on by prehensile tails to flat vines that float upwards and shimmer in sunlight like cities. Red squid that fly with vampire wings and shoot out light orbs to stun predator or prey. A flat rayContinue reading “The Quest”
Pass the Pastured-Eggs, Please!
Best Investments in Sustainability by Laura Parker Roerden What kind of eggs should you buy? Most of us make the decision standing in the grocery aisle, the refrigerator door open scanning cartons with claims like “cage-free,” “organic,” “antibiotic free” and the ever-confusing “natural,” while we mentally calculate how much more we are spending for theContinue reading “Pass the Pastured-Eggs, Please!”
Humpbacks Feeding
by Laura Parker Roerden We first see the humpbacks at the surface, their mouths ballooning open, unfolding in pleats like a girl’s skirt caught in the wind. Seawater and herring is caught now as soup meeting hunger. There are nine whales, I’m told. Their mouths seem to open up as if the hinge that holdsContinue reading “Humpbacks Feeding”
This Old (Farm)House
by Laura Parker Roerden This morning, I awoke to a simple pale orb moving in a confused pattern in the window of my bedroom in the farmhouse. Bits of morning were reflected in flashes off wings like patches of hope in a stretch of darkness. I must have rubbed my eyes too hard in aContinue reading “This Old (Farm)House”
A Baracuda and Boa
by Laura Parker Roerden I once saw a torpedo of a barracuda rake through a school of fairy basslets, gorging on the smaller fish as if they were kernels of popcorn at a movie. The barracuda was all torque and fang; the fairy basslets a delicate purple and orange, like a fragile glass vase createdContinue reading “A Baracuda and Boa”
The Water Awaits
by Laura Parker Roerden A river of loss can still bring one home to an ocean, where brine buoys and anchors us, as if connected to a larger vessel by a line. A pond in a clearing can mirror our hearts like a palm extended connects to arteries and carries blood from places deep and well hidden.Continue reading “The Water Awaits”
All Creatures Bright and Wooly
by Laura Parker Roerden It’s been an eventful time around here with three weekends in a row of crises, both human and animal. The crisis du jour this week was sheep acidosis or grain poisoning of both of our Leicester Longwool sheep on Friday night. Sheep can not eat anything that contains copper (a common element in many grainsContinue reading “All Creatures Bright and Wooly”
A Way of Life
by Laura Parker Roerden “Farming is a way of life,” was one of my father’s oft repeated phrases. Sometimes he used it to explain why he still farmed in a year when he didn’t make any money or when the work demanded more of him than any sane person would give, like during haying season when he’d riseContinue reading “A Way of Life”