For the last seven years, our family has travelled to Mt. Adams to pick huckleberries. We make the drive up the Columbia River Gorge, cross the river into Washington, and head up through the little town of Trout Lake to the dry forests of the eastern Cascade Mountains. This has become a popular area to pick over the years, and at first sight of all the cars pulled off along the main forest service ...
Blueberry Bliss
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This is Just to Say…
This Is Just to Say I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox and which you were probably saving for breakfast Forgive me they were delicious so sweet and so cold ~William Carlos Williams ...
Purple Haze: A Dungeness Valley Lavender Farms Tour
On Washington State's Olympic Peninsula, the community of Sequim has made a name for itself as the lavender capitol of North America. With the rich, fertile soils of the Dungeness Valley, and a growing climate similar to that of the Provence region of France, many hardworking folks have done their part to save farmland from development by planting acres of this wonderful herb. In 1995, a group of ...
Little House on the Prairie Camp
Anyone who has ever read and loved Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie books has probably daydreamed about frontier days gone by. I remember reading those books as a child and wishing I lived on a homestead, and then reading them with my children and realizing I STILL wished I lived on a homestead. For many of us in America, these books are an integral part of childhood. ...
Summer in the Country: A Tour in Photographs
The garden grows First sunflower of the summer The garden gate Onions and tomatoes The corn patch (it's Bodacious!) Mr. Scarecrow Pumpkins ripening on the vine Ornamental Baby Boo's Herb garden in flower around the front porch Strawberry border around the herb bed Hothouse gone wild! Hops Chickens in the shade Ripening apples Clementine Rose takes a cat nap on a hot afternoon. ...
Backpacking Larison Creek
Our family is very fortunate to have some good friends who are hardy backpackers. One of the most important things I have learned about backpacking motivation is that friends who backpack with children can do a lot to encourage each other to hit the trails. Even outdoorsy folks like myself can lose motivation. There have been summers where the weather was hot, life was busy with the kids ...
Beyond the Hall of Mosses: Backpacking the Hoh River
Growing up with the Olympic National Park in my backyard meant that I spent my childhood getting to know all the local rivers and their hiking trails. The Dungeness, the Greywolf, the Elwha, the Soleduc, the Bogachiel, the Hoh, and the Queets became these living, breathing places that I regard as fondly as old friends. Since having children of my own, I think we've done too ...
When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Go Swimming
It's shaping up to be one busy summer. Between teaching pioneer summer camps, tending that enormous garden we planted in the Spring, hand watering for up to six hours at a time, and sometimes canning jam, I've been feeling plum worn out. As I stand out there watering in the dark some late evenings, I contemplate how it is that we moved out to the country for a different pace of life, but ...
Got Wood?
We've got wood! And for this, I am feeling very grateful. I really can't take any credit for it, and my husband is due some serious thanks for keeping us warm this coming winter. One of the first projects we took on after moving into our house last year was installing a good, sturdy Jotul woodstove. We had always wanted wood heat, and the house had no other heat system in place, so it pushed ...