Quote of the Day: Frank Lloyd Wright
“The longer I live, the more beautiful life becomes. If you foolishly ignore beauty, you will soon find yourself without it.”
Frank Lloyd Wright
Many people disregard edible things in their garden for what they believe to be more beautiful ornamental plants. I find that edible plants can be just as beautiful, not only to look at but also in the way they nourish us. This radicchio is quite lovely, definitely something that brings much beauty into the garden!
What plants do you find most beautiful?
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My Mom’s New Greenhouse
On Thursday Mr Chiots and I headed over to my parents house to help my mom & dad put together my mom’s new sun shed. My mom spent quite a while trying to decide what kind of greenhouse to buy and finally settled on a sun shed from cedarshed.com. It’s half greenhouse half shed. It’s made out of cedar, complete with a partial cedar shake roof.
My dad spent a few weeks putting in a gravel pad to install it on while at it he installed a rain barrel overflow for future rain barrel installation on the greenhouse. We helped them raise the shed and put most of it together, except for the polycarbonate panels. It’s a 12×12 shed with about 70% of the roof being clear.
It’s quite a nice little greenhouse. You’ll be seeing more of it as we use it this coming spring for seedlings and garden plants. I’ve always wanted a greenhouse, although I think I would lean more towards a traditional glasshouse type greenhouse (here’s a gallery of a few I made on Flickr). If I keep saving my pennies I may have one in a couple years.
Do you have a greenhouse? Have you always wanted a greenhouse in your garden?
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Meeting the FoodCyclist
While Mr Chiots and were driving around the back roads of Main we happened upon this sign:
Now if any of you have read any of Eliot Coleman’s books, you know that this is his farm. We stopped in to see what kinds of beautiful vegetables were available and what his farm stand carts look like.
The stand was filled with his famous carrots, and all other sorts of beautiful farm fresh organic vegetables. If we hadn’t been traveling I would have purchased some beets and some cabbage and probably some leeks.
Since we had little room in our cooler, I only had room for a big bag of carrots and some arugula. The carrots were roasted with a fresh chicken from a local farm when we got home. The arugula was enjoyed on sandwiches while we were on the road. This particular sandwich was made of: cheese, arugula, a tomato brought from home, local cheese, and guacamole on homemade bread.
While we were there we met Chad who’s working at Four Season Farm and we also met John the Food Cyclist who happens to be planning to bike around the world visiting organic farms. We chatted with him for a while about his trip and all the interesting things him and his wife are doing. Head on over to his blog to read about his trip.
It’s always great to meet like-minded folks and chat with them. It’s encouraging to know that there are so many out there that have many of the same convictions we do about organic gardening and local eating. John and Chad were just a few of the many interesting like-minded folks we chatted with on vacation.
Have you ever met any interesting folks while on vacation?
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The Good Life Center
After reading Maine Farm: A Year of Country Life I really wanted to visit the Nearing Farm. I have yet to read Scott Nearing’s book The Good Life: Helen and Scott Nearing’s Sixty Years of Self-Sufficient Living, it’s been on my “to read” list for quite a while. I have read a lot about them and have been longing to see their walled garden and their little greenhouse. Since we were headed up to Maine we decided to visit The Good Life Center, which was the Nearing Home.
I checked their website and they were going to be closing at the end of September, but I figured we could stop by and look around anyways. There wasn’t anyone there to show us around and the gardens were harvested and pretty empty, but it was still wonderful to see. I’d always read about their stone house, the stone walls around their garden and the solar greenhouse that they built. It was so wonderful to see these things in person, the gardens especially. I won’t bore you with too many words, the home and garden speak for themselves.
One of the wonderful things about the Nearing home is that they built all the buildings themselves from stone. The house is stone, part of the greenhouse is stone, the workshop is stone, the wall around the garden is stone, and even the outhouse is made of stone, it truly is remarkable.
I loved seeing the little things like the compost piles, wooden shoes and the little cat statues throughout the garden – which were a nod to Stanley & Lynn who purchased Forrest Farm from the Nearings and loved cats.
The Nearings really are an inspiration for many of us simple life lovers. I really appreciate people like them, I may not agree with all their ideals or beliefs, and I will most likely never live off the grid without electric, but I really appreciate people than can and do live this kind of lifestyle!
Have you ever read about the Nearings? Who is an inspiration to you?
I’ll be adding more photos of the Nearing Place and the rest of our trip to my Flickr account, so check there often to see them.
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Quote of the Day: Bonnie Friedman
“An unhurried sense of time is in itself a form of wealth.”
~ Bonnie Friedman
This is one of the reasons we enjoy camping so much, it really lends itself to being unhurried. No distractions, just you and nature.
What helps you sit back and relax?
