Some pictures of Santa Gourds that I have sold on ebay are listed, in the pages.  These are hard shell gourds that we have grown on the farm, and that I decorate, using a wood burner and oil paints, and a lot of imagination.

I will be doing a “how to” process of a really huge, magnificent gourd I found yesterday.  It is to be “The Queen of Hearts.”  I will post the raw gourd, the steps I take to decorate her, and then indicate when she is available on ebay/  More later!

One never puts all one’s eggs in one basket.

Nothing on this list is new, or hasn’t been done recently.  In fact, reading it over, there are a few things I’ve left off, but I won’t go back and change the list just yet.

Education has always been our primary goal, so as I work through these pages, I will be listing articles that show how we do what we do. 

Bio-Intesive gardening, rabbit cages and nest boxes, chicken tractors and mini houses, woodburning of gourds, a solar water pump, cooking on a wood burning stove…the list goes on.

As folks react to our current economy and culture, more and more people are going to wish they were back on the land.  We saw this in the late 70’s, and we are seeing it again.

This time, we are in a position to teach folks what to do with their land, once they get there.

Been there, done that, got the blisters!

including a reverence for nature and a preference for country life;

a desire for maximum personal self-reliance and creative leisure;

a concern for family nurture and community cohesion;

a belief that the primary reward of work should be well-being rather than money;

 a certain nostalgia for the supposed simplicities of the past

and an anxiety about the technological and bureaucratic complexities of the present and the future,

and a taste for the plain and the functional.” 

Jerry Belanger, Countryside Magazine.

Mostly dead is also partially alive.

Since this site has not been touched for the better part of 4 years, it was time to blow off the dust and give it a makeover.  Stay tuned for more to come…

Edited to add:  Much thanks to my spendid son in law for giving me a shove in the right direction!  Like a bucket of ice water on a hot day!  Thanks, I needed that!