Lee


Examining Our “Cookprint” 1

Ain’t Earth Day fun? For one day out of 365, even the mainstream media get all excited about what we can do to live more sustainably. Tomorrow, of course, they’ll be back to explaining how things will be fine once we get the economy Back to Normal, but for today, […]


Planting Our First Garden 6

This will seem hopelessly elementary to many of you, but you need to understand just how much we have to learn, so I’m telling you blow-by-blow what we did to plant our first garden, blunders and all.


In Praise of the Front-End Loader 1

When we first started shopping for a tractor for Longleaf Breeze more than a year ago, my brother Dave Gray told me to make sure it had a front-end loader. I complied with his instructions, even though I didn’t understand why it was important. Now I know.


Shopping for a Toilet 3

I hope we will have a composting toilet one day, even if I’m the only one who uses it. Amanda has made it clear from the start, however, that she will not feel comfortable inviting people to Longleaf Breeze to use a composting toilet. So we’ve known since the earliest […]


Earth Hour – For Real 2

The rolling global one hour blackout that is Earth Hour has begun. As I write this on Saturday morning in Alabama, the lights have been turned off and are already back on in Sydney, Australia. Darwin and Manila are in the dark now, as the darkness moves westward across the […]


Transporting Compost (or not) 1

I’m an avid reader, if not an active poster, on the Yahoo! Gardening Organically group. And it won’t surprise you that the Gardening Organically folks are all about compost. So what do we do if we want to start a garden this summer but haven’t lived on the farm long […]


Depending On the Weather Report

It was sunny yesterday morning at our home in Vestavia Hills, Alabama. I knew it would rain for the next several days, though, so I got out and did a good bit of yard work that Amanda needed me to finish before a gathering this weekend. I knew it would […]