A section of the fabric from Christo’s ‘Running Fence’ (1976) is used as a backdrop for the Salami Toss at the Occidental Fire Department’s annual summer barbecue. When Christo and Jeanne-Claude realized their seminal Running Fence project in West Sonoma County in the mid-1970’s, they traded materials used to construct the 24 mile long fence […]
Category Archives: maintenance
Green Walnut Harvest
Ene and Aili harvested hundreds of green walnuts from our tree to make our annual batch of nocino, the homemade digestif we like to share with friends and family on special occasions throughout the year. The nuts peaked about a week later than last year, and we managed to clear the tree of the plump, […]
Mildred’s Lane Dispatch
David Brooks tests the completed pole lathe at Mildred’s Lane (photo by Walker Tufts) The Mildred’s Lane Fellows have completed the pole lathe using entirely materials from the land, and are ready to test its performance cutting green wood, split and foraged from recently fallen trees of beech, hickory and white oak. As I have […]
Making Hay
The road from Valley Ford to Two Rock is flanked by furrowed fields of freshly mowed hay, ready for baling. Pretty soon the barns will be stocked to the rafters with sweet hay, elucidating their proportional relationship to the fields they occupy. Craftwork begins with the localization of supply and demand; contentment begins with their […]
Mowing the Meadow
mowing the high meadow grasses One of my favorite tools is our hand-pushed, mulching mower. As with all of my favorite tools, I like the physical activity and related mental state associated with using it as much if not more than the end result. Mowing the Meadow is a great excuse for taking a long […]
The Gopher Guy
Gregg Crawford, aka The Gopher Guy, at Harmony Farm Supply Just like anyone with open land in West Sonoma County, we have a gopher problem. We have been able to keep them out of our kitchen garden’s raised beds by lining their interiors with 1/2″ galvanized hardware cloth, but have plans to cultivate a 1/2 […]
Tools Making Tools
One of the cool things about craft production is that it does not respond to markets so much as do away with them altogether- supply and demand are localized in both space and time. When in the service of self-sufficiency, production is not only localized but scaled in response to some form of human […]