Finally, the moment everyone's been waiting for --- time to select the winner of the Avian Aqua Miser Giveaway!  The winner is....Cara Blocker from Colorado!

We had 22 entries, which was an all-time high for us.  I wish I could send a free Avian Aqua Miser to everyone, but for those of you who didn't win and would still like to pamper your hens, you can buy single units, groups of three, or do-it-yourself kits over in our store. 

The photo to the left shows how you can make a waterer for your chickens out of any reused bottle using our do-it-yourself kit.  This is actually the way we originally envisioned the product working before we discovered that no one in our area recycles plastic and that we wanted the water reservoir to be bigger.

Thank you all for entering, and I'll look forward to hearing from those of you who make the plunge about how you like your Avian Aqua Miser!

The day has finally come for us to announce and give away Mark's invention!  Introducing --- the Avian Aqua Miser!

Like most chicken owners, I used to moan and complain about the vagaries of watering hens in tractors.  Their waterers would tip and spill on uneven terrain and one of our hens died of heat exhaustion on a hot summer day as a result.  When the waterers didn't spill, it seemed like they got covered with poop within minutes of being refreshed --- ugh.

So Mark put on his thinking cap, and four or five incarnations later he's developed a product that I adore.  In our six hen tractor, half a gallon of water in our Avian Aqua Miser lasts for several days in cool weather and the hens seem to get a kick out of pecking at the nipple.  Clean, clear water for our chickens!

And time to share the joy with a giveaway!  Check out our usual giveaway guidelines (but note that this giveaway will end on Saturday, December 20 since I'm starting it so late in the week.)  In addition to an Avian Aqua Miser, we're going to throw in the e-books and video we developed to go along with it which are explained in our store.  If you have chickens or think you want to get some, I highly recommend you enter this giveaway --- I can't live without our Avian Aqua Misers now!

I'm ashamed by how lax I've been on giveaways over the last few weeks while finishing up my job.  To make up for lost time, I'm giving away masses of seeds --- enough to fill up your garden and your neighbor's too!

These seeds are leftovers from last year or the year before (but all are young enough that they should germinate fine.)  I've got lots of winter squashes (Howden and Jack-o-lite and Baby Bear Pumpkins, unnamed and Royal and Table Queen Acorn Squashes, and Cushaw (a local variety pictured here)) which I'm giving away because after tasting them all Mark and I decided butternut is the best of the best and plan to only grow it next year.  Read about the other varieties and enter our giveaway!

Congratulations to David from Louisianna for winning our tomato seed giveaway!  For those of you who didn't win --- I'll probably give away another set of tomato seeds in a few weeks, so don't give up hope.  Happy eating!

Since I quit my job, we're trying to be even more frugal for a while.  So I'm going to stick to giveaway items which are cheaper to mail --- nix those paw paws and bring on the seeds!

This week's giveaway is a starter set of our favorite tomato varieties.  The winner will get a few seeds each of our favorite tommy-toes (Crazy, Yellow Pear, and Blondkopfchen), early fruiting slicers (Stupice and Early Pick), romas (Martino's, Italian San Rodorta, Russian Roma, and Yellow Roma), and normal slicers (Ken's red, Dagma's perfection, San Francisco Fog, a tomato that is labelled as a Brandywine but isn't the right shape (but is our 2007 taste test winner!), and an unlabelled Green Zebra type.)

I know that many of you think it's difficult to start tomatoes from seed, but I've found that there's no need to mess with indoors starting, grow lights, and transplanting to graduated pots.  Instead, start your tomatoes in a cold frame like this lettuce bed about a month before your frost free date, ignore them for a few weeks, then transplant them to your garden beds.  It's easy and fun --- and you get to try amazingly delicious heirloom varieties like the ones I'll be sending you!

As usual, check out our giveaway guidelines and enter!

Congratulations to Dennis from Florida for winning three grapevines!

We met Dennis through our blog last month, and were thrilled to learn that he and his wife would soon be moving up to our area to become our neighbors. 

Thank you to everyone who entered.  Stay tuned for another giveaway soon --- probably paw paw trees!

Did you ever want to start a vineyard?  I don't particularly want a vineyard, but I do want fruit of any and all sorts coming out my ears.  At $6 and up per plant, a vinyard doesn't really fit into our budget, though.  Luckily, there's a cheaper option.

Early this spring, one of Mark's friends gave us some vines he'd pruned out of his vineyard.  I did some reading and learned that grapes are easy to root from hardwood cuttings like these --- just cut dormant vines into pieces with four buds per piece in early spring, soak the cuttings in water for three days, poke them into the ground about a foot apart so that three of the buds are underground, and wait a while.  Click here to read more (including a giveaway!)

First, before I forget --- congratulations to Jill from Knoxville, the winner of our easy flower giveaway!  And thanks to everyone who entered too --- I always love to hear from you!  Now back to your regularly scheduled navel-gazing....

Lucy and I walked up the holler this morning to check out an old homestead just across the property line.  I'm terribly nosy and couldn't help myself from investigating the results of my neighbor's clearing operation up there --- he told me he was going to be opening up a bit of land to attract deer for his son (who hunts.)

True to his word, he'd rooted up a bunch of blackberries and sown grass over perhaps a half acre or acre.  As Lucy and I headed home, our curiosity satisfied, we nearly tripped over a  big pear at our feet.  My memory --- dubious at the best of times --- finally kicked into gear and reminded me that I'd seen a fruit tree blooming up here by the homestead this spring and had meant to come back and check on it.  Then I'd forgotten, of course.

Most of the pears had already fallen, but shaking the tree dislodged five more which thudded to the ground around us.  (I remembered, almost too late, that it's not such a bright idea to look up while shaking a fruit tree.)  The pears were sweet and gritty --- the old-fashioned kind you find growing around old homsteads in our area, pears which will mellow in the root cellar over the course of a few months into true ripeness.  I like them hard, though, so chomped my way through one, giving Lucy the core.

I love the idea of wildcrafting, but I like the taste of most cultivated fruits better.  Hunting down abandoned fruit trees by old homsteads is the best of both worlds!

In the last week, the world has turned gray --- time to start visualizing summer flowers!  For this week's giveaway, I've put together a packet of each of our easiest annual flowers --- Mexican sunflowers, marigolds, pink and white cosmos, zinnias, and fennel.  To plant them in the spring, just rake the soil a bit and toss the seeds on the ground, then ignore them until the beautiful blooms start attracting butterflies and beneficial insects.  (It's best to put the fennel, Mexican sunflowers, and cosmos where you want them to stay since they'll self-seed from year to year.)

So, same drill as always.  Email me your name, email address, general location, and how you heard about this giveaway by Saturday night and we'll put your name in the hat.  The lucky winner will be announced on Sunday, and on Monday we'll mail out your flower seeds.  We promise not to do anything with your contact information except email you if you're the winner.  Good luck!

Congratulations to Sherilyn in California for winning our Egyptian Onion giveaway!  I'm always intrigued to hear about other people's gardens, so was thrilled that Sherilyn gave me a rundown on her urban homestead:

I'm inspired by Sherilyn's hard work at rooting out the environmental catastrophe which is the American lawn!  Stay tuned for another giveaway soon....