Website Launched!

Please visit the new Healing Tree Farm website!

Website Update and Goals for 2010

Firstly, the website is complete, but we are still unable to upload it and unsure why.  It is likely an issue with the template I used to create the site.  I’ve had success with it in the past, but not so much this time around.  Until that issue is resolved, I’ll post to the blog.
Goals [...]

Website coming soon!

Hoping to have the new Healing Tree Farm website up and running this week!

FYI: Types of Agriculture

Permaculture is an approach to designing human settlements and perennial agriculturalsystems that mimic the relationships found in natural ecologies. It was first developed by Australians Bill Mollison and David Holmgren and their associates during the 1970s in a series of publications. The word permaculture is a portmanteau of permanent agriculture, as well as permanent culture.
The intent was that, by rapidly training individuals in a core set of design [...]

Reconstructing the Forest Garden

Earlier today, I discovered an irrigation system in good working condition out back where the edge of the forest meets the remnants of a long-ago abandoned garden square.  A few onions still grow along with some perennial herbs, but mostly the bed has been lovingly attended by the pioneer knapweed.   
I mowed the area where we’ll be working for [...]

Falling over

I’ve been observing in some of the taller flowering plants a tendency to fall over just as they are blooming.  And I began to wonder whether this is a strategy for survival.  The flower is then low to the ground, at level with other flowers and bees.  And the seeds are dropped far from the [...]

What we learned from an abandoned flower-bed

There’s a flower-bed in the front yard that has not been cared for since last summer or possibly longer ago.  Some are appalled and immediately offer to “weed” it for us, but I wanted to use it as an example at our workshop, so until today, it was left untouched.  
What we saw growing well inside the raised bed [...]

RE Story

Loraine Anderson: Tracking Titus 
By LORAINE ANDERSON
Local columnist (Record Eagle)
Harold Titus has been one of my favorite Traverse City historical characters since I read “Timber,” his 1922 novel, last year. He intrigues me for many reasons.
Part of his mystery is that he is virtually unknown today. He is “new” local history.
He was a writer in the [...]

Farmer’s as story-tellers

I’m not sure what it is about farmers, but most I’ve met are wonderful story-tellers.  Perhaps its part of the more primitive design to educate and pass along knowledge through story.  
Yesterday, I met our neighbor to the north, who owns a large cattle farm.  He pointed to the old farmhouse up the road, and [...]

Planting Milkwood: Making Compost

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