Combine interest in the inaugural Easton Farmer’s Market, an empty store front, and a community of local producers and what do you have? Celebrate Local, a pop-up holiday shop of all-Ohio goods. Celebrate Local opens October 1 and will continue sales through the winter holidays at Easton where Harry & David’s previously resided. The shop offers frozen, refrigerated and fresh local foods, handmade pantry items, and locally made crafts. Customers can select items from around [...]

It’s hard to be a native Ohioan and have an appreciation for seafood. I rarely ate fresh fish as a child and when I did, it wasn’t very good. It wasn’t that my parents were poor cooks; twenty years ago it was hard to find seafood worth cooking. These days, life is different. Fish is flown in from all over the world to several places in the city. Seafood can be great here now but [...]

On my mind these days: 1) Hoop Houses – I was honored to meet Will Allen and attend workshops with his staff last weekend. I now know how to build a hoop house and can’t wait for some land on which to build. I’ll share more about the Growing Power way soon. 2) Better Living Through Chemistry – I am 20 days into another sinus infection. Yes, I had surgery on my headbone back in [...]

We have ‘people’ in Japan. People who have lived with us, vacationed with us, and treated us to tours of their home cities. We have people who mothered me during my pregnancy and attended my wedding. People who were foreign exchangees and are now family. We met our people, Miyu, Naoko, Kaoko, Kristiina and more, through the Ohio 4-H International Program. Ohio 4-H has been arranging exchanges between Ohio families and a Japanese English language [...]

I mentioned a few times that I love Ohio apples.  My sentiments are now indelibly inked on my shoulder, courtesy of Julie Edwards Whittaker, now tattooing at High Street Tattoo.

Homesteaders usually tend towards old-fashioned methods of conservation.  We use hand-powered tools.  We line dry laundry and push a reel mower.  We use renewable fuels to grill and light the fireplace. But we dare not eschew high tech solutions in combination with these old school efforts.  A whole system of high tech ideas to increase efficiency is sweeping the nation under the umbrella name SmartGrid. AEP Ohio invited me to a lunch at Alana’s with [...]

I have no pictures of the turkey or family portraits or plates of food from this Thanksgiving.  Instead, I have pictures of Big Mac. Big Mac is a hog raised by my mother’s cousin’s family, the Barkers.  After Thanksiving dinner (including the delicious ham of one of Mac’s former barn-mates) a group of us went out to visit the pigs.  We found Mac, a solid large Hereford. And when he turned around, we saw Big [...]