wildness

There are new calves all up and down the valley — they’ve arrived in the past week or so. Not only are they incredibly cute, but they play — a reminder that even beef cattle once had a wild nature, before we bred it out of them. When I leave the cabin in the...
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So I was driving down to the cabin last night when I realized that all those grey things in the field next to the East River Road weren’t deer, they were Sandhill Cranes! There were scores of them — I’m notoriously bad at that sort of estimation, but there were well over a hundred...
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This picture isn’t great (I’m still getting the hang of my new camera) but this is a petrified tree trunk in a cave. Over the weekend, Chuck took me up to a secret spot he found a few months ago where there is a lot of petrified wood, and a number of these big...
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Yes folks, that’s an 8.4 ounce morel! Chuck found it up behind his cabin yesterday morning, growing just at the waterline of the irrigation ditch. It was a monster, but we managed to slay it, cook it in butter and vermouth, and enjoy it on rice (along with some pork chops) last night. It’s...
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On Sunday, Chuck and I went off on an adventure — we headed over to the backside of Livingston Peak to look for mushrooms and elk horns. We’d just crossed a ridge that bordered private land, and were talking about how goofy the Icelandic horses in the field looked with their long long manes...
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Here they are — the first morels! (I always want to sing that to the tune of The First Noel.) The Carpenter and I had a great time this weekend finding morels up behind his cabin — mushroom hunting is SO MUCH FUN! I get SO excited when I see one sticking up...
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I keep hearing the headline in my head to the tune of “The First Noel” — but here they are, the first morels of the season. It got hot here this weekend — into the eighties — and after our long cold wet spring, I just knew there must be mushrooms out there. These...
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I have a lot of gardening books — I’m one of those people who learns how to do things from books, so the first couple of years I had this garden, I bought a lot of different things (especially if they were in the bargain bin at Borders). But there’s a very short list of...
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I have a little piece up at Culinate about how mushroom hunting saved my health during grad school. It was fun to write, hope you enjoy it.
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Things are a little hectic here at LivingSmall today — so why doesn’t everyone go over to Someday Homesteader and read about Kim’s first deer. It’s really affecting and well, since she did it by herself, without a guide like my Mighty Hunter, I’m kind of in awe.
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