Longleaf Breeze

We love growing vegetables in the fall in Alabama. It’s more pleasant to be outside in the fall, there are fewer problems with bugs and weeds, you can’t beat fresh vegetables in th...

That blistering heat we talked about all summer seems gone now. Production is slowing down on Veg Hill, and we’re gearing up for the first frost. We’re enjoying more walks around t...

So many green beans. We describe our “second crop” of beans. There are still new beans coming on now, including rattlesnake and Kentucky Wonder, and the new blossoms offer the prom...

Today we focus on fruits and nuts in the orchard. The progress so far, the electric deer fence, orchard floor maintenance, the advantages and disadvantages of trellising fruit tree...

We know how helpful the Longleaf Breeze Planting Database is to us, and we hope to others. We've neglected it, but we pledge to do better. This extra-length episode has a comprehen...

Hard to believe we’ve been at this every week for just shy of two years. We remember where we are when we started, what has changed, and what we’ve learned. It’s remarkable how muc...

Holidays have a different feel to them now that we live on the farm. There’s no such thing as a holiday, or maybe every day is a holiday. We address holidays as “holy days,” and we...

We bought our Sun Oven before we moved to Longleaf Breeze, thinking when we did that it would be a fun novelty. After we’ve settled into life as subsistence farmers, though, it’s b...

We should move Thanksgiving to August, because our production is peaking. We're choked with peas, beans, tomatoes, okra, eggplant, and winter squash. We’re planning two big batches...

We’ve just returned from a week in California visiting our children and our grandchild. So much sunshine! There just aren’t anything like the bugs and fungi there that we have in c...

We've now graduated as Master Gardeners. We're so proud! How has all we've learned changed the way we grow? Our plans for the future? Also: progress on the lodge, arguing about the...

We have far more food than we can use these days. Our philosophy is we eat what we want, store what we can, and give away the rest. Giving food away is our way of priming the gift ...