Having a Blast in 2020: Part 1

Having a Blast in 2020 – Part I One of the (few) positive things about 2020 has been space exploration. Over the past months, my kids’ interest in space has, shall we say, sky-rocketed.  Admittedly, they already had a head-start, as over their first few years of life they’ve amassed a personal library of space…

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Chickens and the Animals that Love Them

In a previous post, I mentioned some of the advantages of raising chickens in the Roanoke valley. As I wrote, I was reminded of one disadvantage of chicken owning: it allows you to encounter the Roanoke valley’s range of predatory animals up close. There are effective ways to protect chickens from each of these predators,…

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Five Reasons to Get Chickens

Chickens are one of the easiest ways to raise a part of your own food with a low upfront investment and minimal daily exertion. We owned them for a few years, and intend to do it more in the future. There are many excellent blogs and books by subject matter experts (chickenologists?) about raising chickens,…

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The Lord of the Ringing: The Return of the Cicada

The last several weeks, Virginia has seen (and heard) the return of the 17-year cicada. Now that the heat of midsummer is here, it’s the very end of the season for these remarkable insects, but you can still find their molted skins and occasionally hear them. Before they completely disappear for the year, it’s worth…

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