Here in Alberta our weather woes typically involve cursing our frozen fingers as we scrape icy windshields or groaning when May rain showers turn to snow. You don't so often hear us griping about being too hot. But this summer has brought a whole new climatic concern to the fore with a streak of heat that's made many of us uncomfortable in every sense of the word. High temperatures, lack of rain, and smoke-saturated skies have defined much of our past two months - enough so a

Every year when it comes time to replenish my garden soil I'm reminded of how we city folk rely on country folk to make our world go 'round

Sure, I'd like to be visiting family on Vancouver Island where the cherry blossoms are already opening, or dashing outside barefoot to snip warm herbs from the garden. Instead I'm tethered to the here and now. The "here" being the Alberta foothills and the "now" being deepest winter (the "here" also being a province undergoing a reckoning of its traditional fossil fuel identity; the "now" being nearly a year into a pandemic and its accompanying restrictions). Sounds potential

In June when I wrote about our new backyard greenhouse, the fresh white paint inside had barely dried and the young plants, still tidy and restrained, seemed pleased with their custom home. Nothing illustrates our planet's axial tilt (aka seasons) and our relative northern setting quite like the ensuing sequence of furious but fleeting growth. Tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, herbs, and pollinator flowers, all supercharged by the shelter and heat of the greenhouse, grew exuberan

The pandemic has invited us to swap travel in search of excitement elsewhere for a renewed inhabitance of our own place in the world...

Here we are in a new season - and in some ways a new world entirely - and I'm happy to report our little food-growing addition is complete.

Here's what's keeping me grounded and hopeful; what's acting as both a balm and a way to be deliberate about the future:

We've been cooking up a new little project for our urban plot at Hereabouts - a wee space for soaking up the sun and growing more food.

I find the best kind of motivation is a beautiful vision of what could be, a glimpse of the world as I want it to become.

If soil is the earth's microbiome, is producing food without it a good idea?

Back at our campsite, we proudly laid our haul out on the picnic table. We washed and strung morels like beads on necklaces to dry.

We're at the tail end of winter and the pantry's almost bare. Well, likely not bare at all given our access to the modern supermarket, but our regional pantry, our store of comestibles produced within even a few hundred kilometre radius of here is down to the crumbs. If you dedicate yourself to choosing local and seasonal foods to any degree, by this time of year not only is the glorious "crispness" of winter wearing thin, so is your culinary inspiration. For months, we've ro

"We need to create a vibrant and tight knit community around our food systems in order to achieve substantive change." -Zev Friedman Part of the aim in creating Hereabouts was to broaden our experience of community by opening our property up to others from near and far along with their varying perspectives, interests, and circumstances. We hoped the tiny house would draw like-minded people to us while, for others, serve to inspire possibilities around small footprint living,

Earth is leaning away from our star as though playing a bit coy, backing off as though it just needs a little space before it can draw back in again. This loss of intimacy with the sun leaves us chilled and lacking light, feeling a tad solitary; in the northern hemisphere, it's winter. Of course, just as our days are shortest, Christmas comes to offer a celebratory reprieve. Regardless of whether the holidays induce true jolliness and wonder or something closer to frazzlement

Summer has come and gone in Alberta and as you may have heard (or experienced yourself!) we actually endured several weeks of winter before autumn arrived. Yes, we were plunged abruptly from August's heat into what felt like a punishing deep freeze in September, our gardens meeting an untimely death. Our raised bed on September 16th Our growing season in the foothills is short indeed and it's easy to despair that it was all for naught when it ends before you can reap what you

"By this action, what am I saying 'yes' to?" -Charles Eisenstein, The Yoga of Eating Deep into last winter I had my doubts we'd ever feel the warmth of July again. Yet here we are, well into summer, the season of abundance, the earth putting forth food in full force. And with all that production comes opportunity. Opportunity not only to seize fresh, nutrient-dense, full-flavoured produce, but to connect more deeply with place and shape the world we live in. Because eating is

Those of you in milder climes may find it hard to believe, but here in our Cochrane yard, approaching the end of April, just about the only things I can find poking through the newly-thawed ground are chives and perennial onions. It has been One. Long. Winter. But let's work with what we've got, right? Hungry for a sprig of anything fresh and alive from soil that has been asleep for so long, I'm ready, scissors in hand, to reap a wee harvest from those tiny allium tufts. And

Well, we've done it! We've seen ourselves through another winter. Sure, it's not fully behind us yet, but the darkest and the coldest of it is. Sometimes, as someone who lives in Alberta, this feels like having endured a bit of an ordeal - ordeal as in an experience that's transformational in its difficulty. Although winter can often be arresting in its beauty, we do regularly contemplate relocating to a milder climate, feel like we could (and sometimes do!) go to bed by 8:00

(Do excuse me if this post seems dubiously tangential to the operation of Hereabouts B&B! In my mind these things are all related - Hereabouts came about partially in response to my grappling with ideas like this one on investment.) "Ask the questions that have no answers. Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias. Say that your main crop is the forest that you did not plant, that you will not live to harvest. Say that the leaves are harvested when they have rotted into the mo

Christmas is fast approaching and I think we can all agree that the experience goes beyond one of pure peace, love, and joy. There's bound to be some pressure in the mix, some disillusionment, and perhaps a little let-down brought on by the cultural hype. And it coincides, of course, with the sun drawing its lowest arc and making its briefest appearance of the year - Winter Solstice (in the northern hemisphere), the climax of darkness. But there's something almost sublime in