Maple Bourbon Wassail Recipe + How to Wassail an Orchard

Wassailing- you did what?! This is something I think is so cool. And something that also makes me feel like a huge dork, if I’m being perfectly honest. At least the Maple Bourbon Wassail recipe turned out AWESOME! There are two parts to this: the act of Wassailing, and the drink Wassail. Wassailing is a medieval Christmastide ritual that used to be (and actually still …

How to Tear Down and Get Rid of an Old Barn, Plus How NOT to Sell the Wood!

We’ll call this one a “learning experience.” (I generally hate those, by the way) If you’re wondering how to sell the wood from an old barn, if your old barn wood is worth any money, and how to handle the process… I hope you can learn from our experience. That is to say, selling our old 1800s barn turned out to be a pretty terrible …

How to Build a Rustic Garden Gate

When we moved to our homestead a couple years ago, one of the first things we noticed was that over the years the resident squirrels had most graciously planted a black walnut grove in the yard. The entire yard. The trees would have to come down because they were taking up our outdoor living space. We hated the idea of having to cut down those little …

Natural Tick & Lyme Disease Prevention

I am convinced we live in the middle of Tick-Central. Meeting place of the National Association of Wood-Ticks. If ticks had a yearly convention, they might hold it in the state of Wisconsin. And I hate them. I loathe these weird, disease-ridden, blood-gorging, leg-climbing creepy stalkers. I didn’t worry much about ticks when I was little. I played in the woods, rolled around in the …

How to Protect Yourself When Buying a Farm or Rural Property (or any property for that matter!)

What we mean by “protect yourself” is: Make a good investment. Know what you are getting yourself into. Prepare so that there are no surprises down the road. Get exactly what you want from your dream property, farm, or homestead. We bought our first house this past October. The perfect country property with outbuildings, acreage, and an old farmhouse. It took us over three years of …

10 Reasons Why We Love Our Old Farmhouse

We moved into our old farmhouse just four short months ago, and from day one it has just felt right being here. It suits us so well. (It should- we searched for three years before finding this place!) Our house was built sometime in the 1880s, but the couple who lived here for the past twenty years updated everything while maintaining a lot of the …