by Sue Schlabach | Jan 10, 2020 | Artisanal Living, Chickens, Family
The last months of 2019 are in the rearview mirror, and I’m happy to have them behind me. I leave that time a little bruised and vulnerable, having lost my mother to a rapid decline from stage 4 cancer in mid November. She was a force of nature and a muse to...
by Sue Schlabach | Dec 9, 2015 | Artisanal Living, Chickens, Paris, Vermont
There are places where you expect to find a velvet Victorian sofa. A chicken yard isn’t generally the place. There are places you expect to see a chicken. AÂ Paris dress shop might not come to mind. In the back garden of a house on the edge of South Strafford,...
by Sue Schlabach | May 28, 2013 | Chickens, Design, Eating and Cooking, Farm Life, Garden, Ireland, Local Food, Travel
Have you ever visited a place you’ve only seen in books, but gazed upon so often that you felt you knew it? It’s like stepping through the looking glass, and removing the glasses you are wearing that have blinders on the sides. A month ago we followed the...
by Sue Schlabach | Aug 28, 2012 | Artisanal Living, Chickens, Eating and Cooking, Family, Farm Life, Garden, Recipes, Summer, Vermont
Tonight’s dinner of braised root vegetables was seasoned with bouquet garni—a pleasing little bundle of parsley, thyme and bay. We ate the sweet potatoes, carrots, and beets over gnocchi, drizzled with the pan juices, butter, and chopped herbs. The wind picked...
by Sue Schlabach | May 13, 2012 | Chickens, Color, Eating and Cooking, Family, Garden, Natural World, Photography, Spring, Vermont
I don’t ask for much on Mother’s Day. I often share it with my husband’s birthday, and so I’ve spent the day at a few ballparks over the years, and that’s okay with me. But this morning Mother’s Day dawned with a bit of overcast...
by Sue Schlabach | Jan 24, 2012 | Chickens, Color, Natural World, Vermont, Winter
Whites of January—tinged with blue. I draw back the curtains to the cawing of crows, the papery bark of birches, the tracks of deer under the crabapple tree below our window. The quilt looks like the landscape in the meadow, puckered and pocked after last...
