It’s blueberry season at the homestead. We pick every year at a friend’s patch, and if it’s a good berry year, like this year, August usually finds us eating a lot of blueberry muffins, blueberry pies, and other blueberry desserts. When it’s hot I hate to use the oven, so more and more ...

We passed the shortest day of the year just a little while ago. At this, the darkest and coldest time of the year, it may seem hard to find joy and light. But at our homestead we embrace the season as a time of rest, and a time to deepen our relationships with one another.From spring through ...

For more than ten years now I've been doing a Christmas ornament exchange with friends out on the west coast. We each make an ornament and ship it off in mid-December. Over the years, my tree has more and more decorations from this exchange. It's been terrific!This year, I did a simple, ...

Last summer we only grew about 200 pounds of squash and pumpkins. I say "only,"because the year before we hit 290 pounds! For the last five years, we've been in the 150+ pounds range for this crop.We've tried every storage method you can think of. We tried putting them up as is. We tried ...

When you grow in the neighborhood of 200 pounds of pumpkin and winter squash every year, you eat a lot of pumpkin bread and pumpkin pie. Plain pumpkin pie can get boring, so I am always looking for a new way to make it. This recipe was an instant favorite!This pumpkin pie is not baked, so for ...

History of the Pony Express Lies in St. Joseph, MissouriAlthough its existence was brief, spanning only 19 months, the Pony Express made a huge impact on the history of St. Joseph, Missouri.  On April 3, 1860, a young man mounted a horse and rode off from St. Joseph, among a cheering crowd, ...