Runamuk Acres Conservation Farm
Soil-first farming, building health from the ground up!
I haven’t posted about it in a while, but I’m still growing shoots and sprouts as part of my Winter Growing Challenge, and I am loving my homegrown winter salads! I’ve modified my methods for growing shoots this year, and─so long as I remember to soak the seed on a regular basis─I’ve been harvesting 1…
I am so pumped about this whole Winter Growing Challenge that I want every household to do this with me and I’m going to give you 13 reasons to grow your own shoots. By doing this together we can encourage the people around us to eat healthier too; we can inspire our friends and family…
The trees and plants in the surroundings are living things that need to be taken care of. The trees and plants provide a lot of benefits not only to mother earth but also to us, human beings. Trees add life as well as color to the environment. For some, trees can be a great addition…
Farmers and gardeners are discovering the benefits of using agribon in the garden. Also known as “row-cover”, this lightweight fabric is the key to extending your growing season and protecting crops from insects. I’ve used it in the past on brassicas to deter the cabbage loopers and had great success. This year I am using…
This past Saturday I installed packaged bees into the existing equipment of my recently deceased hives in the Runamuk apiary. In my 7 years of beekeeping, this was a first for me; I’ve always bought locally raised nucleus colonies with hardy overwintered Queens. With so much comb and honey and pollen stores available following winter…
Buying and eating real food is a challenge for low-income families like mine; for people who struggle to make ends meet, food isn’t always a priority. Yet I get this sick sense of satisfaction whenever I am able to put before my family a meal made up of real and local foods. Food is just…
Following the long winter, as my stores of vegetables dwindle and I am once again reduced to buying Olivia’s spinach at the grocery store, cringing over the kale and lettuce there which never compares to the quality of my own home-grown produce─I am all too eager to get seeds in the ground to grow my…
It’s going on 5 years now that I’ve been using foundationless frames in my Langstroth hives, and I’ve come to swear by the method. Mainstream beekeeping dictates the use of foundation in hive frames to provide a structure for the bees to build their combs upon. However, I’ve found 3 reasons to contradict that way…
Not every beekeeper needs to use pollen patties on their hives. Here in Maine there is an abundant supply of pollen in the fall and our bees are able to store enough for the colony’s purposes through the winter, until fresh pollen is again available in the spring. Unless you’re planning to make early season…
I’m taking a moment today to introduce Runamuk’s new affiliation with Rootsy. I’m really excited about this because the Rootsy network is made up of some of my very favorite sustainable-lifestyle bloggers and gathers into one place some of the best and most reliable information about homesteading, gardening, livestock, cooking, preparedness, herbalism and simple living…