Happy New Year! Here we are in 2023, my third year of life changes. It was the middle of 2020 when we decided to leave our settled, comfy life in Wisconsin to start over in central Texas. A few more changes this past summer led us to move from Austin to rural eastern Texas. We even bought a house in…

Traditional Swiss Christmas cookie names don’t exactly trip off the tongues of most Americans and I doubt many have eaten them, either. Aenisguetzli, mailanderli, schweizer schenkeli, brazeli. They look like a spelling bee nightmare. I grew up very ‘Murican–through and through. It wasn’t as if my family wouldn’t have enjoyed generational traditions, it’s just that our ancestors apparently took the…

I thought that compiling some snippets around my household would be an interesting thing to do this week. I don’t think I’ve ever done a post like this before. The Garden I’ve managed to keep our first garden in Texas alive but I wouldn’t call it a rousing success. I think my plants have used their energy just staying alive.…

Written in 1912 by Milton O. Nelson Did ever a farmer or a farmer’s wife have his work so well in hand that at each day’s close he could say: “I have done nothing that I ought not to have done and have left nothing undone that I ought to have done and I feel as fresh and strong as…