Open View Gardens

I eat seafood only when I’m on a seacoast.  Never in Vermont. Or at least not by choice. I know that this rather severe, absolute rule flows from having grown up six miles from the ocean, and from spending childhood summers in a cottage overlooking the salty water–water that was once filled with lobsters and […]

I’ve stopped buying pine nuts–except when I find fresh Spanish ones at Sahadi’s when I visit my daughter in Brooklyn.  The only sort available around here are flown in from China–too far for something that needs refrigeration and careful handling–and the $30/pound price is beyond affordable.  Perfect pine-nutty pestos and some Italian cakes and cookies […]

My family jokes about how when my husband heads out on a trip, Mother Nature lets loose. An albino robin appears just before he’s to leave. An owl hangs around in broad daylight, staring intently into the screened-in porch.  Bats flit about the house.  Birds get trapped in my studio. Coyotes prowl the garden to […]

I’m trying to break a bad gardening habit. I’m trying to resist the urge to over-plant, to stuff the vegetable beds to bursting point no matter how good it makes me feel. You see, when visitors ask for a tour of my gardens, I do a lot of apologizing– for the small size of the […]

I started Open View Gardens to help open our notion of what we can grow and therefore eat locally.  I want to explore as much of the world as possible through garden and kitchen.  As are others in the North country, I am experimenting with foods we don’t normally associate with this region, and foods […]

This week’s PATCHwork column for the Addison Independent: Hot Pepper Mania My house smells of hot peppers.  Who knew that a dehydrator filled with them would send clouds of pungent oil into the air.  At this rate I could probably produce highly effective pepper spray, may soon have to don goggles.  It’s a good thing […]

It’s snowing. Hard.  On April 28 in the Champlain Valley of Vermont.  Two days ago I spent seven hours in a t-shirt hauling dirt around new garden beds (we’re doubling the size of the already large garden), planting potatoes, weeding, cheering on the rattling bumblebees and softly whirring honeybees at their work among the blossoming […]