We feel lucky to have been unaffected by the wildfires currently burning in North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, and elsewhere. Even the smoke has mostly passed us by --- the photo above captured a rainy Saturday morning rather than the smoky haze it initially appeared to be.

I doubt that extended sprinkle did much good in the fire-prone regions since it hasn't even managed to wet our parched soil..and we're officially only in a moderate drought. This bed where I dug carrots a couple of weeks ago still looks very much like it did the day I pulled the crop out of the ground.

Of course, I have to admit that our farm tends toward soggy and I'm actually a little glad for the ease that dryness brings. But I'll be hoping for rain to quench the flames elsewhere and to water gardens for those of you whose soil is now bone dry. Here's hoping the drought is a mere memory by the time spring gardens hit the ground in 2017.

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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