Garden Blogs for Winter Reading: The Local Edition

To feed your winter garden dreams there is a growing bounty of garden related blogs out there. In November I wrote a post about four very popular ones, three national and one international. This time I’ve got a few local ones to share.

Small Measure is the blog of Ashley English, author of the Homemade Living book series which showcases topics related to small-scale homesteading and the diverse ways people are taking up sustainable food practices. Her blog covers a range of topics, from keeping chickens and food preservation tips, to thoughts about parenting a toddler. Her regular features include What I’m Digging (photos, how-tos, homesteading tips and other inspirations gleaned from around the web) and Recent Aquisitions (cool stuff like tools, artisan made foods and recently published books).

Christopher C.’s blog is Outside Clyde. He is a plant and landscape enthusiast “living the life of gardening on the low spot of a North Carolina mountaintop”, just outside of the small town of Clyde. His blog is full of beautiful mountain photography, stories about his garden projects, poetic musings and occasional rants. He is helping to organize the 5th annual Garden Bloggers Fling which will be held in Western NC this year, May 18-20th.  Previous flings were held in Austin, Chicago, Buffalo and Seattle. Registration is open to all garden bloggers.

A tour of Sow True Seed will be part of their Fling itinerary!

Milkweed diaries is the blog of Beth Trigg of Red Wing Farm, a small farm in the Swannanoa Valley, just east of Asheville. Beth grew up in western North Carolina, and loves cooking, field guides, fermentation, plants and animals, compost, seed histories, farmers markets, and yoga. She blogs on all of these subjects and more.

I love her list of quotes, her stories about her dairy goats, and her thoughtful approach to the challenges of the 21st century. The latest post is a letter she wrote to her 16 year old self (she is now 38) about animal rights and vegetarianism. I’ll close with a quote she found by international sustainable food leader Vandana Shiva

“The beauty of the seed is that out of one you can get millions. The beauty of the pollinator is it turns that one into the million. And that’s an economics of abundance. That’s an economics of sharing. That’s to me the real economics of growth. Because life is growing. The economics and technology of hybridization, of genetic modification is a deliberate creation of scarcity.”

	Article Written by: Angie Lavezzo
	About the Author: Angie Lavezzo is the former general manager of Sow True Seed. Beyond her professional role at Sow True, Angie's passion for gardening extends into personal hands-on experience, fostering plants and reaping bountiful harvests.