We wanted to let everyone know that the 2013 Greenville Urban Farm Tour website has some misinformation that we hope will be fixed soon. In spite of the detailed listing under their “Tour Sites” link, Appalachian Feet is not one of the sites on the fall UFT. Please do not stop by our house that day. If you want to…
We have new classes available! Click here to see the list of topics. We have classes for beginners through experts on subjects like permaculture, soil, insects, beneficial wildlife habitats, plant propagation, fruits, vegetables, seeds, heirlooms, backyard chickens, beekeeping, winter growing, and preparing a garden for next season. We’re teaching small classes (limited to 12 students per class and available first…
Our posts have gotten increasingly photo intensive lately so I wanted to draw attention to the fact that we’ve started using expandable summaries on our blog. Hiding most the photos behind a cut makes it much easier to load the home page. Expandable summaries are pretty common on blogs, but not everyone is familiar with them. All it means is…
Touring, photographing, and sharing permaculture gardens in my area seems like I task I will never get tired of. With that in mind, welcome to my new blog series. I will be showcasing “official” tours as well as informal visits to existing and aspiring permaculture sites in the region. Learning from the ingenious little ways people connect to their ecosystem…
When I started signing up for more permaculture classes this year, my friends and family made fun of me. The thing is, permaculture is more like an artist’s palette than an exact formula. Anyone can use it, but the more you learn and practice, the more likely you are to make a masterpiece. Plus, I just love taking classes. In…
For me, guilty pleasure isn’t buying a bag of Doritos or reading People magazine (especially since I have no idea who most celebrities are these days). Instead, I feel sheepish when I grow plants without being able to explain what they’re good for. “Useless” plants is how I got in to gardening in the first place. Around the age of…
While in Asheville, I found these cherries behind a building in a residential neighborhood I frequent. I hadn’t noticed them before which made me wonder if I wasn’t being observant or if this past winter was ideal for cherries. Many fruits need the perfect quantity of chill hours followed by a period without snap freezes to produce. I collect black…
Since my daughter is really into wild skills her grandma enrolled her in some classes as a Christmas present — including a full day of hearth cooking at the Hagood Mill in Pickens, SC. This class is taught by Carol Bozarth through the Pickens County Museum of Art and History. We booked 2 slots for the April 13th class (yes,…
I often do or learn a heap of things at once and think I’m going to break it down into a series of bite-sized blog posts. It almost never happens — I post the first segment and then get too distracted to finish the rest. The orphaned contents of Appalachian Feet’s “drafts” folder is bursting at the seams. I don’t…
April heralded my first (epic) case of writer’s block. I’ve never run so close on a deadline before, but fortunately my brain clicked into place at the last minute and you can read the result in this season’s summer “honey” issue of Edible Upcountry magazine. Let me also emphatically recommend The Carolina Honeybee Company in Travelers Rest, SC for excellent…
The key here is “when they become a problem.” In general, pillbugs, or roly polies as I grew up calling them, are quite nice little composters. The textbook “fact” is that pillbugs prefer to eat rotting organic matter and only graduate to other foods when they can’t find enough. That’s actually false. They’re opportunistic omnivores, and they’re going to eat…
One of the things we found when searching for permaculture materials online is that there is a lot of chaff to sift through to find the viable seeds. If you click on a “permaculture” video that shows nothing but dancing hippies or tells you to buy lots of drip irrigation and soil amendments, you’re in the wrong place. In order…
On Tuesday evening we created the brand new SC Upstate Permaculture Society. Barely three days later we already have 80 members! Here’s the description of our group: Free & beginners welcome! Permaculture is an agriculture/garden movement that tries to be sustainable and self-sufficient. It incorporates the home and community as well. We’re planning to have meetings where members can talk…
In 2011, I wrote about White Nose Syndrome, and what people can do to help. We knew then it was only a matter of time before the deadly bat disease turned up in South Carolina. On March 11th, 2013, DNR reported that Table Rock State Park near Pickens is the location of South Carolina’s first confirmed WNS case. We feel…