Bad Acre

10/24/2026

Weekly progress! Slowly chipping away at it once or twice a week right now, and my shoulder is letting me push a little more, too.

The cooler weather will soon make it harder to see where the asparagus crowns are, so knocking back the overgrowth has taken priority over some of my other outdoor tasks. I need to identify the strongest crowns so I can transplant them into the rows I’m keeping later this winter.

I’ve set some limits for myself this time around. Next year’s focus is on maintaining the three remaining rows, cleaning up what used to be the border row, (maybe) adding three smaller raised beds where the previous rows were, and simply maintaining everything for the year. As I get a handle on keeping these smaller areas under control, I’ll add a bed or two each year into the cleared space.

Of course, not everything needs to become a bed. Adding another elderberry, blueberry, or other perennial plant is also on the table as more space opens up.

Another big consideration as I rework the growing space is reducing and eventually eliminating plastic. My long-term goal is to transition away from the geotextile fabric in the walkways entirely. In the meantime, all newly established areas will be plastic-free from the start. One step at a time!

Finally, I’m trying to be more mindful of what I take on for the long term. I want to make sure I’m not adding things that will become too stressful or physically taxing to maintain. I bought this ranch-style house with the intention of staying here, and I want the growing space to remain manageable as I get older. If something is overly strenuous now, it certainly won’t get easier 10 or 20 years down the road.

So, the goal is to build something that works for my current lifestyle, works for the household, and is still enjoyable to maintain. And hopefully, one that requires a little less wrestling with the weeds along the way.

10/17/2026

Anyone relate? I don’t cover the blueberries but I have considered it.

When we first started this garden I planted berries and used bird netting. Didn’t work. Guess who went and scooched her way under it? The dog. She’d go and eat all the raspberries. The birds would get through the gaps the dog left. And I gave up growing berries for several years. I decided I’d only bother again when I could afford to build a berry cage. And that’s what I’ve now got. Strawberries, raspberries, boysenberries, blackberries, and a dwarf nectarine tree now inhabit my little berry prison. The birds hate me. The dog feels sad. But we get to eat the berries!

10/14/2026

Happy “Gotcha Day” to our little rescue.

Iris was found by me along with another dog while I was working my route in the Amelia and Nottoway area. You hear stories about dogs being dumped, but you never really expect to witness it yourself. I couldn’t just leave them there.

After getting the dogs off the road, I finished my last delivery in the area, found a local rescue willing to take them in, then went on break and drove back to get them. Sadly, the other dog didn’t make it, but Iris did.

I reached out to the rescue about adopting her, provided she got along with the other dog I had at the time, and everything just clicked.

She’s been hogging the bed and loving us right back every day since. We wouldn’t have it any other way. 💜🐾

10/13/2026

Iris and I took a little field trip to PetSmart yesterday. She wasn’t aware of it, but she was due for a new bag of food sometime this week.

But more importantly, we perused the treat aisle in search of something to bring a little seasonal fun to our Sniffspot guests. Iris settled on these two, and you’ll find them waiting in the mini fridge!

No costumes required. Available until you make them disappear. 👻🐾

10/08/2026

Sniffspot friends: Were you or someone else recently victimized by being startled as we passed by our newfound Problem Window?

If so, we owe you an apology. Your surprise has also been ours!

We spent far too long debating how to remedy the sudden, much larger view into the house that our guests now had. We just had to stop debating it long enough for me to swing by Lowe’s after work.

If you’re a newer Sniffspot guest (or haven’t visited yet), you wouldn’t remember that this window has held a very large window AC unit. In fact, one had been there for the past 14 years. We installed an alternative setup this summer, which roughly doubled the amount of accessible window.

Everything is so much brighter in what is usually a darker section of the house. But with all that extra light came a much easier view of us, too. Particularly since this window happens to be right beside the mini fridge and a door into one of the more frequently accessed areas of the house. Which means there was a little more opportunity for surprise human appearances than we realized.

We want you and your beloved furry family members to feel comfortable here, especially our reactive-dog guests. So after entirely too much discussion, we (me. I did it 🤣) finally decided to do something about it.

10/07/2026

It still doesn’t feel particularly good posting photos of an overgrown growing space, no matter how much I justify it to myself.

There’s a huge positive: I’ve now had two outcome measures since my second procedure, and for the first time in more than six months since the injury, I’m actually seeing and feeling improvement in my range of motion and abilities - and I have numbers to prove it!!! That feels pretty damn good.

I’m still slowly figuring out how much and how often I can work my arm, because frankly, I still have too many bad pain days and nights. After an easier day yesterday, I took advantage of the beautiful weather after work to start knocking back the growing space. Tomorrow…. well, we will see how much it hates me.

The first priority is simply getting everything roughly cut back so I can actually see what I’m working with and identify the areas/plants that will be moved, changed, or otherwise reimagined through the fall and winter. It’s a fairly moderate task for my shoulder, which makes it a good place to start. I don’t anticipate touching the chainsaw for another couple of months. There’s plenty to do before then anyway.

Baby steps, as it were, both for me and for tackling this monster of a growing space.

10/05/2026

Seasonal pear ravioli is made! And this new ravioli form absolutely took it to the level I’ve been working toward.

I left the rosemary out of the filling this year to really let the pear be the champion flavor. The cheeses are there to complement and brighten it, which is exactly what I want from this dish.

People tend to give me a funny look when I say “pear ravioli,” so I’m going to challenge you here: keep an open mind if this is the first time you’re seeing this here.

My first attempt with the new form was a little…sticky. So I started flouring the mold. Perfection. Sometimes culinary innovation is just knowing when to add more flour.

As I rethink the growing space over the next year, I’ll be focusing more on growing for the household and growing more of the ingredients I use in these special seasonal dishes. I want to expand the number of dishes I make while also getting better at preserving what we grow. This year, that meant making and freezing pesto for the first time, and I’m hoping to build on that.

This pear ravioli is especially meaningful to me because while it was inspired by other recipes, it has become uniquely my own. Every year I make little tweaks, and with each one it becomes a little more mine. That’s really the goal with all of these seasonal dishes: take something I’ve grown, make it the star, and keep finding new ways to challenge and delight the people lucky enough to try it. Maybe even inspire someone else to look at an ingredient a little differently.

10/03/2026

It’s beginning to look a lot like cooler weather! 🍂 🎃 Friends, we love this time of year. It means our fur babies can run themselves ragged without heat exhaustion kicking in, and there’s finally a little more time for them to enjoy all that outdoor space.

And if you’re coming for a visit, we’ve decorated for the season! We’re still a long way from growing our own pumpkins, but they sure do bring out the fall vibes.

A couple of seasonal notes for our guests:

Feel free to adjust the fan under the shelter as needed. As temperatures start dropping below 70°, I’ll be turning it off more often.

The mini fridge will also disappear around the end of the month so we can protect it from the winter weather.

Enjoy the cooler weather friends. We certainly will!

10/01/2026

I removed the tomatoes this week to make way for whatever comes next. Fingers crossed I can get back into seasonal plantings a little this year.

I thought there were only a few small green tomatoes still hanging on, so I was pleasantly surprised to find a small haul. My gf and I had talked about making fried green tomatoes earlier in the season, and I thought our opportunity had passed. Turns out, the tomatoes had one last little treat in store for us and we enjoyed them as a perfect end-of-summer snack.

Did you know you can freeze green tomatoes to fry up later?

I’ve found it saves time to prep them all at once and freeze whatever we aren’t going to eat within a day or two. The important part is getting rid of as much excess water as possible before breading them for the freezer. After slicing, sprinkle the tomatoes with salt and let them sit for about 10 minutes. Pat them thoroughly dry to remove the moisture that’s been drawn to the surface. Then bread them however you like with flour, buttermilk, and cornmeal.

Fry the ones you’re ready to eat, then freeze the rest flat and individually. Once they’re frozen, transfer them to a freezer-safe container and you’ve got fried green tomatoes waiting for a future craving 💚

09/27/2026

I know I need to give myself grace and patience with my shoulder injury, but watching the growing space get reclaimed by weeds again has been more than a little disheartening.

There has been a silver lining - having some forced downtime has given me a chance to really look at what works, what doesn’t, and where I want Bad Acre to go after so much has changed over the past 14 years. As we move more toward a farmstead approach, I’m also thinking more about how the growing space can provide for our own household, rather than simply trying to keep up with what I’ve been doing.

On Monday, I had a second procedure on my shoulder. It improved my range of motion, but it’s still difficult to use and excruciatingly painful. I keep testing the waters and seeing what my capacity is, and as that improves, I’ll slowly reclaim and transform the growing space as the cooler weather moves in.

Reimagining nearly the entire space wasn’t an easy decision, but I think it will ultimately give me a better long-term setup for the farmstead and, hopefully, a growing space that works with me.

The planning has already begun. The full plan will take more than a year to bring to life, but that’s okay. For now, I’m figuring out what’s possible, learning to breathe through what’s out of my immediate control, working within the limits I have, and letting the next version of this space take shape a little at a time.