I just took part in saving America’s Most Endangered Mountain- Coal River Mountain! Coal River Mountain could be a clean energy wind farm- or a 6,600 acre mountaintop removal wasteland. I urge you to contact the Obama Administration today and ask them to stop the blasting that has just started on the mountain.

http://www.ilovemountains.org/coalriver

There is also a danger associated with a coal sludge dam near the current blast site. So not only are local residents afraid of losing the last remaining mountain in Coal River Valley, their lives are in danger should the dam fail. Please help by emailing the Obama Administration today!

You can multiply your impact for preserving the mountains and communities of Central Appalachia, as well as our nation’s drinking water, by getting your friends to take action.

There’s alot going on here at The RiverRest this spring. We’ve been busy getting the garden ready, preparing the soil and starting transplants. It seems like every year it gets bigger.

We had to find ways to keep the chickens out of the garden. All of the Bamboo that Charley and Tony cut and hauled here really came in handy. We used it to build a fence around the main garden and the Potato Patch. So Far So Good. We’ll be publishing our stick fence building experiences as soon as we get around to writing it. In the meantime, here’s some photos of our new bamboo fences.

Last year we built a primitive stick fence around the new Strawberry Patch. We used sticks, limbs and twigs from the woods. It lasted the Winter but was in need of some repairs so we decided to try something new with the bamboo.

Probably the most exciting thing to happen is with the chickens. Red, one of our hens, went broody. She started sitting on a few eggs so we jumped at the chance to let her hatch them.

I’ve got many things I want to tell you all about. Like about how our dog Pearl has become an egg retriever, making Dandelion Jelly and what to do with KnotWeed. So, please bear with me. I’ll get around tuit, soon, I promise!

©2009 Susan Hoke

Someone posted this question on a forum I visit. I started thinking of some of the things we do here on the River Rest that keeps trash out of the landfill.

The 3 R’s. REDUCE – REUSE – RECYCLE.

Reduce,reuse,recycle

Our county has a pretty good recycle program. They take the usual; newspaper,plastics,aluminum,glass and cardboard. They also take used motor oil and car batteries. We utilize this program as much as we can. The little things add up.
We not only recycle, we REUSE.
[Read more →]

That’s what we call the wild Raspberries that grow around here. They are usually the first berry to ripen. There’s only about a 2 week window in which to pick them. To me it’s one of the first great tastes of summer. Tony went up on the mountain & picked us a bunch.

I made a Thimbleberry Crisp for dessert tonight. Ummmm! [Read more →]

A dear friend of ours planted a butterfly garden outside her kitchen window. The flowers bloomed and the butterflies were her delight. She told everyone about her beautiful garden and the abundance of wonderful butterflies that it attracted. It was refreshing to see someone, who in her sixties, get so excited about something so simple.

One day my mother stopped by to pay our friend a visit. Immediately she noticed that the butterfly garden was gone, destroyed, she said it looked as if a tornado had touched down and left the flowers strewn about in heaps all over the ground. [Read more →]