As I watched this winter’s snow melt, I plotted my backyard garden with the same fervor that I planned my own wedding. After years of renting, I was soon to be a first-time member of the home-gardening club, and I was ready. After the maps were drafted and the spreadsheets complete…
It’s an overcast morning in late February, and Missoula’s northside neighborhood is quiet except for the backyard of Mark Vander Meer, where embers pop from a fire pit and iron clangs against steel. Vander Meer, blacksmithing hobbyist and owner of the Missoula companies Bad Goat Forest Products and Watershed Consulting, Read more…
When you set out to dig a backyard garden bed, chances are you are more motivated by visions of the fall harvest than by notions of emotional wellbeing and community resilience. And yet, happiness and resilience are both benefits cultivated by the act of gardening. In a recent study by Read more…
Square dancing in a parking lot beneath a star-speckled sky. String lights illuminating ripening apples and flowering lettuce. Paper plates loaded with food-truck fare. Conversations punctuated by the crunch of footsteps on crushed glass. Fiddle tunes playing late into the night. The Garden Party has long been an autumn staple Read more…
Each May, the MUD crew gears up to hold our much-anticipated Llama Poo Sale. The manure of llamas and alpacas contains an elixir of nutrients similar to what you’ll find in most livestock manures – namely nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium – but with several additional benefits that make it a top Read more…
As we attempt to distance ourselves from one another, let’s not forget that we are all firmly planted on this planet, together. On this 50th anniversary of Earth Day, here’s how you can honor and speak up for our one and only planet earth.