Common Ground

I'm a data nerd who married into a farm—and I built real farm recordkeeping systems for it. Here's how index cards, dry-erase walls, and a custom-built app turn everyday chores into provable, scalable proof that regenerative farming actually works.

Join me on my Florida apartment patio as we navigate the brutal summer heat and the heavy seasons of life. Discover the slow, rewarding growth of my tiny container orchard—from resilient Cuban oregano to a challenging vanilla orchid. Learn about my custom 'Tiny Orchard Blend' soil and how these small, introspective gardening victories can bring peace and grounding to a busy life.

Baby goats, brutal Florida heat, and hours in the worm bins — this week's field notes on grief, growth, and what it means to feed the invisible things that quietly hold everything else together.

I went out to change the fence line. The fence line changed me. Ninety photographs, thirty-three native species, and one thing I almost walked past that I will never forget.

A misunderstanding about compost is not a gardening problem—it is a literacy problem. Here is what the lab numbers actually say about finished compost versus raw manure.

Four citrus trees on an apartment balcony three flights up. A dramatic Ponderosa lemon. A tomato sharing a pot with a succulent. And a gardening assistant named Stevie who supervises from inside a cardboard box. Is it slightly unhinged? Probably. But even tiny things are still growing through hard seasons.

we hadn't had rain in weeks. The fields to the left—baked bare. The pastures to the right—exhausted, dusty, and parched. But the fog stayed here. Right over our windrows. Right over the exact ground where we've been building soil for fifteen years.

We bought it used but loved, knowing it had started its life at Walt Disney World. Then we followed the thread back — and found Walt Disney's own words about soil and nature that stopped us cold.