About

About

Welcome to Happy Acres! This page gives me a chance to tell you a little bit about myself, and this blog.

In 2007 I retired after 40 years in the IT area, where over the course of my career I did everything from computer operations to mainframe programming, disaster recovery to site security, and local and remote networking and telecommunications. Whew, I am so glad to be out of that rat-race! So if I sound a little geeky sometimes you’ll understand where it comes from.

I now live on a 1.6 acre plot that my wife and I call Happy Acres. I share this space with her and our 2 cats, plus a menagerie of outdoor wildlife both large and small – some more welcome than others.

I stay busy with gardening, cooking,  beekeeping, photography and volunteering my time with various local organizations. I enjoy traveling, but always look forward to coming back home. I’ve been growing things for some 40 years now, and there’s always lots to learn and new things to try in the garden and kitchen.

Happy Acres has a large vegetable garden, a smaller kitchen garden near the house, various flower gardens, an asparagus patch, plus herbs, raspberries, blueberries, currants, blackberries and gooseberries. An old orchard is being replanted with new varieties and should begin bearing in a year or two (if the deer don’t eat the trees). An 8×12 greenhouse grows food, seedlings and cuttings year round, and provides a summer home for many tropical plants. Our area is rated as being in the USDA Plant Hardiness Zone 6b, but of late our winter weather has been more like that in zone 7a.

We garden organically, using sustainable and responsible practices. We do our best to be good stewards of the land. We compost all organic materials from our household in compost bins made of rough sawn red cedar. We practice integrated pest management (IPM), using prevention and monitoring for pests first, then using the least harmful and organic methods for pest control when necessary.

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PHOTOS:

All photos on this site have been taken by me or my wife, unless otherwise specified. All images and text are copyrighted and may not be used without my express permission. Please contact me using the form below if you have any questions.

RECIPES:

All recipes on this site have been tested by me – usually many times. All recipes have been created or adapted by me, unless otherwise specified. Please feel free to print, use, share, or adapt them to suit your own tastes or needs. I use Living Cookbook 2015 recipe management software to manage my recipe collection. The nutritional information, limited as it is to our current understanding of macro nutrients, is provided by the Living Cookbook software, and is mostly from USDA nutrient databases. It is provided here for informational purposes only.

REVIEWS:

I do not receive any compensation or other consideration for any reviews of products, seeds or plants on this website. All opinions expressed are my own, and uninfluenced by any potential remuneration of any kind. I do not accept advertising requests, not do I allow spam comments that promote commercial websites. And I’m not a member of any affiliate programs, not that there’s anything wrong with them. I do cheerfully accept samples to try, as long as there are no strings attached.

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION:

© HappyAcresBlog, 2009-2021. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and owner is strictly prohibited. Photos may not be used without my permission. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Dave@HappyAcres and Happyacres.blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

 

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