Everyone has heard stories of the Native Americans saving the first settlers in the New World from starvation. Leaving their homelands, the settlers came to America expecting to practice the same farming techniques they used in Europe. But disease, drought, and cruel living conditions brought famine that few survived. If not for the native people bringing food and teaching the settlers foraging skills, we would not be here today.

It’s the dead of night. Your air conditioning is on the fritz and you can’t sleep for the heat. Unfortunately, your wife stored the box fan in the shed out back. Dying for a little air movement, you grab a flashlight, shining a dim beam at best, and head for the backyard. Just as you unlock the door, the flashlight goes out leaving you in the dark.

I remember my seventh-grade class gathering photos, newspaper clippings, maps, and other special things to create a time capsule. We put everything into a milk can (remember those?) and buried it at the edge of the school property. The plan was to dig it up in the year 2000.

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Deno and Tina Poulos’ kitchen is full of wonderful stories of their Greek upbringing, how they met, and of course, cooking.

Deno’s father James founded the Charcoal Steak House in 1956. After selling it, the family started DJ’s Brasserie in Tanglewood.

“Growing up in the restaurant business was hard,” Deno said.

Ever since I can remember, I’ve wanted to grow lemons. When we lived in Florida, our backyard was a forest of citrus trees—tangerine, pomelo, orange, and pink grapefruit. Twenty years ago, we moved back to my roots in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. Not exactly the place to grow lemons.

When you bought your home 10 years ago, you thought the garage and basement plenty large enough for storage. But add a couple kids with bicycles and sporting equipment, lawn tools, and that second freezer, and you find yourself busting at the seams. What you need is an outdoor storage shed.

Living the “acreage life” frequently means foregoing a summer vacation. Although the kids are out of school, few folks can get away when the crops need planted, tended, or harvested. But that doesn’t mean you can’t take any vacation. Many folks save their vacation time for a ski trip in the mountains, or for when the beaches are not overcrowded.

Have you had enough winter yet? Enough cold? When it dipped to the single digits I found myself pricing tickets to Florida, where I would bunk in with my best friend and roommate from college, Peggy, and lay on the beach soaking up the warmth of the sun. But the timing wasn’t right. I had just said “Yes!” to returning to Shenandoah Living.

Hidden away under the shade of a pecan tree, in the corner of the home on the corner of the street, is where Laura Farmer goes to unwind after a day of teaching at Virginia Tech and mothering two small girls.

“It is my Zen place,” Laura said, referring to her recently remodeled master bath.

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