Nothing says fresh summer flavors more than Green Goddess dressing!
Grabbing handfuls of all the herbs and creating a magically delicious while nutrient dense topping for things from salads, to chips and sweet potato fries couldn’t be easier. It is literally dump, blend, and pour (or dip).
Let’s make it easy to preserve your harvest! Harvesting and eating from our garden is what we work so hard for. And there’s nothing like those sun warmed tomatoes, or is there? What about homemade tomato soup in February, or strawberry jam in January?
Michelle prepping corn for canning
Being able to preserve your harvests to enjoy longer somehow tastes + feels even better. It also feels like the step between being a gardener and a modern day homesteader. Let’s get you capturing those flavors to savor throughout the seasons!
Many of us are getting back into preserving our own food for so many reasons—the better nutrition, reducing food waste and our carbon foot print, more control of ingredients. Not to mention most of these ways are easy and a great way to feel more connected to our food!
We finally hit a new milestone at our suburban homestead last summer- preserving eggs! When we couldn’t keep up with the eggs our hens were laying we had to make some decisions.
What a wonderful problem to have. But I also wanted to make the most of our surplus for those winter months when the eggs dwindle. Especially because I knew that most of my girls were in for their first serious molting (usually happens around 18 months old) and so we’d be short on eggs come winter.
So, I did what most modern-day, first-generation homesteaders do- I took to the internet and started researching…
The number and diversity of bugs that want to eat what you grow is truly staggering, but we’ll tackle organic garden pest control together.
With new insects coming into our gardens every season (thanks climate change) it can seem like a losing battle.
But looking at each insect as part of a larger ecosystem can calm fears and get us into the right mindset when finding yet another new bug eating our plants.
We love bird baths AND we love our huge Rhubarb leaves—so we decided to combine them into this easy DIY Cement Rhubarb leaf bird bath!
We also had gigantic leaves and a partial bag of concrete at the same time as a broken bird bath bowl. So this was a project begging to be done!
This is DIY project is truly easy enough for the kids to help with. There’s a little prep, some fast action while pouring the cement onto the leaf, then patience while waiting to dry. The only fussy part is removing any stuck leaf material by scrubbing off the cement after it has set. From start to finish, ours took a few days to complete- and will last years!
Rhubarb combines some serious garden nostalgia with punchy modern takes on how we eat it. There’s so much to love about this perennial plant, so let’s dig right in!
First off, rhubarb is a vegetable, not a fruit, even though we treat it like one.
Second, it was originally cultivated in the far east over 2,000 years ago and used medicinally, for cleansing the body, stomach issues and reducing fever.
Thirdly, only eat the stalk. The leaves are toxic and contain oxalic acid, which can build up in the kidneys and cause kidney stones and even failure.
These local plant sales will start your garden off right! Good for your garden, the pollinators, your harvests and the community.
Plants grown for the sales I mention are never treated with Neonicotinoid pesticides, are non-GMO, always locally raised by experts- and the sales directly benefit some great gardening programs.
Listed in Chronological order- ladies and gentlemen, save these dates!
Choosing local flowers can have as big an environmental impact as the food we buy!
With Mother’s Day coming up – which accounts for about 25% of all cut flower sales in the U.S. annually, I thought it was time to dig deeper into the dirty side of floriculture and look into the growing trend of local flowers…
Did you know that cut flowers are one of the biggest offenders when it comes to being sprayed with synthetic pesticides and herbicides. And with a nearly $60 billion industry in the U.S., Americans bring a lot of those sprayed blooms home and then seat themselves around them for meals…
It is so empowering to be able to make something like homemade mayonnaise in your own kitchen you thought you had to buy from a store!
This is such an easy staple to be able to swap out, and so much healthier for you and your family too- with all real ingredients and it tastes so much better than anything you can buy in the store!
With a stick blender and some simple ingredients; oil + egg + acid you’ll be amazed at how quickly this comes together!
Let’s get your garden dreams onto paper so you can make harvesting from your garden a reality this summer! A little planning can go a long way. To that end, I’ve created a step by step Garden Planning Guide for you.
First – let’s get clear on what YOUR garden goals are. Setting an intention up front (and knowing it will change with/in the seasons) can be a welcome guidepost later in the planning process. Try to not to compare your gardens or goals to anyone else’s.