I truly can’t believe I’ve been sharing garden, homestead, farmer, and food stories with you all for eight years now.

Thanks for being part of the movement to heal our earth one garden, homestead, and meal at a time.

In those 8 years lots has changed and much has stayed the same. Locavore is a known word. Farmers markets have exploded. We’re inching towards Victory Garden era numbers of people gardening (but not quantity yet). Climate news has gotten scarier, but many people are doing more.

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With early planting and adding a few varieties, we can get you growing spinach all season long!

A few tweaks and tricks can strengthen our spinach growing skills and save us from buying those—very expensive and oh so wasteful—plastic bags of half-wilted greens shipped across the country.

Not to mention the multiple recalls for listeria and E.coli outbreaks…

And, as we know that produce loses around 30% of its nutritional value within days of harvesting, growing our own makes sense both to our personal health and the health of the planet.

Plus, crunching sweet spinach leaves is one of the joys of an early season garden.

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I started growing leeks about 8 years ago and now can’t imagine the end of a harvest season without them!

Plus—leek powder is a must in my spice rack now (more on that later)!

Leeks are like the cosmopolitan older cousin to onions—graceful lines compared to round and squat stature. They have a more sophisticated flavor; and yet somehow easier to grow for me!

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with Michelle of Forks in the Dirt

2025 is the spring to dig deeper into your gardening and homesteading skills!

**Check my Social Media for Spring 2026 Classes**

I am so excited to have public, in person classes available and now open for registration!

Feb 12th – 6:30-8pm– Herbal Salve Making
*SOLD OUT* Anchor Coffee House

Feb 27th – 6-8pm Intro to Small-Scale Homesteading
(with Stephanie Thurow + Starter Kits provided)
Richfield Community Center

March 2nd – 9:30am-3pm Practical Permaculture to Get You Started
*SOLD OUT*(with Elaina Moss)
Women’s Environmental Institute

April 14th – 6:30-8pm – Intro to Small-Scale Homesteading
(with Stephanie Thurow)
WBL Public Library – FREE!

April 16th – 6:30-8pm – Seed Starting + ‘Winter’ Sowing
*SOLD OUT* Anchor Coffee House

If you want to make a recipe that will turn ‘kale no’ into ‘KALE YEAH’ – here it is.

This is the perfect balance of healthy kale hiding in creamy cheesy perfection, finished with a crispy topping. This has become a holiday family meal favorite- and that’s saying somethings with all those kale haters out there 😉

Bacon fat is an amazing addition but not necessary for this recipe.  And as with all my recipes there’s room for making them different each time, or just to make them your own. Sometimes I’ll add in the bacon, or if my family ate all the bacon, I’ll just use the bacon fat to sauté the leeks and onions… a bit of pancetta or even smoked ham would be delicious too. If you like it spicy, add in the hot pepper flakes or even some dashes of hot sauce. If you don’t use bacon fat, taste test and add salt as needed.

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Find your new favorite by comparing twelve tomato varieties with me.

Did you know that tomatoes have been bred for different purposes for centuries?

Some are perfect for popping in your mouth, like cherry tomatoes. Some are meant to balance out that bacon on a BLT, like the huge heirloom slicers. And some are best for making sauce, like the thick and meaty paste tomatoes. And then there are a million variations in between!

With over 10,000 known tomato varieties, this is of course a very limited list. But it’s also based on my nearly twenty years of growing tomatoes in the north.

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