Spring is the season of new beginnings and new growth. As the temperature starts to warm up and everything begins to thaw from the winter, spring foraging options increase! This is the time of year for fresh salad greens, tasty spring flowers and shoots, medicinal plants, and a few edible mushrooms. This list of what…
Getting Started
Learn the basics and get started with healthy, seasonal, simple living. Discover the DIY tutorials that will help you master any of the recipes you'll find on Grow, Forage, Cook, Ferment.
Basics like mastering the easy-to-identify edible mushrooms or brewing your first gallon of mead. Grab a basket and head out to forage in the spring, start an herb garden and plant a simple herb like mint, and once you're harvesting herbs, learn to make an herbal salve.
Chickweed Pesto: Wild Greens Superfood Recipe
Foraging is one of the most rewarding things that you can do, especially when you find a huge patch of a highly nutritious plant such as chickweed. While it’s always fun to find and identify a wild edible plant here and there, it can be a rare occasion to be able to harvest enough to…
What to Forage in Winter: 30+ Edible and Medicinal Plants and Fungi
Foraging in winter is not always easy, and it gets even harder the further north or higher in elevation that you are. The super cold temperatures, low light, and heavy snow cover in these areas can really make it difficult for anything to persist and survive through winter. There are a few wild plants that…
Fermented Honey Garlic
I’m really excited to share this post with you! Fermented honey garlic is something I’ve been wanting to try for a very long time, ever since I first read about it on the Killer Pickles blog. I usually reserve my honey for mead making, but using it for other ferments intrigued me. Don’t ask me…
5 Easy to Identify Edible Mushrooms
Mushroom hunting can be a bit scary, especially if you’re a beginner. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t do it, though. Everyone has to start somewhere! I always advise that beginners should first start mushroom foraging by simply paying attention. Observe the different mushrooms that you may see, and consult a guidebook as you go…
10 Reasons to Grow Mint (Without Fear)
Mint has a bad reputation for taking over the garden, for good reason. But, there are many reasons to grow mint in your backyard without fear! Even though mint is a highly beneficial plant, due to its spreading nature, many of us opt to just go without it all together. The problem with doing this…
How to Grow and Use Calendula
I was so happy when we moved into our house and discovered that the backyard was covered in calendula flowers! I use this flower in so many of my herbal preparations because it’s a wonder plant, full of so many benefits. Calendula is a plant that everyone should have in their yard, for multiple reasons….
How to Make Soap For Beginners + Calendula Soap Recipe
I’m going to say right now that I am no expert when it comes to making homemade soap. In fact, what you will see in this post is how to make soap for beginners. This is because I am also very much a beginner! The benefit from learning from a soap making newbie like me…
How to Make an Herbal Salve
I’m so excited for this post as this is something that I’ve been wanting to do for a long while! If I had known how easy this is I would have done it years ago. I’m going to show you how to make an herbal salve with herbs that you can forage or are most…
How to Make a Gallon of Mead: A Simple Mead Recipe
Maybe you’ve heard of mead before or maybe you haven’t, but one image that always seems to come to mind when mead is mentioned is Vikings drinking their grog. I don’t know a whole lot about Vikings, but I do know a bit about mead! Mead is a fermented honey and water mixture, some call…
