We’re at the end of summer, when the bounty of the season is in full swing. Time to start preserving the harvest in any and every way. Canning and freezing are the most common ways to do this, but don’t forget about dehydrating! This is a simple and effective way to preserve food for storage,…
Homestead & DIY
Joel and I just bought our own little urban homestead and we are so excited to share our homesteading endeavors with you! This is where I will be talking about things like storing and preserving food, harvesting rainwater, natural building, living off grid, and alternative means of heating, cooling, and power for your home. I will also cover some survival topics, which are becoming more and more important in this day and age.
How to Make an Herb and Flower Drying Screen
Hello my wonderful blog readers! I recently wrote an article for the The Herbal Academy about how to make an herb and flower drying screen, and I wanted to make sure to share it with you here as well so you don’t miss out! Growing your own medicinal, culinary, or otherwise useful herbs and flowers…
How to Build a Permaculture Swale Planting Bed
Hello my gardening friends! As I alluded to in my recent updates post, I have a really cool project to share with you today. If you’ve been reading my blog for a little while then you know that I’m big into permaculture, and my husband Joel is even more so than me. He has taken…
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 Ditch Your Lawn and Grow Food
Grow Food Not Lawns! This is my new mantra. While lawns can be nice for playing soccer, rolling around on, or as a place for your dog to poop (don’t roll on it after that), all of those tasks can be done elsewhere. Beyond that, with the drought that we’re having out west, why would…
How to Bottle 5 Gallons of Mead (or wine)
Hello all of you lovely fermenters! Have you made mead yet? If you haven’t, you should start with my How to Make a Gallon of Mead post. Once you do that you will probably want more… a lot more if you’re like most people! So your next step is my How to Make 5 Gallons…
How to Make 5 Gallons of Mead
I’m sure most of you have seen my How to Make a Gallon of Mead post as it’s still one of my top posts on the blog! It really makes me happy to think of all of you that I have inspired to go out and make your own delicious mead. It’s so easy and…
How to Make a Rain Barrel
Spring is coming! I know that this is when a lot of you out there get torrential downpours. April showers bring May flowers, right? When I was growing up in the Portland area I coined the term April showers bring May showers! It’s true, although thankfully here in Southern Oregon it’s not quite as dismal…
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…
How to Make Yogurt in a Dehydrator
Did you know that all you need to make yogurt is yogurt? And milk, of course. That’s why fermenting is so cool! You’re basically transporting a bit of the beneficial bacteria to a new medium so that it will continue to multiply and turn into something even more awesome. It’s actually almost like pre-digestion in…
