Learning how to make an infused herbal oil is the first step in making numerous all-natural body care recipes like herbal salves, body butters, and creams. Making an infused oil is easier than you might think, and the perfect first project for a beginner herbalist. Herbal Academy Courses Well hello there! As I’ve mentioned before,…
Homestead & DIY
We have 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 and dehydrating food, harvesting rainwater, and DIY projects like making a homemade apple press, an herb and flower drying screen, or even your own beeswax food wraps!
How to Dehydrate Peppers for Food Storage
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! Here’s how to dehydrate peppers for food storage. Why Dehydrate Vegetables? The…
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
Making your own all natural herbal salve is so easy! This salve is the perfect beginner herbal medicine recipe for a beginning herbalist. Use it on minor cuts, scrapes, bruises, bites, stings, rashes and dry skin. It has powerful healing benefits with all of the medicinal herbs it contains, and smells divine! Learn how to…
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 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…
