We’re still in the process of getting our house move-in ready, but it’s always a treat to go visit the land we’ll soon be living with.
Without any input at all there are many strawberry blossoms!
Homestead Update – The Beginning
Tag Archives: reskilling
Our New Homestead!
After at least 10 years of dreaming, 2 years looking at properties, and 7 months working on closing on this particular piece of land, we finally have our permaculture homestead. These 23 acres are the land that will sustain us into the future, where we hope our dreams will blossom into fruition, and where we will grow together as a family and into our community.
Help others step lightly!
Back to the Garden (+ the Littlest Permaculturist)
Today was the first day I really dug my hands into the soil for quite some time. I’ve been putting it off for a few reasons — mostly because of the weather, but also because I’ve felt conflicted about whether or not I should invest the time when we will hopefully be moving in the next couple of months.
However, the soil still calls asking me to dip my hands in, refresh my immune system, and connect with the Earthly energies. I couldn’t resist.
A lot of today was just clean-up. I was very pregnant last fall and didn’t get the beds taken care of the way that I should have.
There were also little surprise tasks like baby garlic plants ready to be separated and begin life anew. Hopefully somebody will be able to harvest these culinary delights in the fall!
Help others step lightly!
Permaculture for Urban Homes and Small Spaces
One of the best things about blogging is discovering a new community of people with shared interests and goals. One such kindred spirit is Mari of the blog Gather and Grow. She is a fellow lover of permaculture and has graciously shared some great tips and inspiration for many of us who are interested in being more self-sufficient but feel limited by the space constraints of the urban environment.
Whether you live in an urban environment, or on many acres of land – I think you’ll find something useful here!
Permaculture Strategies for Urban Homes and Small Spaces
Permaculture designers love challenges. After all, permaculture is not just a set of organic gardening techniques, but a toolkit, a decision-making process, for designing sustainable human settlements. And one of its fundamental principles is: “The problem is the solution.”
What if we apply this principle to a challenge that many of us are all too familiar with: living in small urban spaces with little or no access to actual soil on which to grow food? Permaculture and gardening books present pictures of lovely, lush farm landscapes and large suburban lots overflowing with greenery, fruit trees, and vegetable gardens, perhaps even with small livestock. But what do you do if you live in an apartment, or have only a postage-stamp-sized bit of yard by your front door?
The permaculture answer: you can still do a lot. In this case, seeing the problem as the solution means turning the seeming constraints of an urban environment – the density of buildings, people, and resources – to your advantage, and doing things like intensive planting, vertical growing, and maximizing solar exposure in- and outdoors. Here I present ideas and strategies first for the apartment dweller, and then for those who do have yard space but it’s limited. Continue reading
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Forest Farming, Inoculating Mushroom Logs, and a Surprise
Recently I attended a weekend workshop focused on forest farming.
I can hear you ask, “What’s forest farming?”
Well, it’s the process of growing non-timber forest crops beneath the canopy of an established forest. In this way, forest farming is a form of “productive conservation” – you’re reaping benefits of crops grown in the forest while protecting the land from destruction. Examples of non-timber forest farmed products include: maple syrup, medicinal plants, mushrooms, nuts, ornamental woodland species, and fruit. (Learn more here.)
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Homemade Yogurt in a Crockpot – Four Steps
Yogurt is an excellent way to promote proper functioning of your digestive system. As long as you’re eating yogurt that has live active cultures, it contains probiotics (aka beneficial bacteria) that help to balance the microflora in your gut. This makes digestion easier and helps keep your system moving regularly.
Making your own yogurt ensures that you know where your milk came from, and also reduces your reliance on continually buying hundreds of little yogurt containers. By knowing where your milk comes from, you can be sure to choose milk from grass-fed cows. Not only are grass-fed cows generally living a higher-quality, free-ranging life where they are eating what they should be naturally (i.e. grass and not corn or soy which also increases your exposure to GMOs), but grass-fed cows also produce milk that is more nutritionally dense. For example, most grass-fed cow milk contains nearly 5x more conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), an unsaturated fat that may help with heart health and assist with weight loss. Continue reading
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Adventures in Natural Building: Strawbale Studio
Walking into Deanne Bednar’s Strawbale Studio in Oxford, Michigan is like walking into the future…or maybe the past. Either way, it is at the same time homelike as it is ethereal and dreamy. It is a wonderful, welcoming space in which to find oneself.
Here, you are immediately immersed in a more nature-based state of living: jars of herbs, kombucha, and kefir line the counters, whittling projects lie about the room, and natural trinkets like spiraling wood, herb bundles, and dried flowers can be found in every corner and adorning the walls.
What is more unique to those unfamiliar with natural building techniques are the wonderful Earthen plasters that soften edges, relax the eyes, and bring the outdoors into the home. Continue reading
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Homemade Vanilla Extract
After finishing up a store-bought bottle of vanilla extract, I realized that I could make my own version of this baking staple quite easily for less money and with better assurance of quality vanilla beans. Continue reading
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Clean it Green: Laundry Detergent
We recently went to a Sustainability Symposium at the Botanical Gardens. It was a day filled with a variety of lectures related to the impacts of climate change in Northeast Ohio, gardening, and green living.
One of the lectures discussed green cleaning products. At one point, the presenter showed a picture of what it looks like in the cupboards underneath the sink in a “green” home — lots of cloth rags, vinegar, baking soda, and maybe some borax or washing soda. She then asked, “How many of you have cupboards that look like this?”
I was one of very few people that raised a hand. Hmm…I guess there’s still a lot of educational work to be done! Continue reading
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Sprout It Out
The weather remains snowy and cold, but there are fresh things growing indoors!
Sprouts are a wonderful way to introduce a fresh, healthy food to your winter diet. And certainly, if you are aiming to eat a low-carbon diet that incorporates lots of local foods, sprouts are an ideal way to continue eating fresh through the winter months.
They’re also really good for you! The most common types of sprouting seeds (mixes of radish, alfalfa, clover, broccoli, legumes) are rich in nutrition containing:
- Vitamin A, Vitamin C, Vitamin K, Vitamin B1, Vitamin B6, Vitamin K
- Minerals such as phosphorus, iron, magnesium, potassium, manganese, and calcium
- Dietary Fiber
- Folate
- Protein
- Antioxidants
- Chlorophyll Continue reading
These Light Footsteps 