Long winter nights give me a burst of creative energy. The other seasons are loaded with long, busy days on a homestead. But winter gives our family long evening hours and a little more time on our hands. Time to be creative, as a family. This time of year, that creativity often entails salt dough ornament creations. A salt dough ornament recipe is right up my alley. Not surprisingly, really, I kinda love homemade salt dough ...Continue Reading
3 Home Dairy Myths That Are Holding You Back
It's kinda like a status symbol. That bowl of ricotta on my counter that I just made myself? It gives me rockstar status y'all. And I know I'm not the only one. For many folks who dream of homesteading, not much would make them feel like they've "arrived" more than successfully creating delicious dairy products at home. I know for me, home dairy completely captured my imagination at the beginning of our homestead journey. Every time ...Continue Reading
How to Harvest and Roast Sunflower Seeds
I may have harvested a lifetime supply of sunflower seeds. For some reason, the sunflowers grew like gangbusters this year, even while everything else struggled. (Funny story: all of my sunflowers were volunteers this year, and when they first popped up, I thought they were bean plants... so I transplanted them into a nice little square in one of my beds, and then was promptly embarrassed when I realized I'd planted 9 sunflowers ...Continue Reading
Why You Should Plant Cover Crops In Your Garden
I don't know why homesteading makes me so impulsive... Whether we're talking about my propensity to impulse-buy farm animals, or my tendency to fire up a canning project in the middle of a busy morning when I have no business standing there peeling peaches, I guess I just have to blame it on my passion for this lifestyle. This week (like literally this week-- just a few days ago!) I decided to do a 180-degree flip on my garden plans ...Continue Reading
How to Use a Fermenting Crock
My kitchen currently resembles the laboratory of a mad scientist. There's my sourdough starter bubbling away by the oven, a container of continuous brew kombucha doing it's thing on the island, and a 2-gallon crock of sauerkraut fermenting away in the corner. I've come a long way, considering I used to be scared of fermented foods. Both the sights and smells of fermenting foods turned me off for years, not to mention the worry it ...Continue Reading
