Happy Friday everyone! What’s new with you? So… I have a “homestead fail” to report. This is most certainly NOT my first fail. In fact, I could probably come up with at least a fail a day but most of them would be pretty boring and run of the mill. I thought … Read more
Today I am starting a short series on natural homemaking. Our garden is still in hibernation (though I did plant corn this past weekend) and I usually try to post something garden-related on Thursdays. So, for the next month, while the garden is inactive, I’m going to post something about how to … Read more
Lip balm can be a wonderful thing, especially in very dry weather. You can take a stab at making it yourself. Here is a recipe to check out: Homemade Lip Balm – with Tint Ingredients 2 tbsp beeswax 2 tbsp coconut oil 1/4-1/2 tsp vanilla extract beetroot powder or a chunk of … Read more
If you’ve ever made authentic sourdough products at home, you know that eventually taking care of your starter becomes a job in and of itself and that you are constantly looking for new ways to use it. I refuse to simply “discard” any starter and am determined to make something with it … Read more
Getting enough water to your plants is a constant concern for any gardener. Here in the desert, it is a particularly troubling problem. However, after several years of gardening, I feel I am finally getting the hang of keeping my plants happily watered, even in the dead of summer. The key to … Read more
For now, all of the gardening we do in the backyard is in raised beds. I love growing in raised beds. In the front yard, we plant directly in the ground in raised rows, which is nice because it provides more space and the ground tends to stay wet longer, but I … Read more
If you’ve been following along here for any length of time, you know we had a bumper crop of tomatoes this year (and I’m hoping for the same this fall). When we couldn’t keep up with the tomatoes that we were growing, I started freezing them in gallon size bags. The plan … Read more
We previously posted about making sourdough bread and now you may have this starter in your fridge and are trying to figure out all kinds of ways to start using it. One great way is to make English muffins. We drew heavily from this recipe on the blog Nourishing Joy. Ingredients Sponge … Read more
You may have noticed the letter NPK on bags of fertilizer or other organic matter in the past. These letters stand for Nitrogen-Phosphorus-Potassium (in that order) and these are essential nutrients for your garden and its plants. Of these three nutrients, nitrogen is often the one that is most difficult to get … Read more
Sourdough bread is a fermented food. I’m just beginning to learn about fermented foods and their health benefits. From everything I’ve read, I can only improve my health by adding more of them to my diet. I am no scientist, but this what I’ve gathered so far. Sourdough bread lasts longer than … Read more