Fermented foods are excellent for your gut health.  The probiotics they offer are some of the best you can get, and for much less than buying pills at the store.  Actually, this fermented salsa recipe was nearly free with vegetables from the garden. Fermented salsa is apparently the best recipe …

We use our cob rocket stove outside half the year for all of our cooking.  The other half of the year it’s cold out so we cook on the woodstove inside.  We really love the rocket stove, but we could really, really, use another burner.  I decided to try to …

We have plenty of tomatoes. I don’t really have time to process and preserve them all, so I will squeeze in a quick round of un peeled canned tomatoes. And I’m using my rocket stove to do it. Get your jars ready, I’m using quart jars, by boiling them in …

If you live in an area anything like mine, you have plenty of clay “soil” and hate it.  It is terrible for gardening and makes a huge mess when the kids play in it.  However, clay is an ingredient in cob, which is an amazing natural building material used for …

Thursday Food (and Herb) Day! Continuing with the wildcrafting herbal remedy theme, today we will collect and infuse some St. John’s Wort.  This pretty herb grows wild all over the place on my homestead and all over the side of the road.  Plenty available for sutainable wild harvesting. St. John’s …

This is the fantastic pile of rich yard waste we have to work with: The purpose of this post is to demonstrate how a pile of twisted up “waste” can be useful for so many different things.  The pile is tree tops left by the logger and pushed aside, twisting …

Thursday, Food Day! Don’t worry, I didn’t know what it was either, but it was scrumptious.  The story goes: I have these huge zuchettas growing on the vines… And I had a hankering for mexican food.  Put the two together and you have…calabacitas! (Thanks to A Life From Scratch for …

Fruit trees are a major component in a food forest.  Since we plan on cultivating a large food forest, we better get going on some fruit trees.  Especially since trees don’t bear fruit for quite a few years.  However, we have approximately $0.00 to buy fruit trees so what do …

Mullein is an herb that grows wild all around us here. It can be used as an herbal remedy for all sorts of things like respiratory problems, earache, lymphatic issues, inflammation, pain, and many more.  It can also be used to make a vanilla-ish extract.  I won’t get in to …

Wild foraging is gathering wild plants to eat.  Many people around here gather fiddleheads, wild blueberries, and maple sap.  Maple syrup, as you may well know, is kind of a big deal around here.  But there is far more out there to be found.  From raspberries to cattails, there is …