A few weeks ago we packed up our homesteading essentials and moved across country to Vermont to begin a new chapter of our lives. To my regular readers, the ones that have followed our off the grid journey for the past five years, I know this sentence may seem shocking. In many ways, it has been hard for us to wrap our brains around: “We’re leaving a beautiful property with maturing fruit trees, wonderful neighbors, and very low expenses to move to a rental in a state with a high cost of living and start all over again?!?” I’ll start by saying that the decision to move was incredibly difficult, as we love our home and adore living off the grid. But we are also very practical people … [Read more...]
Elderflower Kombucha Recipe :: Wildcrafted, Fizzy, and Delicious!
Elderflower season is a glorious time in the Midwest. Everywhere you look - along roadsides, wood edges, and creek bottoms - you see elderberry bushes in full bloom. In addition to the delicious elderflower kombucha recipe that I'm going to share with you today, the range of recipes you can create with the simple elderflower is vast - check out my collection of elderflower recipes to get inspired! And don't forget that the elderberry itself is immune-boosting and tasty. I like to enjoy it as an elderberry syrup. Yum. Elderflower kombucha is very simply a combination of an elderflower simple syrup and your homebrewed kombucha. In the secondary ferment, the elderflower syrup's sugar content … [Read more...]
How to Make Kombucha in 3 Simple Steps!
Kombucha is a tasty, easy to make fermented beverage that delivers a probiotic kick. If you've ever purchased kombucha at the grocery store, you know it is delicious, but expensive! I'm going to show you how to make kombucha at home - for pennies a serving - and in just three simple steps. If you want to take the kombucha love up a notch, you can continue the process with a secondary ferment. I'll give you some suggestions for flavor combinations below, and also check out my super delicious wild-foraged elderflower kombucha recipe! What is Kombucha Anyways? If you haven’t yet experienced kombucha, it is a fermented beverage made from tea, sugar, and a culture called a SCOBY, or a Symbiotic … [Read more...]
20+ Elderflower Recipes for a Summertime Treat
Driving around rural Missouri in mid-June, it's impossible to miss the glorious clusters of white flowers that crown large bushes on the sides of roads, in pastures, and along creeks: Elderflowers. On our homestead, in addition to the wild bushes on our land, we also planted 20+ Sambucus canadensis, the American elder, so we have abundant berries for canning and making elderberry syrup, and also plenty of flowers to use in these creative elderflower recipes. Of course, when foraging any wild foods, it is important to make sure you are safely and ethically harvesting wild foods. In particular, because elderflowers do resemble some other common wild plants (some of which are inedible, and … [Read more...]
Foraged Food :: How to Safely Enjoy Wild Edibles
Foraging is the act and art of searching for, finding, and harvesting wild foods. Perhaps the most common foraged foods are mushrooms gathered in the woods, but foragers also enjoy wild greens, aquatic and marine plants, nuts, berries, seeds, sap, and more. The beauty of foraging is that edibles can be found almost everywhere, even in urban and suburban areas. Some of the most prolific plants - the most ubiquitous dandelion, for instance - have parts that are edible, once you know how to identify them safely. I’m a huge fan of foraging for a few reasons. First, foraging gets our family outdoors in all seasons, connecting to the natural world and its bounty. Second, foraging fills our … [Read more...]
7 Ways to Grow More Food in Less Space with Succession Planting
If you have a small garden, or even if you have a large garden but you like to grow year-round, you need to know how to maximize your food production by making use of every bit of garden space available. Today I'll share my top 7 tips to grow more food, even in a small space, with succession planting. What is Succession Planting? Very simply, it’s the action of following one plant with another. For instance, planting peas in the spring, pulling them out in the summer, and planting beets in that same bed for fall harvest. If this is as far as you get with succession planting, you’re still going to increase your harvests, but we’re going to dive deeper. For me, the push to grow more food … [Read more...]
Dandelion Soda Recipe :: Naturally Fermented with a Ginger Bug!
When dandelion season comes around, it hits with full force! Looking around my garden, it's hard to believe that only a few years ago there wasn't a single dandelion on our property! Now we have ample dandelions to leave some for the pollinators, and still have enough dandelion flowers and roots to make into recipes. This dandelion soda recipe requires a bit of effort in stripping the petals from the plant, but you will be deliciously rewarded! Whenever harvesting any wild edible, you want to pay attention to where and how you harvest. Is there any chance that herbicide may have been sprayed on or near the dandelions? If so, move on! Once you've found a chemical-free source of dandelion … [Read more...]
How to Make a Ginger Bug for Homemade Soda
A ginger bug is a really cool ferment with a fun name. It is essentially a starter culture, much like a sourdough starter is to bread, or a SCOBY is to kombucha. With a ginger bug, you can naturally ferment homemade soda, healthy ginger ale, root beer, and other healthy soda alternatives. Using three simple ingredients—organic ginger root, sugar, and water—a ginger bug will “capture” wild yeasts and bacteria that will eat the sugar and emit carbon dioxide as a “waste” product; hence the ability to give sodas a natural fizz of bubbles. A ginger bug has natural kid-appeal because of its name, and because the process requires “feeding” your ginger bug each day, much like a pet! And because … [Read more...]
Spring Pesto with Chickweed and Green Garlic
When you're craving the fresh, tangy flavors of spring, but are still waiting for almost everything in the garden to start growing, the solution is a spring pesto made with chickweed and green garlic. This spring pesto recipe is easy to make, packed with flavor, and the perfect topping for pizza, pasta, and more! Chickweed (Stellaria media) is an edible and medicinal plant, often thought of as a weed because it is so common! Here in Northeast Missouri, we often find it near creek bottoms in the deciduous forest. After a few years, it made its way into our garden, likely via purchased hay. It is recognizable by its white, star-shaped flowers (hence the Latin name Stellaria) and thin line … [Read more...]
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