Welcome to May - my favorite month of the year! (And not just because of my birthday.) :-)

This time of year is so beautiful, with everything green and growing and blooming! Usually it's not too hot, and bugs aren't too bad yet, and although it is the beginning of the busiest time of year for me, it's enjoyable work like planting and mulching and watching things grow.

I even put the hammock out this weekend - a bit earlier than usual, but since we were enjoying an 80-degree afternoon, it seemed fitting. :-)

Anyway, on to this month's freebie! I'm pretty excited to share this with you, as Marjorie is one of the homesteaders I respect the most. She has such a fun-loving personality, and she's always sharing new and interesting ideas about health, gardening, homesteading, and more. She has a new book coming out this year on all of these topics, and to celebrate and promote her book launch, she's hosting a 3-day online event on sustainable living, medicine making, growing your own food, and more! Check it out below to learn more and register to attend for FREE.

It's January, which means I would usually be sharing my New Year's Resolutions and goals for the year. But this year, with our interrupted vacation plans due to COVID-19, and the changes to our travel schedule, I just wasn't feeling the New Year spirit... Anyway, personally I felt pretty much on track last year, and don't have any major changes that I feel the need to commit to right now.

So, instead, I thought I'd share a quick homestead update, as it's been a while! In fact, I'm not sure I've posted one since we've had chickens, and there are SO many things about this experience that I've found surprising or unexpected over the past few months... Here are a few lessons about chickens that I've learned (and am still learning), and I'm sure there are many more still to come!

As we move into the winter months and the pandemic rages on, many families are concerned about not only health, but also food security. Based on the shortages of some foods that we experienced back in the spring, it is reasonable to expect that if things shut down again, we may face the same - or perhaps worse - before things improve.

Let's face it: these are some crazy times we are living in, and it is important to be prepared for anything.
Fortunately, those of you who follow the holistic living way - growing your own food, taking responsibility for your own health, etc. are better prepared than most. Whether you're growing your own produce, or buying fresh, healthy foods from local farmers through a farmer's market or CSA program, learning to preserve your favorite fresh vegetables and herbs is one way to stock up so that you can enjoy healthy meals without going to the grocery store all the time - and ensure that you have plenty of food if the grocery stores run short.

There are so many amazing healthy foods out there that boost your immunity - and most of them can be easily grown in your own backyard. Imagine being able to preserve these foods to enjoy whenever you want them...

Today, more than ever, this is a game-changer.

And let’s face it, store-bought pasta sauce is just NEVER as good as fresh and homemade! When you make your own, you know it’s chock full of nutrients without all the crazy weird preservatives, sugars, and other additives.

So are you ready to learn how to start preserving fresh food for yourself… all the basics like pasta sauce, salsa, hot sauce, pickles, dried herbs, sauerkraut and more?

If so, you're in the right place!  My colleague, Stacey Murphy, is a "garden guru" who provides mentorship to thousands of people so they can nourish their loved ones with fresh, organic food. And now she’s released a brand new webinar to help you stock your kitchen with fresh goodies so you can enjoy fresh and healthy foods year-round!

Fall is the perfect time to make sure you are prepared for the winter months with plenty of healthy foods to keep your immune system strong.

Click here to register for the FREE webinar on preserving the harvest, or learn more below...

We started growing ground cherries (also known as husk cherries) a few years ago, and not knowing how productive they would be, I planted 4 plants. These produced a ridiculous amount of fruit, and after eating and giving away as many of them as we could, as well as freezing quite a few, they were still producing and I was at a loss as to what to do with them.

Fortunately, my awesome husband found me the amazing recipe below, and I've made at least one big batch of ground cherry jam every summer since!

This is my go-to recipe and I've never used any others - I love it as it's super simple, tastes amazing, and is also low-sugar. I would describe this jam as tasting like "if caramel was a fruit and you made jam out of it". However, for even more rich caramel-y flavor, try using demerara or turbinado sugar. YUM!

As I write this, we were supposed to be on a bus from the Montego Bay airport to our beautiful resort on the Jamaican coast. A few short weeks ago, I was so excited at the prospect of the warm Jamaican sun, relaxing music, amazing food, lying on the beach in the shade of palm trees... Less than a month ago, I was planning what to pack, and debating whether to kennel the dog or try to find a house sitter. Only just over 2 weeks ago, we decided to cancel our trip "just in case"...

Now, all flights to Jamaica in the next several weeks have been canceled, and the resorts are officially closed until May.

How quickly things can change, and how drastically a tiny virus can change the lives of millions of people...

For years, people have given me weird looks when they hear that we can our own food from the garden, or how much time I spend harvesting and preserving vegetables every summer and fall.

Now, it's not so funny. Grocery shelves are sparsely stocked in many areas, and people are afraid to leave their homes. My husband's multiple weekly shopping trips have diminished to less than one. Fortunately, there is little that we actually need to buy. Last week, we prepared all of our meals for the week without going grocery shopping at all!

This is the time of coronavirus - a time when homesteading doesn't look so crazy after all...

No matter what the calendar says, for me, winter always begins the first weekend in December, when we put up our Christmas tree. This tradition started in 2013, when my wonderful husband proposed to me beside the Christmas tree on a snowy evening in early December.

That Friday, after a long and stressful week at work (I was extra busy preparing to spend half of the next week at a marketing training program), I headed over to spend the evening with my sweetie, even though we were in the middle of a good-sized snow storm, and the roads were iffy at best.

The storm continued as I drove, and what was normally a 25-minute drive took nearly an hour over slippery, treacherous, snow-covered roads, and I arrived shaking with nerves and stress. Although there had been many hints at marriage over the past few months, and I had been on pins and needles for weeks wondering when he would "pop the question," that was the last thing on my mind that night!

He prepared me a cup of hot vanilla chai tea with a splash of rum, and together we decorated his tiny tree with hideous red and gold plastic ornaments as I began to unwind. We were almost finished, and he said he thought he had a tree topper somewhere, and disappeared into the other room. I turned around a moment later to find him on one knee!

Every year since then, we bring home a fresh and lovely tree on the first weekend in December, and I put on most of the decorations while enjoying a glass of wine or a hot toddy, while my husband prepares us a beautiful spread of charcuterie, olives, cheeses, fruit, nuts, and other snacks. Then we finish the tree together and have a drink while admiring the beautiful lights and decorations and the fresh scent of evergreen. It's a wonderful tradition, and a perfect way to kick off the winter holiday season! It also gets me feeling all...hygge?

Funny - when I thought of how to describe this summer, that Bananarama song "Cruel Summer" suddenly started playing in my head. :-) 

Seriously, it has been the weirdest summer ever weather-wise, with buckets of rain and nearly daily flooding up through June, and then barely any rain at all for the last couple of months. Needless to say, the garden season has been quite challenging.

Several of my new raspberry plants drowned and died early on, many tomatoes rotted on the vine before they were even ripe, and we also had problems with rot with the garlic and onions. August and September have been so hot and dry that it has been a challenge just keeping the garden alive, but somehow I have managed for the most part...

Personally, it has also been a busier summer than usual, with two separate vacations plus a weekend road trip, as well as the roofing project which took up our driveway for all of June and July, delaying our yearly delivery of wood chips until nearly September. The abundance of rain coupled with the lack of mulch meant that I spent much more of my summer weeding than I would have liked, and didn't get to many of the projects that I had intended.

However, the new metal roof is done and the recent rain we got last week sounded AMAZING! I am looking forward to (hopefully) doing the barn roof in metal at some point, as I have read some negative things about watering the garden with water off of an asphalt roof.

Our new patio doors should (finally) be installed at some point in the next week or two, and we have replaced the siding on two sections of the back of the house ourselves this summer (hot and tiring work, but kind of fun and rewarding, too).

Below are pictures plus a few more updates from the homestead this summer, including a couple of new food preservation experiments that we've tried recently...

Garden season is upon us! With birds and spring peepers filling the air with music, daffodils blooming brilliantly on every corner, and balmy days staying lighter and lighter for longer and longer, springtime has definitely arrived, and we are reveling in it!

Along with springtime comes the seemingly endless list of outdoor and garden tasks to be done. This weekend I cut down some shrubs near the house to make room for our new gooseberry bushes, planted potatoes, set up a pea trellis, planted peas, and moved our herbs out to the deck for some fresh air and sunshine. Next weekend we will be erecting our raspberry trellis and (hopefully) planting raspberries - if they arrive on schedule - as well as planting out spring salad greens, onions, and possibly our broccoli and cabbage seedlings.

Although growing your own food does take some time and effort, it is well-worth it when you reap the bountiful harvest! There are also plenty of gardening methods that require less work, especially if you are working with a smaller amount of space.

For most people, growing all your own food may seem a daunting prospect. However, it can be a much more realistic achievement to grow approximately half of your own food - even if you don't have a huge piece of property.

In fact, this can be a lot easier than you think - and not as much work as you might expect - as long as you are using an appropriate growing system for your location - and you have the right knowledge for success.

Want to know how to do it for yourself? Read on...

I grew up on homemade mayonnaise - or at least, on the rare occasions when we had mayonnaise, it was homemade...

I remember standing beside my mother, watching as she slowly poured oil into the blender with the brilliantly orange eggs I had collected that morning, along with salt, mustard, and vinegar, forming a creamy yellow spread.

Ours never looked anything like the thick, gelatinous, almost bleached-white stuff in the jars that my grandmother and grandfather sometimes brought along when they visited.

Of course, that meant theirs was much more special to us kids!  Consequently, I never realized just how tasty homemade mayo really was until I grew up. Now I am surprised how few people actually make their own - especially since it's so easy.

All you need are 5 simple ingredients and a blender or food processor to make your own homemade mayonnaise from scratch in just 5 minutes!

After spending last weekend traveling to visit friends in Tennessee, this weekend was double the work - with piles of tomatoes to work through, and the fridge stuffed full with corn, green beans, and okra. When the bounty of the summer garden arrives, it arrives with a vengeance!

I always forget how productive certain crops (i.e. tomatoes) can be until another summer rolls around and they are rotting in piles on the counter, as well as under the plants in the garden. I thought I had sufficiently scaled down my tomato planting this year, but apparently not quite far enough!

Anyway, we canned our first batch of tomatoes this weekend, and froze some as well - along with a number of other food preservation tasks.

Below is a quick list of what I was up to this weekend in the homestead kitchen - along with some pictures of the bounty, and a quick run-down of our tomato canning process...