Tag: simplestead
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Embrace Change, Adapt, Grow
Those three ideas in the title of this post are pretty much the heart and art of living well today. They are also the focus of Issue 4 of Epicurean Living. For any newcomers, Epicurean Living is a free PDF magazine I create about philosophy, gardening, homesteading, creativity, and ecology. You can open and read,…
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Abundance Begins
Our first real garden harvest of the growing season is the abundant and lush beauty that washes over our landscape in May. This feast for the senses nourishes us just as much as the fruit and calorie-dense staple crops that come later on. What’s most amazing to me is that before I began homesteading, I…
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Early and Evergreen Herbs and Spices
I started my journey to become a gardener by growing herbs. It was so much fun, and saved me so much money, that even before I even knew the term “homesteader” I became self-sufficient at growing herbs. I grew so many, everywhere I could, that I cut them for bouquets, gave divisions to friends, and…
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Epicurean Living: The Chicken Issue!
The latest edition of Epicurean Living is now available for free online viewing or download. I’ve dubbed this one the “chicken issue” since I devoted the entire Epicurean homesteading section to the subject. There are also details on using all five senses in the garden and some easy ways to engage with the ecology where…
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Early Spring Garden
Spring gardens are slow to wake. Day by day, they brighten a bit more. Blooms begin. Foliage fills in. Then one morning, you step outside and find the world transformed by life. This morning — a blustery, cold one set against the backdrop of a bright sun — it feels as if the garden has…
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Free Course on Growing Spices
Hi All! With my new book, Grow Your Own Spices, coming out soon (and already available for pre-order from many booksellers and on Amazon), I’ve been doing talks and interviews to get everyone excited about growing spices in 2021. So, today I want to share a link to a 2-hour course I taught this week…
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Fermented Food Fight Over Kimchi
I think food dishes taste better — and nourish more than our bodies — when they are steeped in long-standing traditions and cultural diversity. That’s one of the big reasons that kimchi makes my top ten list of all time favorite ferments. Not only is it easy to make at home, but thinking of those…
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Raising Ducklings – Week 3 (with video)
I’d like to start this post by wishing a Happy 70th (day) Birthday to the gorgeous stars of the duckling video in this post and also in my previous posts: Raising Ducklings Week 1 (with video) Raising Ducklings Week 2 (with video). I faithfully took videos of these 13 beautiful Muscovy ducklings every day for…
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Growing, Harvesting, and Curing Saffron at Home (with Video)
Saffron is one of the most exotic seeming and expensive spices in the world. Yet I grow an abundant perennial crop of it in a weedy, but compost rich patch of ground in my North Carolina backyard. Okay, so my backyard isn’t exactly a typical yard. It’s a homesteader’s fantasy of organic food production meets…