There are a lot of ways to detox. Clinically speaking, the term applies to weaning your body off toxic and addictive substances like alcohol, drugs, or dopamine driven activities like gambling. That kind of detoxing often requires professional assistance to get through safely and recover your health afterwords. It’s also easiest to do with the… Read More Detox for Good
Seed catalogs are arriving. So now is the perfect time for planning what to plant in your outdoor garden. Right? I used to think so until I realized that gardening isn’t like placing an order on Amazon. You can’t pick the plants you want and install them like you would a power cord or an… Read More Natural Garden Planning
Supposedly, the average American household hoards an average of 300,000 objects. That number sounds astounding. But when I did a rough count of the non-food objects in our small kitchen I got to 800 in short order. And I’m an anti-consumer! When you factor in spaces like garages, basements, closets, sheds, and even rented storage… Read More Hoarding
In my last post on Winter Dormancy for Humans, I ended with an easy way to connect with your winter biology by asking “How do I feel right now?”. I followed that with a suggestion to wait a few moments before trying to formulate an answer. Clever readers probably noticed the contradiction. I mean what’s… Read More Nature Calls
The dark days of late fall and early winter have an undeniable impact on our moods and energy levels. Just like plants, the decline of daylight makes many of us want to cease to grow for a while. This desire for dormancy isn’t just some Pinterest-induced yearning for hygge comforts triggered by overwork and overwhelm.… Read More Winter “Dormancy” for Humans
I used to think cover crops were for commercial farmers with tractor attachments to use for tilling. Now, I know they are a basic gardening tool that any gardener can use to improve and protect soil while reducing weeds. What are Cover Crops? Cover crops are kind of like an exciting adventure vacation for your… Read More Cover Crops: An Invigorating Vacation for Your Soil!
Want to live better while improving our shared environment? It’s easier than you think. Issue Two of Epicurean Living includes ideas on how to garden sustainably and regeneratively. There are tips on cooking and snacking to save time, money, and benefit your overall well-being as well as our environment. Plus, it’s full of ways to… Read More Live More Sustainably
Hi all, I know there are still plenty of challenges from the pandemic, extreme weather, and just the ordinary stuff that comes with being human and caring deeply about our world and loved ones. But I hope you are finding moments of grace and pleasure, getting time to homestead, enjoying being with friends and family,… Read More Epicurean Living (Free eBook!)
Can one woman really garden on about two acres using hand tools in just a couple hours per week? Absolutely! That’s what I do. I occasionally get some help from Matt for special projects. But the routine care is my domain. My secret weapon in being able to handle all this land is permaculture. And… Read More Landscape Gardening: Real Permaculture
Matt and I recently watched an aptly-titled documentary called Can’t Get You Out of My Head. It focuses on how our human fears, anxieties, and propensities to live by impulse rather than reason have shaped so much of our recent history. One aspect of this particular historical view that stuck with me is that the… Read More Modern Homestead Living: A New Future Not a Romanticized Past
Each morning I walk our dogs through the semi-wild parts of our wooded property. There I encounter various trees, shrubs, ground cover, mosses, lichens, and a seemingly infinite variety of fungi. What beautiful complexity exists in this woodland ecosystem. Yet, as a gardener, I can’t help but notice the diseased limbs on otherwise healthy trees.… Read More Simplestead Guide to Pruning Plants
The garden explosion happened. Those tiny, seedlings I showed pictures of in the last post Plant Your Homestead Potager suddenly started to look like fully-fledged plants. Even when you visit your garden daily, and observe the incremental growth, there is still this moment when you realize “Wow, this is a real garden.” Honestly, it was… Read More Harvest and Succession Plant Your Homestead Potager
The first gardens were forest gardens. Actually they were more like cultivated forests than gardens. The plants that humans found beneficial, they encouraged. The plants that didn’t have utility were removed. Eventually, early gardeners installed fences to protect their food supply from being eaten by other free-ranging forest animals. There’s no precise information on when forest… Read More Homestead Potager Garden Bed Design
The world is a mess. The climate is beyond repair and all we can do now is wait for disaster after disaster to destroy us. All of our institutions are so completely fragile that the next big event might mean the end of our entire way of life. If you really believed that, would you… Read More Recognizing Resources
How did we figure things out before the internet? Did we learn at school? In the US, children weren’t required to attend school until about 100 years ago. As such, schools have only been a source of learning for large populations in recent times. Did we learn from books? Books have been around for thousands… Read More The Importance of Observation
Simplestead with Tasha 