Blog
How It Started and How It’s going, Market Garden Update
A market style garden has captured my eye for years. I like the neat rows of varied crops, and have long found inspiration in the orderly yet productive estate-owned gardens across the pond from the Victorian era and beyond. Gravetye Manor in Sussex has a beautiful kitchen garden that I am constantly finding myself drawn…
Foraging Autumn Olive: Make An Invasive Preserve
Autumn Olive (Elaeagnus umbellata Thunb) is an invasive deciduous shrub here in my neck of the woods. It originates from Asia. It was brought back and cultivated as early as the 1800s to provide habitat and food source for wildlife but made it’s way to roadsides and erosion-prone soil in the 1950s. It has become…
Foraging Chanterelle Mushrooms
(affiliate disclosure) Cantharellus is a genus of popular edible mushrooms, commonly known as chanterelles. They are mycorrhizal fungi, meaning they form symbiotic associations with plants, which makes it a challenge to cultivate domestically. There are many common name Chanterelles (over 40+ in North America alone) the common name for the chanterelle below is known as…
The Whitest White is actually Blue: A Victorian Laundry Secret
(affiliate disclosure) Many years ago, as I was enjoying The Victorian Farm, a documentary you must watch if you enjoy historical homemaking or farming, Ruth Goodman shared a fascinating tidbit about laundry bluing. She was demonstrating “wash day” from a “wash room”. She had a large vessel of water steaming in the background and was…
The Carriage House, Walls and Ceilings
“A lot of hard work is hidden behind nice things” – Ralph Lauren The simplicity of this quote sums up what I know to be true. No matter the how, between the start and in the process, before the completed product – there is a lot of hard work behind nice things that you can’t…
The Practice of Electroculture in the Garden: A Brief Overview
In the online Homesteading community, a new term has cropped up over the last few years and has finally caught my attention. That term is Electroculture. Also spelled Electro-culture, this technique utilizes static, ambient and pulsed electricity to stimulate plant growth. As I began researching this topic over the last 2 years on and off,…
Home Canning, The Benefit of An Open Mind and Looking Through History
(Affiliate disclosure) My progression as a Home Canner I am a relatively new canner. I have canned goods for 7 or so years now and have grown in proficiency over time. There is always room to grow in this important preservation skill. When I first began canning, I “dipped my toe” into water processing or…