Lessons from Spreadwing’s farm internship

food preserves

Well, I am finally back home after a month at Spreadwing’s farm internship. This is an Organic farm ran by Michael G. Smith, natural builder extraordinaire, and his wife Cathy, homesteader of the year in my book.  Together this couple is a treasure trove of natural building, farming, animal husbandry, food preservation and the list…

About SRI and how it could better feed the world

  SRI, originally a rice farming technique developed in Madagascar by French Jesuit Henri de Laulanie, stands for System of Rice Intensification.  This system spawns from over twenty years of observation of “deviant” farmers in the area. Instead of espousing the rice paddy‘s traditional approach, this technique: Transplants the seedlings at a very early stage in the…

Must read online library

Soil and Health Library is one of those pages I wish I would have seen when I was back in High School and had nothing better to do with my time than skateboard and play video games. Steve Solomon, the founder, and Justin Crawford, the current librarian, should be given a medal for all the work that…

The secret to free food, almost

Regrowing green onions from the butts

I was recently cooking some veggies and , as I was throwing the scraps into the compost bin, I remembered something I read on one of my favorite blogs. Kelly from Rootsimple mentioned a neat trick. What you do is save the butts, or roots, from your green onions. You then plant them and in a fewdays,…

Home Brew Kombucha – Second fermentation

Now we get into the second fermentation part of how to home brew kombucha. You may want to read the first fermentation part.   Once kombucha tea smells or tastes a bit more vinegary than sweet you can start. How do you know? It’s really more of a trial and error thing. As with most…