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Spring Foraging for Edible Weeds

Foraging for edible weeds and wild greens is an age-old practice, and here in Ohio, it’s the perfect time of year to grab a bucket and take a hike to search for supper ingredients.

Interested in growing herbs for more than just food? Many herbs and edible weeds are wonderful herbal allies for our health. Learn How to Start a Medicinal Herb Garden for more self-sufficient wellness!

Spring Foraging: Identifying Edible Weeds

Why Should You Forage Wild Edible Weeds

Foraging wild edibles isn’t just a fun spring pastime. It is a skill that, when done properly, can uplevel your sustainability by providing food and medicine from your own property. 

Many beneficial plants that are typically considered “weeds” and killed out instead of utilized. These plants are excellent for pollinators, but they are also great for human consumption as well. Once you learn to properly identify edible weeds, you can begin to use them in teas, salads, infused oils, tinctures, and more.

Before You Begin Foraging

I know, I know… You are excited to get started, BUT you need to familiarize yourself with edible plants and their lookalikes before go head out on your spring foraging adventure. Check out local field guides, foraging apps (I use PictureThis), articles, and blog posts to make sure you know the differences in the beneficial plants that you are looking for and the potentially toxic plants that look very similar. 

wild edible weeds in a basket

7 Common Edible Weeds

While you wait for your garden seedlings to grow, you can take advantage of the delicious and nutritious greens nature provides. Many of the wild greens available this time of year are packed with vitamins and minerals, plus many have cleansing qualities to help clear our bodies of toxins we accumulated over the winter.

1. Dandelion

Dandelion (Taraxacum officinale) is probably the most common of the edible weeds. The young greens make a tasty salad or can be used as wilted greens. 

Traditionally, dandelion is served with a hot vinegar dressing and topped with hard boiled egg and bacon. There are even a couple restaurants in Holmes County that feature Dandelion Salad on the menu during the spring season. 

child holding dandelions

Dandelion greens are best eaten young as they become more bitter when the plant flowers. The flowers are the primary ingredient used in dandelion wine, plus they can be dipped in batter and fried.

Dandelions blooms can also be infused into oil for salves and the roots can be roasted as a coffee substitute.

2. Lamb’s Quarters

Lambs quarter (Chenopodium album) is a prolific garden weed that tastes like spinach when steamed. Another green that is common around the garden and yard is chickweed. I often pinch the tender end shoots and add it to salads. 

Watercress from streams and garlic mustard from wooded areas are other edible greens that grow in abundance in the spring. Ramps or wild leeks will spice up your foraged dishes and soon the season to hunt for tasty morel mushrooms will start. 

You can even add a touch of elegance to your wild salads with violets, which are an edible flower.

3. Stinging Nettle

A spring edible weed that is prolific on our farm is stinging nettle (Urtica dioica L.). I once viewed them as a problem to eradicate, now I look at them as a cash crop. Stinging nettle will lose its sting when cooked and makes a delicious green that is great in scrambled eggs or in soup (see recipe below). Many folks also use it as a tea to help with arthritis and other maladies. You do need to take care when harvesting and preparing this plant because the stems can cause skin irritation before cooked.

stinging nettle
Learn More About Edible Weeds at Lehmans.com

4. Purple Dead Nettle

This invasive wild edible takes over yards and meadows in the springtime. Purple Dead Nettle does not have the stinging properties commonly found in nettles, hence the name “dead”; therefore, you don’t have to worry about wearing gloves when foraging this plant.

purple dead nettle

Purple Dead Nettle (Lamium purpureum) makes a great tea to calm seasonal allergies due to its antihistamine and anti-inflammatory properties.

Eat purple dead nettle raw in salads, in a pesto, or as a dried seasoning. You can also use this plant to make infused oils, salves, tinctures, and wound poultices.

5. Wild Violets

Wild violets (Viola sororia) pop up in early spring. The small purple flowers don’t last very long, but the heart-shaped leaves will stay for months.

This plant is an anti-inflammatory, high in Vitamin A & Vitamin C, cleanses the blood, moves the lymphatic system, and relieves skin irritations. 

wild violets in field | edible weeds

Use violet flowers to make a tasty tea or violet jelly. Use the fresh leaves in raw salads or in violet leaf oil and violet leaf salves that can treat insect bites and sunburn.

6. White Clover

White clover (Trifolium repens) is a very common “weed” that shows up in the spring. It is known to treat common cold symptoms and the effects of arthritis. Although it is an invasive species, it is valued in the garden for nitrogen fixation, pollinator attraction, and as a ground cover. 

White clover blossoms

Use white clover blossoms and leaves raw in salads, in infused oils, salves, tinctures, and teas. You can dehydrate the blossoms to use later as well. 

7. Wild Strawberries 

Wild Strawberries (Fragaria vesca) are tasty little berries that look almost exactly like miniature strawberries poking out of the grass. 

These berries are high in potassium, vitamins, and other minerals. You can eat them raw or gather them to make wild strawberry jam. 

Wild Strawberries

There is a lookalike to the wild strawberry, but thankfully it isn’t toxic. It is called a mock strawberry. To tell them apart, look at the shape of the berries. Wild strawberries are shaped like regular strawberries- almost heart-shaped- while mock strawberries are round. The flowers also bloom in different colors. Wild strawberry flowers are white and mock strawberry flowers are yellow.

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Spring Foraging for Common Edible Weeds
Spring Foraging for Common Edible Weeds

Long-Term Power Outage: Be Prepared for the Worst

candle burning during long-term power outage

It’s the emergency situation no one wants to think about: A long-term power outage lasting two or more weeks.

The thought of losing lights, refrigeration, heat, washing machines, and hot water understandably leaves some people paralyzed with fear. If you’ve never lived without these resources, then their long-term absence is not just inconvenient, it’s potentially dangerous. Modern conveniences are wonderful; but when they fail, it’s worse than never having them in the first place.

emergency survival kit

Long-Term Power Outage: Be Prepared for the Worst

But living without modern amenities – and living comfortably – is more easily achieved than you might think. To find out how to handle a long-term power outage, it’s best to turn to those who spend their lives without electricity, including the Amish and those living off-grid.

The secret is to realize what you would suffer most going without – such as heat, lights, bathing, washing clothes, refrigeration, cooking, etc. – and figure out what’s needed to provide those things without electricity. Fortunately, there are modern, efficient options available to supply these needs.

waterford stanley cookstove

A wood-burning cookstove is a reliable choice for cooking AND heating your home! Visit Lehmans.com or our store in Kidron, Ohio to see our wide selection.

Consider what tools provide the most bang for the buck for supplying basic needs. A wood cookstove, for example, not only heats the house, but it cooks and bakes food and provides hot water for laundry, dishes, and bathing. A non-electric clothes washer and a couple of drying racks can make one of the most time-consuming chores far quicker and easier. That’s a lot of benefits and sustainability from just a couple of items!

There are other things to consider. During a prolonged power outage, emergency personnel are busy helping those in need. The best thing to do is stay off the roads and out of their way. But that doesn’t mean you should stay home and ignore everyone else. It’s also a time to reach out to those around you who might need an extra hand or perhaps shelter: the elderly, the disabled, and families with young children. These are people who would suffer the most without assistance.

READ MORE & Get Prepared for Long-Term Power Outage at LEHMANS.COM

How to Prepare for a Long-Term Power Outage

Power lines can go down for several reasons: storms, natural disasters, wildlife, and human error just to name a few. Sometimes power is restored quickly, but sometimes it can take days or even weeks.

If you already live off-grid, then you are golden! However, those of us who are still on the grid are at risk of losing access to the things that we need to survive comfortably if we were to lose power for more than a day. It is vital to prepare ahead of time before a storm or other natural disaster knocks the grid down. 

There are six main categories to think about when preparing for an extended power outage: 

  1. Clean Water
  2. Food Supply
  3. Light source
  4. Heat source
  5. Connection to other people
  6. Health & home.

Long-Term Power Outage Prep #1: Clean Water Supply

When the power is out, water pumps don’t operate so you will have very limited water coming from your pipes. It is a good idea to stock up on clean water by storing it in large food-grade containers or simply purchasing a couple of cases of bottled water. 

Keeping a water bottle with a built-in filter or a water filtration straw can also help if you have a water source on your property, but don’t have any bottled water saved.

Long-Term Power Outage Prep #2: Food Supply 

Food that is kept in the refrigerator or freezer is at risk of spoiling during a power outage. There are a few things that you can do to prepare to keep your food from going bad.

1.Buy a generator. A generator will provide power to your appliances even when the electricity is down in your area. This is pricey, but if you store a lot of food in freezers it is well worth the investment. Portable generators can cause carbon monoxide poisoning if used indoors. Be sure to keep the generator outside and have a carbon monoxide detector in your home. 

portable generator for a long-term power outage

2. Keep fridge and freezer closed. Try not to open the doors unless necessary. Food can last about 4 hours in the fridge without power and 48 hours in the freezer if the doors aren’t opened.

3. Stock up on Non-Perishable foods. Canned and dried goods don’t require electricity and you don’t need to open the fridge or freezer to access it. When you are preserving your harvests, consider canning, dehydrating, or freeze-drying instead of freezing. You can also purchase extra canned and dried foods from the grocery store to build a supply. 

How to Prepare Food in a Power Outage

You have an emergency food supply, but how will you prepare it without electricity? 

The easiest thing to do is to consume foods that can be eaten without cooking such as sandwiches, canned beans, fruit, etc. If you need to cook during a long-term power outage you can use a cast-iron skillet or Dutch oven over an open fire. Wood and propane stoves are great to have for emergency cooking as well. 

Also, be sure to have a manual can opener for store-bought canned goods. Your electric can opener won’t be of any use when the power is out. 

Long-Term Power Outage Prep #3: Light Source

Supplemental light is important to keep in with your emergency supplies because when the power goes, so does the light source. Sure, we all have cell phones with flashlights, but that will only get you so far when you don’t have electricity to charge the phone. 

oil lamp burning

Battery-powered flashlights, candles, headlamps, oil lamps, and propane lamps are all good supplies to have on hand. You may also want to keep extra batteries for flashlights and headlamps just in case. 

Long-Term Power Outage Prep #4: Heat Source

Power outages during the wintertime can be extra difficult because you have to find a way to keep yourself and your family warm. 

  • If you have a wood cookstove, fire it up to create extra heat. 
  • A propane heater is a great option as well. However, you will want to have backup propane on hand in case the power is out for an extended time. 
  • A generator can be used to power electric heaters, but be sure to only run the generator outside because it can cause a build-up of carbon monoxide.
  • Use hot hands to warm hands & feet.
  • Gather blankets and wear layers of clothing to preserve heat. 
  • Block drafts to reduce the amount of cold air coming in. Roll up towels and push them against the base of exterior doors, keep curtains closed, and wrap windows in plastic film.
  • If possible, stay in one room with doors to the other rooms closed. This will help to keep the heat centralized.

Long-Term Power Outage Prep #5: Connection

When the power is out for a long time, you may find the need to connect with other people. Not necessarily for the social aspect, but for sharing information and goods. 

  • If you have a corded landline phone, then it is a good idea to keep important phone numbers written out so you can contact neighbors and loved ones when needed. 
  • Visit your neighbors to see if they need help or if you can work together to get your families through the power outage. 
  • Keep a battery-operated radio so you can stay up-to-date on emergency news and storm warnings.
  • Use a portable power bank to keep your cell phone charged for as long as possible. These power banks can be charged and stored with your emergency supplies. Then they will be available to transfer power to your cell phone when you need it.

Long-Term Power Outage Prep #6: Health & Home

It is important to prepare your home for potential power outages to keep things running and to make sure your family stays healthy and clean. Use these tips to get through a long-term power outage fairly easily. 

Carbon Monoxide Detector 

The use of a generator and other fuel-burning appliances can cause a carbon monoxide buildup within your home. Keep your generator outside and be sure that you have a working battery-powered carbon monoxide detector. 

Unplug appliances

When the power goes out, unplug all of your appliances. This can help to avoid power surges when the electricity is turned back on. 

Laundry Supplies

You may not need to do laundry unless the power is out for weeks or more, but in the event that the outage lasts that long, it is a good idea to keep a manual clothes washer and a drying rack.

First Aid Kit

Keep a simple first-aid kit with bandages, alcohol swabs, gauze, herbal salves, and anything else that you may need for minor injuries when you are stuck at home with no power. 

Backup Home Power

If you can purchase a home generator system, do that! A home backup generator can power your fridge, freezer, internet, washing machine, heaters or fans, and other electrical appliances. 

Preparing for a long-term power outage

Winter Garden Planning: The Secret to Success

Winter Garden Planning

“The most efficient and effective way to guarantee summer success is through planning your garden during the winter.”

We are heading into the coldest, bleakest months of the year, but this season has one highlight… something like the gardener’s version of the swallows returning to Capistrano: The arrival of seed catalogs in the mail.

The timing of these catalogs is no accident. Amidst the snow and wind, these beautiful, colorful pages give hope that our gardens will bloom once more. They also suggest giddy possibilities, sometimes beyond logic, that this time we’ll be able to grow peanuts in Idaho or mangoes in Alaska.

And above all, seed catalogs give gardeners a powerful tool, something everyone should do before putting that first seed in a pot or in the soil: Paper gardening.

Winter Garden Planning

The most efficient and effective way to guarantee summer success is through planning your garden during the winter.

Whether you’re gardening in pots on your patio, a suburban backyard, or a half-acre truck garden – all our growing efforts benefit from pre-planning on paper. The best thing about these tools is they are virtually free.

Understand that no matter how well you plan, some failures are inevitable. Gardening is rife with unpredictable factors out of your control. But as the old adage goes, “Planning prevents poor performance.” You may not be able to predict or control these outside factors, but you can plan for them – on paper.

winter garden planning | notebook, seeds, coffee

Start by figuring out your challenges. Are you in an area prone to drought? What’s your soil like? What kind of pests do you routinely face? What kind of space constraints do you face?

Whatever weaknesses you face, now is the time to figure out how to reduce or eliminate them. Perhaps you could install a drip irrigation system. Perhaps you should bypass the ground and garden in raised beds. Maybe you should raise your fence to eight feet to discourage deer. Perhaps you should incorporate vertical plantings to maximize space.

Next, sketch out your garden space, approximating the dimensions and shape. Unless you’re blessed with a huge area, you’ll have to restrict your garden dreams to within the confines of what you have available. Thankfully, whole industries and entire sciences have arisen to tackle the challenges of maximizing output within minimal space … and the best place to start is on that piece of paper.

Keep Reading at Lehmans.com

Winter Garden Planning & Preparation Tasks

Take advantage of the colder months to start planning and preparing your vegetable garden so you will be ready to start planting in early spring! 

1. Reflect on Last Season

Take some time to think about your past garden seasons. What worked well? What plants, growing techniques, etc flopped? Are there things that can be done differently in the upcoming season?

2. Decide What to Plant

Be intentional. What does your family use the most? Write out the potential uses of each plant… Fresh eating, canning, dehydrating, etc. This will help you make sure that you are planting with purpose and reducing your food waste before you even start to grow. 

Also, the USDA hardiness zones have recently changed. Be sure to check to see if your zone has shifted because you may need to adjust the plants that you choose based on this. 

3. Plan the Garden Layout

Use The Homestead Journal Planner to draw your garden’s ideal layout. Consider sun exposure (sun mapping is a good idea), water accessibility, wind patterns, soil type, and companion planting possibilities as you design your spring garden. 

4. Take a Seed Inventory

This is the perfect time of year to go through your seeds and write down everything that you have so you can see what you still need to purchase. If you have seeds that are 5+ years old, you might consider tossing them OR planting them with the understanding that they may or may not germinate. 

Seed Packs in a Bucket

5. Purchase Seeds

Don’t wait until spring to buy seeds. Go ahead and purchase what you need during the cold season so you will be ready to go when it is time to start seeds.

6. Write Down Optimal Planting & Harvest Dates

Look at each seed variety that you want to plant. Do the math based on the average last frost date to determine when they should be started (indoors or outdoors) and when they should be ready for harvesting.

7. Prepare the Soil

Use the winter months to prepare your garden beds for planting. Test your soil’s pH, add any amendments, layer compost and other organic matter on the soil, and add weed control. 

Winter Garden Planning Resources

Grab these resources during the cold weather to get a head start before the upcoming growing season begins. 

1 . Homestead Journal Planner

This journal-style planner includes record-keeping & planning sheets to help you improve the productivity of your garden as well as the rest of your homestead!

Homestead Journal Planner | Winter Garden Planning

Write daily journal entries about what happens on your homestead, with your family, and more. Keep track of the weather every single day in the weekly calendar portion so that you can go back year after year and see what the weather was like. Having a cooler year than normal? Find a year that it resembled in the past and see what grew well for you that year!

The Homestead Journal Planner isn’t just a planner for one year, it’s a planner to help you build your homestead for years to come. Purchase the physical or digital copy now to get started planning for next year.

2. Kids’ Garden Journal

Winter is a great time to start introducing your children to garden planning! The Kids’ Garden Journal is the perfect tool for getting your kiddos excited about gardening! They can keep their own garden records and color on three different garden related coloring sheets! 

The Homesteaders of America Podcast

Check out the gardening related episodes on the HoA Podcast!

3. The Sustainable Garden Workbook

The Sustainable Garden Workbook was created to help you structure your garden space while providing essential tips for what food items store best long-term. Use this workbook to prepare for a successful garden-to-pantry season.

4. Free Garden Guides

Join the Homestead Insiders at The Prairie Homestead for FREE access to the Garden Planting Guide, Raised Bed Guide, and Cover Crop Guide!

5. Composting Made Easy Free Ebook

The Composting Made Easy E-Book will walk you through the basics of composting, teach you to make your own compost bins (large and small), introduce you to vermicomposting, and give you the information you need to make your own rich garden compost!

The most efficient and effective way to guarantee summer success in the vegetable garden is by planning your garden during the winter.
Winter Garden Planning: The Secret to Garden Success

Fermenting or Pickling: What’s The Difference?

pickled peppers
Photo Credit: Christopher Shockey

Learn about the different pickling methods you can try: Vinegar Pickles for canning; Quick Refrigerator Pickles, or Fermented Pickles from  Kirsten K. Shockey, Guest Blogger for Lehmans.com

What is the difference between fermenting and pickling? It is a common question. In a way, it is just as much a semantics question as it is a process question.

Pickling Methods: Difference Between Fermenting vs. Pickling

What is Pickling?

Let’s start with the definition of a pickle, or the verb to pickle. The simplest definition is “to preserve or flavor (food) in a solution of brine or vinegar.” Any food can be “pickled” but for the sake of this post we are going to stick to vegetables. Therefore, the first misconception is that all pickles are cucumbers, which is not true—cucumbers just happen to be ubiquitous enough to have earned the title.

pickles
Photo Credit: Christopher Shockey

Different Pickling Methods

Now that we have that out of the way let’s think about the second part of this idea of pickling, which is that the food, or vegetables in our case, are brought to a pH of 4.6 or lower which is necessary to kill most bacteria. In other words, for something to be a pickle it must be acidic—that distinguishing sour pucker. This acidic and anaerobic setting is the environment that we are looking for when we want to preserve our vegetables for later use.

Vinegar Pickling & Quick Pickling

We can preserve vegetables a few ways, but we are going to concentrate on the two ways you might be drawn to in your kitchen: vinegar pickling and quick pickling. With both of these methods you add vinegar to the vegetable to acidify it; often these pickles are packed in a jar and water-bath canned to remove the oxygen and seal the jar.

A true quick pickle, or refrigerator pickle, is generally made for flavor instead of preservation and stored in the fridge for quick consumption. Recipes for canned vinegar pickles are very specific because, for them to be safe, it is important that the added acidity brings the pH of everything in the jar to below that 4.6 mark.

Read more about the different pickling methods at Lehmans.com

More Pickling Ideas

Check out these other recipes for preserving the harvest with pickling!

Fermenting vs. Pickling: What's the Difference?

My Favorite Garden Tips

My Favorite Gardening Tips: Harvesting Lettuce

I have had so many great people teaching me about gardening, I picked up many helpful and fun gardening tips for a healthy & fruitful garden.

by Allison Ervin

Gardening is one of my all-time favorite summertime activities. I love planting seedlings, watching them grow, taking care of them, and eventually, harvesting the wonderful things they bring to the table (pun intended!). 

It is fun in every way to me – gardening draws me outside and into the warm sunshine and fresh air each morning. I love the excitement of seeing the plants each day and watching their progress.

When I was very young (so little I don’t remember it), my mother said I told her that gardening was magic. With dirt and sun, you can make food!

Each successful and delicious vegetable I get is a great achievement, and each less fortunate sprout (one that doesn’t, well, sprout) is an opportunity to learn and become a better gardener.

My Favorite Gardening Tips

I haven’t been gardening for many years and I only have a few seasons of produce under my belt, but I had so many great people teaching me and guiding me that I have picked up quite a few helpful and fun gardening tips for a healthy and fruitful garden.

Source the Best Garden Tools

The first thing is that Lehman’s is the place to get everything you need. I get all my seeds, tools and even the containers in which to plant them, from Lehman’s. This summer I used two raised bed gardens, which I highly recommend.

They keep my garden clean and contained and allow me to plant the garden on our deck, which keeps it safe from woodland creatures. I have discovered the rabbits and deer in our backyard will eat anything!

My Favorite Gardening Tips: Raised Bed Garden

Grow 16 sq ft of vegetables in your backyard. Available at Lehmans.com

Lehman’s also carries composting soil and lots of organic plant care items. I really like the book, Starter Vegetable Gardens, which is also available at Lehman’s. If you have a chance to visit the retail store in Kidron, you can get lots of advice from the staff. They also have a garden planted on the patio, so you can work with the tools and see the fruits (or should I say “vegetables”) of the labor.

Read More Top Garden Tips on Lehmans.com!

My Favorite Gardening Tips

Sustainable Farming: Making a Living on the Homestead with Joel Salatin

Sustainable Farming with Joel Salatin
 by Patrice Lewis

If you’ve ever wondered how to make a living from a homestead, there’s a man who can tell you about the sustainable farming methods that can make your dream a reality. 

Joel Salatin is that man. His family owns Polyface Farm in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley.

Homesteading is – or should be – something like a closed circle. Everything supports and contributes to the success of everything else, looped in an endless cycle of healthy natural feedback.

The result is a variety of different products – meat, eggs, fruits, vegetables – which the farmer can sell to earn income, all while making sure the land is nourished and protected.

Salatin does this by following the cycles of nature, both in plant growth and in animal behavior.

Implementing Sustainable Farming to Make a Living on the Homestead

Joel operates his “beyond organic” operation by employing radical principles: Rather than fighting nature, he works in conjunction with nature. (Radical, no?)

His success proves small farmers can use holistic management techniques that fly in the face of agri-business practices and even surpass the governmental “organic” certification (which Salatin dismisses as little more than bureaucratic paperwork but does little to help nature).

Salatin is an agrarian gladiator who enjoys sharing his expertise. But watch out: the man brooks no tolerance for conventional agricultural “wisdom.”

Instead, he’s here to show small farmers how to make a profit from their land while maintaining healthy, sustainable practices.

Cows graze on grass, grouped in herds as instinct demands. They are moved to fresh forage daily so they don’t graze in their own waste.

Behind them comes “eggmobiles” – floorless chicken tractors which allow free-range meat birds to scratch up the cow droppings, eat bugs, and sanitize the grass, just as birds do in nature.

Pigs forage on pasture in summer, but during winter they bed down in “pigaerators,” which oxygenates the winter waste products of the cattle.

The resulting compost is the backbone of the farm’s fertility program. “We’re really in the earthworm enhancement business,” says Salatin. “Stimulating soil biota is our first priority. Soil health creates healthy food.”

Read More About Joel Salatin’s Farming Methods Here

Joel Salatin’s Tips for Sustainable Farming on the Homestead

Joel Salatin spoke at the 2019 Homesteaders of America conference on the sustainable farming methods that have made his farm successful. He shared a wealth of knowledge and tips for homesteaders who are seeking to have their farms turn a profit.

In this excerpt of clips from the lecture you’ll glean wisdom that will help you get your farm started on the right foot!

The full lecture is available for viewing in the Homesteaders of America VIP Member Library! Become an HOA VIP Member and get access to ALL of the available conference lectures (over 55+ hours in all!) from homesteading experts and educators across the country!

TRANSCRIPT

Going into Debt To Start Your Farm

“Debt should only be used to leverage income. I’m not as quite a pariah on debt as much as Dave Ramsey but I do believe there are places for debt. Debt is ok to use if it’s actually going to generate income and it’s going to return an investment.”

Gaining Experience on the Farm: You Can’t Google It

“You can’t Google experience. A lot of people say, “Why did you become successful?” Well I think the best answer is we were just too stubborn to quit. Perseverance brings you to mastery. If you’re familiar with the Peter Drucher Learning Curve, you enter an enterprise and say, “Let’s try this.” You enter at this point [raises hand high]… well it gets worse [drops hand down to demonstrate going down a curve] because you make mistakes, you’re trying something new. That’s called the Slough of Despond down in here. And that is usually 3-5 years before you come back in to where you entered. And then it goes way up here as you develop mastery [raises hand above the beginning level]. The problem is, that 3-5 years, most people quit, right in the bottom of the trough. Right when it’s ready to turn back up and you start making headway, that’s when everybody quits. So, persevere. When people ask me, “What’s your single biggest advice for a person starting out?” my advice is, “Don’t quit! Because it’s darkest right before the dawn and you’re going to get tired right before you have the breakthrough.” “

Focusing on Form or Function? Does the appearance of a farm really matter? 

“Don’t get so caught up in what things look like. Think about function first. And if I may go where angels fear to tread, I would include in this: Breeds. When you start out, you’re not going to get the picture perfect bull or the picture perfect cow or goat or whatever it is. This is one of the problems with heritage breeds. “Oh! I want this cute little animal!” And people get all fired up about these cute little things. So what we have are Scottish Highlander cattle in Alabama cause they’re cute. Scottish Highlander cattle don’t work in Alabama. They’re uncomfortable, they’re unhappy, they’re burning up. If you want Scottish Highlander cattle, go live in Ontario but don’t live in Alabama. We get this idea of a look and it gets in the way of function and we try to force function into form instead of doing function first and working on form later.”

Sustainable Farming Infrastructure: Will it Make You or Break You? 

“If you’ve been to our place, man, it looks threadbare. Allan Nation always used to say that a profitable farmstead should have a threadbare look. If it’s got pretty white picket fences and everything is all done up just right, it’s probably what we call a “land yacht” instead of something that is actually  turning a profit.”

Mastering One Thing at a Time: Profitability Comes Before Expansion

“Before you build your menagerie because you read all this stuff and you have all these ideas,
“We oughta do this, we oughta do this, we oughta do this…” and what happens is we end up doing a lot of things halfway. 

My encouragement is to get one thing good at a time. 

Get one thing good at a time. Become a master of one thing. The menagerie will come later. You can have all the menagerie you want, but do one thing well. And once you’ve mastered one thing that will be profitable… and if you can’t do one thing profitably, trust me, you can’t do two things profitably…  So do one thing very well and that profitability and that efficiency will pay for and drive your trials and experiments in other things.”

Building a Local Economy: What REALLY Works

“We spend a lot of time spinning our wheels trying to develop complete independence when we’d actually do better at finding what we’re good at, spending more time there, mastering it, becoming efficient at it, and then taking the profit we’re able to get because we’re really good at this, and becoming mutually interdependent within the community and creating the economy. That’s what makes the local, rural economy work is different trades and gifts being traded back and forth.”

Being Strategic: Achieving Success at the Right Things

“The thing is there’s a lot of things we can do in life. Everybody has full calendars, we’ve got full schedules, lots of things to do. The question is at the end of our life do we look back and say, “Well, we were successful at the wrong things.” That’s a great tragedy. And so we want to be strategic, we want to be direct, we want to be specific about our activities and know that what we’re doing is the effective thing, the right thing, at the right time.”

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Sustainable Farming with Joel Salatin

Do You Know Where Your Food Comes From?

food recall

It’s an exercise which far too many people are finding themselves doing. Open the refrigerator, take out the bag of veggies or tray of meat, and check whether the contents are involved in the latest food recall.

The newest scandals to hit the news involve romaine lettuce and ground beef. Dozens of people from nearly 20 states have been sickened (one has died) by lettuce originating in Yuma, Arizona contaminated with E. coli. Then a North Carolina food processor recalled more than 35,000 pounds of ground beef for possible contamination with plastic bits.

Do You Know Where Your Food Comes From?

The Problem

These types of recalls are not uncommon … and they lead to a very uncomfortable question: Do you know where your food comes from?

So much has been written about the adverse effects of artificial ingredients in packaged foods that many health-conscious people are increasingly buying what are termed “one ingredient” foods – fresh, unpackaged or minimally packaged items that can be mixed with other one-ingredient items to make a delicious meal. But what happens when one-ingredient foods are the ones being recalled?

The sad truth is fruits and vegetables are often picked while unripe, shipped long distances, stored for long periods of time, and handled extensively. At every step, the potential increases for carrying diseases and contaminants. Meat and dairy products are just as bad.

planter

An Alternate Choice: Locally-Grown Foods

It’s no wonder people are becoming more interested in locally-grown foods. Not only does buying locally support small farmers, but less energy is required for shipping, handling, and packaging.

You don’t need a lot of space to grow your own food. Raised garden beds and planters are great solutions for small yards and patios.

Of course, the ultimate “locavore” experience comes from what you grow, raise, or produce yourself. What could be more satisfying than picking a breakfast of fresh strawberries? A salad lunch with your own lettuce and tomatoes? Dinner with green beans or corn?

Some go further and raise their own chickens for eggs and cows for milk. Others raise their own pork or beef or buy these products from local sources they trust.

It can bring great security and comfort to grow or raise your own food, or buy it locally. No more wondering what happened to that romaine lettuce as it traveled 2000 miles to your supermarket. No more wondering about that crunchy bit in your hamburger.

Read More on Lehmans: Do You Know Where Your Food Comes From?

Do You Know Where Your Food Comes From?

Basic Pickles Recipes: Summertime Is Pickling Time

Basic Pickles Recipes

Discover the joys of making homemade pickles in the summer with fresh garden vegetables! Your family will love these basic pickles recipes!

by . Lehman’s Hardware

Summertime brings us the freshest produce of the year. Now is the time to put up some of the bounty for the cold winter days! Pickled cauliflower, cucumbers, and peaches? Yes, please!

There are a few hard and fast rules that will protect your family and the food you have worked to prepare.

Resources for Making Homemade Pickles

My first suggestion is to get a quality book on canning and read it. Lehman’s has all the essential canning supplies, including the Blue Ball Book, which many consider the only guidebook you will ever need.

Jars and Lids

When canning, use standard canning jars with pre-treated lids; leftover food jars are NOT safe to use, they can explode in hot water bath or pressure cooker. Discard any jars with rims that are cracked or chipped.

Do not reuse lids! They come pre-treated from the manufacturer with an agent to help them keep their seal. It would be a shame to do all of the work of canning only to find out that the seal didn’t hold.

Basic Pickles Recipes

Here are a few recipes to try this summer:

Pickled Cauliflower

Cauliflower

Pickled Cauliflower

A simple recipe for pickled cauliflower.
Print Recipe Pin Recipe
Prep Time 20 minutes
Canning 5 minutes
Course Appetizer
Cuisine American
Servings 4 servings

Ingredients
  

  • 1 Tablespoon canola oil
  • 1 teaspoon cumin seed
  • 1 teaspoon coriander seed
  • 2 teaspoon curry powder
  • 1 teaspoon fresh minced ginger
  • 1 whole clove garlic, smashed
  • 1 head cauliflower, cut into florets
  • 1 cup water
  • 1 cup rice wine vinegar
  • ½ cup cider vinegar
  • 3 Tablespoons sugar
  • 1 Tablespoon pickling salt, no substitute

Instructions
 

  • Heat the canola oil in a heavy skillet over medium heat. 
  • Crush the cumin seed with the coriander seed and add to the pan.
  • Add the curry powder, ginger, and garlic to the pan.
  • Cook these spices, stirring until the oil colors and the spices are fragrant.
  • Add the cauliflower florets to the pan and toss to coat.
  • In a lidded plastic container, combine the water, rice wine vinegar, cider vinegar, sugar, and pickling salt. Shake to combine.
  • Once the cauliflower is slightly tender, add it to a canning jar. Pour the pickling liquid over the cauliflower, filling to the top of the jar.
  • Cool, chill, and store for 1 week to allow the flavors to develop thoroughly.

How to Can Pickled Cauliflower

  • Heat vinegar mixture to near boiling.
  • Pack cauliflower into jars.
  • Pour hot vinegar mixture into jars, leaving ½” headspace. Cover with lids; screw on bands to “fingertip tight.”
  • Process jars in hot water bath for 5 minutes; water should cover jars by 1 inch. Remove jars to rack to cool. Test seals. Store in cool, dark place.
Keyword cauliflower, pickles

Head on over to Lehmans.com to get more delicious tangy recipes for basic pickles including Sweet Gherkin Pickles, Dill Pickles, and Southern Pickled Peaches! You’ll also find a video tutorial for simple water bath canning instructions. Homesteader home canning couldn’t get any easier!

Find More Basic Pickles Recipes at Lehmans.com

Preserving the Harvest

If you grow a homestead garden you’ll eventually need to preserve the produce haul you bring in. Find more recipes and tutorials for preserving your garden bounty!

Basic Pickles Recipes: Homemade Pickles from Summertime Garden Vegetables

Benefits Of Apple Cider Vinegar Made at Home

Apple Cider Vinegar

For little effort you get one of the most beneficial pantry staples, apple cider vinegar! Learn all about the health benefits of apple cider vinegar and the various ways you can use it!

By Destiny Hagest, Lehman’s Hardware

A few falls ago, one of my husband’s coworkers invited us to come out with buckets to pick apples from the trees in his overwhelmed backyard. We came home happy with three five-gallon buckets full. Then came the endless task of processing them, and figuring out what the heck we were going to do when we got sick of apple pies.

Aside from bourbon apple pork chops, apple muffins, and EVERYTHING ELSE we wound up making, I had a massive pile of apple peels, and I decided I wanted to do something more than feed them to my chickens this year. (Sorry chickens, that’s what you get for trying to eat my wedding ring).

Turning to the internet for inspiration, I quickly discovered that making apple cider vinegar required little else but clean water, apple scraps, and a bit of patience, so I set to work.

By that Christmas season, I had about 64 ounces of the stuff — pure, homemade apple cider vinegar, just ever so slightly sweet, and all the more satisfying because I had made it myself.

You guys, this isn’t a complicated process, it takes SO little effort (well, aside from all that cursed peeling).

And you get one of my favorite beneficial kitchen staples ever out of the deal. Learn about the health benefits and other creative ways you can use apple cider vinegar.

Benefits of Apple Cider Vinegar

Health Benefits of Apple Cider Vinegar

There are so many fantastic health benefits to apple cider vinegar.*

It can slow premature aging. 

  • Thanks to the natural antioxidants in apple cider vinegar, sipping this little concoction is akin to taking a beauty supplement — it actually helps to fight signs of premature aging caused by free radical damage (think: sunlight).

It helps balance your blood sugar.

  • This one is really interesting. Several studies have shown that sipping a couple of tablespoons of apple cider vinegar each night can actually lower your blood sugar the next morning!

It’s great for sore throats. 

  • Thanks to the natural antibacterial properties of apple cider vinegar, it makes a great natural sore throat medicine.

It can balance your gut. 

  • There’s a healthy balance of bacteria in your gut responsible for making digestion run smoothly and helping your body absorb nutrients properly. When you have a bacterial overgrowth, apple cider vinegar can help to balance that.

It can reduce heartburn. 

  • It sounds crazy, right? The truth is is that apple cider vinegar, when diluted with water, can actually help prevent heartburn. Since acid reflux is caused by a shortage of acid, apple cider vinegar helps to gently restore the balance.

It’s a great source of manganese. 

  • There isn’t much nutrient-wise to apple cider vinegar, but it does have unusually high levels of the mineral manganese, which is responsible for everything from bone health to regulating our metabolism.
Learn More Benefits of Apple Cider Vinegar at Lehmans.com

4 Ways To Preserve Food Like A Farmer

4 Ways to Preserve Food Like a Farmer
By Hannah Breckbill, Lehman’s Hardware

As a vegetable farmer, all season long I’m confronted with too much abundance — it’s absolutely overwhelming. In winter, though, it can feel like the opposite if I don’t prepare and preserve food. So the question for me is, how can I manage the abundance of summer so that I can enjoy it into the winter?

I have four techniques to preserve food:

  1. Canning
  2. Freezing
  3. Fermenting 
  4. Fresh storage

All have their pros and cons. But let me tell you some of my favorite things to make and then eat during winter.

4 Ways to Preserve Food Like a Farmer

4 Ways To Preserve Food Like a Farmer

Freezing

Learning to preserve food through freezing is one of the easiest ways to save money!

Freeze your own garden produce or take advantage of a great sale at your local grocery store. Our heavy-duty containers are made of durable plastic to lock in flavor and freshness and prevent damaging freezer burn at very low temperatures.

Whenever I come up with extra peas, beans, and broccoli, I do my best to blanch and freeze them. I don’t grow my own sweet corn, so I often don’t spend the time dealing with someone else’s abundance. I try not to freeze too much, though. Freezer space is precious, and I’d rather have half a hog available to me than as much broccoli.

The one vegetable I devote really significant amounts of freezer space to is sweet peppers… I love making winter stir-fries with that sweetness, and no tomato-based dish is complete in my mind without plenty of peppers also. I just halve the peppers, take the seeds out and stem off, and toss them in a freezer container — no blanching necessary.

And finally, if I made a zucchini bread a little more often, it might be worth it to shred zucchini in 2-cup quantities and freeze it, but honestly, I don’t think much about zucchini bread except when confronted with big ones during the season, and the frozen stuff usually gets forgotten. (The tip here is: only freeze what you know you’ll like to use!)

4 Ways to Preserve Food Like a Farmer

Canning

Water-bath canning is a great way to get started in canning! Our enamelware canner is just like the ones our moms used, and its included canning rack holds 7 Ball quart or pint jars. At Lehmans.com and our store in Kidron, Ohio.

This method loses some nutrients as compared to freezing, but it doesn’t take up freezer space, and it’s so satisfying to have a larder full of bright cans. I only water-bath can, which means I can only preserve acidic things without risk of botulism. In terms of vegetables, this pretty much means I can tomato products and vinegar pickles. I love making tomato and tomatillo salsa to can, and I make enough of it to eat until next tomato season, usually with corn chips as my lunch, or with eggs as my breakfast.

I also stew tomatoes and can those. All I do is choose tomatoes that aren’t too watery, cut them in half and squeeze the seeds out (I learned that technique when working at seed savers exchange), and then throw them in a big pot and cook down, skins and all. After a number of hours, I end up with something very like tomato paste. If I wanted to, I could run it through a food mill to make it smooth without the skins, but I’ve found that whatever I want to do with my stewed tomatoes—pizza sauce, pasta sauce, chili—doesn’t really mind having the skins in. I can it by packing it hot into jars, putting a tablespoon of lemon juice in to assure its acidity, and processing the jars for about 20 minutes.

Learn how to can tomato juice (and the reasons why you should!)

I’ve learned to love making pickles, not only from cucumbers, but also from summer squash, beans, and okra. That sharp vinegar flavor coupled with dill or garlic or cayenne or all of the above is a really nice addition to any meal in the winter. But I don’t can too many batches of vinegar pickles because my next method of preserving these things is even better.

Read the Rest of the Article at Lehmans.com
4 Ways to Preserve Food Like a Farmer