How I Dress For Cold Weather: An Ode to Wool
Life on the homestead in NE Utah is thrilling in many ways – gorgeous sunsets, seedlings emerging dramatically from the soil in spring, or the surprising call of sandhill cranes…
Death and Life – A Walk in the Desert
Who needs candy and costumes? We celebrated Halloween with a hike in the desert where we found signs of life and death to help us contemplate the holiday. Since we’ve…
Welcoming Barney – Transitioning a Feral Cat into Our Home
For a while it was a running joke between Chad and I that we didn’t need any other cats – but, we didn’t have an orange one yet, so maybe…
Low Oxalate Cranberry Muffins (GF, Low Histamine, Low FODMAP)
Behold, cranberry muffins that even those with gluten intolerance, histamine intolerance, oxalate overload, and SIBO can eat! I’m not going to be entering them into any Bake Off contests –…
Bonus Round – The Fall Garden
In early October we brought in what we thought would be our last harvest before wintery weather put an end to our summer garden. Now, a day away from November…
Are Plants Trying to Kill Us? A Look at Oxalates
It can be easy to forget that a plant has a point of view. We tend to not see them doing much, so we think that they aren’t very much…
Showy Milkweed – Weed or Wildflower?
When it comes to differentiating between a weed and a wildflower, the answer lies in one’s perspective. Many farmers find that milkweed gets in the way. I wouldn’t exactly say…
We Grew It From Seed – Costata Romanesco Zucchini
In addition to ‘Cube of Butter,’ another of our favorite zucchini varieties in the Hearthwilde garden is this Italian heirloom, ‘Costata Romanesca.’ What initially appealed to me about this summer…
Celebrating the Autumn Equinox
Being nature lovers, we like to celebrate the equinoxes and solstices, those special moments in the year that mark the rotation of the earth around the sun. At each of…
Winter Squash and Pumpkin Varieties – 2021
This year, 2021, we grew at least 11 different cultivars of winter squash and pumpkins. ( I say “at least” because we can’t peg an ID on some of them.)…
Fall Color on the Farm
As much as I love gardening during summer, the transition into autumn makes me want to give a big sigh of relief. Along with the cooler weather, some glimpses of…
100 Years of Love – A Tribute to My Grandfather, Crawford E. Hicks
Today my dear grandfather left his mortal form and passed on. Since I’m unable to grieve with my family in person, I’m sharing this here to celebrate his life and…
Watching Our Pollinator Neighbors
Once the days are warm and the flowers in bloom, one of my greatest and most simple pleasures is watching insects – and our garden affords many opportunities to do…
We Grew It From Seed – Plains Coreopsis
Coreopsis is a plant I’ve been fond of back since my high school days when I had an afternoon job working at a family owned garden center. There’s something reassuring…
We Grew It From Seed – California Poppies
While we still grow so exotic garden flowers in our polyculture garden, such as cosmos and zinnias, this year I decided to add more native annuals to the mix. One…
The Totally Unexpected Way I Reduced My Inflammation: A Low Oxalate Diet
A year ago today, my body was so inflamed, it seemed like everything hurt: my back and my joints in particular. I felt like my body was attacking itself and…
We Grew It from Seed – Lauren’s Grape Poppy
I’m not sure why, exactly, but I decided to grow several different types of poppies from seed this year. Lauren’s Grape poppy was one of my favorite varieties. With deep…
A Natural Way to Remove Skunk Smell from Dogs – Apple Cider Vinegar
Living in a rural area means we have lots of wildlife visitors. Loads of friendly pollinators visit our garden, deer come to browse at the apples that fall from our…
Peter Wohlleben’s The Hidden Life of Trees
Have you ever hugged a tree? And have you wondered if it might be aware of you hugging it? If you are the type of person who might entertainment such…
Rice Salad with Beef, Lime, and Herbs
After months of eating a restrictive and not super flavorful diet, I’ve finally come up with a meal that gets my taste buds excited. This is now one of my…
Gut Health and SIBO – How I Finally Got Diagnosed
I’ve struggled with gut issues for over a decade and a half. With hindsight, I believe that I may have had SIBO (Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth) this entire time without…
A Low Oxalate Garden
Since I began gardening seriously in 2013, I have always been focused on expansion. How can I grow the most diversity of foods? How can I incorporate perennials, fruit trees,…
A Natural Remedy for Ringworm – Coconut Oil
One day I noticed our cat Louie licking his belly. This didn’t seem to be a typical grooming session, he had been licking the same spot for far too long.…
A Truly Green Bed – What to Look for in a Natural, Organic Mattress
I used to wake up drenched in sweat every night. If you’ve ever slept on a bed that had one of those vinyl-plastic-hospitalish peepee pads on them, you know just how horrible they are… I was looking for a mattress and bed that would have a positive impact on our health and would not have a negative impact on the environment.
Peeling the Onion – My Journey Towards Better Health
Have you ever stumbled across one of those blogs, one that has plenty of content and then stops pretty suddenly? This always makes me wonder what’s going on, what has…
Histamine Intolerance – The Weird Food Intolerance You’ve Probably Never Heard Of
If someone had told me three months ago that the weird constellation of symptoms I was experiencing was all connected and that to reign in my symptoms I would need…
An End to Painful Periods
After years of thinking I’d be suffering from painful periods until menopause delivered me from my monthly cycle, I have found an unexpected release from my monthly pain. If you…
My Experience with Three Elimination Diets for Gut Health and Lowering Inflammation
Over the past year I’ve tried three different diets to help with my gastrointestinal issues and inflammation: the Low FODMAP diet, the Autoimmune Protocol (AIP) diet, and the Low Histamine…
2020 Winter Squash Harvest
What do you call a big veggie with attitude? Sassquash. Now that I’ve gotten that terrible joke out of my system, it’s time to share some gardening news. As a…
Why We Grow Our Own Food
Sometimes in the middle of summer when it seems like all our spare time goes to the garden, both Chad and I can start to question our commitment to gardening.…
First Steps to Reducing EMFs
I’m going to give you a primer on the first steps you can take at home to reduce your exposure to EMFs – no meter required! First, though, I thought…
Soaking Rice for Improved Digestion and Nutrition
Part of my gut-care routine includes eating brown rice that I soak before cooking. Why Soak Rice? Like fermentation, soaking is a way to transform grains into a more nutritious…
Celebrating a New Season – Autumn Rituals
As I sat outside this morning throwing the ball for Leo, I looked at the ground and noticed that the first leaves had begun to fall. The air was crisp,…
We Grew it from Seed – Cube of Butter Yellow Zucchini
Chad and I usually prefer open-pollinated varieties as opposed to hybrids, so that we have the option of saving seeds if we want to. However, early this year when we…
Gluten Free Sourdough Starter from Chick Pea Flour
After a few years of loyalty to my trusty brown rice sourdough starter, I tried experimenting with switching out the brown rice for chick pea flour earlier this year. To…
How to Be Less Reliant on Heating and AC
As I write this it is the middle of summer, and like many of the recent summers past we’ve experienced hotter than normal temperatures. And yet, in our household we…
North, South, East, or West: Determine Your Direction at Home
I did not grow up thinking about the cardinal directions. Although I was a Brownie (translation, “pre-Girl Scout”) for about one season as a child, all I remember from that…
How to Forage and Cook Lambsquarters
Do you grow spinach in your garden? If so, or even if you are just a spinach fan, you might want to consider branching out to this other, less well-known…
Alternate Ways to Use Sourdough Starter
Most people make sourdough starter with the intention of making bread. That was my intention as well, when I first started cultivating a starter. As it turns out, I use…
Edible Weeds: Blue Mustard, Arugula’s Wild Cousin
I have been craving sauteed greens lately – and as our stocks of frozen spinach have started to disappear, I’ve been thinking about what’s in the garden. Not the plants…
Edible Weeds: Dandelion
The first seeds in our spring garden are just barely starting to come up, and with less frequent access to the supermarket, I’ve been missing fresh greens. I was thrilled…
Garden News: Spring 2020
Howdy friends! It’s time to show off what Chad and I have been up to recently. It’s so nice to have energy to work on these projects instead of moping…
Prompts: Finding Perspective
Welcome back to your weekly lockdown prompt! If you didn’t see my answer to last week’s question, it’s right here. As previously mentioned, since many people are confined to their…
Gardening: How to Grow a Survival Garden for Beginners
Growing your own food must be sounding pretty good right about now, eh? And you’re not alone, based on the current run on seeds. The seed companies can’t keep up…
Prompts: Your Desert Island Foods
Being home with a somewhat limited food supply has me thinking about food a lot. I’m not exactly stuck on a desert island, yet, the situation makes me wonder what…
Prompts: Know Your Neighbors
Hi there! I hope everyone reading this is staying healthy, or recovering. I was sick for a month myself and am just regaining my normal rhythm, routine, and (mostly) energy.…
Garden News: Overwintered Carrots
This week, Chad and I received a gift from ourselves from the past – almost 20 lbs of carrots! We had a large carrot crop last summer and decided to…
Homekeeping: How to Get By Without Toilet Paper
I thought I would try to cover a few subjects of current interest to myself, and perhaps you, during this global health crisis we’re living through. Don’t moments like this…
Food Issues: No Clue about Paleo? Here’s the Answer.
Fellow food-intolerant friends, As mentioned here recently, I have spent some weeks (months?) of frustration on the food intolerance front, despite some fairly valiant efforts to avoid suspect items. During…
Homesteading: Creating and Keeping Routines
When we’re on the road, Chad and I like to listen to Great Courses CDs, and one of them we listened to recently was on decision making. Chad wasn’t excited…
Wildlife: Painted Lady Butterflies
Last summer we had some borage come up as volunteers in our garden. Did I say “some”? I meant thousands of plants. We didn’t have borage plants, we had borage…
Food Issues: A Quest for a Healthy Diet
I thought I had my healthy diet all figured out. Vegetarianism was my eating style of choice. For me, this choice lasted for twenty five years. After a long struggle…
Yoga: My Home Practice
I live in a very rural location with no access to regular yoga classes. But yoga is one of my great joys in life, so I’ve had to figure out…
On Aging and Growing Older
Over the past several years I have noticed something about growing older: I feel the same as I did when I was a little girl. I assume I am not…
Garden to Campsite
Last year we went on a short road trip to Montana. We made sure to take some of our garden produce with us to use as we stopped over at…
Garden News – Summer’s Harvests – 2019
Winter seems like a good time to look back at the past year’s summer bounty and see what did well for us out here in the high desert. Here are…
Climate: The High Desert
We live in the high desert in Northeast Utah, where the winters are long and cold and the summers are short and hot. It’s a continental climate. I first learned…
Garden News – Winter Seed Catalogs and Garden Planning
My spirits tend to get low during the winter – the post-holiday blues, gloomy weather, and reduced outdoors time always get to me. Winter here in NE Utah is long,…
Living With Less
Howdy friends, Lately I’ve been trying to recenter the framework for this blog. One of the things that keeps coming up is that life here on the homestead is so…
Homekeeping: How to Buy Organic Gluten Free in Bulk
If like me, you’re trying to make a simple living by being largely self-sufficient, finances are probably one of your constant concerns. But along with pinching pennies, I also have…
Recipe: Gluten-Free Sourdough Pancakes
Life-Changing Two-Ingredient Pancakes How many times have you wanted pancakes but didn’t have a mix on hand? This recipe will show you that you’ll never need to buy a pancake…
Garden News: The Apricopocalypse
My Two Weeks (Or So) Of Non-Stop Apricots One of the nice things about living on an old homestead is that usually some person, decades ago, was smart enough to…
Why I Embraced Vegetarianism – And Why I Gave It Up
One evening as a young teen I was babysitting for some family friends. The baby was safe and sound in bed and all I had to do was eat my…
Growing Heirloom Snap Beans
This spring as I planned our garden, I wanted to make sure we planned heavy on produce that would get us through the winter – including lots of winter squash…
Garden News – Harvesting Apricots – 2019
Harvesting Apricots in July in Utah We have one mature apricot tree on our property. Mostly every year it blooms a bit early, then a frost comes along and kills…
Recipes – How to Make Fermented Sauerkraut
Make Your Own Homemade Sauerkraut Making homemade fermented sauerkraut used to scare me. Along with the fear of botulism, I was also confused and unsure how to proceed. I really…
Native Plants – Elkweed
On a recent hike I was excited to discover a plant I was unfamiliar with. For those of you who grew up in the Western US, you probably are familiar…
Food: Cauliflower and Mushroom Sauté
Last night as dinner time approached, I looked in the fridge. Nothing to eat, or so it seemed. I looked in the cupboard. I considered cooking a box of (gluten…
Tips – How to Keep Track of Your Polyculture Garden Plantings
A few years ago I excitedly planted several varieties of snap beans and dry beans in the same section of the garden. At the time of planting, I marked the…
Recipe: Winter Squash Potage
“Potage” is a French word used to describe a soup. While living in France I learned that the term “potage” referred to the type of pureed soup that I’m cooking…
A Natural Resolution
In her book the Nature Fix, author Florence Williams says that the Finnish recommend being in nature for 5 hours a month to reap health benefits. That seems like a…
Gluten Free and Organic Bread Options
We, the gluten intolerant and celiac-afflicted really miss the taste and texture of wheat bread. Yes, there are substitutes, but once you make your way around the gluten-free bread…
Recipe – Gluten Free Sourdough Starter
Most of us have probably heard that fermented foods are healthy for us, increasing the biodiversity in our microbiomes. Fermentation is also an exciting way to see nature at work…
Nature – Love is a Two Way Street
Author, Professor, Botanist and member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, Robin Wall Kimmerer asked her students this question one day: You love nature but do you think that nature loves…
Foraging – Why Eat Wild Food?
Getting to Know Plants My first gardening experience came when I was a teenager. Back then “gardening” for me was an after school job at a small, family-owned garden center,…
Garden News – Polyculture Garden in Late Summer
On this last day of August the days are still hot and I find myself longing for fall. The garden is producing beautifully, and everything seems as if it will…
Foraging and Cooking Wild Asparagus
Asparagus grows wild and abundant around here in the springtime, but we only have a few small patches growing near our driveway. We harvested a few stalks one morning for…
Gardening – Composting in the Desert
Anyone who gardens or simply cooks a lot of vegetables quickly finds out – you must have a compost pile! Vegetable waste translates into useful fertilizer and soil very quickly…
Homesteading – Sheepy Poos
When my husband introduced me to his two icelandic sheep, I asked what their names were. He looked slightly embarrassed and told me he hadn’t named them. Strangely, two names instantly came…
Gardening – Desert Garden Design
Over the past ten years or so my husband has been planting a fairly traditional garden. Each year he tills the ground with a tractor then digs out rows to plant…
Gardening – Gardening in the Desert
Contrary to what you might think, people can and do garden in the desert. However there are certain obstacles to overcome that those of you in more clement areas won’t…
Native Plants: Milkweed
Milkweed is one of the loved, cherished weeds we have growing on our property. The plant is very important for monarch butterflies and may be edible (this subject gives rise to much…
Garden News – Cold Frame Conundrum
I have four cold frames that I made using plastic storage bins and two more that use glass with the thermal mass of bricks and stone. These are experimental and so…
Garden News: New Life in Macro – Spring 2017
If you’re a gardener but have never planted from seed before, you really must try it. Every year when I plant seeds there’s always some doubt: they might not come up.…
Garden News – New Cold Frame
Me and my sweetie went a little crazy ordering seeds a couple of weeks ago. When we combined households last year our seed collections expanded dramatically! I added a lot of…
Starting Seeds
Over the past week or so I’ve been starting seeds in some DIY cold frames which consist of plastic storage bins with a few holes drilled into the bottom. I…
A Climate Change
But not the kind you might be thinking of. Last year I moved away from the Southeast where the summers are hot and humid and the winters are mild. It…
Native Plants: Curly-Cup Gumweed
This summer, anytime we walked up to the end of our lane, Chad would point out a plant with bright yellow flowers growing along side it and tell me he…
Fermentation and Your Fantastic Gut: Why Fermented Foods Help
If you haven’t heard about the importance of gut bacteria to your health, well, where have you been? It’s been everywhere! Research on gut bacteria and health has taken a…
Wildlife: How to Attract Birds to Your Backyard
Last weekend I took a class on birds. It was a great crash course in ornithology and I was delighted to learn all sorts of interesting things about our feathery friends. The…
Cure for gluten sensitivity: Let them eat sourdough?
Gluten-free eating may seem to be just the latest diet trend… Yet, I seriously doubt that the many people buying gluten-free products are doing it for insincere reasons. I don’t…
Sweet sleep: Earthing
Last night I slept on my earthing sheet for the first time. As I lay in bed with the lower part of my legs on the earthing sheet, wondering how…