Self Reliance On A Small Homestead
Foraging for Free Chicken Feed Chickens love to forage for their own greens, insects, and worms but not everyone can allow their flock out to free-range. If you are short on pasture for your hens or the threat of predators is too great, you can gather food for them! Foraging…
How to Start Urban Foraging If you live in an urban area, you might feel kind of left out of the whole self-reliance movement. How much can you possibly do to increase your self-sufficiency in a city? Actually, there are quite a few things to try! I’ve grown little plots…
I read 'Sweet Maple: Backyard Sugarmaking from Tap to Table' by Michelle Visser and loved it! Brings back memories of visiting the family sugarbush!
This recipe for Burdock with Black Beans and Pasta is a dish I created to use more wild foods foraged from our homestead. It's a cheap and delicious meal!
Carduni made with burdock leaves is another great dish you can cook up from foraged greens. This is a great way to save money and eat healthy!
This Creamy Burdock Soup is a tasty spring dish! Made with just fresh milk, butter, burdock leaves, ramps, mushrooms, and a little flour.
How To Harvest & Use Stinging Nettle I remember my Gram telling (little) me that stinging nettle was good to eat. I found it preposterous at the time that this irritating weed could be edible, much less a delicious wild green. After all, in my experience, this plant was the…
How to Harvest and Use Curly Dock Curly dock (also known as yellow dock, sour dock, and butter dock, as well as other names) is one of the first wild greens ready to harvest in spring. This relative of rhubarb is a hardy herbaceous perennial weed native to Europe that…
Cooking Foraged Greens Free Food from My Backyard I don’t have spinach or lettuce ready in my garden yet…heck, the snow just melted last week! But I have weeds and perennial greens coming up in my backyard, free for the picking. This post contains affiliate ads…you will not pay any…
The Bushcraft Field Guide to Trapping, Gathering, & Cooking in the Wild by Dave Canterbury I’m always interested in reading a new book on this subject, and Dave Canterbury never disappoints his readers! So I was happy to have a chance to review a copy of Dave’s latest bushcraft guide.…
Ethical Foraging – Food for Free I’ve been interested in foraging for wild foods since I was a kid. Dandelions, plantain, cattails, wild berries and apples all made their way into a bag or basket as I hiked through the woods and fields, or scavenged through the weeds in our…
Eating Weeds I like to supplement my garden goodies with weeds foraged from the countryside. This year I decided not to forage for milkweed, since the Monarch butterflies are in danger. I do believe that you can harvest milkweed if it is in abundance in your area, but please check…
Leaving Milkweed for Monarch Butterflies I decided to start saving milkweed for the Monarchs. I like foraging for wild edibles, but I also like Monarch butterflies. And these beautiful creatures are in trouble. Habitat destruction and herbicide use are destroying the milkweed plants that Monarchs must lay their eggs on…
Foraged Garlic Mustard Greens The first greens of spring are ready for the taking! Dandelions, garlic mustard, curly dock, horseradish leaves, and wild onions are green and growing. I’m trying to get a jump on the invasive garlic mustard in our yard, although I’m sure I’ll never eradicate it completely.…
Eating Tiger Lilies or Daylilies Tiger lilies are a wild variety of daylily (Hemerocallis) that often grows in naturalized clumps along ditches and roadsides. They are easy to spot and identify and may even grow in your own yard. I like to make salads with young day lily shoots in…
How to Freeze Lambs Quarters and Foraged Greens We have a lot of lambs quarters growing in our garden. I weeded much of it out to make way for my regular garden vegetables, but I keep a small patch here and there to harvest for salads, cooked greens, and freezing…
