Just when I think I’m going to write to you about something, something else even cuter, better, more insistent or more exciting lands in our laps, waddles across the grass, or in some cases, tornadoes out of its hive and covers the land in a buzzing cacophony. (I’m looking at you, honeybees…)

That’s the way July goes.

They say things come in threes. This month thus far, we’ve had three bee swarms, three newborn kittens, and nearly 30 baby geese. The geese clearly wanted to drive the message home.

Plus, of course, the normal July in Vermont things, like summer camps, hiking trips, and finding a way to get a dip in a pond, river, or lake at least once a day if possible.

Every one of those stories deserves its own letter, and I’m writing them now. Honeybees who won’t stay in their hive, geese who put rabbits to shame with babies this year, and more kitten snuggles than a lap can hold.

Those three are going out over the next couple of weeks, one at a time, but they’re going out through my own email list rather than here.

I’m not leaving Substack, to be clear. The monthly updates will keep landing in your inbox just like always, with some sneak peeks of our life here in Vermont by way of photo journal (as you’ll see below). I write for my living, so to some extent, being on all the platforms is just par for the course.

But more and more, I find myself avoiding posting simply because Substack is becoming less a newsletter platform and more a social media platform every day. There are feeds, algorithms, and rankings…and honestly, it’s just more than I can take.

I’m not a social media person. I’m a feet in the pond, cool breeze through my hair, watching the littles play in the yard kinda person. Reels, short videos, and virality be damned.

I want to create somewhere that’s my own, that I can use to connect with you, my readers, that’s not curated, sifted, or otherwise fiddled with by the tech bros that be.

(If you’re already on my list, signing up again won’t hurt anything.)

Yes, Add Me to The List!

Letters from my own list will come from Ashley@PracticalSelfReliance.com, and that inbox goes straight to me. Send me a note there, and add me to your contacts list to make sure you never miss a thing.

Ok, that’s enough administrative kerfuffles for one note. On to the pictures!

What are you harvesting, preserving, building, or exploring on your homestead this week? I’d love to hear about it!

Write to me directly at Ashley@practicalselfreliance.com. That’s my own address now, on my own domain, and it comes straight to me.

If you add it to your contacts, my letters will land in your inbox instead of getting shuffled off into promotions or spam, which matters more than you’d think these days. Replies help too. The email providers pay attention to who you actually write back to.

Starting later this week, you’ll see emails coming straight from me on my new list.

(Already on my list? You’re all set. Not sure? Signing up twice won’t hurt a thing. Here’s where you can make sure you’re signed up.)

Until Next Time,

Ashley at Practical Self Reliance and Creative Canning

You’d think that’d be my 9-year-old, or my 11-year-old, but that’s how my husband greeted me, running up the driveway as I stepped out onto the porch with my morning coffee. He’d trekked down to the driveway to get the mail and found an orphaned raccoon wandering in the road, crying piteously.

The night before had seen torrential rain, more than three inches in just over an hour, and a lot of flash flooding. This little lady was soaking wet, down by the culvert, lamenting her lot with no mama in sight. Our dog found her first, but my husband called him off and ran back up for me.

Our dog listens, luckily, but soon the neighbors will be waking up to walk their dogs, and they don’t all listen quite as well. This little lady is about to be in a world of trouble.

So I grabbed the pair of thick gloves I use for tending the woodstove, and scooped her up.

While it may be tempting to keep this cutie, she belongs with a wildlife rehabber, and that’s where I took her. She’s only 4-5 weeks old, with eyes that have just opened, and still entirely dependent on milk.

In the past 20 years living in Vermont, I’ve known more than one person who’s fostered baby wild animals, from raccoons to woodchucks to ravens, and plenty more.

My first home here was an 1850s schoolhouse, back when I was 22 and a one-room home on a hillside, insulated with what I assume was nothing more than straw and newspaper, suited me just fine. I’d take long walks up through the hills to pick blackberries in the summer months.

One time while out on the trail, surrounded by nothing but sky, birdsong, and blackberry brambles, two tiny raccoons came running right up to me. Before I could blink, one latched onto my ankle and started licking my sandaled toes. The other scurried up my leg and perched on my shoulder.

I’d like to say I kept my wits about me, but I was honestly frozen in shock.

A second later, my neighbor came around the corner, profusely apologizing about “her babies” making a nuisance of themselves. She scooped them up, and then explained that her construction-worker son had found them in the wall of a house and brought them home to her as infants. She’d had them for a few weeks, and they treated her like mama.

At least, they treated her like mama until later that autumn, when they hit their teen years. Then they turned back into the pair of feral trash pandas they were born to be.

They terrorized her house until she released them, and then they ravaged the neighborhood until one of the other neighbors trapped them and released them high up the mountain.

Some things are darn cute… until they’re not.

But for now, like any infant, this little baby is downright perfect. We had her in our care for about 24 hours, until she could be placed with a rehabber. Just enough time to completely fall in love, with all the positive feels and none of the long-term consequences of a raccoon in the house.

The flooding had knocked a lot of raccoons out of their nests and separated them from their mamas, so ours was hardly the only orphan in need of a place. The rehabber arranged to meet me at a park and ride, and when I got there, I wasn’t the only one who’d had to beg off work at 2 p.m. on a Friday to hand off a baby raccoon.

She loaded them in one by one, until her car became a proper raccoon clown car (a Subaru Crosstrek, because it’s Vermont).

While I waited for my turn to hand over my precious cargo, a bumblebee decided I was its life partner on the spot. I spent the better part of fifteen minutes trying to get this little guy off my hand and onto the flowers nearby, and every time I divested myself of him, he came right back and landed on my hand.

Everyone else thought it was hilarious and said I must be trading one baby for another, and that I’d be hard-pressed to make it into the car without him.

I realized later that I’d just washed my hands before leaving home with the new lemongrass soap I made… and lemongrass, it turns out, is a bee attractant. It mimics their mating hormone… so my amorous friend really did want to move in.

Still, there’s nothing more Vermont than waiting your turn at a park and ride to hand a raccoon off to a lady in a Subaru, with a lovestruck bee in tow.

While the thought of so many orphans is heartbreaking, there’s also a real comfort in that, too. She won’t be raised alone. All those orphans loaded into one heck of a wild carpool become a kind of foster litter, and she’ll grow up in a rowdy pile of siblings, wrestling and tumbling and learning to be a raccoon the way she’s meant to.

Raccoons are far more social than most folks give them credit for, and being raised alone is about the worst thing for such a sociable little being. By the time they’re released, she’ll have a whole band of brothers and sisters, and a real shot at a wild life.

My son named her Pie. Short for Cutie Pie, and this little slice of cuteness will forever have a piece of my heart.

Until Next Time,

Ashley at Practical Self Reliance

I write about slow living. About taking the time to dip your feet in the water on a hot summer day, and all things tangible, deep, and real. About our life out here in Vermont, raising littles in nature in a chronically online world, putting up food, foraging the woods, tending animals, and the slow, satisfying work of doing things by hand.

But I’m not the only one who speaks of the value of a sense of place.

It's writing with roots. Writing that smells like woodsmoke or rising bread or fresh-cut hay, where you can almost feel the dirt under the writer’s nails and the wind on their face. Writing where the words are anchored to a real life, being lived in a real corner of the world.

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Some folks call it sense-of-place writing, some call it terroir writing, some just call it rooted writing. (I keep trying to land on a catchier name for what these all have in common. I’ll let you know if I find one.) Whatever you want to call it, these are the voices I won’t open at a glance. I save them for an actual quiet moment, with tea and a blanket and time to feel what they’re telling me. In no particular order, here they are.

Echoes from an Old Hollow Tree, by Ryan B. Anderson — Another Vermonter, not far from me as the crow flies, writing about building a more tangible life in an increasingly intangible world. There’s something especially lovely about reading someone whose seasons match yours, but on the flip side of the coin. Where I write as a mother holding my littles close, he writes as a father building a legacy on the land for his children’s children.

Dispatches of a Feral Housewife, by Hannah Beukema — A mother of four, living thoughtfully within her means and building real community as she goes, gathering up stories along the way. Hannah’s in the thick of things, with a baby on her hip, but still just as ambitious as I ever was when produce goes on sale and the pantry needs filling. She’s an inspiration to me, honestly, and I have a feeling she’ll be one to you, too.

A Life in Season, by Jess Sowards — She writes straight from the heart, and her work speaks to me like very few others do. We’re both women who weren’t born into this life, but who saw the world with all its hardships and chose another way for our babies. (I don’t even open her posts unless I’m already sitting down, with a cozy blanket, ready to feel all the things.)

Milk Trekker, by Trevor Warmedahl — This one is about terroir, literally. As a passionate cheesemaker, I’ve learned more from him than I can begin to say. About cheese, yes, but also about the world we live in and the way a place quietly shapes everything that grows from it. His book, Cheese Trekking, is something special, and lately he’s been branching out beyond cheese into honey and oysters and all the other ways a place can taste like itself.

Cold Antler Farm, by Jenna Woginrich — A single woman making homesteading work entirely on her own terms, with a healthy dose of philosophy and humor stirred in. Her work is raw, real, and at times vulnerable, and I absolutely love her for it. And hawks! Oh my goodness, the hawks.

A Private Chef, by Will Cooper — A chef on a small family’s organic farm in rural England, writing about everything I want to be cooking and eating in this very season, every single time. I rarely close one of his posts without a new idea for dinner (or for my charcuterie cabinet).

The Sassafras Curio, by Martin Philip — Another Vermonter, also not far from here, writing about baking with terroir in a way I’ve never quite seen anyone else do. I don’t hear from him all that often, but I relish every single post when it lands.

Prairie Philosophy, by Jill Winger — I’ve been following Jill’s homestead for more than a decade now, and even though we’re the same age, I always feel like she’s a step ahead of me on this journey (in the best possible way). Family, burnout, finding meaning and value. Unapologetically, all the things I know I’ll see myself in one day, one way or another.

If you’ve got a sense-of-place writer I should be reading, leave them in the comments. I’d love nothing more than a few new voices to add to the rotation.

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Or, if you’re so inclined, send me a note via email. I have noticed that my Substack replies are often enough filtered out and lost to spam folders, so I set up a dedicated email where I’ll actually see your lovely words. Feel free to send me a note at Ashley@practicalselfreliance.com

Speaking of inboxes (and don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere), my monthly seasonal updates will keep landing in your Substack inbox just as they always have. But Substack is, at the end of the day, a social media platform, and platforms are fickle. Terms can shift, algorithms can change, and one morning the whole landscape can look different than the night before. So I’m building a parallel home for these letters and much more over on my own list, just to make sure my words can always reach you, and your replies can always reach me, no matter what tomorrow looks like on Substack.

The tech side is a bit tricky, but I’m putting on my big girl pants and getting it done piece by piece. If you want to make sure you’re on the list as I get it sorted, go here to sign up. You’ll have me in your inbox no matter where I’m writing from.

Until Next Time,

Ashley at Practical Self Reliance

The local farms throw open their doors for “lamb days,” part open house, part social hour, part neighborly investment. Bring the family. Pet the lambs. Watch a sheepdog work. And remember us when it’s time to fill your basket at the farmer’s market. The lambs get socialized to humans and the farmers faces are remembered fondly at the farm stand in July. And, of course, the kids go home muddy and tired and asking when we can do it again.

Some farms even run lamb camps over spring break, where elementary-aged kids spend the week weighing newborns, learning to handle wool, frolicking with herding dogs in training, and getting a good honest dose of farm chores in between.

It’s a brilliant arrangement, really. The farms get extra hands, the kids learn where food comes from from the actual people who grow it, and the community of folks who buy from local farms grows up right alongside the lambs they once held.

The little courtesies, the open gates, the willingness to let muddy strangers into your barn at lambing time. Those are the axle grease that keeps small agriculture turning in a state like ours.

Early May is also when the land really and truly wakes up. The first trees break bud, and the woods go from grey-brown to that pale, almost-glowing chartreuse that lasts about ten days before everything settles into proper summer green. The dandelions finally open, and the woods are full of spring ephemerals: ramps, fiddleheads, trout lily, wild asparagus along the road edges.

I give my littles a $1 bounty for every morel they find, and they each got their first payout of the season this week.

(Worth every penny. They’re out there for hours, eyes to the ground, learning the trees and the soil and the way the light falls under maple trees swaying in the breeze without me having to say a thing.)

Early May is also trout day around here, the week the pond gets stocked. Ours is the only year-round water in our particular 600-acre block of forest, which means come summer it’s a busy place.

Frogs, herons, the occasional bear track in the mud, and now, freshly arrived, a new class of rainbow trout figuring out their neighborhood.

A while back I told you my daughter is smitten with weaving, and we’d just wrapped up a six-week intro to weaving class together. Near the end of the class, our instructor mentioned that a friend of hers was selling a beautiful antique cherry loom for an absolute steal, and when she saw my daughter’s eyes light up, she picked up the phone right there in the middle of class and called the woman.

With all of us listening, the woman on the other end told her story. She was retiring and following her dream: moving to Ireland in her sunset years to write fairy stories. (I am still not over that sentence.)

In the 1970s, she’d attended a weaving school and learned her craft on a 45-inch handmade Nordwood cherry wood loom. A few years later, the school shuttered, and when they sold off all the equipment, she bought the loom she’d loved for $400. She wove on it for fifty years.

And she thought it was only fair that when she parted with it, she’d sell it for what she paid, $400, along with everything that went with it. Warping board, weaving chair, skein winder, spare parts, and a generous stash of wool.

One road trip in a box truck later, and it seems we have a loom.

I keep thinking about that math. Fifty years of use, and she’s passing it on at cost, with all the accessories thrown in, because it feels right to her. That’s not a transaction. That’s a gift wearing a price tag for politeness’s sake. And it’s exactly the kind of thing that happens in the world of people who actually use their hands to make things, a quiet, generous economy running underneath the loud one.

My daughter has already started sketching her first project. (Linen. Of course it’s linen. The girl has been plotting a flax patch since she met the spinners at last summer’s fair.)

We also, through an odd chain of events, inherited a duck this month.

All through April, our town email list had been buzzing with reports of a domestic duck loose on a local pond. Was anyone missing a duck? Did anyone know whose duck this was? An impromptu rescue committee formed, with multiple nights, multiple kayaks, and multiple attempts. I followed the saga with a smirk, knowing perfectly well that you are not going to catch a duck on a pond who does not want to be caught. (And, secretly, cheering for the duck. Out there wild and free, living her best life.)

Eventually, though, they did catch her. And she was hurt.

Mating season is not kind to lady ducks, and a chubby domestic girl is not nearly as swift as her mallard cousins. The drakes had a field day, and she paid for it. Battered and worse for wear, her rescuers put out a call for someone to take her in and rehab her.

My kids and I were so taken with her story we volunteered on the spot.

What I did not expect from a “wild” duck was snuggles. But that’s what we got. She’s a Cayuga, a breed known both for being shockingly good foragers (hence her survival skills out on that pond) and for being unusually gentle. Within hours of arriving here, she was at my heels in the yard. I sat down in the grass to weed and she climbed right into my lap, tucked her head against my knee, and wiggled her tail for pets like a dog.

The kids have taken her swimming in their stock tank pool every day since, rain or shine, never mind that spring in VT means 40-50 degree daytime highs. They splash and play, and she’s taken to it, well, like a duck to water.

She’s also started laying. Black eggs.

That’s another small wonder of the Cayuga: sleek, iridescent black feathers that catch green and purple in the sunlight, and dark grey-black eggs that lighten as the season goes on. The yolks are rich as can be, deep orange from all that foraging.

The kids named her…Raven.

So here we are, soaking in a Vermont spring, awash in lamb snuggles, duck snuggles, and gratitude for a loom with a history as rich as its deep cherry wood. The ephemerals are already starting to pass, the trees are leafing in, and the year is rolling forward at its usual breathless pace.

What’s coming alive on your side of the world right now? What sparks are catching at your house? I’d love to hear about it. Leave me a note in the comments.

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Or, if you’re so inclined, send me a note via email. I have noticed that my substack replies are often enough filtered out and lost to spam folders, so I set up a dedicated email where I’ll actually see your lovely words…more on that later this month. But for now, feel free to send me a note at Ashley@practicalselfreliance.com

Until next time,

Ashley at Practical Self Reliance

PS. On the subject of lambs, Ben Scalise of Scalise Family Sheep Farm was kind enough to send my daughter some of his sheep-based skincare to try, and she is in love. Lanolin salves and sheep milk soap are wonderfully nourishing, and his felted wool dishcloths are a lovely way to keep microplastics out of your dishwashing routine. We loved everything he sent, but the runaway favorite at our house is the sheep milk soap shaped like a tiny sheep, because of course it is. I’m not affiliated with Ben or his farm in any way, and I get nothing from telling y’all about his work except the satisfaction of pointing you toward a good local sheep farm. Take a look if you’re so inclined.

We call it mud season for a reason.

The driveway is a mess, and our eight geese have decided that every stray puddle is the perfect spot for romance. They’re feeling the warming temps and courting like it’s their job, splashing and honking and carrying on while our few chickens look on with what I can only describe as judgment.

But there’s magic in mud season too, if you know where to look.

The maple sap has slowed to a trickle now. In a normal year, we’d make eight to ten gallons of syrup. Enough for all our sweetening and baking, maple lemonade all summer long, and still plenty to give away to friends and neighbors.

This year, we only tapped a few trees.

Maple season is my husband’s passion project. He’s the one who hauls the buckets through the woods on snowshoes, trudging through knee-deep snow to check the taps. But you can’t exactly snowshoe when you can’t put on shoes.

So this year, we kept it simple. Drank fresh sap straight from the trees, which is a treat in itself, and boiled what we could on a propane burner outside. We didn’t even fire up the arch. It felt strange, scaling back something we love so much, but you can’t do it all. Not with a man down.

(If you’re new to maple sugaring, I have a full guide on how to make maple syrup that walks you through the whole process, from tapping to bottling. Next year, we’ll be back at it full force.)

Speaking of getting back on our feet, my husband is finally mobile again.

Twelve weeks in a cast felt like a lifetime, I won’t lie. He’s a man who doesn’t sit still well, and watching him hobble around while I tried to keep this place running was... an experience.

“I can help,” he’d say, reaching for his coat.

“You can sit down,” I’d reply, pointing at the couch.

We had this conversation approximately four hundred times.

But he just got cleared for shoes, real shoes, on both feet… and “gentle, short walks.” I can’t tell you how promising that feels. He’s already puttering around the property, albeit carefully.

The comfrey salve and bone broth regimen seems to have done its job. Whether it sped up the healing or just kept us both sane, who can say. But we’re grateful to be on the other side of it.

The littles have been my saving grace these past few months. I don’t think I say that enough.

A homestead this size is a serious undertaking, even with two adults working full tilt. With one of us down, things have been slipping. Corners cut, projects postponed, to-do lists that keep growing instead of shrinking.

But my children have stepped up in ways that make my heart swell.

My son took over goose and chicken duty like a champ. He takes his role seriously, like clockwork, letting them out each morning and putting them to bed each evening, collecting eggs, making sure everyone has food and water. He doesn’t need reminding. He just does it.

My daughter has picked up... well, everything else. Wood tending and hauling. Cooking dinner while I’m out dealing with whatever crisis the day has brought. All our plants and seed starting, which she’s taken over completely. And the sourdough starter.

We call it “tending the tiny animals.”

That’s how I explained the wee beasties in a jar to my littles when they were very small. The wild yeasts and bacteria that make our bread rise and give it that tang. Tiny animals that need feeding, just like all our other creatures.

For years, I’d get gentle reminders. “Mama, did you remember to feed the tiny animals?”

Now, it’s her voice I hear from the kitchen. “Oh my, I almost forgot to feed the tiny animals!” And then she tends them, and starts something with the discard too. She’ll get some kind of sourdough recipe going, not even asked.

She’s baking a darn respectable sourdough loaf now, all on her own. And, of course, given the choice, she’s going for some kind of sweet discard recipe, like sourdough donuts or sourdough apple fritter bread. No judgement, my baby. She who tends the starter can do what she wishes with the discard and I’m happy enough to come inside the fruits of her labor.

Our big project for this year is weaving.

My daughter and I took a beginning weaving class together a few weeks back, and she absolutely rocked it. I had to ask for special dispensation to allow her to take it, because it was an adult class with minimal students, and adding a 10-year-old into the mix can really change a class dynamic.

Even if she’s honestly a more careful, conscientious, and meticulous student than I’ve ever been. Still, that’s not what people see when a kid walks into the room.

The instructor agreed, and I’m so grateful she did.

It was a small class of adults, and one gave up on the first day. Too much fiddly work, she said. All those threads and heddles and careful counting.

But my baby girl? She heard the instructions, warped her loom all on her own, and powered through until she was all set. She was throwing her shuttle while I was still all thumbs trying to string the heddles.

I looked over at her, shuttle flying back and forth, fabric growing inch by inch under her hands, and I thought: there’s that spark again.

First it was the wood turning with her dad. Then the linen processing at the fair. Now weaving. Enough times of Mama saying, “You can make it yourself, you know.” And so it seems, she knows without my saying a word.

(I’m working on a beginner’s guide to weaving where I’ll take everyone through all the steps, from warping to finishing. Stay tuned.)

Now that the ground is thawing, I’ve been out checking on the trees we planted last fall. It was a mast year for our oaks, the first in quite a while, and we went a little nuts. Literally.

Fifty-six gallons of acorns. Thirty-two gallons of black walnuts. Three gallons of butternuts. Two gallons of wild plums. A gallon of chestnuts. And a quart each of hazelnuts, ginkgo, and witch-hazel.

All of it tucked into the soil and left to winter over.

It’s too early to see sprouts, but I like to walk the rows anyway, remembering where we drilled each hole. My son helped me count acorns into buckets, and somewhere around gallon forty, he looked up at me and said, “Mama, do you think the squirrels are mad we took so many?”

I told him the squirrels would forgive us, eventually. And their little ones will appreciate our work in a few generations. Still, we’d left plenty for them too. Mast years are good like that.

The truth is, most of those nuts won’t make it. Squirrels will dig some up, deer will browse the seedlings, and some just won’t germinate at all. But some will. And in fifty years, when my grandchildren are walking these woods, they’ll find oaks that their daddy helped plant when he was eight years old.

That’s the kind of math I like.

This past weekend was Easter, and we took a break from all of it for the important things.

I hid eggs all over the yard early in the morning, and then stood back and watched them go. Running, searching, calling out to each other when they spotted a flash of color. Boots squelching in the mud, baskets swinging, faces lit up with that same breathless excitement they’ve had since they were toddlers barely steady on their feet.

These are the same children who haul firewood without being asked. Who tend the geese and chickens morning and evening, rain or shine. Who bake bread and start seeds and pick up the burdens of this life without complaint. They carry loads that would make some adults blink.

But they’re still littles. Still my littles.

They still skip. Still hunt Easter eggs like it’s the most important thing in the world. Still call me Mama and laugh until they can’t breathe over the silliest things.

I think that’s what catches me off guard sometimes. You watch them grow so capable, so steady, and you forget. And then they come tearing across the yard with a basket full of plastic eggs, cheeks flushed, grinning ear to ear, and you remember: oh. You’re still so young. Still so small, in the grand scheme of things.

Capable and tender. Strong and small. Both true, at the same time.

The foraging is just beginning to stir. Coltsfoot is blooming along the roadsides, those cheerful yellow flowers that look like dandelions but aren’t. They’re one of the first wild medicines of spring, traditionally used for coughs and respiratory support, and I always feel a little thrill when I spot them.

(Coltsfoot is a bit controversial these days due to some compounds in the leaves, so I stick to the flowers and use them sparingly. As with all herbal medicine, do your research and know what you’re working with.)

The ramps won’t be up for another few weeks yet, but I’ve been checking their spots, looking for that first hint of green pushing through the leaf litter. In our particular corner of the world, they seem to come later than folks further south. Patience, as always.

I did find a patch of chickweed thriving in a sheltered spot near the compost pile, and I’ve been tossing handfuls into salads. After a winter of stored food, anything fresh and green tastes like a miracle.

This time of year always feels like a held breath to me. The hard work of winter is behind us (mostly) but the hard work of summer hasn’t begun. The garden beds are too wet to work. The ground is too soft for heavy projects. Even the geese have settled down from their puddle romances, at least until tomorrow’s thaw creates new opportunities.

It’s tempting to rush it. To push the peas in early, to till before the soil is ready, to force spring to arrive on our schedule instead of its own.

But I’ve learned, the hard way more than once, that mud season has its own wisdom. The land needs this pause. The slow thaw, the gradual warming, the patient gathering of strength before the explosion of growth that’s coming.

And maybe we need it too.

After a winter of hauling wood and tending fires and nursing broken bones, after months of things slipping and corners cut and doing our best with less, maybe the gift of mud season is permission to slow down. To drink tea by the window and watch the world wake up. To eat fresh sourdough baked by small hands and feel grateful for the helpers we’re raising.

Balance, as always. Even when it’s imperfect. Especially when it’s imperfect.

What’s stirring in your corner of the world? Are you starting seeds, pulling taps, or just waiting out the mud? I’d love to hear about it.

Leave me a note in the comments…

(Comments only, please. Emails tend to get lost in my inbox, and as much as I’d love to get back to each and every one, my screen time is very limited and things fall through the cracks. If you comment here, they’re all in one place, and it’s much easier to get back to every single one.)

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Until Next Time,

Ashley at Practical Self Reliance

PS. If you’re curious about spring foraging, I have guides on foraging ramps, chickweed, and a big list of more than 100 plants to forage in spring if you want to explore what’s coming up in your area. And if you’re new to the newsletter, you can catch up on what we’ve been up to in my archives, including the herbal support for broken bones post from January (which explains why I’ve been rubbing comfrey salve on my husband for the past two months) and the foraging across generations post about our mast year nut planting adventure.

I love helping people grow and preserve more food, and I’m happy to brainstorm or troubleshoot just about anything in that world: gardens and orchards, raising chickens and other backyard livestock, foraging, canning and preserving, fermentation and other scratch-cooking projects, DIY and frugal fixes, and off-grid living questions.

So I’m starting something new: I’m sharing a handful of the best questions I’ve received this month (via email, blog comments and substack), along with my answers, in one place. And, hoping that you’ll all jump on the bandwagon and ask your wonderful questions in the comments!

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This month’s lineup is a fun mix. A high school student is looking for beginner foraging advice, a seasoned canner wants to know about safe substitutions when canning meat, and a gardener asked for the best plum varieties for a home orchard.

And because I love seeing what you’re all working on, two enterprising readers also sent in their permaculture and herbalism projects for me to share with you as well.

Getting Started with Foraging

Question via Email:

I’m a sophomore in high school currently taking a Stewardship Action Project class. For my project, I’ve chosen to explore and experiment with foraging as a way to reconnect with the land and better understand the ecosystems around me. That’s actually how I found your website, and I’ve really been inspired by what you share.

I’m reaching out because I’d love any wisdom you’d be willing to pass along. As I begin this journey, I want to approach it with care, respect, and intention. If you have any tips, tricks, beginner advice, or even just things to be mindful of while learning to forage, I would be so grateful. Whether it’s about sustainable harvesting, plant identification, seasonal rhythms, or simply cultivating the right mindset, I’m open to learning. —Sophie

Answer:

Hi Sophie,

My best advice is to find one spot and take a walk there every day during the growing season. At first, it’ll all just look like…plants. Kind of like you’re looking at that cascading text flowing down the screen in The Matrix (you’ve seen The Matrix, right? If not, here’s the screen I’m talking about.) Everything looks like gibberish until your brain learns how to “read” it.

You have to start somewhere, decoding the green into words. Pick a plant, any plant. Whatever catches your eye. Identify that single plant and learn how to spot it in the landscape. The next time you take the same walk, you’ll see it again. It’ll pop out from the background, and suddenly you’ve got your first “word” you can recognize.

Once you’ve got that one word, add another. And another.

Eventually, that jumble of shapes becomes legible. Your daily walk starts to feel like reading a book you know well, and you’ll notice when the woods “adds a new word” here or there. You learn it, and your understanding keeps expanding.

Learning to read the plants around you like you’re walking through a living book makes being outside so much more fulfilling. And after a while, you’ll do it automatically. I can’t even drive down the highway without noticing the trees on the hills flying by: the crown of a black walnut, the late-orange leaves of an oak, the spring blooms of black locust. It’s kind of wild how fast your brain gets at this once you’ve built the pattern recognition.

So stick with it, and you’ll get there. Just start with learning one word in the maelstrom, hold onto it, and reach for the next.

And if you need help along the way, send me a note. I’m happy to help.

—Ashley

P.S. If you need help decoding those first “words,” the iNaturalist app is amazing. Snap a photo and it’ll give you a handful of solid possibilities to choose from. It won’t replace learning the plant yourself, but it narrows the field so much when you’re staring at a leaf and don’t know where to begin. I still use it all the time.

Pressure Canning Ground Meat

Question About Canning Taco Meat:

Can I cut this recipe in half so that I only need 1 1/2 pounds of ground beef? Next question is can I use half beef and half ground turkey? -Pam

Answer:

Hi Pam,

You’ve manage to hit on two things that seem fine, but they’re actually not according to NCHFP guidance. The minimum batch size for pressure canning is 2 quarts (or 4 pints) because the heat up and cool down time is actually part of the processing time. If there’s not enough in the canner, the canner will heat and cool too quickly and the jars won’t be processed right.

As to ground turkey, they’ve found that ground poultry can have higher bacterial loads than other meats, so while you can substitute pork, beef, venison, lamb and even bear or elk…ground poultry is one of the few meats you can’t add. Really, almost anything but a bird is fine.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news here! So often simple switches like that are fine, just not this time.

Best Plum Varieties

Question via Email:

Hello Ashley, thanks for your informative site. Somewhere you said you picked plums for eating out of hand and for canning. What kind(s) do you suggest? I'm also in Zone 4 in Central Vermont, with plenty of sun most of the year. Appreciate your thoughts.
-John

Answer:

Hi John,

We've grown just about every plum that's hardy here at some point.

My favorites are Toka and Alderman. Toka is usually considered a pollinator tree, and it blooms like crazy, smells amazing, but sets very little fruit. What fruit it does set though, is some of the best.

Alderman is absolutely amazing, high quality fresh eating fruit, but in my experience it only sets fruit one year in three. That year though, it sets buckets.

My husband really loves Mt. Royal European Plums. They're a bit different than the Japanese types, and I think it's consider a prune plum, so it's not a juicy plum, but really full of flavor.

Personally, I really don't like Waneta or Pipestone, and they're not worth growing.

All of our Black Ice trees died within a year or two of planting, not sure the issue, either hardiness or disease.

La Crescent is good, but soft and a little unidimensional or cloying. If you pick them slightly under ripe they're tart enough to be interesting, and worth it at that point (but they make great yellow plum jam).

Here in Vermont, East Hill Farm has a really great selection of plums that do well locally, and they're doing their bareroot presale right now. Pickup only, no shipping.

Fedco Trees is also a great source, and looking at their website, it looks like they have a bunch of new hybrids that they've never carried before. Wow! So many new ones to try.

Neither source seems to have Alderman plums this year, and they're worth seeking out. It looks like St. Laurence Nurseries has them though.

Hope this helps!

Permaculture Documentary

Via Email:

Hi Ashley, I am a fan of yours and I know you know my book. Now there is an 8-episode TV show based on my book and my garden which will be available for national distribution on PBS this Spring. Would you be willing to let your followers know about it and ask that they call their local PBS station to request scheduling?

If you can, have them contact their local PBS website and find the staff member in charge of scheduling, as well as the head honcho and email and/or call them both to request that the Home-Scale Forest Garden show be scheduled.

I have attached a promo card in two versions with info. If you would like any more info, let me know! —Dani Baker, Owner Cross Island Farms, Creator The Enchanted Edible Forest, Author The Home-Scale Forest Garden: How to Plan, Plant and Tend a Resilient Edible Landscape

Answer:

Of course! Happy to help, and I’m sure my readers would love to see it.

Wild Remedies Card Deck

Hi Ashley, I admire the way you share life so closely intertwined with the land. Your words and work feel rooted, genuine, and full of heart. I’ve been creating something close to my heart, the Wild Card Series, hand-illustrated playing card decks meant to help people reconnect with the natural world through play, learning, and beauty. The first deck, Wild Remedies, celebrates the quiet, healing herbs that grow all around us.

I’m sharing these with a small handful of kindred spirits whose work carries that same reverence for the wild. I’d love to send you a deck if you’d like. Warmly, Johanna at Forage Folk

Answer:

Thank you so much! My kids absolutely love the deck. It’s a bit like the Wildcraft Board Game, but it’s so much more versatile. Right now, my daughter absolutely loves that board game for the herbs, but my son is board of the repetition (it’s pretty unidimensional).

These will still give my daughter the herbs she loves to see and learn about on the cards, but with even more information. And they can be used to play any card game, so my son will be happy too.

They love them, thank you so much for sharing!

How Can I Help You This Month?

Looking for a recipe? Trying to figure out what varieties to plant? Getting started with a new fermentation, charcuterie, cheesemaking (or other kitchen project) and not sure where to begin?

Anything at all.

Leave a note in the comments below, and I’ll do my best to help.

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Until Next Time,

Ashley at Practical Self Reliance and Creative Canning

So we do what any sensible northern people do when the calendar stops giving us reasons to celebrate: we invent our own.

We’ve got Mole Day (a spring celebration of life underground, where we eat root vegetables, turn the compost, and dig in the dirt) and Moon’s Night (the full moon closest to the summer solstice, when we camp out and stargaze). There’s Mountain Day in mid-August, where we hike the highest mountain we can, and Pepperinox in late August, where we roast Hatch chiles all day and make salsa (because August doesn’t have any holidays of note, we gave it two).

And many more, too many to list. We really love our holidays, festivals, and feast days, even if we’re the only ones in the universe celebrating.

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But the one that really carries us through the darkest part of the year is our annual Citrus Festival, the bright, fragrant antidote to mid-winter gloom. Mandarins alone could carry a whole festival, but they’re just the beginning.

It’s not just an excuse to gorge on Sumo mandarins and call it a tradition. Wait, who am I kidding. It is definitely that.

But it’s also when we put up our year’s worth of citrus by running it through the canner as juice, jelly, and marmalade, packing it into fermentation jars to cure, and sending batch after batch through the dehydrator and freeze-dryer.

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Citrus in Vermont has always been a thing. About a hundred years ago, local food co-ops around here actually started as citrus buying co-ops, with neighbors pooling orders to bring up a whole truckload from down south for preserving.

Those co-ops eventually became the grocery stores we know today, but the ritual itself goes back much further.

Bringing citrus north in winter is as reliable as the seasons, a thread that runs through old-time rural life, too, all the way back to the days when people planned for months ahead and made the most of whatever could be hauled in when the roads allowed.

Here in Vermont, it’s always had a rhythm to it, a give and take. In the settler days, farm families would walk all the way down to Boston, driving turkeys to the market, and then, like clockwork, they’d bring the citrus up later in the winter for preserves.

So welcome to this year’s Citrus Festival. It’s our little bright spot in the middle of winter.

On Creative Canning, I have a whole category for citrus canning recipes, with idea lists for lemons, limes, and oranges, and everyone has their favorites.

My son loves citrus sections canned in syrup, especially mandarin orange sections, and we remove every last bit of pith so they’re sweet and they pretty much glow in the jar. My daughter loves orange slices in honey syrup, put up with the peels intact, and they go into her tea party cups.

My husband is partial to lemon marmalade, and he really loved the Buddha’s Hand marmalade I made last year too.

My favorites are lemonade concentrate and limeade concentrate because they taste so darn good, and they’re absolutely indulgent when I come in from the garden mid-summer, exhausted and dehydrated. It’s like a gift I can give my future self.

I’m also really loving the lime pickled onions we’ve just started making, and they’re excellent on tacos.

Since I’d never canned orange juice or grapefruit juice, I decided to do a big batch of straight juices this year. I got a really lovely cast iron and stainless citrus juice press, and it is so much more efficient at juicing citrus than any other method we’ve tried. I’m getting double the juice out of everything these days, so I figured this would be the year to give it a go.

I’ll say that even with great yields, canning citrus juice isn’t really worth it. If I lived down south and had a yard full of trees perhaps, but I think my time here is better spent elsewhere. Still, I’m happy I tried it. One more thing checked off my canning bucket list.

Of course, it doesn’t have to be just canning recipes. The dehydrator is running too.

Dehydrated citrus slices are wonderful in simmer pots all winter long, and they make the house smell amazing. Smell is one of those little things that makes a house a home, and simmer pots go a long way to making long winters cozy.

My husband really wants traditional mincemeat pie and my daughter is excited about learning to bake panettone, both of which call for candied citrus peel. Those are also great in all manner of baked goods, and my son likes to eat them right out of the jar for a treat too.

He calls them orange candy, and I actually never told him he’s eating peels (shhh…).

This year, I’m also making batches of an Italian-style candied citrus peel in syrup. Giulia Scarpaleggia has a really lovely tutorial on how to make them, and you can almost taste them just looking at her pictures.

If you want to try something that’ll really change the way you cook, you should try making salt preserved citrus. It’s really simple, and all you’re really doing is packing citrus in salt so it ferments, kind of like sauerkraut.

The taste is hard to describe. Like citrus, but more.

More complex, more full, more everything.

They’re amazing in marinades and dry rubs for meats, or in salad dressings, but they’re also delicious in desserts, like literally diced up on top of ice cream, and in baked goods. You can make it with any citrus, but salt preserved lemons are the most well known, and they work really well in with lamb or goat, as in this slow roasted shoulder recipe.

And while this year was crazy busy, and my family is a bit “short staffed” due to injury at the moment, I’m just not willing to give up one of my very favorite parts of winter.

It’s not just a kitchen project, it’s a bright spot in the middle of winter, and a reminder that even in the darkest month of the year we can still make something that tastes like sunshine. We start with a pile of fruit on the counter, and we end with shelves full of jars and the house smelling amazing.

And even when the last jar is sealed and the sticky cutting boards are finally washed, nothing really goes to waste. The seeds get saved too, with a few planted for future indoor citrus trees to pass along to friends. Our greenhouse will be filled with baby trees this spring, growing right alongside our seedlings, and I’ll remember our citrus festival every time I water them well into summer.

Though many of those babies will get given to friends, citrus are still really generous with their seeds, and the rest dried and tucked into little pectin satchels for old-fashioned jams. The seeds have incredible amounts of pectin, and I dehydrate them and keep them in a jar for helping jams set all summer long.

With pectin at $6 a box, a few tablespoons of these babies are worth quite a bit.

So here’s to citrus season, sticky fingers, and jars that glow on the shelf. If you’re preserving along with us this year, I’d love to hear what you’re making, and what your “must do” citrus project is when winter starts to drag.

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Until Next Time,

Ashley at Practical Self Reliance & Creative Canning

It’s a month for reflection and planning, for tending to the small details that get overlooked in the rush of harvest season. While the land rests, we do too, at least a little.

I often get asked what homesteading looks like in the dead of winter. January might seem quiet, but it’s still full of small, steady tasks that keep everything running. The garden may sleep, but the animals, the pantry, and the people don’t stop.

Of course, every homestead is different, and ours here in Vermont is shaped by deep snow, frozen ground, and short days, but the rhythm of January is universal.

Here’s what a normal January looks like on our Vermont homestead, as we ease into a new year and prepare for the seasons ahead.

In the Garden

The garden may be buried under snow, but that doesn’t mean it’s forgotten. January is the month for planning next year’s garden, and the seed catalogs are spread out like a second quilt on the bed.

If you grow microgreens or keep a small indoor herb garden, there’s still a touch of green life to tend on the windowsill. Some years, I’ll even start very early seedlings like onions under indoor grow lights just to get a jump on the growing season, but most things won’t be started until April to be set out after the last frosts in Early June.

(Yes, our last frost date is usually right around the first week of June…nearly half a year away.)

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In the Orchard

January is the quietest month in the orchard, but it’s still part of the cycle. The trees rest beneath their snow blankets, and our job is simply to make sure they stay protected. I’ll check tree guards and rodent barriers after every thaw to keep voles and mice from gnawing bark.

But many years, the snow’s so deep I just have to hope that the preparations we did during the growing season will be enough.

On mild days, it’s sometimes possible to do a bit of winter pruning, especially on hardy apples and pears. But most of the orchard work now is done indoors, planning grafting projects, ordering rootstock and scion wood, and reviewing notes on which varieties thrived last year.

If you’re growing perennials from hardwood cuttings, now’s the time to collect and prepare those. Elderberries and grapes are some of the easiest to grow from cuttings, and they root very easily. But there are so many different fruiting plants you can grow from cuttings, all you need is a small piece.

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In the Kitchen

If December is about feasting, January is about comfort food. The pantry is full of canned soups, bone broth, stews, and meat-in-a-jar recipes, which make winter meals easy and satisfying.

This is the time of year when I lean heavily into putting up meats and soups, and plenty of dry bean canning recipes too.

This is also a good time for restocking essentials, rendering lard and tallow, baking sourdough bread, and starting new ferments like sauerkraut or water kefir that help balance the heavy winter diet.

It is also citrus season, and while we’re not exactly harvesting oranges by the bushel here in Vermont, it is the time of year when they’re shipped up in bulk from down south. It’s a tradition that’s been going on for centuries, and they even talk about it in the little house on the prairie books.

Preserving citrus is just a part of the rhythm of the season, and every year I try out new citrus canning recipes. And, of course we’re also dehydrating and fermenting those as well.

And of course, the kitchen wood stove stays busy, warming the house, but also baking bread, as we now have a modern wood cookstove (and we’re absolutely loving it).

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In the Woods and Fields

Winter seems like a “dead” time in nature, but in reality, everything’s still out there, just dormant and waiting to spring back to life. Foraging in winter isn’t all that different than any other season, if you know where to look.

There are dozens of different winter edible roots you can dig, if you know how to see their signs above ground, and plenty of cold hardy winter mushrooms.

There are also half a dozen different fruits that hang on branches and vines waiting for the birds to return in the spring, and it’s the perfect time for harvesting wild grapes, nannyberries, highbush cranberry and even regular lowbush cranberries.

This time of year I’ll collect usnea lichen or birch bark for herbal projects, and I’m currently saving up birch bark for rendering into tar for salves. and it’s the perfect time for foraging chaga mushrooms while the trees are dormant.

It’s also prime time for tracking wildlife. The fresh snow tells a story of deer, fox, and rabbit activity that we don’t see any other time of year. We’re not hunting or trapping them, but it is a wonderful way to get outside with the littles this time of year.

In the Barn

Winter chores are steady but simple: feed, water, and bedding. With our off grid electrical system, we don’t have heated troughs to keep water from freezing solid, so we’re often hauling water by buckets to the animals.

We make sure the geese, chickens, and any overwintering livestock stay comfortable through cold snaps that can dip to -20°F with deep bedding and draft free structures.

If we’re brooding chicks or goslings later in the spring, January is when we order new hatchery stock or check our own breeding flocks to plan for hatching season. It feels far away, but it’ll be here before long, and many breeds sell out long before spring.

In the Community

January is a slower, quieter month socially, but it’s when neighbors tend to check in on one another most. The local seed swaps are active, and Vermont has a really spectacular winter farmer’s market scene that almost always involves live music and a community meal.

It’s also the time for learning, reading new homesteading books, and studying up before the growing season starts all over again. And it’s when my kids and I take classes to learn new skills. On this year’s docket is fiber arts, and we’ll be learning new spinning and weaving techniques this winter.

What’s happening in January where you live?

What are you cooking, planning, or working on around your homestead this week? I’d love to hear in the comments!

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Until Next Time,

Ashley at Practical Self Reliance

But…winter is also ice season, and while sledding and skiing are lovely, there’s a reason someone coined the phrase “it’s all fun and games, until someone gets hurt.”

In this case, my husband took the fall, literally.

He came in hobbling, and slipped his boot off with care.

“I just need a minute,” he said. “It’s just bruised, I’ll be fine.”

One look, and I told him to get in the car. What I didn’t say was, “Sorry honey, your foot isn’t supposed to be shaped like that.” But I was thinking it.

Years ago, a friend who worked in urgent care told me that most injuries people come in with aren’t really much, and they get sent home without treatment. That is, unless it’s a man walking through the door, saying, “My wife made me come in.”

He told me as soon as he hears that, they bring the man back first thing. There’s no surer sign of something that is, in fact, a big deal than a man trying to tough out something his wife insists needs treatment.

That was years ago, long before I was married, and I laughed and tucked that little nugget away in my memory.

I’ve never taken him to urgent care, he’s a toughie, and will work through most things. He was skeptical, but I convinced him, and as we got loaded into the car, he looks at me and says, “I’m going to tell them you made me come in.”

I turned my head to the window, so he wouldn’t see my smirk, and it was all I could do to not chuckle, but I said, “Ok sweetie, you do that.”

And so he did, and wouldn’t you know it, he was in that X-ray machine less than 4 minutes after limping through the door. Like magic…

As we left, cast on and crutches in place, he turns to me and with a smile, “You were right….but did you have to be right?”

And he was joking, of course.

But he went on. “I’m going to need you to hit me with everything you’ve got. Salves, teas, whatever magic you’ve got up your sleeve. I need it. How am I supposed to stay off this for 8 weeks!?!?”

There is, unfortunately, no magic pill for healing broken bones. Medicine, no matter the source, hasn’t cracked that one yet. But people have come up with many ways to support the body as it heals, and shorten the duration of the injury.

But people have been treating broken bones for a long time. Almost inconceivably long.

There’s an old saying that goes something like, “the first real sign of civilization isn’t a tool or a pot, but a healed femur, because healing meant someone stayed, helped, and fed an injured person long enough to recover.”

That was 50,000 to 70,000 years ago. A long, long time of people comforting the injured, and ministering to them with teas, poultices and salves. For love, of course, but also because carrying the weight of someone in a subsistence community is hard work.

That’s one less hunter, and one less person gathering firewood. But still a mouth to feed. Everyone’s incentivized to shorten the duration, in any way possible.

And, as they say, necessity is the mother of innovation.

So how do you support bone healing with herbal medicine and nutrition?

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Herbs for Bone Repair

Food is the foundation, but herbs are where I start feeling like I’m actually doing something while we wait for the calendar to do its slow work. Mostly, I’m aiming for three things: calming inflammation, supporting circulation to the area, and helping the surrounding tissues (ligaments, tendons, muscle, skin) stay happy while everything knits back together.

This is not meant to take the place of Western Medicine, and you should always see a doctor first. They need to evaluate the break, set it and make sure surgery isn’t required. I’m not saying skip the doctor and drink tea. What I’m saying is, once you’re stable, in a cast, and waiting for your body to do the work…you can support that work.

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Comfrey

Comfrey is the best known herb for mending bone breaks, and it even has the common folk name of “knitbone,” which tells you exactly what people have expected from it for a very long time.

Historically, monastery gardens maintained old medicinal strains that were high in healing compounds, and low in toxins. Those, sadly, have been lost, and the modern cultivars have liver toxins more often than not.

Comfrey can be used safely when applied topically, rather than taken internally, and it is effective, even by the standards of modern medicine. Modern placebo-controlled clinical trials using comfrey root extract ointments have shown meaningful improvements in pain, swelling, and function for acute sprains and blunt injuries. That’s not the same thing as “it heals a fracture faster,” but if you’ve ever tried to sleep with an angry, swollen injury, you already know why I care about the pain-and-swelling part.

Keep comfrey topical. Keep it on intact skin. Keep it time-limited during the actual bone mending (no more than 6 to 8 weeks).

How I use it:

• Comfrey salve or oil rubbed gently around the injury (not on open skin), once or twice a day.

• Comfrey poultice (fresh leaf mashed or dried leaf rehydrated) on intact skin around the area, covered with cloth, for an hour or two.

I treat it like a support the tissues herb. It’s for comfort, swelling, and the soft-tissue drama that comes along for the ride.

St. John’s Wort

St. John’s wort is famous for mood these days, but it gets its name from St. John, who used it for battlefield medicine. It’s well known for it’s wound healing properties, and it’s the main component of my burn salve, but it also works deeper.

Herbalists have long used it for nerve pain (like sciatica), but also for nerve growth and regeneration after major injuries. Modern peer reviewed studies show that it can calm nerve pain as well, so it’s not just folklore.

How I use it:

• St. John’s wort infused oil (the classic red oil) rubbed gently into intact skin around the injury.

• St. John’s Wort Salve made from the infused oil if we need something less messy.

Remineralizing herbs

Remineralizing herbs aren’t dramatic or short term fixes, they’re steady, nourishing, and easy to keep up for weeks. They’re exactly the type of warm herbal teas that comfort and nourish in the winter months anyway, and in this case, they’re working double duty.

Stinging nettle

Nettle is one of the best “food-herbs” in the whole materia medica. Analyses of nettle leaf (especially when dried as powder) show meaningful mineral content, including calcium, potassium, magnesium, iron, and trace minerals.

But stinging nettle is also one of those herbs that you either love like a long lost friend, or hate with the fire of a thousand suns. I, personally, hate it. I react viciously to stinging nettle, and I’d rather be stung by 4 wasps (maybe not quite 5) than simply brush by a single leaf.

As a tea, I think it smells like a chicken coop, and tastes much worse. I actually scraped my tongue off with a butter knife after I tried it years ago.

But…other people love it, and sipping it tastes like deep nourishment. (They don’t get any ode’ de chicken coop, only a fresh grassy field.)

People love it more often than hate it, so I picked some up and I learned that my husband and children all love it. Good for them. Actually, literally, spectacular for them, and their bones.

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How I use it:

• Strong nettle infusion (think: a big jar, a big handful of dried leaf, steeped for hours) a few times a week.

• Nettle as food: soups, broths, pesto, anywhere leafy greens make sense. (That is, of course, if you’re one of the people that likes the taste.)

Red clover

Red clover sits in the same mineral-rich, gentle, long-game category. That’s helpful for some people and a reason for caution for others. It’s generally considered safe, but it does contain some plant based estrogen compounds, so if someone has a hormone-sensitive condition, this is not a casual “drink it daily forever” herb.

Women often drink it to support their childbearing years and menopause, and it can work double duty for women with bone issues and osteoporosis.

For a man or child, it’s not a the best daily herb, but fine for short term acute use.

How I use it:

• Tea in rotation with nettle, especially when the goal is steady, nourishing support rather than take this for a symptom.

Horsetail

Horsetail gets talked about constantly for silica. There’s interesting early research around bone metabolism, and it’s been used traditionally for connective tissue support.

When I worked as a massage therapist in a sports medicine clinic, I used it for my sore hands and wrists, and it works wonders. I also suggested it for strains and sprains, where joints can use a little love.

How I use it:

• Tea or tincture, but for short term acute use as the long term impacts aren’t well documented.

What not to use (and why)

Boneset is the perfect example of an herb being sabotaged by its own name.

Despite what it sounds like, boneset is historically used for fevers, flu-ish illnesses, and the deep body aches that come with them. That’s where the name comes from: “it sets the bones” as in easing the misery of fever aches, not repairing fractures.

It was used to treat Dengue Fever (also known as bone break fever), where the fever pains are so intense it feels like your bones are breaking. But it’s not treating your bones, it’s treating the fever.

It is effective against acute fevers, but it also has a bunch of other long term health consequences that I won’t go into. Despite the name, it’s not for bones, and it’s not safe except in very short term acute uses (2-3 days for extreme fever).

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Nutrition for Bone Repair

I know, I’m here to write about herbal medicine, but food is medicine, first and foremost.

The first thing I did when we got home wasn’t dig out a rare herb or a mysterious tincture. It was open the fridge and start thinking like a practical person with a very inconvenient problem: the body is going to rebuild a whole chunk of structure, and it needs raw materials.

Bone healing isn’t just “bone,” either. There’s connective tissue involved, blood vessels involved, immune signaling involved, and a whole cascade of repair work that’s incredibly nutrient-dependent. When people are undernourished or protein-deficient, fracture healing complications are more common.

When we talk about “healing,” we’re really talking about building new tissue, and building requires amino acids.

So yes, I’ve been feeding him a lot of meat. Not dainty little boneless skinless anything, either. The good stuff.

Shank. Neck. Short ribs. Oxtail. And, because I apparently cope through irony, pig’s feet.

It’s hard not to notice the comedy in breaking a foot and then eating feet for dinner. But if you’ve ever made a pot of broth that turns into meat Jell-O in the fridge, you know exactly why I’m doing it. Those long, slow-cooking cuts are rich in gelatin (collagen’s cozy kitchen form), and they come with a profile of amino acids that the body uses heavily in connective tissue.

And there’s a second, unexpected benefit: those same “brothy” amino acids can be calming and mood boosting. Glycine, in particular, has human research behind it for improving sleep quality and reducing the symptoms of seasonal depression, and when someone’s in a cast and uncomfortable, sleep and a mind at ease becomes its own kind of medicine.

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What this looks like in real life at my house:

• Protein at every meal, even breakfast if I can swing it.

• Big pots of soup and stew that make leftovers easy (because cooking every meal while someone’s on crutches is…a lot).

• Broth-based meals on repeat, especially when appetite is low.

We’re running through my stockpile of pressure canned bone broth quickly, but that’s ok. Starting a new pot simmering on the stove is just one more good way to warm the house this time of year.

Beyond Protein and Collagen

Even if you’re eating plenty of protein, the body still needs specific micronutrients to actually assemble new tissue.

• Bone-in canned fish (sardines/salmon with soft bones) for bone building calcium and zinc.

• Eggs because they’re high in Vitamin D, which is essential for bone building and tricky to get in winter.

• Broth, stew, and braises from connective-tissue cuts, because they’re the most efficient healing food I know how to make.

• Nuts and seeds (especially pumpkin/sunflower/sesame) because trace minerals hide in there, and some specialty nuts like brazil nuts are high in hard to find minerals like selenium.

• Citrus, peppers, and potatoes because vitamin C, potassium and magnesium are important too.

I’m not pretending any of this is a magic lever that turns eight weeks into two. But if the body is going to rebuild itself, I want it to have every screw, board, and tool on site when it’s ready to work.

Final Thoughts

So, here I am, hitting him with everything I’ve got. We’ve a few weeks in, and he’s doing much better. Is it the herbs? Is it the deeply nourishing food? Who can say.

What I know is that I’ve been hauling wood to keep our off grid homestead heated in this extreme cold snap, and keeping the home fires burning is hard work on your own. As is keeping animals fed, watered and tended when the wind chill hits -40. I’m looking forward to when he’s back up and mobile, as much as he is.

In the meantime, I’m rubbing St. John’s Wort salve on my own aching back, and counting my blessings that I have two very helpful and handy little ones here to share the load.

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Until Next Time,

Ashley at Practical Self Reliance

Try as I might, inspiration always seems to strike last minute.

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This year, we bought my daughter a herbal tea advent calendar on a whim and she LOVES it. She cannot wait to open each day, and since it came with two tea bags each day, her brother is even getting in on the action. They’re both literally bouncing with excitement in the kitchen each day as we open the little box and brew new teas.

We drink tea, of course, and harvest plenty from the garden and woods all year round, but there’s something about a special little box just for you that really builds enthusiasm.

Seeing her excitement, I started looking for other “special little boxes” to make the things we do (or hope to do) more exciting. Sometimes, gifting is all about taking something and packaging it in a special way to lift the spirit and turn an everyday ritual into something treasured.

A cookie becomes something special when packed in a pretty tin with a bow, or a simple jar of jam becomes a treasure with a piece of fabric cut to fit over the lid and tie with a ribbon. And, of course, handmade helps too, obviously.

With my little ones, anything that’s hands on, or kits that get them moving, doing and learning are a bonus too.

I talked a while back about how I see my job as a parent these days as “catching the spark” of excitement when I see something that excites my little one’s creative interests, and tending that spark is one of my biggest joys.

My little ones love crafts, and sometimes they just need an enabler (me, of course) to help that spark take light.

So, when I saw that the Herbal Academy brought back their ever popular Herbal Starter Kit, I knew it’d be perfect for catching that spark with my little ones.

Their kits are really great, lovely packaging and everything just right to make what could be random ziplock bags of herbs and supplies something truly special. Sometimes it is all in the presentation, and this one is presented beautifully.

It comes with a cardstock recipe card for each and every project one of the 24 different projects outlined in the kit, from salves to tinctures, teas and oxymels. It even has instructions for making Honey Electuaries, which is one of the few herbal preparations even I haven’t tried yet!

To the littles it’s a box of beautifully packaged fun, but for me, it’s easily 24 hours worth of quality time, connection and hands on time making and doing with my babies.

Even thinking about getting this for my little ones has given me a spark of excitement for my own herbal career. At this point, I’ve been studying herbal medicine for nearly 25 years, and I’ve taken just about every course that the herbal academy offers. All, but one.

The Advanced Herbalism Course that’s the capstone of all their other courses. I think I’m finally going to take the plunge and get my Advanced Herbalism Certificate this winter.

I absolutely love their courses, and honestly, I was holding off on this one simply so I’d have something to look forward to. But I think this year is the year…because who am I kidding, they’re always coming out with all manner of new mini courses, and there will always be herbal fun to look forward to!

So I know, I’m not new to herbalism, and honestly, neither are my little ones, but this herbal starter kit is still going to light a spark in all of us. Sometimes you need a little catalyst to get you going down the path you’ve wanted to walk all along, and having something at hand that reduces the friction of finding the right project or recipe can be just the thing.

I’m honestly hoping that some of you, my dear readers, will catch the spark as well and join us! They still have herbal starter kits available for purchase for another few days, and honestly, given the price of herbs these days, it’s kind of a steal.

Buying 24 different herbal remedies is expensive, and buying the herbs to make them is only a bit less. Not to mention having all the recipes and tools you need in the box too.

If you have been thinking about taking a Herbal Academy Course, they’re running a substantial sale right now on all courses with a bunch of free goodies thrown in. Or, if you simply want to follow along and craft from your herbal starter kits alongside my family this winter, I’d welcome the company.

Let me know if you’ll be joining me!

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Until Next Time,

Ashley at Practical Self Reliance

It’s a quieter month outdoors, but that doesn’t mean homesteading stops. The work shifts indoors to food, family, and craft projects, while outdoor chores focus on keeping the animals watered, fed, and sheltered through the cold. The rhythm is steadier than the rush of fall, but every day has its share of work.

I’m often asked what homesteading looks like in the depths of winter. By December, the gardens are long tucked away, the orchard is bare, and the animals need more care than the plants. For people dreaming of moving to the country, it helps to see how the rhythm of the year carries on even after the growing season ends.

Of course, every homestead is different, and December in Vermont won’t look the same as December in a milder climate. Still, there are common threads—woodstoves burning, pantries full, animals tended, and families gathering close indoors.

Here’s what a normal December looks like on our Vermont homestead, as the year winds down and the quiet of winter settles in.

In the Garden

By December, the garden has been put to bed. All the root crops are either pulled and stored or buried deep under mulch in the hopes of keeping them insulated. A few hardy greens like mâche or spinach might survive in a cold frame, but otherwise the beds are resting until spring.

Some years, when we get minimal snow, I can harvest carrots and parsnips from the garden all winter long. They naturally “store” right out there in the soil, sweetening up and waiting for spring.

This is the time for planning. We’ll sketch out garden designs, order seed catalogs, and make notes on what worked (and didn’t) this past season. December is as much about dreaming of the next harvest as it is about closing out the last.

And, of course, so we keep something green going, we’ve got microgreens going on the counter all winter long.

In the Orchard

The orchard is quiet, branches bare and often coated with ice. But that doesn’t mean there’s no work to do. We’ll check on our apple storage racks and root cellar bins, culling any fruit that’s beginning to soften before it spoils the rest.

Late December is also the start of pruning season if the weather cooperates. A few mild days above freezing are perfect for trimming back apples, pears, and stone fruits before the deep cold sets in. The wood makes excellent kindling for the stove, and pruning helps keep the orchard healthy for the next season.

We’re also trying to keep deep snow away from tree trunks to prevent rodent damage. A few years back we lost half our trees to girdling by rodents, and since then, we’ve added more farm cats to the payroll here, but we also try to keep the deepest snow away from the trunks if possible so the predators can do their jobs.

In the Kitchen

December is the month when the pantry really shines. Jars of home canned corn, homemade tomato paste, and blackberry jam line the shelves, ready for holiday cooking. Baking is a constant—sourdough bread, cinnamon rolls, and hearty stews simmered with bone broth fill the kitchen with warmth.

It’s also a wonderful time for making holiday gifts. We’ll bottle homemade liqueurs, whip up batches of cordials and tinctures, and pull out jars of jam to wrap as presents. The slower pace means more time for experimenting with recipes we don’t always get to during harvest season.

I’m using dried herbs to make herbal infused oils that will eventually be turned into herbal salves, plus a making a batch or two of tallow soap and whipped tallow balm to nourish our skin this time of year.

In the Woods and Fields

Foraging is sparse in December, but not gone entirely. Wintergreen berries, rose hips, and pine needles can still be gathered for teas, jellies, and syrups. Birch bark and chaga mushrooms are also harvested this time of year, when the trees are dormant and the forest is easier to navigate without heavy undergrowth.

There’s a surprising number of things you can forage in winter, even in climates as cold as ours. And there are even plenty of winter mushrooms, too!

We also spend time simply walking the woods, noting deer trails, wildlife sign, and storm damage. December is more about observing the land than harvesting from it, but those observations shape how we’ll manage things come spring.

And, of course, cleaning up that storm damage keeps the wood stove stocked and warms us twice as we run the saws in the snow!

In the House

With the snow piling up outside, December is the perfect time to turn inward. The woodstove is roaring, and the evenings are spent with spinning wool or working on herbal crafts. The long nights lend themselves to quiet projects, recipe testing, and reading.

This is also when we evaluate our food stores. Are we going through flour bins too fast? Do we have enough canned meat to last the winter? The tally sheets get updated, and we make adjustments for the months ahead.

And this is the time of year when all those pressure canning recipes get put to use, with canned vegetables and meal in a jar recipes making meals a bit easier.

In the Barn

Barn chores in December are simple but relentless. Twice a day, no matter the weather, animals need food, water, and bedding. With our off grid system, we don’t have heated troughs keep the water open, so we’re out there with an axe breaking the ice, or hauling buckets of warm water to the animals again and again. Deep bedding systems keep the geese and chickens comfortable through the cold, but water is important.

If there’s a thaw, we’ll muck out pens and haul manure to the compost pile, but most days it’s just about keeping everyone safe and warm. Having stocked up on hay, grain, and feed in the fall makes a huge difference, since hauling 50-pound sacks through snowdrifts is no one’s idea of fun.

In the Community

December is a month of gatherings. Neighbors swap jars of cranberry jelly, loaves of homemade bread, and bottles of hard cider at holiday parties. Church suppers and town potlucks feature tables laden with local food, and there’s a spirit of generosity as everyone shares the abundance of their pantry.

It’s also the month when we take stock with each other—who needs more firewood, who has extra eggs, who’s willing to lend a hand clearing a snowy driveway. Community ties feel especially important in December, when winter’s weight is just settling in.

What’s happening in December where you live? What are you baking, preserving, or working on around the homestead this week? I’d love to hear in the comments!

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Until Next Time,
Ashley at Practical Self Reliance

My family celebrates leftover day every year, and here I am, warm cheddar topped apple pie on my plate, sitting in front of our wood cook stove, contemplating a day playing board games with the kids snacking on one too many turkey sandwiches.

We always intentionally cook way too much food for Thanksgiving, simply because it takes the same amount of effort to make enough turkey for one day as it does for a week. It takes the same effort to prep a 12 pound turkey as it does a 20 pounder, and sure, it bakes for an extra hour or two, but it’ll keep us fed without effort for many meals to come.

The same is true for all the sides. Maybe it takes 5 extra minutes to peel a few more potatoes, but once in the pot, it’s the same effort to cook, mash and season them.

So here I am, fridge packed to the gills, contemplating all the wonderful ways this bounty will be reformulated over the coming week. Turkey enchiladas are a must, of course, and this year, my daughter’s hoping for turkey ramen, my son’s voting for turkey fried rice, and my husband’s demanding turkey shepherd’s pie.

I’m already thinking beyond those, to all the Turkey Canning Recipes I’m going to try this year. The bones are going to turkey broth, which is more or less the same as chicken broth (but one turkey equals three chickens in the pot).

It also works well as a freezer bone broth, if you don’t do pressure canning.

And honestly, turkey can be used in place of chicken in any chicken canning recipe.

Turkey is especially good in Chicken and Gravy Meal in a Jar or Chicken Pot Pie Filling or Chicken and Corn Chowder.

At some point, we’ll run out of turkey (long after we’ve run out of all the sides), and I’ll go pick up a few more birds for next to nothing and roast a few more on a random Tuesday for quick meal in a jar recipes to keep us going through the winter.

There’s few ways to put protein on the table cheaper than a turkey bought the week after Thanksgiving.

I would be putting everything in the freeze dryer too, but we haven’t gotten ours set up again yet after our move this autumn. (Yes, we’re in our new house…about 100 yards from our old house, more on that soon!)

This year, I’m hoping to get my hands on two extra birds to roast side by side to develop a few more canning recipes for y’all. Least year, several people asked for a Turkey Tetrazzini in a Jar recipe, and I’m hoping to perfect a Turkey Enchilada Filling in a jar recipe.

I would love to hear your requests for Turkey Canning Recipes as I plan out my week putting unique meals in a jar to save few pennies on this winter’s meals. Y’all always have the most creative suggestions, and I always love developing new recipes from your ideas.

How are you celebrating leftover day this year? Hopefully your fridge is full and you’re in cozy socks. (And if you’re doing anything else, why on earth are you not in cozy socks!?!?)

I’d love to hear how your holiday went this year, and what recipes you especially loved. And, of course, your favorite things to do with leftovers!

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Until Next Time,

Ashley at Practical Self Reliance and Creative Canning

Four out of the last five years we’ve had a hunter in our yard early in the morning, either dragging a deer, or knocking at the door asking for a hand hauling a deer out of the woods. Two years ago, I literally stepped outside early one morning to feed the chickens to find Mike, a neighbor that lives half a mile down the road, in the thick of things with his catch not thirty feet from my front door.

And a good morning to you too, sir.

Hunters around here don’t generally hunt near houses, even ones back in the woods like ours, as common sense. But our land has the only pond in this 600 acre block, and that counts for something with an injured deer. They’ll head to water, so any deer that makes it more than a few steps on this land is headed toward our dooryard. Even when not shot here, they land here.

We don’t get many visitors back here in the woods most of the year, but hunting season is the exception.

We more or less expect a hunter to drop by this season, either a neighbor we know asking for a hand, or someone we don’t asking for permission to track a deer across our land. (A couple years back, it was a dad and his 12 year old son early one morning, with the pride of having shot his first buck. Absolutely made my day.)

This year, it was a bit different.

Right at dusk, the dog was sounding off, barking at something just out of view, and I’m thinking it’s a skunk. Another one, when he’s already been spayed three times in as many months. Or maybe a porcupine this time, just to spice things up.

But no, it was a deer, taking its last steps as our pup announced the alarm. I ran outside just in time to see it breathe its last breaths.

I expected a hunter to be hot on its tail, like always, and called into the woods, wondering if Mike or Ben, the two most likely candidates around here, were working their way toward the house from their stands a half mile away.

I waited, but none came. I phoned the neighbors, asking them if they’d lost something, but none were hunting this evening…that’s a first.

It was getting on dark, so I called the game warden, and he said likely the hunter lost it, and at this point, they’d probably given up the search, assuming the meat would spoil before morning. The warden said he’d be by in a day or two to simply dispose of it.

But wait, if you’re just going to dispose of it, “Can’t we just keep the meat?”

He perked right up! Of course, one less thing for him to do. But do you know how to gut and butcher a deer?

We’re not hunters, we’re farmers. Our neighbors take care of the venison around these parts, and they’re always more than happy to trade a bit here and there for a bottle of blackberry wine or a whole goose from our flock come Christmas time.

I’ve never processed a deer, but I have processed plenty of goats, pigs and all manner of other animals, both two legged and four. It’s not all that different.

There was time, when we didn’t have these skills, back when we were newlyweds. I’d picked up a pair of goat bucks from a local dairy. They’re happy to be rid of them, and sell them for as little as $5 a head in the spring.

We raised them on the yard all summer long, but come autumn, the reality that we didn’t know what we were doing sunk in. I asked a hunting co-worker if he’d give us a hand and show us the ropes, and he was all too happy to share his skills. And it was the week before hunting season, so he was about to get out his supplies anyway.

We harvested the bucks and hung them up in our garage for processing. This was back when we had just half an acre, and reasonably close neighbors, and I’ll never forget one of our neighbors hollering over the fence, “I’d close that garage door if I was you.”

“It’s a goat!” I hollered back.

“Sure it is!” He chortled. It was a week before the start of hunting season, after all.

Now here we are, sixteen years later, and we’re hauling a deer up to process, my husband looks to me and chortles in his best backcountry accent, “I’d close that garage door, If I was you.”

We’re a long many years from that day, and a lot of skills later, but I’m still eternally grateful for the gifts that hunter gave us all those years ago. The knowledge to put meat on our table, fist from our farm, and now with this surprise windfall of meat this year as well.

I was talking with a mom friend a few days later, and she said that her son had just got his second deer bow hunting. He’s thirteen, and he handles it all himself, which she’s pleased by, as she has younger children to tend.

But she looks to me, suddenly serious, and says, “Honestly, I’m just happy to have the meat. That’s a hundred pounds of meat in our freezer for the winter that I didn’t have to buy.”

We live in a high cost of living area, and even with the local farms, you can’t get chicken for less than $6 per pound. The cheapest ground beef is $10 to 12 per pound, and even basic stew beef is more than that.

A hundred pounds of meat in the freezer is quite the gift from a teenager under your roof.

And for us, the fifty or so pounds of meat this deer put into our freezer was one heck of a blessing as well.

My daughter has a passion for cooking, and she’s enamored with one young youtube chef that teaches advanced techniques for beginners. She’s watched his Beef Wellington video more than a dozen times, memorizing all the steps.

When she felt ready, we started shopping for ingredients, but quickly stopped short. A beef tenderloin is at least $225…and that’s at the Costco. Local farms are a might bit steeper.

I promised her we’d find a way to make it happen for Christmas, one way or another, maybe getting the whole family to go in on it as a gift for her. In the meantime, she’s been practicing.

She’s made two exceptional meat loaf wellingtons, carefully mincing mushrooms and tending the duxelles. She’s ready for the real thing, but that sticker shock is still a bit much for this mama.

Looking at the deer in our yard, I saw the wheels in her young mind turning. Deer have tenderloins too, don’t they?

It looks like Christmas came early for my baby girl.

Now I’m rendering tallow on the stove, and boiling venison bone broth with the roasted bones. I wasn’t expecting this deer, so I’m also finishing up three different batches of marmalade at the same time.

(The sales guy laughed when we bought our big 6 burner stove. Who could ever use all six burners he said…)

My husband walked in from work with all that simmering away, scrunched up his nose, and said, “It smells like a Mongol horde invaded a Yankee Candle factory!”

He wasn’t wrong, and take it from me, game meat, citrus and cinnamon aren’t the best scent combination.

But you gotta do what you gotta do, and I’m not about to let any of this spoil on my watch. Not with the price of meat these days…but even if meat was free. I can’t imagine just “disposing of” such a gift from the forest.

If we didn’t have the skills to put that deer up, we would have learned right quick.

Some things are too precious to waste.

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Until Next Time,

Ashley at Practical Self Reliance

PS. If you’ve made it this far, thank you. Whenever I talk about meat and where it comes from, I get angry emails and people unsubscribe in droves. Even a simple picture of one of our fluffy cats hunting mice in the daffodil bed last spring brought hate mail for “promoting animal cruelty,” just for acknowledging a cat’s nature as a hunter.

Humans are part of that same web of life, not above it and not separate from it. Food may be bought at the store, but it’s not made there. Eat meat or not, that’s your choice. But recognize that others in our world do, whether they’re humans in houses or creatures of the woods.

I don’t see any moral high ground in letting good meat spoil when there are mouths to feed.

I have a feeling I’m mostly hearing from the vocal minority, and that my people are out there, quietly spending their time creating, being, and doing rather than raging in the comments. If you do enjoy this kind of frank, real conversation about where our food comes from, please let me know. Hit reply or leave a quick comment so I know you’re out there.

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This month is all about finishing the harvest, tucking away the last of the garden, and preparing for the deep winter ahead. The frantic energy of September and October slows a bit, but the work shifts indoors to cooking, crafting, and tending animals through the cold.

I often hear from readers who want a clear picture of what homesteading looks like across the seasons. Many are still in the planning stages, living in cities or suburbs, and they’re curious how the rhythm of the year unfolds once you’re settled on land.

Of course, no two homesteads are exactly alike—climate, growing zone, and personal priorities all shape the work. Still, I can share what a typical November looks like here in Vermont, where early snows, frozen ground, and short days define the month.

This isn’t every November project or every possible crop, but it’s a snapshot of the kind of tasks we tackle this time of year, year in and year out.

In the Garden

By November, most of the garden is put to bed. We’ll pull the last of the carrots, beets, and Brussels sprouts, and dig any lingering parsnips before the soil freezes solid. Hardy greens like kale and claytonia will keep producing under a low tunnel or cold frame, even when the ground outside is snow-covered.

This is also when I finish planting garlic and tuck in perennial divisions for spring.

(Somehow I’m always still planting garlic as the first snow flies…it’s tradition at this point.)

The beds are mulched, the hoses are drained, and the tools are oiled and stored until next year. It always feels bittersweet closing the garden for the season, but it’s also a relief to finally rest.

In the Orchard

The main orchard harvest is over, but there are still late-season fruits hanging on. Crabapples, hawthorns, medlars, and persimmons (if you grow hardy types) are all at their best after a few frosts. We’ll also gather quince and any late-keeping apples that haven’t been stored yet.

Much of November’s orchard work is about storage and use—sorting through bins of apples, checking the apple storage rack, and pressing any leftover fruit into hard cider or apple cider vinegar. Soon we’ll be taking cuttings of some of our favorite heirloom apple varieties to graft in spring.

In the Kitchen

November in the kitchen is quieter than the October rush, but it’s no less important. We’ll start using up jars of applesauce, canned pears, and canned pumpkin off the shelves to make space for new projects. This is a good month for cranberry canning recipes, too—cranberry sauce, cranberry jelly, pickled cranberries and cranberry salsa all find their way into the pantry ahead of the holidays.

We’re putting the recent harvests to good use right away in some cases, and roasted brussels sprouts on the stalk are stunning on the table (and tasty too).

It’s also stock-making season. The cool weather means we can simmer pots of bone broth for days without heating up the house, and we’ll pressure can quart after quart of it for winter soups and gravies. November is also when we bake more—sourdough bread, holiday pies, and pumpkin recipes are all in heavy rotation.

And it wouldn’t be November without one too many batches of my favorite cinnamon roll recipe…

In the Woods and Fields

November is a leaner month for foraging, but there’s still plenty to find if you know where to look. Wintergreen berries, rose hips, and highbush cranberries are all sweetened by frost and hang on late into the season. We’ll also collect the last of the black walnuts and hickory nuts, and gather pine needles for tea and syrup.

Mushroom season is nearly done, but hardy species like late oyster mushrooms sometimes appear even after snow, along with other cold loving winter mushroom species like velvet foot and chaga. I also use November for gathering birch bark and other materials for winter crafts and herbal projects. (We even make traditional birch bark flour, which is surprisingly tasty.)

In the House

By November, the house feels more like a winter lodge than a homestead base. The woodstove burns quietly in the corner, and we’re spending more evenings knitting, sewing, and working on winter crafts. The pantry is well-stocked, and it’s time to inventory what we put up—counting jars of jam, pickles, and syrups so we know where to pace ourselves.

This is also when I start pulling out the holiday recipes and gifts-in-a-jar projects. Homemade liqueurs, cordials, and herbal gifts all get made now so they’re ready for December.

In the Barn

November barn chores are all about winter routines. Deep bedding goes down, and the animals are tucked into their winter quarters. The geese, chickens, and any other animals still on the farm are fed from bins and hay stored up over the fall.

If the freezer isn’t already full, November is still a great month for home butchery and meat canning. This is when we process the last of the chickens usually, but the freezer is usually packed to the gills, so we’ll be canning chicken instead.

For the larger animals, the cold weather makes it easy to hang carcasses, and it’s the traditional time for processing pigs to salt cure without refrigeration and making charcuterie, especially new meat curing recipes before the deep freeze of December.

In the Community

November feels quieter outdoors, but it’s full of gatherings indoors. This is the month of harvest suppers, church dinners, and neighborhood potlucks where everyone brings a dish made with their homegrown food. We’ll bring jars of cranberry sauce, fresh pumpkin pie, or bottles of hard cider to share.

It’s also the season for trading—neighbors swap venison, apples, maple syrup, and late squash. The generosity of the harvest season continues into November, but with more of a focus on feasting and gratitude than on preservation.

What’s happening in November where you live?
What are you harvesting, preserving, or cooking on your homestead this week? I’d love to hear in the comments!

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Until Next Time,
Ashley at Practical Self Reliance

This year is a mast year for our oaks, the first in quite a while. The trees seem to conspire, producing far more than the squirrels can possibly cache, ensuring that some forgotten acorns will wake in spring and take their chances.

The last time this happened we gathered acorns by the bucket, partly for acorn recipes, my daughter still talks about the acorn ice cream from that year, but mostly for planting.

Our land didn’t have oaks then. Now their saplings dot the woods, adding diversity as the ash trees that once dominated our land now slip toward a quiet extinction.

We’re gathering black walnuts, butternuts, beechnuts, hazelnuts, chestnuts, hickory, ginkgo, wild plums, and witch-hazel seeds as we make our rounds.

Food for the forest and everyone who lives in it, us included.

Outside of oaks, finding seed sources isn’t easy. Most of these are what city ordinances call “messy trees,” treated as a nuisance instead of a resource.

It wasn’t always that way.

These trees were once a treasure handed from one generation to the next. Some don’t bear until they’re 80 or 100 years old; they’re almost always planted by people who will never taste a single nut.

You can still find an ancient, craggy specimen in a farmhouse dooryard, though each year a few more are cut for tidiness. Shocking, really, given the price of food. But there is one place they’re almost never felled for appearance, lumber, or fuel, and haven’t been for generations.

Old cemeteries.

I mean the truly old ones, from settlement days, when hunger meant an empty plate, not a cheaper store-brand substitution at the supermarket. People understood these grounds would endure, whether remembered or forgotten; the trees would abide either way.

But when they were planted, they were meant to be remembered. They were meant to call people back each autumn.

In the late 1700s and throughout the 1800s, a cemetery visit wasn’t the hushed ritual it is today. Whole families came with a picnic blanket and spent the day among the stones. Children laughed and ran; neighbors traded news with kin above and below ground.

Nut trees that span generations were planted there for a reason, by people who knew hunger well enough to plan beyond it, and who trusted that future strangers would be kin where it mattered.

Each fall the village gathered the nuts, sharing food, stories, and laughter. They nourished spirits and laid in calories for winter at the same time.

Vermont is full of such places, old graveyards scattered across the hills. Many haven’t seen a burial in generations and are visited only when the town crew mows a few times each summer.

But for me and mine, the trees call us back.

My children play and laugh as children did a century ago, threading carefully between stones. I can’t help but think it puts a smile on the faces of those who rest here, one way or another.

Have you ever met someone truly old, tempered by both hardship and happiness, who doesn’t soften at a child’s smile? You don’t last that long by hating life.

I like to believe the ones beneath these boughs feel that same softening when laughter moves the leaves, when small hands sort nuts, and small eyes turn to the sky above watching the harvest rain down.

We bring baskets to gather their gifts, not for our pantry so much as for the woods.

Aside from a small scoop of acorns destined for ice cream for the littles, every nut will be tucked under soil and given a chance at spring.

This mast year alone: 56 gallons of acorns, 32 gallons of black walnuts, 3 gallons of butternuts, 2 gallons of wild plums, a gallon of chestnuts, and a quart each of hazelnuts, ginkgo, and witch-hazel.

Bucket after bucket carried into the forest, drilled into the earth, and left to wait.

It feels like time travel.

A seed planted ten generations ago in the corner of a forgotten cemetery spreads outward to fill acres centuries later. All it needed was a bucket, a hand drill, and someone that remembers: nourishment, for body and soul, does, in fact, grow on trees.

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Until next time,

Ashley at Practical Self Reliance

PS. Many of my readers have asked where they can get seeds for these trees, and I finally now have a source! Sheffield’s Seed sells canker resistant butternut seed, along with hundreds of other varieties. Every nut you can imagine, plus off the wall permaculture foods like hackberries and lotus, and just about every fruit I talk about in my foraging guides, plus hundreds of types of medicinal herbs. Really everything you could possibly grow except the standard garden fare like tomatoes. (No, this is not sponsored at all, I don’t get anything if you choose to order seed from them. I was just so happy to find them!)

If you’re looking for young trees, a friend of mine started a nursery selling bareroot nut tree seedlings called Yellowbud Farm. He sells them by the 10 pack or 100 pack, for low prices to encourage mass re-forestation. Again, not sponsored, just so happy he’s out there doing it. And they ship!

Right now, when they’re dormant, is the only time you can viably transplant these tap rooted nut trees, and it’s the best time for setting out seed too.

Mornings are often frosty, and we’ll sometimes wake up to a thin glaze of ice on the stock tanks. Highs are usually in the 50s or low 60s early in the month, but by the end we’re often looking at freezing nights and highs in the 40s.

It’s a month of transition—the gardens are mostly winding down, the orchards are heavy with fruit, and the barns and sheds are filling with firewood and animal feed. Preservation is still in full swing, but there’s a shift toward root cellaring, fermenting, and canning meat for the deep winter ahead.

And, of course, harvesting the last of those wild edible berries out there in the woods and fields.

I often get asked what a “typical” month looks like on the homestead, especially from people who are still in the dreaming and planning stages. A month-by-month picture helps make the whole process feel more real, even if the exact details will vary depending on your region and setup.

Of course, every homestead is different—what grows in Vermont in October may not be ready yet in the South, and some places won’t see frost for weeks after we do. Still, there are common themes, and October here usually means finishing the big harvests, storing food for winter, and settling animals and infrastructure into their cold-weather routines.

This is what a normal October looks like on our Vermont homestead, and it gives a good sense of the seasonal work that happens as autumn turns toward winter.

In the Garden

By October, the garden is nearly finished. We’ll bring in the bulk of the potato harvest, winter squash, and beets and tuck them into our basement turned root cellar for long-term storage. We grow potatoes in raised beds to keep them out of our heavy wet clay soils, and we’ll pull 50 to 60 pounds from a single 4x8 raised bed most years.

Carrots, cabbage, beets and Brussels sprouts will hold in the ground well into November since they’re incredibly cold hardy vegetables, but we’ll start pulling them gradually now for everyday meals.

We’re also harvesting some of our more unusual crops, like homegrown ginger and fresh turmeric.

We’ll also clean up spent beds, spread compost, and plant garlic for next year. I like to mulch it thickly so it stays protected under the snow all winter, and the mulch keeps them insulated even though we grow our garlic in raised beds for improved drainage.

The extra compost in those beds helps too, and we’ll pull out huge crops of monster northern hardneck garlic with little effort beyond planting them in the Autumn months.

In the Orchard

October is peak apple season here, and the varieties come in waves—early ones are already gone, but mid- and late-season heirloom apple varieties are still coming in by the bushel. Most of the late season crop is storage apples, and we have apple varieties that keep 14+ months in our basement in a simple homemade apple storage rack (and no refrigeration).

Pears are finishing up, and crabapples are ready now too. We’ll also harvest hardy kiwis, wild highbush cranberries as well as homegrown cranberries and Lingonberries, and some of our fun unique edibles like Cornelian Cherries, Seaberries and Rowanberries.

Much of October is about pressing apple cider for canning (and making into hard cider and apple wine, too), making apple cider vinegar, boiled cider syrup for pancakes, and filling the pantry shelves with apple butter, applesauce, and spiced apple jam. The scent of cinnamon and simmering apples fills the kitchen nearly every day.

This year, I’m putting up a bumper crop of pears, and I’ll have half a dozen more pear canning recipes to share soon, in addition to my recipes for home canned pears, pear jam, pear butter and pear pie filling.

In the Kitchen

The kitchen is still buzzing, but it feels different from the September crush. Now it’s more about bulk storage and slower preservation methods. Potatoes, beets, carrots, and turnips get packed in bins, either dry and dark for potatoes, or in damp sand for carrots and beets. Apples and pears are put up whole in our basement storage racks, as I mentioned, but they’re also turned into preserves, wines and mead.

I’m particularly fond of pear wine and cyser (or apple mead).

Meat canning and home butchery start in earnest once the temperatures drop. We’ll have stockpots of bone broth simmering for canning, and not just the standard chicken broth and beef broth, but also make pork broth for beans and winter stews (plus it makes unbelievable homemade ramen). The first batches of homemade charcuterie—pancetta, guanciale, and bacon—get hung to cure.

It’s a lot of work, but it’s the kind that feels like settling in for winter.

In the Woods and Fields

October is one of the best months for foraging. The nut harvest is in full swing with black walnuts, butternuts, chestnuts and hickory nuts. We’re also raking up acorns from oaks by the bucketload to make into acorn flour later this winter (and a few batches of acorn ice cream for the little ones).

Autumn olives, crabapples, and hawthorns are all ripe now, and will go into preserves and wine.

The mushroom season peaks in October, with hen of the woods, lion’s mane and shaggy mane mushrooms, and late-season pheasant back mushrooms all available if you know where to look. It’s a great month for filling baskets in the woods before the snow sets in.

Beyond harvesting in the woods, we’re also planting woodland medicinals from bare root cuttings. Now’s a great time to plant things like goldenseal, wild ramp seeds and many others.

In the House

Heating season is well underway by October, and the boiler shed should be packed to the brim with firewood. We’ll also bring in the last bulk pantry staples, making sure the bins are topped off with beans, flour, rice, and oats for the winter.

This is when we switch gears indoors, too. The long nights mean more time for knitting, sewing, and reading by the woodstove, even if the days are still filled with chores. There’s comfort in knowing the shelves and bins are full and the house is ready for the cold.

In the Barn

October is when we make the hard decisions about livestock. The animals we aren’t keeping through the winter get processed for meat this month, while the rest are settled into their winter housing. It’s the right weather for butchering—cool enough to hang meat safely, and the flies are gone.

Hay, grain, and animal bedding are hauled into storage so we’re not scrambling later. Feed shortages often crop up in midwinter, so it pays to be well ahead. For us, that means filling galvanized cans with poultry feed and pig feed most years.

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Our animal housing can’t quite hold a whole winter’s worth of feed, it just doesn’t have quite enough space, so we’ll have to keep things topped off as long as we can so that we won’t have to hand haul feed bags over deep snow mid-winter. If we stay on top of it, the bins will be bursting full as we get our first big storms of the year, and then they’ll be just enough to take us through to when snow packs are lighter.

It’s also when we do a heavy round of tractor maintenance to make sure our work horse is ready for winter. Scraping off rust with an angle grinder, re-painting, lubricating and changing all the filters before they’re tested by freezing weather.

In the Community

October is quieter socially than September, but there’s still a lot of neighborly sharing going on. Extra apples, cider, pumpkins, and even cuts of fresh pork often make the rounds as everyone processes their harvests and livestock.

We’re carving pumpkins, and roasting pumpkin seeds by the gallon full for winter snacking (and for sharing with neighbors).

There are a few late-season fairs and festivals, but mostly October feels like a time to hunker down. We’ll swap jars of preserves, share mugs of cider around the fire, and enjoy the last crisp outdoor gatherings before winter pushes us all indoors.

What’s happening in October where you live? What are you harvesting, preserving, or preparing on your homestead this week? I’d love to hear in the comments!

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Until Next Time,
Ashley at Practical Self Reliance

Highs are usually in the 60’s and 70’s at the beginning of the month, and 40’s and 50’s overnight…but they’re cooling off rapidly, and we’ll often have our first frosts in September.

This month is all about pulling in the bulk harvests of all the long-season vegetables, and preparing for winter and heating season.

I often get requests for a month-by-month “homestead to-do list,” largely from people who are living in the city but planning to homestead someday. Everyone wants to see what their year will look like, in a month-by-month way.

What are you doing in January anyway?

It’s really impossible to answer, as every climate and homestead is a bit different, but what I can give you is a look into what our life here in Vermont looks like on a month-by-month basis.

Here’s what September looks like here in Vermont, and I hope to add a new post as each month goest by for the rest of the year.

This is a shortened version of a new post on the blog titled September Homestead To Do list. You can read the full post on the blog, with everything we work on this time of year.

In The Garden

Our growing season is a painfully short 100 frost-free days, and sometimes we're lucky, and we’ll get 120 or even 130…but don’t count on it. September is when all the long-season vegetables ripen, all at once. (And hopefully, they make it before frosts.)

We’re harvesting tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers by the wheelbarrow full. In some cases, as with tomatoes…it’ll be 2-3 full-sized adult wheelbarrows a week. With eggplants and peppers, the little ones get their turn, and they’ll fill their child-sized wheelbarrow to the brim. It’s smaller, but that’s still around 25 pounds of eggplant this week…

This time of year, we’re harvesting (and preserving):

• Tomatoes (and Green Tomatoes)

• Peppers (Hot and Sweet)

• Eggplant

• Herbs ~ Basil, Oregano, Thyme, Tulsi

• Husk Cherries

• Summer and Winter Squash

• Cucumbers

Next month in October, we’ll expect lots more winter storage squash and the main storage potato harvest.

We’ll also begin to pull in some of the cold hardy vegetables like scallions, brussels sprouts, carrots, beets, cilantro, and cabbage, but those will hold on right out in the garden all the way into mid-November. (And in some cases, all winter long until spring.)

In the Orchard

Much of our homestead is centered around perennials, especially our huge orchard full of unique perennial fruits, but also some perennial vegetables.

In September, we’re mostly harvesting and preserving:

• Elderberries

• Aronia

• Plums

• Fall Raspberries

• Fall Blueberries

• Everbearing Strawberries

• Early Apples

• Pears

• Grapes

(Yes, grapes do thrive in zone 4, and there are about a dozen that grow well in zone 3 too. Since so many of you asked, here’s a list of cold-hardy grape varieties. We grow about a dozen, but there are nearly 40 to choose from.)

There are still thimbleberries, blackberries, lingonberries, and a handful of other fruits as well.

In the Kitchen

This time of year, the kitchen is all about preservation.

Sure, I’d like to bake a loaf of bread or, honestly, even prepare a decent meal…but there just isn’t the time or space. Late August into September is peak harvest season, and every spare counter is covered by something desperately needing preservation before it starts to turn.

It’s exhausting, but these six or so weeks of mad preservation only come once a year, and then things slow down.

Tomatoes are getting turned into canned whole tomatoes, tomato sauce, diced tomatoes, tomato paste, spaghetti sauce, and tomato jam.

Sweet peppers canned as roasted peppers and hot peppers turn into pickled peppers and fermented hot sauce.

Eggplant is tricky to preserve, and there are plenty of traditional eggplant fermentation recipes, but they really alter the flavor and character, turning it into more of a pickle or condiment. I love using it in soups, stews, and curries, so in the past, I’ve just frozen it as roasted eggplant. This year, it’s all going into our freeze dryer (affiliate link), and I think they’ll be a lot more versatile come this winter.

Zucchini and Summer Squash are put up in zucchini canning recipes or grated and frozen. This year, they’re also being freeze-dried and turned into zucchini flour.

Plums are going into whole canned plums, plum jam, and plum wine.

Grapes become canned grape juice, grape jam, grape jelly, canned whole grapes, raisins, and wine (or pyment, which is grape mead).

Elderberries are turned into elderberry wine, elderberry syrup, and elderberry tincture/cordial.

In the Woods and Fields

September is a great time to forage, but I’ll admit, I only get out a few times this month with all that’s going on. Still, it’s a great time to harvest:

• Wild Grapes (Made into wild grape jelly and wild grape wine, but there are extra preparation steps when working with wild grapes.)

• Wild Elderberries (Used like regular elderberries)

• Himalayan Balsam (related to Jewelweed, and used in topical salves)

• Wild Quinoa (seeds from lambs quarters)

• Wild Raisin (Viburnum Species)

• Shaggy Mane Mushrooms

• Puffball Mushrooms

• Chanterelles

• Chicken of the Woods (Mostly harvested in August, but it’s often still available in early September)

• Hen of the Woods (Late September)

• Black Walnuts

• Butternuts

Next month in October, there’s actually a lot more available as all the long-season fruits come to bear, including crabapples, hawthorn, nannyberry, hobbleberry, and many more. The autumn mushrooms really pick up in October as well, and we’ll be harvesting lion’s mane and many others as well.

In the House

The heating season starts in September, so if we don’t have all our wood stacked and stored by now, we’re in trouble. And honestly, that’s usually the case. We’re still packing in wood into the boiler shed in September almost every year.

Summer is spectacular here, and every year we have to decide whether we’re going to buckle down and get it early…or sneak in one last trip to the lake with the kids…knowing that we’ll still have more wood to stack come September. Every year, the lake wins, and I watch my babies splash to their heart’s content.

The cool September air is better for wood stacking anyway…

It’s also the time of year when we check on our off-grid systems, do any pre-winter battery maintenance, test our standby generator, and generally prepare to maintain all our off-grid systems all winter through the snow and ice storms ahead.

We’ll top off our food stores with the few bulk things we don’t grow ourselves, mostly flour, rice, and dry beans. That’s a lot of bulk to haul in over the snow, and we’d rather just store a winter’s worth in gamma seal buckets down in the basement.

In the Barn

At this point, we only have a flock of 10 geese to bed down for cold weather, but in the past, we’ve had a whole menagerie to tend. Ducks, geese, pigs, goats, bees…everything short of a partridge in a pear tree (though there’s no shortage of pear trees, and we considered guinea hens…which aren’t all that different than partridges.)

Generally, this time of year, we’d be evaluating our animals and deciding who we plan to overwinter on the hoof, and who’ll be spending the winter in the freezer.

October is the best time to process meat, as the weather’s cool enough to hang the animals to chill, and the early frosts have killed off the flies. September is a time of decisions, but all the action will happen a bit later. And then we’ll be canning meat and getting our homemade charcuterie started with pancetta, guanciale, lonzino and bacon.

Winter here means six months of hauling buckets of water across the ice to animals out in the barns, twice a day during the coldest part of the year. We don’t overwinter any more than is strictly necessary for the following year.

For the animals that are staying, this is the month where we’d pack in feed for the next 6 months. It’s easy to get hurt hauling feed sacks and hay through snow/ice, and there’s no reason for it if it can be avoided. There are also often feed shortages in mid-winter, and no one will sell you hay once the snow starts to fly.

For chicken and pig feed, we store it in galvanized trash cans to protect it from rodents, and a single can will hold around 150 pounds of feed. (You can extrapolate out how much you need by reading my articles on how much it costs to keep chickens and how much it costs to keep pigs.)

In the Community

September is also when all the best country fairs happen, at least the old-time-y ones. Sure, there are fairs in the summer, but they’re mostly centered around amusement park rides and fried Oreos.

Our favorite fairs are the ones with animal exhibits, oxen pulls, shelf after shelf of preserves judged and rated, and barns full of quilts, farm machinery, and displays where they bring the old technology back to life.

We’ll spend the day watching men shape 14’’ square timbers for timber frames, turn logs into pipes and aqueducts, run horse-powered corn shuckers, make hooked rugs, churn butter, and a thousand other things that were once a daily part of life.

There may, or may not, also be corn dogs and carrousel rides…but that’s just the icing on the cake. The main dish is a trip back in time.

Besides the country fairs, it’s also when neighbors share the bounty of their garden with each other.

Sure, there’s the non-consensual zucchini you’ll find on your porch, hanging in a bag from your mailbox, or even in the back seat of your car all summer long, but September’s harvests push everything into high gear, and seemingly everyone has something to share.

We’ll offer up everything we can’t preserve, and our neighbors will do the same. This year, we were gifted bucket after bucket of hops (for the price of harvesting them at a neighbor’s house), 10 pounds of husk cherries (for husk cherry jam, wine, and salsa), and more cucumbers than I can count.

We share our homebrewed beer and wine, dozens of jars of jams and jellies, and in the past, our home-cured pork and smoked duck.

Everyone wins in this season of abundance.

What happens in September in your part of the world?

What are you harvesting, preserving, building, or exploring on your homestead this week? I’d love to hear about it!

Leave me a note in the comments…

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Until Next Time,

Ashley at Practical Self Reliance

We have more cheesemakers per capita than anywhere else in the country (with 1 cheesemaker for every 13,000 people), which means the quality and variety here are truly unmatched.

The event was held at Shelburne Farms, right here in rural Vermont, and the drive in set the tone for an unforgettable day. As we turned onto the property, spanning more than 1,400 acres, winding lanes led us through a shaded maple sugarbush.

The road opened onto wide hayfields, where neat rows of golden bales dotted the green expanse. Under a brilliant summer sky, the scene was warm, open, and unmistakably Vermont.

At the end of the drive stood the show-stopping Breeding Barn, an immense and absolutely stunning structure that seemed almost too grand to be called a barn.

Napping calves and a pair of lively goats greeted us in the parking lot, which was really just a giant hayfield, alongside half a dozen Vermont-based food trucks serving handmade ice cream, wood-fired pizza, and dairy-inspired drinks.

I was invited to the industry preview, a quiet window before the crowds arrived when cheesemakers could talk about their craft and offer samples without interruption.

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I brought my dairy-loving daughter along, which made the day even more special. She spends a few weeks each summer at 4-H cow camp, tending to the animals and learning the ins and outs of dairy management, and this was the perfect capstone to her summer.

Meeting the people who take that milk and turn it into something so complex and flavorful gave her a whole new appreciation for the process.

And, of course, allowed both of us to try some of the world’s best cheeses!

The cheese itself was extraordinary. There were tangy, soft-ripened wheels, aged cheddars with crystalline crunch, and rich, buttery blues that lingered on the tongue. Each table offered something new—sometimes from a farm I already knew, other times from a cheesemaker I’d never met before.

Sampling them one after another made it easy to appreciate just how much variety can come from the same few simple ingredients, shaped by place, method, and skill.

I introduced my daughter to the makers at Jasper Hill, the team behind the iconic Cabot Clothbound Cheddar. The flavor of that cheese is what first inspired me to start making my own years ago, so much so that I even wrote a copycat cheddar recipe.

For a long stretch, I made wheel after wheel of raw milk cheddar, hauling home five-gallon buckets of fresh milk straight from a local farm on milking day, always chasing that unforgettable taste.

Beyond the cheese, there were so many “cheese-adjacent” treats to discover. Charcuterie makers offered everything from paper-thin slices of artisanal salami to rustic farm made hot dogs.

Local brewers were pouring beers chosen to match the cheeses on display, and jam makers had jars of pear, cherry, and maple blends that transformed a simple wedge into a perfect bite.

I met the owners of Side Hill Farm, a local Vermont Jam Company that makes jams the old fashioned way without added boxed pectin.

I’ve tried to explain this before, what a difference it makes when you cook jam with little more than fruit, sugar and patience. The thing is, it’s hard to explain in words, sometimes you just have to let the fruit do the talking. If you would like to taste them, they’re their jams are spectacular, and they ship for online orders too.

There were even whimsical baked goods, like delicate blue cheese macarons that somehow managed to be both sweet and savory in a single bite.

(Seriously, if you have a chance, you should check out Small Oven Pastries! They ship, and they even teach baking classes!)

After sampling enough cheese to make a cow blush, my daughter crowned her favorite, a washed rind cheese from Lazy Lady Farm, a small off-grid goat dairy near the Canadian border. It surprised everyone, since washed rind cheeses are often considered the “stinky” ones, reserved for so-called mature palates.

But my girl is growing up a little more every day, and she’s already dreaming aloud about the goat herd she’ll have of her own someday.

On our way out, we stopped to scratch the goats, brought to the festival by Sweet Doe Dairy, a Goat’s Milk Ice Cream maker here in Vermont. We’ve sampled their treats at fairs and farmer’s markets over the years, and it was nice to get a quick snuggle with the production team, in this case, Waffle and Sundae.

With ice cream on our mind, we made one last stop on a hot summer day at the Sisters of Anarchy food truck for a simple cone of handmade vanilla.

They have some truly exceptional flavors, things elderberry, aronia and golden raspberry…but after a day of dairy overload where our taste buds had been working overtime, it was nice to smooth things out with one of the best vanilla cones I’ve had in a long time.

All in all, it was the perfect mother daughter dairy date, savoring our shared passion. Mine, for the craft of cheesemaking, and hers, for the love of the animals that make it all possible.

She's already making plans for all we'll see and do at next year's festival, and if you find yourself here in Vermont next August, it's well worth the trip.

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Until Next Time,

Ashley at Practical Self Reliance

All it takes is an infused herbal oil, a bit of beeswax, and a clean container. That’s it. You can get fancy with essential oils or blending different herbs, but the basics are simple.

(If you’re new to it, I’ve got a complete step-by-step tutorial for how to make herbal salves on the blog. I also have a specific tutorial for making vegan salves without beeswax, and you can convert any regular salve recipe into this vegan version if you’d like.)

But what kind should you make? That depends on what you’re treating. Below I’ve broken things down by common use so you can stock your home apothecary with exactly what you need. (And here’s where you can find all my herbal salve recipes.)

It should go without saying that I’m not a doctor, nor do I play one on the internet. This should not be confused with health advice from a qualified professional, and obviously, you should always do your own research. I’m just sharing what I’ve learned through more than 20 years of research into medicinal herbs, and what works with my own family.

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Salves for Bug Bites, Stings & Rashes

These are the salves I keep in the kitchen and by the back door during the summer months:

• Jewelweed Salve – One of the best home remedies for poison ivy. Also great for bug bites and itchy skin.

• Plantain Salve – Soothes mosquito bites, bee stings, and other minor skin irritations. It pulls out splinters and stingers too.

• Calendula Salve – A gentle option that’s anti-inflammatory and safe for sensitive skin, including kids.

• Chickweed Salve – Cooling and calming for hot, inflamed skin or rashes.

Salves for Burns, Bruises & Wounds

These are the salves I reach for when someone gets scraped up or scorched on the woodstove:

• Herbal Burn Salve – My go to remedy for burns, including calendula for skin healing and st. johns wort for nerve pain and antimicrobial action, plus plantain and comfrey for good measure.

• Comfrey Salve – Encourages tissue regeneration and speeds healing of bruises, sprains, and minor injuries. (Avoid on deep wounds that need to stay open to heal.)

• Yarrow Salve – Stops bleeding and disinfects small cuts or scrapes. Great in a pinch when someone skins a knee on the gravel driveway.

• Calendula Salve – Again! It's just that versatile. Use it on everything from diaper rash to sunburn.

• St. John’s Wort Salve – Excellent for nerve-rich areas and pain from burns or deep bruising. It turns a beautiful red color when infused properly.

Salves for Pain, Inflammation and Sore Muscles

For sore muscles, joints, or tension headaches, these salves deliver relief:

• Arnica Salve – The go-to for muscle soreness, bruises, and overuse injuries.

• Cayenne Salve – Warms and stimulates circulation (test on a small area first—it's potent stuff!).

• Turmeric Salve – Anti-inflammatory and soothing for joint pain and stiffness.

• Dandelion Salve – Gently soothing and anti-inflammatory, this one’s great for stiff joints, tension in the neck and shoulders, or tired feet after a long day. It’s surprisingly effective and smells like spring.

• Comfrey Salve – Known as “knitbone,” comfrey supports tissue repair and is a favorite for sprains, bruises, and overworked muscles. Just don’t use it on deep, open wounds—it works too fast for that. It’s great in combination with St. Johns Wort too.

Salves for Skin Health & Everyday Use

These are great to keep in your bathroom or bedroom, especially during the dry winter months:

• Whipped Tallow Body Butter – A bit like a salve, but without the need for beeswax to thicken and solidify it. Tallow is especially nourishing for the skin, and you can infuse herbs like calendula, chickweed, rose or lavender into the oil for added benefits.

What’s in Your Salve Stash?

Are you growing calendula? Drying comfrey? Making a jewelweed oil for later?

Let me know what herbal remedies you’re working on this week—I love hearing from you! Leave me a note in the comments.

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Until next time,
Ashley at Practical Self Reliance

My outdoor canning kitchen is hard at work putting up the season’s treasures, and this year, I’m working through every single relish recipe I can find. We’ve done a dozen different types thus far, and have many more to go.

The littles aren’t complaining, everybody loves a good hot dog in the summertime.

If you are looking for recipes to help preserve the season, I created a “Summer” tag on creative canning to help you preserve this season’s produce. Thus far, it has over 100 different recipes for putting up corn, peaches, blackberries and more. And plenty of relish recipes, of course.

When we’re not splashing in the pond, I’m busy putting together new recipes and DIY guides for you. This summer, that means everything from garden planning and canning recipes to foraging guides, herbal remedies, homemade soap, fermenting projects, off-grid skills, and simple ways to live a more self-reliant life, from my homestead to your inbox.

If there’s something you’d like to learn how to do, and you’d prefer to learn it from a person (rather than chatting with an AI bot that suggests Elmer’s glue on pizza), I’m here for you. Just let me know how I can help you!

What do you want to see on Practical Self Reliance?

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I would love to hear from you!

In the meantime, here’s what’s on my camera roll this month:

And lastly, y’ll probably know I’m not really into social media, I try to avoid it when I can, but still, I’m looking for a way to connect with readers a bit more in real time. Twitter seems like a good place to do that, since it’s not all reels (like instagram) and it’s not all AI (like facebook).

So I’m hanging out a lot more on twitter these days, and I’d love to see some of you there. Here’s my handle: AshleyAdamant

My morning coffee snuggle buddy will be there, too =)

What are you working on, harvesting, or just plain excited about at this summer? Leave me a note in the comments!

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Until Next Time,

Ashley at Practical Self Reliance

PS. Here are links to a few things I mention in the newsletter:

• My Favorite Cinnamon Roll Dough

• All my relish recipes on Creative Canning