Classes!

Alright, I know it has been too long since I have written....I apologize, but I told myself that I would only write when I felt that I wasn't burning myself out by adding another thing to our already full schedule around here. I am sure you all can agree that nothing runs smoothly when Mom is running on empty right?!

I have recently added something new to my plate which has kept me from the blogging, but has begun to really solidified a dream I have had for years. I have finally made it a priority to take some herbalism courses with a fantastic local herbalist here in Minnesota. She is a Masters Level herbalist who has been teaching and studying for more years that I care to age her with :) I am taking an intensive course which covers local medicinal plants and their uses, as well as lots of other pertinent information. I am learning an immense amount and I am giddy about it. This is my thing folks. This is really exciting stuff for me. I have known for many years that I am meant to be a healer in this life. I think on many levels I have known somewhere inside of me since birth, but that is another post all together. That being said, one doesn't always know exactly what that is going to turn out like...what kind? what field? what expertise? what, what, what? Plus, we get married, we have kids, we clean, we cook, we exist, we rarely sleep.....so it all has to come in time right!? Well, NOW is the time. I am hoping to convince my teacher to continue lessons with me in an official apprenticeship role, although doing something like this is typically something she does with a group over a year long period (she is not currently beginning one). So, we will see what she has to say about it. Maybe I can convince her. Send out some good wishes for me would ya? If it turns out she does not want to do this (as she also has a practice), I have some other ideas up my sleeve. I will just take some other courses, hit a herbal conference and continue to read, learn and make medicines at home. There are many other herbalists practicing that I will contact if necessary. My goal is to be teaching and practicing. Yes, practicing. Herbs are medicine for our bodies. That is why they are growing all around our bodies on earth.

I don't know when, and I am not in any way going to push myself (too much ;) ), but this is the next step for me. I am already learning more than enough to start. I just need to keep going. The medicines are brewing in my basement, the foods are drying in my rafters.....I feel like the witchy woman you read about it the books and I LIKE it. And seriously, if you have some weird freak out because I said "witchy woman", get over it, really. The stigma there is absurd. That too is another post altogether, ha! The witchy women of the past were the natural healers Religions were too _____ (fill in the blank with your own label) to identify and cherish for the gifts they could give to humanity. It is all about intentions, those with the intention to help, teach and heal others.
I digress....

I have been busy making medicines like crazy when I can get my hands on the fresh herbs that I need for them. You would be amazed what you can find in your yards folks!!! *Class plug* I have been busy utilizing Nettle, Motherwort, Plantain, Dandelion and many others. Needless to say I have been eating and cooking with many more. Anders and I also took a mushrooming class where we learned to identify edible and medicinal mushrooms. We are adding this to our repertoire as well. It really has been so much fun delving into this new culture we love so much. Wild edibles are really where it is at! This stuff can do amazing things for your body and it is meant to, it is growing here for us to utilize it. It is about time we learn how.

With all of that said. I would like to share some of this awesome knowledge that I have learned with everyone. At first I really thought that I wanted to just blog about what I learned, do write-ups with beautiful photos and etc.. but with some soul searching, and my current distaste for being on the computer a lot, I have decided that I am going to offer classes where I teach in person. This really feels like the right thing for me to do. I realized after doing YEARS of reading, taking courses and dabbling that you just can not be sure what a plant is if you don't see it, touch it, smell it, and repeat this a dozen times. A teacher whom can actually show you the plant, is extremely helpful. I have learned identification so much quicker actually going out on identification walks than I did learning out of a book. Plants look so different at different stages. Plus, you can read why a herb is beneficial in a book over and over and it almost NEVER sticks until you get out and actually DO IT, learn it, see it, write down the information as you learn it. So, I am going to teach people how to identify these plants, why they are useful, and how to use them. And because, you know, people need to get off the computer and get out and interact with people and take classes. People need to connect. Okay, maybe I need to? Either way.

I have also told myself that I will not pressure myself to make this bigger than it begins. I will do what I feel I can comfortably fit into our life and just go with the flow. If people are really interested in learning more, then I will think about doing more. If not, then I have time to really get into doing more studying, medicine making, experimenting, treating, etc. I will just step off the edge and see where I fall. No stress. Just this. Yeah.

If you are interested in information about the courses I will teach feel free to click the "classes" page on the home page above. Don't feel like you have to be interested in being a herbalist to take them, this is just about learning something new and having fun.

Love and light,
M

Treating a burn naturally at home.

We had an accident recently which prompted me to write this post. My littlest guy had some hot water from a coffee shop spilled on  him recently and I will share the method I used to treat him. I realized that most people probably are not aware of how to treat a burn at home*. I used all of the products pictured at one point or another; along with washcloths, gauze, an old shirt, and a bandage.

Burn treatment supplies Nature's Acres Homestead

When treating a burn follow these steps:

Building the cold frame.

Anders made our cold frame this weekend. I am really excited to share the pictures with you all, I think he did a great job! I first want to tell you a little bit about why we built one...

I have to be honest, we really don't know exactly what we are doing with starting seeds, but we are making headway. We know we need a cold frame or a green house to put the seedlings in, because of our disaster last year.

Last year we planted tons of seeds and kept them in the only south facing window that we have in our home; our bedroom. It was not so great. It smelled of potting soil and was dusty for-ever in there, and it was gross. We don't have the biggest bedroom, so we were forever climbing around it to get into bed.

I didn't know a thing about planting seeds and "hardening them off" because I had never done it before. Neither Anders, nor I had ever grown up in a home where this was done. So, what do I do? When it is nice and warm out (I am not sure what the temperature was) and I think the plants are ready to be moved outside, I picked up all those seedlings that I had been watering diligently and set them out on our picnic table to get sunstroke and die. Yep, it was a fantastic start. I didn't know what the hell I had done wrong. I was rather heartbroken. I would walk by those plants everyday and water them and think, "what did I do wrong?", "how do I do this?!" Ah, the joys! I later found out there was this thing called "hardening off" or something like that. You harden them off by introducing them gradually to the light, air, and weather elements of the outdoors. Well duh Mandi! Jeesh. Sometimes we just don't think, do we? Well, I learned. It was the hard way, but it was real effective!

So this year we looked into cold frames a bit. I say "a bit" because that is the truth of it. When we ripped out our windows last fall I had the idea to save them all for a green house/cold frame, and for future buildings ie: Up-cycling them. So, here they sat for the entire winter. Just waiting for this day.

Nature's Acres Homestead Cold Frame © 2013.

Up-cycling. Why we do it.

We up-cycle stuff. A trendy word for recycling, re-using, taking donations, trading, what have you..we do it. No shame, it is the reality of starting up a homestead, a farm, a business. It is the way it goes. Start ups always have Large expense and limited to no income. You must keep costs low if you plan to stay out of the red. You can not spend a fortune on a new coop if you then have no money available to put chickens in it, right?! That is like buying a new house and having no money to furnish it..you are house poor.

Here is the last project we up-cycled the materials for last fall. Our newest building on the homestead; the big chicken coop. Maybe we should name it..thoughts?

Anders and I had been talking about our need for a bigger coop for a while, but it was going to be a fairly big project, and life is life....busy. Well, and budgeting in a coop when your home needs siding and we needed other things, is a tough sell. I was adamant, we WERE selling more eggs and meat birds next year, it was a divine message I received (sounds more convincing this way, no?)... and we were going to manifest it; no more waiting around, we do it Now. Anders was not such a fan, how in the world are we going to budget a 50 bird coop? Anders priced out what he thought it would cost to build that 50 bird coop you are looking at...and can you believe that his estimate was 1,200.00-$1,300.00! That just wasn't something we were willing to budget in for a coop to put the chickens in. So, crafty me, I get a thinkin', because when I want something, I make it happen. I had another divine inspiration my husband hates to love; we were going to Up-Cycle it. We were going to get as much of the materials for free as we could.

We weren't out asking everyone on the street for their stuff or anything weird like that. We just payed attention to what people wanted to get rid of, and if we could use it, we did. Anders works construction and I sent him off each day with me in the back of his head telling him to look for materials they would throw out that we could use. He began coming home with our old Volvo station wagon stuffed with old plywood (which had strategically placed square holes cut out of it), wood and other supplies that they typically just throw out. Then I asked him to spend some of his free time on Craigslist searching for other materials that we could use. Next thing you know, we are in Minneapolis with our trailer picking up tons of 2x4s from someones house; they were remodeling. The catch? The 2x4's were full of nails.

One man's trash is another man's treasure.

What do we do on the homestead, what does that look like? Who are we?

I think after introducing what homesteading is exactly, we should let you know what that looks like at Nature's Acres Homestead. What do we do each season or day? I will do this with some pics of the joint. Please note that none of them are current as we are in the middle of the most absurd winter blizzard in the middle of April. I have no intention of snapping shots of anything right now. At evening chore time the snow on the way to the chicken coops was mid-calf in some places. Which just means that more pictures will come in later posts. I have found that people love pics of the HSF(I am going to use this for Homestead/Farm, way easier) while reading an update, so....a photo montage, in  no particular order...just thowin' 'em up there as I find them...'cause that is the reality of life.

First, meet the Benson's...we typically dress like this and hold hands while doing farm chores...when I harvest cherries(Mandi) it gets real fun... I hope you all are ready for some snickers while reading....it is who I am.

The lot of us..except the kids are a bit older..I don't take family pics often..but, here we are. These are the best pics of us you will see on here, this is not farm garb, and when we take pics we wont be modeling. Well, my daughter might be..

So, what exactly does is mean to Homestead? Is it farming?

Homesteading isn't really a common term anymore. I am sure most who hear Anders and I talk about it wonder, what does that even mean? Well, that really is a good question. What does it mean, especially today? Well, I will share a bit of insight on the term/action and explain a bit about what it means for Anders and I, and our family at Nature's Acres Homestead. 

I am sure we are all familiar with The Homesteading Act of 1862 right? Well, settle in for a few minutes of history...You all have seen Far and Away with Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, right? They leave Ireland to come to America where they are giving away free land (wouldn't it be nice if they were doing this today, instead of taking it away?! Times sure have changed), this is an example of the Homestead Act. The United States gave away free land in order to entice people to settle in remote or less desirable places. The idea was that people would settle down and live sustainably (gah! another of those words..what does that mean?) off the land. They would build their own home from resources in their environment, grow their own food, preserve their own food, they even used wild yeasts to make their bread!, hunted, raised their own animals(utilizing all of the animal), use bi-products from the animals such as: wool, leather, hair etc. to make clothing an containers, build homes, decorate, for food, and many other uses. They lives as self-sufficiently(this is another post entirely) as possible. Most of these people didn't have jobs outside of the Homestead; they didn't really need one. They raised their own food, didn't have a mortgage or cars to fill with gasoline, and traded or sold goods to get what they couldn't procure in another way. Many had skills they traded with others, for example; a woodworker could trade the work of a kitchen set with a neighbor for the mortar work of a new fireplace. They spent their days living to produce what they needed to live, with very little consumption outside of that.

So, with that said, do Anders live like Little House on the Prairie?