Gratitude Sunday 3-31-2013

Welcome to our favorite day of the week, Gratitude Sunday! This is a weekly link up hosted by Taryn at Wooly Moss Roots so be sure to visit her blog to see all the other inspiring lists of gratitudes shared. Here are a few highlights of what we have been grateful for this last week:

-Weather in the 40's-50's so it is warm enough for us to go outside to play in the fresh air.

-Our little nugget's new favorite word "dirt!" which means she wants to go outside and play in the dirt in the gardens.

Simply Natural Saturdays 3-30-2013

First Antler Hunting Trip of the Season

Last spring I wrote this post and this post about our love of antler hunting every spring when the deer and elk start to shed their antlers. Although it is still a little early in the season, we've been having some major cabin fever so decided to head out for an antler hunting adventure this last week. We've also been selling so many antler buttons in our Etsy shop we need to restock our supply!

We headed to the river bottom where I harvested my deer this last hunting season since we knew there were several south facing slopes. On the south slopes the snow is melted so lots of deer like to graze there and hopefully shed their antlers. The drive in paralleled the Clearwater River and we saw a beautiful white swan as well as a variety of ducks and geese.

Garden Seed Selection Tips For Cold Climates

Selecting garden seeds was something I never used to give much thought to. I would pick out seed packs of vegetables and fruits I grew up eating or thought “it would be fun to grow this.” After several years of failed attempts at growing corn and melons in the cold climate of Montana, I realized that some produce just does not grow as well in our area. I started chatting with my good friend who is an organic farmer to learn the ropes of proper seed selection. Here are a few tips I have learned:

1. Decide what produce to plant. Make a list of all the produce you eat throughout the year. Rank your list in order of the produce you eat the most to the least. Once I did this I realized that we eat a lot of green beans, onions and spinach but were not growing enough to feed us most of the year. Last summer we had a very hearty crop of kale and a small crop of spinach. While we like kale and froze a lot to mix into quiche, lasagna and soups it is not something we eat as often as spinach. Because spinach is more versatile for us and something I mix into our smoothies on a regular basis, I’ve been having to spend money buying it at the store all winter long. This coming garden season, we will be planting a much larger crop of spinach and a smaller crop of kale.

Inspiration From The Urban Chicken Book

I have been talking with my husband for a few years about getting chickens to raise for meat and eggs but have no idea where to begin. I have fond memories as a kid collecting eggs from my uncle's chickens up the road but I have no idea how to raise our own chickens. We have several friends with backyard chickens who have explained to my husband how they built their coops but there is so much more to know and honestly it is a bit overwhelming.

A lot of folks say it is pretty easy once you get started, but the getting started part is the spot where we’re hung up. Then I had the opportunity to read The Urban Chicken ebook by Heather Harris, who also blogs at The Homesteading Hippy. This ebook was exactly what we needed! All the basics we need to get started from choosing breeds to coop styles, feeding, flock management and even how to cut up and prepare the chicken.

 

Mother's Organic Giveaway

Welcome to the Spring Into Green Mothers Organic Giveaway!

We have teamed up with Eco-Crazy Mom and a wonderful group of bloggers to celebrate the grand opening of the Mothers Organic store by bringing you the chance to win an amazing prize pack valued at $375.00!

Come check out the Mothers Organic Grand Opening March 25, 2013!

The Mothers Organic motto is simple: happy shopping for the everyday eco-mama. Why? Because we've all been there before. Confused by labels and not knowing which products were safe for our kids. Overwhelmed with information. 

That's why eco mama Kelly McKnight and her husband created Mothers Organic. They wanted to make it easy for moms to find a variety of safe, tried and true eco-friendly products in one convenient place. 

Gratitude Sunday 3-24-2013

Welcome to Gratitude Sunday! This is a weekly link up hosted by Taryn at Wooly Moss Roots where we all share what we have been grateful for this last week. Here are a few highlights from our week:

-Discovering the Lifeline Farms Creamery Store down in the Bitterroot where we can get local, organic discounted butter and cheese ends. It is also so wonderful to be able to buy milk only a few miles from the farm instead of at a store in town.

-A snow storm to help build up the snow pack in the mountains so we won't have as dry of a summer (and hopefully lessen the forest fire danger!)

-Publishing my first YouTube video as part of my post on making sourdough bread. I was a bit shy about making a video of myself for the internet so if you watch it you will notice it is only of my arms down- a nice compromise!

Simply Natural Saturdays 3-23-2013

Rock Collecting on the Blackfoot River

Did you ever see the movie "The River Runs Through It"? The movie takes place on the Blackfoot River in western Montana. We are blessed to live within a short hike of this same river. This week has been a mixed bag of rain and snow but one afternoon the clouds parted and we were graced with a blue sky and little bit of sunshine for a few hours so we headed to the river. 

 I've been a rock collector for years and the Blackfoot River has always been one of my favorite spots to find the most beautiful rocks: shades of red, green, gray, tan and white in solids and stripes.

March Sponsor Group Giveaway

Since we have several creative sponsors with online shops selling their handmade creations, we decided to organize a giveaway! What better way to help promote some amazing handmade shops and give you all a chance to win some wonderful creations.

Our sponsors for this giveaway are:

Aquarian Bath
"Aquarian Bath offers quality products with no artificial chemical fragrances or dyes. All my soaps are either unscented or lightly scented with pure essential oils or botanical waxes and resins."

Re-Grow Roots
"Living simply and harmoniously with the earth and universe is the foundation of my life. This belief inspires me creatively in my business to make useful products from earth friendly materials. I specialize in crochet hats and headbands, but my creative endeavors are many - painting, growing veggies and herbs, and creating herbal healing products are among my various interests" 

Light Footsteps 
"I specialize in herbal products and homemade eco-friendly goods. I want to help you achieve health and well-being through nature and simple living."

How to Make the Perfect Loaf of Sourdough Bread

About a month ago I mentioned we had made the perfect loaf of sourdough bread. I promised to share the recipe so after making it several more times to make sure it wasn’t a fluke that it was so fabulous, here it is!

I’ve been making sourdough bread for a while now and have been experimenting with different recipes and tweaking ingredients in search of the perfect bread. I tried out a variety of recipes and some of them were ridiculous the amount of steps and transferring from this pan to that pan. Some of the recipes just didn’t turn out very tasty.

Then we came up with this one after tweaking a few things and it is so delicious. What makes it even better is the fact that it can be made in 10 easy steps! This recipe can be used to make any style of bread you would like: rectangular loaf, baguette, round loaf or even a braid.

If you read our post on making a sourdough starter and gave it a try earlier in the month, by now you should have a sour, bubbling starter ready to bake with. Before you embark on making this recipe, be aware of the time involved and plan accordingly. Because the bread needs to sit out for 12-15 hours to ferment and rise, I make the dough around 7pm at night. The next morning when I get up I bake the bread so we can enjoy our tasty homemade bread for breakfast. 

Striving to Eat Healthy With a Spouse Who Doesn’t Care

A few weeks ago my husband made a statement to me that stopped me in my tracks “I really don’t care what I put into my body. I would be just as happy eating a Big Mac as I would your homemade meals.” I was dumbfounded. Not that I didn’t already know he wasn’t a foodie like myself, but I thought after years of living with me and my homemade, healthy cooking he had somehow changed. Nope. Silly me.

When I first met my husband, he was living the stereotypical bachelor life with a cupboard full of boxed meals like Hamburger Helper. Granted he made these boxed meals with super healthy wild game meat but that didn't cancel out all the other overly processed ingredients in the box. He also used to eat fast food, not giving it much thought for a quick drive through McDonald’s lunch while in town for work.

I’ve always been a homemade, scratch cooker for many meals I make. That’s just the way I was taught how to cook growing up “a little of this and a little of that”  and the family recipes were passed down to me. I'll admit I'm not perfect and back in the day before I read Fast Food Nation in college over ten years ago I occasionally ate some fast food. I don't have time to make EVERYTHING from scratch so I still  buy some pre-made things at the store like tortilla chips or organic chicken nuggets for the occasional quick meal instead of eating out. I am conscious about our food choices so the pre-made things I do buy at the store are always natural, organic foods.

Moon Root Soaps Sponsor and Giveaway

Moon Root Soaps: Soaps from the Earth.

Christelle is the creator behind this wonderful natural business. We recently had a chance to find out more about Christelle and Moon Root Soaps to share with you. Christelle is generously offering our readers a chance to win some of her handmade goods so be sure to check out the giveaway at the end of this post!

Gratitude Sunday 3-17-2013

Welcome to Gratitude Sunday! My favorite time of the week to sit down and reflect back on all the wonderful things we have to be grateful for in life. This is a weekly link up hosted by Taryn at Wooly Moss Roots so be sure to visit her blog to read all the other wonderful and inspiring lists of gratitudes shared.

This last week I was grateful for:

-Buds on the lilac bushes, my favorite spring flowers!

Simply Natural Saturdays 3-16-13

A Day in the Woods at Rock Creek, Montana

Yesterday dawned a beautiful partly sunny day with a weather forecast calling for an unusually warm 60 degrees. My husband was headed out to work on a house remodel in Rock Creek, one of my favorite areas about 20 minutes from home. He pointed out the weather forecast and suggested I bring our little nugget out to the house for the afternoon since it is vacant and sits on ten acres in the woods.

I was reluctant at first because I had a very long "to do" list, but I realized that I REALLY needed a break since we've been pushing so hard to meet our goal of stocking our Etsy shop with over 100 items. I packed a lunch, our trusty baby backpack and the dogs and we headed out of town.

How to Naturally Polish Silver

Polishing silver is not something I do very often but when I need to, I use this easy natural polish: toothpaste. I’m sure you’re asking yourself “Toothpaste?” and thinking I’m crazy. But I swear it works wonders. Even the natural brand toothpaste we have does the trick. No need for special chemical cleaners or polishing cloths, just a dab of toothpaste!

Gratitude Sunday 3-10-2012

Welcome to our favorite day of the week, Gratitude Sunday! Throughout the week I keep a journal where I write down my gratitudes and at the end of the week share a few of the highlights with you. This is a weekly link up hosted by Taryn over at Wooly Moss Roots so visit her blog to read all the other wonderful lists of gratitudes shared from the last week!

Here are the highlights of our gratitudes this week:



-Our little nugget's fascination with handfuls of garden soil.

-Looking at a really amazing piece of property on the river and although it is out of our price range, it gave us a new perspective on our homestead shopping. We're starting to think more out of the box about ways to make our dream property affordable so hopefully we can make it work!

Greenwoman Magazine for the Hip and Eco-friendly Gardener

Recently I've been enjoying a wonderful read, Greenwoman Magazine: A Literary Garden. Since I'm a bookworm, I always have a stack of books and lists of online publications to read. I'm especially thrilled about Greenwoman Magazine because it is right up my alley "Daring and fun, Greenwoman is for the hip gardener who loves digging into the world of art and environmental thought that underlies gardening."

 

On days when I read and re-read the same favorite toddler books to my daughter, it is so nice to sit down in the evenings with a cup of homegrown herbal tea and read something I choose. Something thought provoking and stimulating. Greenwoman Magazine is exactly that.

Grow Organic Gardening Giveaway Bonanza

To welcome spring and gardening season, I'm thrilled to share with you a wonderful gardening themed giveaway! While some of you in warmer climates are already planting seeds or watching seedlings grow, here in Montana we're still pretty frozen and pining for the ground to thaw so we can go outside and dig in the dirt. Whatever stage your gardening is in, what better way to welcome gardening season than with a giveaway!

Enter the Giveaway!

 

Members of the Homestead Bloggers Network have partnered with Peaceful Valley/GrowOrganic.com to bring you this fabulous Grow Organic Gardening Giveaway Bonanza with a Harvest Basket overflowing with $200 worth of Peaceful Valley Farm & Garden Supplyʼs organic gardening favorites, to take you through the garden year.

Start and sow certified organic seeds with a seed sower, and mark them with wooden plant labels. Feed them the finest organic fertilizers, and put on an organic cotton t-shirt to harvest them with garden gloves and snips. Carry and rinse the produce in the Harvest Basket. Chart your garden progress on a botanical calendar and plan for next year in a garden journal. Put up your produce with tips from a new book, then use botanical cards when you give those jars as gifts. Harvest Basket 4 seed tin collections, each with 10 packs of our non-GMO, certified organic seeds:

• Grandmaʼs Root Cellar Collection - Gift Seed Tin
• Frost Kissed Collection - Spring or Fall Mix - Gift Seed Tin
• Crafterʼs Delight Collection - Autumn Decor Mix - Gift Seed Tin
• Sun Splash Collection - Heat Loving Mix - Gift Seed Tin

Seed Sower Wooden Plant Labels 1 gallon Peaceful Valley Farm & Garden Supply Liquid Fish Fertilizer 1 quart Peaceful Valley Farm & Garden Supply Organic Liquid Kelp Corona Long Straight Snips Winner picks the glove and t-shirt sizes! Peaceful Valley Farm & Supply Organic Cotton T-Shirt Bamboo Nitrile Gloves PVFS Garden Art Calendar A Gardenerʼs Notebook, Doug Oster and Jessica Walliser How to Store Your Home-Grown Produce John and Val Harrison PVFS Garden Art Greeting Cards

Additional prizes offered by Baker Creek and participating blogs: UntrainedHousewife.com, MomPrepares.com, springmountainliving.com, lillepunkin.com and harrisheather.com. Home Gardener's Collection 30 Minute Mozzarella/Ricotta Cheese Kit Stainless Steel Compost Pail Ball Canning Lids and Ball Complete Book of Home Preservation Backyard Farming on an Acre (More or Less) - Signed by Angela England One really lucky person is going to win this amazing bundle of tools, seeds, books and more to get their garden off to a great start this spring! Use the Rafflecopter widget below to enter the giveaway. Then be sure to visit all the participating blogs listed below! a Rafflecopter giveaway Giveaway is open to US Residents ages 18 and over only. Entries close on March 20th and winners will be drawn March 21st. This giveaway is part of the Homestead Bloggers Network and sponsored by Peaceful Valley - Small review samples may have been provided but thoughts and opinions expressed are my own.

Participating Blogs

1. Chris Dalziel- Joybilee Farm 2. Dani Meyer- The Adventure Bite 3. Heather Harris- The Homesteading Hippy 4. Erica Mueller- Mom Prepares 5. Angela England- Untrained Housewife 6. Linsey Knerl- Lille Punkin' 7. Gretchen Stuppy Carlson- The Backyard Farming Connection 8. Kristi Stone- Let This Mind Be in You 9. Annie Kaylor Bernauer- Montana Solar Creations 10. Krystyna Thomas- Spring Mountain Living 11. Mary Hitchings- Raising Dick and Jane 13. Amanda Jones- Adventures of Mommyhood

Simply Natural Saturdays 3-9-2013

What are Plugged Ducts and Milk Blebs and How to Naturally Treat Them

As a breastfeeding mama, getting a plugged duct or milk bleb is bound to happen at some point. Knowing what they are and how to naturally treat them is helpful information all mamas need to know. I know first hand just how important proper diagnosis and treatment is!

When my daughter was five months old I was exclusively breastfeeding and working full time in a stressful job as a supervisor. I was fiercely committed to breastfeeding and struggled to fit two pumping sessions into my busy work day. Shortly before I resigned from my job, I began having excruciating pains shoot through my left breast. I was so afraid of getting mastitis since I had heard from other breastfeeding mamas just how painful and awful it was.

How to Make a Sourdough Starter

Sourdough is made by a natural process of fermenting flour and makes a bread that is easier for our bodies to digest than regular flour breads. Don't be scared off by the idea of fermenting and making sourdough, it is unbelievably easy! Making your own sourdough starter only takes a minute or two per day. I think the hardest part is remembering to feed your starter everyday!

Interview With These Light Footsteps

I mentioned in this post that we had several wonderful sponsors for the month of March and would be sharing more about them throughout the month. Today I'm excited to share an inspiring interview we did with Christine from These Light Footsteps.

1.     Tell us about These Light Footsteps.

I had been working at an environmental organization for nearly 5 years when I became increasingly frustrated that so many business practices and individuals that I worked with didn’t really seem to be on a path toward sustainability.  I felt like I was working within a big system of contradictions. Everyone seemed to be addressing problems “out there” rather than undertaking lifestyle modifications that are part of the path to sustainability. Rather than allowing myself to get too frustrated, I decided to direct my energies into teaching about ways that I try to live more sustainably, while also writing about what inspires me to live this way.  Thus, These Light Footsteps was born as a way to highlight what I consider to be my real life’s work - to live a more Earth-centered, conscious, and simple life, and to teach others about this, too.

Gratitude Sunday 3-3-2013

Today we are joining Taryn at Wooly Moss Roots for

G r a t i t u d e  *  S u n d a y 

{Sunday's heartfelt tradition. A time to slow down, to reflect, to be grateful. A list of gratitudes.} 

Here are a few of our gratitudes from the last week:

-Getting to see the full moon a day late. The day of the full moon was overcast and snowing but the next night was crisp and clear so we had a wonderful view of the moon glowing in the night sky. 

-Several productive days throughout the week.

 

-Finding six nature themed board books at the second hand store to add to our little nugget's collection. It is hard to find one nature themed board book second hand let alone six!

-Feeling so grateful that I am able to work from home most of the week and spend my days living an intentional life and raising our daughter.

Simply Natural Saturdays 3-2-2013

MontanaSolarCreations March 2013 Sponsors

Since it is officially the first day of March, we wanted to introduce our blog sponsors for the month. We will be sharing more about our sponsors throughout the month but wanted to introduce them today. Click on their graphics below to visit their websites:

These Light Footsteps: A blog about living simply and sustainably