Here’s a lovely way to save some time when you prepare apples or Asian pears for canning. Use an apple peeler-corer (see mine at work here) to make beautiful coils of automatically-cored firm fruit. The swirly fruit looks fantastic in the jar, and packs in well for a nice, well-filled raw pack. Don’t get too…
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reCAP Mason Jar Cap Giveaway Winners
You all had so many great ideas for how to use reCAP Mason Jar Pour Caps. Thanks to everyone who entered. Our five winners were: Ryan Darla S Ellen Toni Wolfie Winners, you’ve been emailed so check your inbox for details on how to claim your reCAP prize. Thanks all for entering and for reading!…
Battling Mulch Mountain at the Chicken Coop Door
I suspect anyone who has a chicken coop with a human-sized door has encountered the problem of door-blockage. Chickens adore kicking and scratching in the straw and dirt and debris of the coop floor, and tend to make little mountains and valleys from their scratching efforts. Mulch Mountain The mountain chickens create is always immediately…
Giveaway: Mother Earth News Fair Weekend Passes
Are you tired of amazing giveaways yet? Nah, me neither. The second annual Mother Earth News Fair in Puyallup (“pyew-AL-up,” for non-Washingtonians) is happening soon, on the weekend of June 2-3, and I’ve got a pair of tickets to give away. We went last year and it was fantastic. I saw Joel Salatin, who is…
Mother’s Day: A Radical Act of Defiance
Secretly, creeping through the brain and heart and blood of every mama there is a deep, dark fear that we are Not Mom Enough. We snap at our kids, or grab the sharpie out of their little hand a bit too roughly before they can decorate another piece of furniture, or are the last to…
Notes From A Synthetic Environment
For the past five days I’ve been living in an unreal, unearthly limbo. I’m at a professional conference, in a 34 story hotel, in Chicago. I could easily have no idea what time it is. I certainly have no idea what the weather is like. My menus over the past few days read something like this:…
Side-Dressing: A Feeding Strategy For Plants and Kids
For a year-and-a-half I felt terrible guilt that I was ignoring my daughter. Reasonable observers would assure me that I was not neglecting her, but in my heart I knew that the attention lavished on her had diminished markedly since the birth of our son. You see, our daughter was a home-schooled only-child for six-and-a-half years. She got…
Coop Improvement: Nesting Box Failures and Successes
The nesting box is a pretty important part of the coop – it’s where the chickens, hopefully, lay their eggs. Our nesting box has seen a couple of modification lately. One worked. One really didn’t. Let’s start with the failure, shall we? Fail! Using Shredded Paper For Nesting Box Material In an effort to turn…
Your Seedlings Hate Your Fancy Window: How Plants See Light
Two months ago, Erica posted comparison photos showing seedlings started in a south-facing window vs seedlings started under full-spectrum grow lights. The results were surprising to many readers (including me!) and at least a few readers invested in grow lights after seeing the difference light makes. There are a few reasons why windowsill started seedlings…
DIY Mason Jar Stir-Fry Sauce
Stir-frying is a great technique when you have a little bit of a few things. Often as the garden is just ramping up, you don’t have quite enough of a single vegetable to get a good, solid feed without wiping out all of that vegetable. And then late August comes, and you have too much…
To Do In The Northwest Edible Garden: May 2012
What a change from last year, huh? It has been a gorgeous spring. Evenings are still dipping into the mid-to-low 40s (tonight is projected to be 41 in my neighborhood!) but the days have been great gardening weather – mostly clear, with enough sun to make gardeners happy and enough overcast to make transplants happy….
Urban Farm Magazine Seed Starting Challenge Winners
Big Congrats to Marie, the winner of our seed starting challenge! Marie is growing strawberries and artichokes from seed for the first time. Great job! Check your email for info on how to get your certificate for a year’s subscription to Urban Farm Magazine. Also congrats to At Home On Paradise Cove, who is the…