I have been wanting to write this for days and somehow the spring rush of planting and preparing for the growing season and keeping up with all the routine work that goes with homeschooling, cooking, cleaning, and having some fun with my husband, kids, and several new families has made time go too fast. 

We have enjoyed many projects on the farm over the last few months including harvesting about 800 gallons of maple sap to produce 20 gallons of maple syrup (doing this more efficiently than last year), redesigned two of our large gardens, started numerous plants and herbs from seed, installed a wood cook stove in our kitchen, started numerous shitake mushroom plugs and prepared 3 beds of wine cap mushrooms, built 10 beautiful large raised beds for growing strawberries more easily with wood harvested from our neighbor’s ditch, cleaned up more areas on the farm, started over 100 new fruit and nut trees, and recently began harvesting and preserving food. 

My main goal right now is to grow and preserve as much food and medicine as possible this growing season and prepare for our baby that is due in the middle of September. I also have many things I want to share with you like new recipes, frugal tips, homesteading skills, natural medicine, and using food as medicine. Over the last year our oldest daughter has been able to add more food back in to her diet after a series of cleanses that we made in our home using herbs (this is just one story). I hope to share more about this soon. Right now I want to share that it’s important to have a clean, nutrient dense diet before cleansing. Today is the day to ditch those processed foods, get back to the kitchen, and use beyond organic ingredients to make nourishing, highly digestible foods.