We made it to 2023. I will say it again. We made it to 2023. As a family that has been on lockdown since March of 2020, that is almost unbelievable to think. 3 years. No dining out, no grocery stores, no shopping in person, no restaurants or cafes, no events or festivals. No family holidays, no vacations, no hotels, no business trips, no hotel pools, no dentists or hair salons, no road trips, no museums. No book stores, no clothing shops, no live music. No visitors in the house, no friends over, no driver's education classes, no botanical garden. As a family with several high risk people including one with a compromised immune system, we have done all touchless, curbside, online, shipped to the door for everything. While we regularly go into Doctor offices and hospitals for ongoing medical needs, even our Doctors have done telehealth and video visits to protect the high risk here. I cannot believe it is 2023. 

One thing I always focused on when my kids were young was creating the life we didn't need a vacation from. To work so hard at things we don't love only to desperately get away from it all every single day off seems off balance. While I have traveled and enjoyed travel, I also spent most of my childhood wandering the woods by myself.  I am so grateful that I can be with myself and family for a long time. I know that means something to be able to sit and read a book. To sit and write for hours. To make sourdough bread from scratch at home 3 times per week. To have time for art and making and tending the home. To spend every day with our kids. To have time to garden and grow things. To have time to cook meals. To have time to just be. So, while we would love to get out and about more, we also are OK being safe and keeping our most vulnerable safe, spending time as a family, and living our life from our home, as people have done for millenia. 

Does anyone else remember the early days of blogs? Back when we all wrote and shared and visited each other and left comments that became conversations? When it was about feeling the roots we made with our family and our connections to them? When we all became penpals and wrote paper letters as well, with the people we met and connected with? When sharing was about sharing and not a hustle? When we cared enough to visit and comment on our lives and ask questions, and have meaningful exchanges? I can tell I'm getting old when I say it was not like the tik tok of today with people faking entire lives and filtering faces and hair and clothing and location and food and experiences to get attention and people only clicking the little heart or thumbs up button, it was interactive. I think constantly seeking new experiences and constantly running and looking for more attention and more clicks and more approval is a product of our modern society in many ways, as old as it might make me sound. ;) In the beginning of the pandemic I thought here is everyone growing vegetables, being home with their kids, having quality time just being, engaging on a deeper level...and then it was gone. 
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I hate New Year resolutions (esp In january - hellooooo regeneration and new life is in spring, not deep winter), but my wish for the world is to have more time. Time to be home with family. Time to spend reading or hanging out with the kids. Time with teenagers before they leave. Time with partners to talk and dream and think together. Time to read and write and draw and bake. Time to plant feet on the ground and smell the fresh clean air. Time to feel the sun on your neck as you weed the garden. Time to enjoy a bite of a freshly picked strawberry. Time to take a long walk and look at every plant along the way. Time to scribble in a notebook and explore your ideas and inspirations. Time to sit by the fire. I wish that for everyone in 2023. The year of home, the year of simple living and being where we are.

Winter for me Is a time for Introspection, stillness, recovery, connection. In winter we cocoon and prepare to emerge with the green grass and golden sunshine. With that, I plan to post more often this winter, like we did back in the olden days of blogs, with conversation, sharing, and inspiration. 

​Happy New Year. 

If you have a moment, I'd love to hear from you. What are you dreaming this January? How do you rejuvenate yourself in winter? What are you doing at home that makes you feel grounded? 

Making change in our own lives can be hard. As a "type A" person I have to do it all. I am sure many of you overachievers can relate. The house must be clean, the laundry must be folded, the beds must be made, the work must always be caught up, the to-do list is before anything resembling sitting, relaxing, or enjoying. I was realizing last spring that I was working so hard to keep working at 150%, that I was not able to actually do any of the things I enjoy - such as working in my garden, harvesting herbs, distilling hydrosols, making herbal products. I was working. Working. Working. And I was stressing. Panic attacks, heart palpitations, waking up 5 times a night with full on heart pounding sweating shaking panic feelings. That is no way to live. So, over the past few months we have been making change. It takes time to plan, move, wiggle, resign, transition, step away, resignresignresign, just say no, and walk away from so many things. But, it was the right thing to do, and I am feeling better about the future. 

When we work only for others, we burn out. It is a guarantee. While I have always rolled my eyes at the whole take care of yourself first idea, as I think we can take care of ourselves AND others at the same time, I was stuck in that rut of always doing and being everything for everyone else, without thinking ever of myself. It was definitely impacting me in being unable to sleep and having panic attacks. I could feel deeply things had to change, and I could not continue. I know many of us steamroll full speed ahead until something happens that forces us to change or stop - cancer, heart attack, injury, illness. But we shouldn't need an excuse to make deep life and systemic changes for our health and wellbeing. We should be able to make these changes JUST BECAUSE WE WANT TO, and not have to justify why we have to prioritize ourselves and our families over...everything else. 

This is something we all need to do in some way -  to take time to dabble, sit, be, and not feel that we must fill all the gaps with some other measure of success or achievement.

So, as my roles are wrapping up and I have more time, I am slowly working to give myself a break. To bake bread.  Pick herbs. Read a book. Sit still. To read something that is not for a business, or a skill, or a function. To give myself permission to not complete or achieve anything if I don't want to. Spend time just hanging out with my teenagers. To focus on the health needs they have with time, attention, and consideration. To focus on my health needs with time, attention, and consideration. 

What do you do for yourself? How do you take time to be? 

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One of our goals this fall and winter, is to start building a YouTube channel with more videos and life. To start, we have been practicing with small video editing, drone footage, music editing, and playing around with Davinci Resolve as our video editor. Gavin has also been creating content for his TikTok and Instagram, and I have been playing with making short videos. I am enjoying the process, and look forward to building more skills at both filming and editing.

August is a hard month. It starts out slow and forever feeling like the heat and sun will never stop, and ends with cool nights, and the hint that the garden is ending in those wilting leaves and fading squash vines. While it is here, I dream of September, when September begins, I wish summer would hold on just a tiny bit longer. I love fall, but I also love that golden light and those amazing sunsets that came with August. Looking forward to fall, with a small peek back at our last month. 
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I can't believe I haven't posted in a few months again. This year has been an intense year with major life changes for my kids (plus the loss of my mom), and every time I have wanted to write and share, I feel blank.  We have had huge losses and huge changes as a family - just like a lot of folks -  and a lot of that hit my own system pretty hard. While I was already having stress issues, losing my mom toppled me right over, causing me to start experiencing intense health issues. 

So, we as a family did some deep thinking and reflection and decided I need to make some major life changes to allow myself the time to focus and care for the needs of myself, my own health, and, the needs of my kids.  Well, more like my family stepped in and said I needed to stop before all of the stress took me out, so I listened. ​

It is hard to step down, step back, do less, and change our entire schedule and daily life to accommodate the impacts of change, and, to find some kind of balance that allows me to release that stress.  I'm so grateful we are so close to our teens, and that they felt comfortable reaching out and asking for what they need, to ask for more time and support from me, and, to support me in my own needs as they saw the impact stress and anxiety was having on my health and wellness. 

With that, I have stepped down or am stepping down from everything. This is something I have thought long and hard on with the full support of my family.  I think this fall is the perfect time.  I will be turning 55, my youngest will be turning 18, my oldest will be starting some amazing life changes that needs my support and time. I feel like the slowing down of fall into winter is  a good time to wind down, take some down time, and focus on what is important. 

I have resigned as the Chair of the American Herbalists Guild. I have given my 90-day notice and will be stepping down from Executive Director of Herbalists Without Borders as well. I am closing my herbal practice work. I will still volunteer with HWB as the lead donation distribution person for the US network, as I have the entire lower level of my home dedicated to HWB donations and packing/shipping boxes out to free clinics. But, that will not be 40-50-60 hours per week, it will be a few Mondays per month for boxing/shipping, and 2 other days per month for inventory management, cleaning, prepping, organizing the donations that go out throughout the US. So, instead of every waking moment being this work, and 40-60 hours per WEEK being this work, it will be more like 30-40 hours per MONTH of this volunteer work. 

As I am working on transitioning out of the roles and reducing my stress and working on improving my own health by stepping back and focusing on wellness, I am feeling a call back to my art - photography, writing, and painting/visual art - and know I will be taking more time for those creative outlets that help me feel who I am and calm my restless and anxious spirit. Having more time for my art, design, writing, photography, permaculture gardens, handwork, kitchen, and home, is just what I need. It is funny, because I was so busy managing and organizing herbalism, that I haven't had any time in over a year (or more?) to actually make herbal support from my own gardens and use the herbs I work so hard to grow (other than simple tea). I want to have time again to make things and ferment and tincture things and cook with things and share what we do. 

I have already started supporting G on a new business endeavor that we are working on together to get him started in one of his areas of interest. And, I have started supporting A in some of the life changes that we are focused on over the next few years. Having more time with my kids in these key years as they enter adulthood and find their own paths is SO IMPORTANT. There is nothing I would rather do. 

So, I will be here, hopefully more, but it will be different as I make major life changes and transition to a new stage of my life. As I try to look at my stress-related health issues, and return to the calm equilibrium I had for so many years before taking on too much.  I look forward to sharing more about life, home, gardens, art, handwork, design, words, and things that make me feel healthy and strong and happy.

Looking forward to the fall.  

I am so happy to be presenting at the Botanica 2022 conference, on behalf of Herbalists Without Borders, on Using Tools for PTSD When Working in Disaster Relief and Humanitarian Aid. 

As an herbalist and an aromatherapist, I find that our industries often cleave them into two opposing forces, divided, when in fact I think they should be united.  I believe in sustainable aromatherapy, and I believe in sustainable herbalism. I think both modalities compliment each other and provide us with specific properties, effects, and tools to support those we serve. 

I am so happy to be speaking at this conference, with so many wonderful scientists and clinical aromatherapists, to talk about using these amazing plants as tools when working with trauma. To find out more or to register for the conference, visit:
www.botanica2022.com

Stop by the Herbalists Without Borders virtual booth and say hi if you attend! 

It is seed season. Back in 2018 I started the first US Seed Grant by gathering donated seeds from companies and sharing them out to HWB gardens around the US. Early on, all seeds were from seed companies, and they included fruit, veggies, culinary herbs, flowers, and of course some medicinal herbs. Food justice is health justice, so growing fresh food is so important and food seeds are as important as medicinal seeds - but to be honest, since most seed companies do not specialize in medicinal seeds, we didn't have enough medicinal herb seeds. We really needed more. So, I started buying medicinal seeds for my own garden (not that I need an excuse to buy more herb seeds, ahem), and then saving them to continue growing out to get more and more seeds to share. I grow herbs for free clinics, but I also grow a lot of plants that I also grow out just for seeds now. Over the past year or two there have been other HWB members and herb schools that are also now saving and sharing seeds back so we have more medicinals to share out as well. So, this year, I am so happy to be bagging up hundreds of packets of medicinal seeds from Lunar Hollow to donate to the HWB Seed Grant Program. It is very satisfying to bag up so many seeds for seed sharing. 

Even after bagging up over 400 packets of seeds (yes, four hundred! woot), I still have more bulk seed left to grow out this year in the garden, and, to include in seedling sales for others this spring as well. 

I have many new herb varieties I have purchased this year to grow out and hope to share seeds from those in the future. I will be growing new herbs such as Balkan Mountain Tea, Greenthread, Huacatay, Kkaennip, Labrador Bog Tea, New Jersey Tea, Green Pepper Basil, Perilla, Pushkarmool, Safflower, Hoary Skullcap, a few new types of Tulsi, Yauhtli, Hairy Wood Mint, and more. So excited to be starting seeds in my seed trays, and planning and plotting the gardens for summer. It is the perfect time to sort through all of the successes of last summer and bag seeds to share. I hope to share more about growing medicinals this summer, as well as tips for seed starting and propagating woody cuttings. Seed starting season always comes just as winter feels like it has been here forever, and I need growth and light to grow. 

What are you growing this year you have never grown before? 

I like giving regular updates on things. It helps me feel like I am recognizing the work I am doing, and, marking the time and passage of the things I am doing. In this work people often do not focus on any self care  - well, I know I don't, anyway - and so it is a steamroller full speed ahead. By sharing updates, I feel more that I am recognizing my own work. 

It has been a hard few weeks. My mother passed away suddenly on her birthday at home. We were able to see her urn and have a few minutes by ourselves before everyone arrived (we had to leave as people came in), but it was hard to not be able to be included in any memorial service due to my son being immunocompromised, and the service having so many people. It helped with some sense of closure, but also felt pretty sad and alienating. 

But with that all happening, I have been struggling a bit. Luckily, I had several huge deadlines that I had just completed 2 days before she passed. So that helps me feel like I accomplished something, even though the past 2 weeks have been a wash. 

One project I completed is as a guest presenter for a Health Justice and Accessibility Intensive for Wild Rose College of Herbal Medicine (MORE INFO HERE). I am presenting a series of 3 webinars on accessibility, community herbalism, and using social permaculture in community models, followed by a live Q&A coming up in March. I have been wanting to begin teaching more again, and this is a perfect way to get into the swing of presenting and recording myself for webinars and classes. I hope to do a lot more online teaching in 2022. 

I was also interviewed for an Integrative Medicine publication that will be out in a few months, and interviewed for a video module within an Integrative Medicine program online - a "Meet the Herbalist" type of interview - where I was able to share more about the profession of herbalism, our work, the state of the profession in the US, finding an herbalist, and more. I will share more when some of these pieces go live!

I am also working on a few modular courses on Herbal First Aid and Trauma-Informed Practice, and am planning some more social permaculture and garden design webinars and online classes for this spring. 

It is also seed starting season! We will be selling some seedlings on the farm this spring - if you are a local and might be interested in seedlings (veggie, fruit, culinary herb, medicinal herb, flowers), please fill out the interest form. It is just to help us get an idea of what types of plants people would be most interested in so we can start enough seedlings!  (FILL OUT FORM)

I am happy my teenagers want to do all of the seedling work with me this year - and are helping me create spreadsheets to calculate it all and will be helping manage the plants until they are hardened off and ready for purchase/pickup. So excited for even the thought of spring. How about you? 
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Seedlings!

For the 2022 growing season, we plan to have a limited supply of seedlings for sale at Lunar Hollow Farm (no shipping). These seedlings will be annual fruits, vegetables, and herbs, primarily, with many annual medicinals. As our first year doing this, we will be planning to start a large amount of seedlings for our own use, and will sell extra starts to friends who don't have the space or equipment to start their own seeds. This will be first come first serve, and we will designate spring pickup times (socially distanced, outdoors, most likely) for people picking up any pre-purchased seedlings on site here. We also plan to have some medicinal plant seeds for sale here on farm. We already have a lot of folks asking about the seedlings, so think they will go fast once we get our quantities set. I'm still buying seeds, so if you have any special requests, let me know! This year I purchased several new herbs (to me) from Central and South America, that I am so excited to try. 

UPDATED TO ADD: If you are Interested In purchasing seedlings this spring (local pickup in Deerfield WI), please take a moment to fill out the seedling interest form so we can have a better idea of quantities as we start seeds. 

FORM: forms.gle/vyLowu4UGXJkJfdx8

​I am also expanding our cutting gardens this year, so we will have some annual flower starts as well. I buy my flower seeds from Johnny's because they have the amazing earth tone flowers that I love so much. 

Seeds are carefully gathered each fall from our gardens here at Lunar Hollow, processed, winnowed, and stored all winter long. We bag them in sets of about 25 seeds for those more rare seeds, up to 100 seeds per packet. Seeds  will only available on farm here. Available seeds will be listed in early spring. 

Keep an eye out for more information soon!

A few things I am excited to grow this year include: 
Huacatay - AKA Aztec Marigold (Tagetes minuta), is a fragrant South American herb that is both medicinal and edible. It will likely be annual this far north, and is the plant found in Black Mint Paste you find at Latino Grocers. It is commonly used in Bolivia and Peru, and dried leaf and flower is used to make tea. 

Greenthread - Thelesperma fifolium, is a dye and medicinal plant. You use the new leaves before they flower and dry them to make a tea. It also is used to make a yellow/orange dye. (as you can see from my list, I am growing a dyer's garden this year as well). This might end up being annual up here, but I do plan to save seeds so I can share to folks that use this traditionally next year. 

Altai Dragonhead - Dracocephalum rupestre - I love Moldavian dragonhead balm, and this is in the same family, though looks more like Betony. It is found natively in Russia, Mongolia, and China. I have a rocky garden area where I am growing Rhodiola, so I think this will be perfect there. 

Balkan Mountain Tea - Sideritis scardica - This is from the Balkan peninsula, and it is a downy, fragrant, plant. It is traditionally used as tea or tonic. 

Flouncy Soapwort - Just the name alone makes me want to grow this. It is used with botanically dyed fabrics as it is super gentle, so I plan to use it in the dye garden. 

Yauhtli - Tagetes lucida - Another marigold family plant of South American descent, that I have grown before and I love love love the smell. 

Schizonepeta - Schizonepeta tenuifolia - you might notice the nepeta, as in catnip, and this is a Japanese Catnip used in TCM. This is a very fragrant plant that apparently perfumes buildings when it is dry. This is used for tea re: cold and flu season. 

Camphor Basil - Ocimum canum Sims var. Camphor - This is a camphory sweet basil that is used often as an insect repellent. 

Tinda - B enincasa fisulosus - This is a northern India fruit/veggie that is like a green tomato watermelon that is used in curries. Can't wait to try it. 

Hoary Skullcap - Scutellaria incana - This is a midwest native that is used as others are used, as a nervine. I grow 3 types of skullcap, so am happy to add another. 

We are growing upland rice again, this time Loto, Hayayuki, and Zerawachanica. And, expanding the oats, sorghum, amaranth, flax, millet, and quinoa this year to grow more. 

There are many more new varieties I have been happily purchasing all winter, in addition to the standards that I grow every year (mullein, elecampane, astragalus, ashwagandha, etc.). I'll share more as I start seeds! 

So, keep an eye out for info on seedling and seed sales for this spring - with pickup on the farm here - it will be wonderful to be able to share plants that we rarely find in nurseries! 

~Denise

This is the time of year I like to start slowing down. This year, we have so much going on it has been a challenge! We are wrapping up a lot of things before taking down time for the last few weeks of the year. 
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I thought I would share some of the big things happening this fall and winter. 
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1. I recently spoke with Bevin Clare on the Mountain Rose Herbs Meet the Herbalist podcast and the podcast is now live. Take a listen here. 
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2. Speaking of Bevin, I am now transitioning to the Chair of the American Herbalists Guild as Bevin finishes her long tenure in that role and transitions to non-officer Board role. Bevin has been a wonderful mentor and supporter in this transition, and I wish her the best. I am so happy to serve the AHG in this role.   Read more about this here. 

3. I am also excited to say that I submitted my final presentation and video for my dual Permaculture and Advanced Social Systems Design Certificate (PDC) course, and will be transitioning now into more education, and teaching more on permaculture systems, social systems, and mutual aid work. Want to check out my final presentation video and PDF? It is live on the Permaculture Women's Guild page here. ​

4. We are having a full house solar system installed. The solar installation has been happening on cold autumn days over the past few weeks, and we are in the last stretch just awaiting 2 final panels being installed when the electrician connects us to the grid. We have 32 panels on both south and east facing rooflines. The system is an 11.85 Kilowatt system with battery storage and switch so that we utilize solar energy when it is sunny, draw from the grid when it is not, and can continue to operate even with power grid is down. This will average out over the course of the year to provide us with 100% of our power needs. ​We are so happy to reduce our reliance on the grid, produce our own energy, and have systems that will keep working if the power goes out. This is a part of our goal of reducing waste and reducing our reliance on the grid, that I outline in my permaculture plan, and I am so thrilled this is coming to fruition a few years before we thought we could do this. 

5. Just as I thought I would like to start teaching more about social systems design, community supported herbalism models, and accessible herbalism, a few opportunities have come up, so I am working on a class outline, which I am happy about. I will be doing a deeper dive into how I can best teach this over the holidays. This all aligns with my goals of teaching more moving forward, so things are all falling into place. 

​We have had a lot of big health needs happening around here, so we have been taking time to be outside, bake and make, have quiet evening time, and enjoy the season. Self-care is one of the hardest things for activists and people working in community models. There is always another person or community needing support, there is always another fire, flood, hurricane, tornado, or earthquake. There are always more people in need. With that, it is hard to not feel guilty or selfish about taking time for our own health needs and self care when there is so much need every single moment.  And, with climate change, all of this is happening back to back to back without a break or any reprieve. The saying you must put on your own oxygen mask first always seemed trite, but we must be strong and resilient to continue to do this work, and self-care is a part of that.

The point is that I am learning that it is important to take care of myself as well, because to do this community service work requires endurance and stamina  for the long haul. So, teaching, family time, and also modeling self care and life balance in this model is a part of my own goals for 2022! 

I can't wait to share more of the Lunar Hollow plans for 2022, including a lot of the outlines and work we have in our permaculture plan for 2022, our new water systems, plantings, outdoor classroom plans, and more! 

​In health and gratitude,
​~denise

Autumn is the season that seems to pass so quickly. We go from summer garden to snow and while there is so much in the middle - from winter prepping the chicken coop to closing up the greenhouse for the winter - it seems to be over so quickly.

As soon as the daylight savings happens and it is suddenly dark at 4-something every evening, we all seem to slow down. The oven is on as we start to bake, soups and stews are for dinner, and we have longer quiet nights watching homesteading YouTube channels (or Korean farmer and lifestyle channels), reading books, working on our projects, and feeling a little slower as the darkness hits our moods and sleep schedules.

I have been realizing (as we all do, I’m sure) that I am working too many hours and not taking enough time for home life, family, homeschooling, and home keeping. While most people make new years resolutions, I like to make fall and winter resolutions - and consciously work only a normal work schedule and be sure to take the time I need for short days and dark nights, making and baking, family time, and enjoying the winter snow, cold, and holiday season. I have made my playlists for the dark days - Asgeir, Fever Ray, Foy Vance, and Chill Dubstep, Zoe Keating, and so many others that make the darkness more manageable and meaningful and ping the creative threads.
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I have been realizing that while I am in zoom meetings 5,6,7+ hours a day, I'm missing deeper human connection and friendships. Zoom is not that, for sure, and I think COVID has intensified that disconnect (that and our need to isolate due to immunosuppressed family). People have also been less ... nice. I miss the days of blog friends, sharing our life, and seeing what others were doing - and handwriting letters, sharing, and engaging with people. So, I am going back to the idea of sharing on the blog, snippets, life, bits and pieces, and daily life, not just information or what is deemed important enough. And sharing works in progress, and daily life.

We have some winter projects planned, and I have been stitching and working on many new creative pieces for gift making, skill building, and creative outlets. I have been working on more writing, more art, and as I finalize my PDC presentation video, will start to have webinars and podcasts on making your own permaculture life plan. We have been at the hospital a lot for A, but that should slow down to monthly now, which is better for winter. So, the focus is on food, family, fun, craft, creativity, and connection.

What have you been up to? How do you handle the transition to the dark?

I love autumn and winter. My family is amused my favorite seasons are the seasons where things do not grow, but for ice and winds. I love early darkness, a steaming mug of hot tea, cool evenings, introspection, and falling leaves. I love time for poetry, music, medicine making, stitching and drawing, thinking and resting. I love time for planning, for sketching, for wondering, for hoping. I love fleece and flannel, blankets and seeing my breath. I thank the world for summers where we can grow food, fruit, nourish and sustain ourselves.  But I love having breaks and having time to change. Summer is the extrovert, and autumn and winter are introverts. Like me. 

When seasons change, the light changes. As the summer transitions the light is golden. As the leaves turn gold the sky shifts.  It gives us a chance to take a break. Think about what to try next. What to do differently. To plan new ideas and projects and to have time to think about them. To have a new opportunity to change, to reinvent, to try again. To rest with the darkness and rejuvenate for another year. 

This autumn I am turning another year older. 54. The older women get it seems the less we talk about it, and the less we share what the number is. 54 feels a little big to me. 50 was pretty simple, but now mid-something, not early something, but halfway to the next something. No longer young, not old, in the invisible in between.  Autumn is a change to start anew with the season, and start a new year. I like to live with intention and not obligation, but that can be hard to do.  Once we commit to something we feel a little stuck in it, even if after a while it doesn't fit right anymore, raggedy hem, short sleeves, itchy. But we continue. Every year I get older I realize that I have less energy for those things that don't fit anymore, and that I am more aware of the ticking clock of time taking me from the things that are meaningful if something becomes not the right thing for me anymore. Autumn is a time to slow down, think about  where I am, and where I want to be. To use all of the medicine I grew all summer. To drink the tea of the herbs I grew with my own two hands. To dream.
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So while many people are dreading the end of summer, I embrace it. I change the pillows on the couch. I watch the sun set earlier every evening. I look at the stars. I clean the oven and pull out the blankets. I bake bread. I pound the cinnamon, ginger, clove, and allspice.  I write in my journal. I stitch the fabric. I turn the pages. I gather the bark.  I mark time by when I can first see my breath in the early morning. I carry my basket and gather seeds. I dig the roots of fall herbs and make root medicine.  I listen to the sound of leaves under my muck boots and wrap my scarf around my neck, twisting and turning in warmth and reminders of the season to come. Welcome, September. I have been waiting for you. 

It has been 18 months since we first locked down with covid. With a high risk person in the house, we have stayed home, had everything delivered, and haven't gone into any building that wasn't a hospital. Luckily we are all mostly introverted, and happy to be home. This year has been used to get a lot done at home, on our land, and to make future plans that accommodate a likely ongoing challenge of interacting in public spaces with a mutating virus and high risk people. This has been a good year to work on finishing my Permaculture Design and Advanced Social Systems Design Certification. To look at ways that we can be more self sufficient, use less resources, build in loops and cycles that are regenerative, grow more of our own food, produce our own energy, and have our home needs grow with the idea of ongoing multigenerational living. 

​I have realized as we are living in the world of nonstop zoom meetings, that we are losing our connections even while we see people MORE. I for one am in zoom meetings all day every day, and lately miss the days of blogging where we actually connected one on one, communicated, shared, and interacted. When we continued talking outside that one meeting, that one moment. With everyone working from home people have been working more more more and doing more more more meetings and expecting more more more results and connecting on a deeper level less less less. And, with that, people are connecting less, deeply present less.  I miss the world of kindness and interactions. Some of it is that people are just overdone and burned out and are not taking the time and energy to be supportive of one another and don't have to deal with the repercussions of being unkind as when the zoom disconnects, the transaction of that energy and moment is completed. The energy of self care supercedes the energy of other people care. It is tough.  Permaculture itself is about regenerative systems and relationships and community are systems just as animal waste and energy use are. 

So, how do we find those positive connections with people that are people working together towards a common goal in a supportive way that also shows appreciation, respect, and understanding and that does not burn people out? That looks at relationships as regenerative and doesn't chew them up and spit them out?  And, builds continuing connections? 

​There is a point, and that is if we are going to continue living life differently for years (and for us, being carefully protected in this house, due to our needs), how do we pivot our world, interactions, and goals to better fit our place and this land, and create meaningful connections with like-minded people that lift us up and don't tear us down? 

I keep coming back to teaching. Sharing in a positive way that supports people and connects while also giving people information that they can use to create their own circle of sustainable existence, or more accurately, regenerative existence. So I have spent a bit of time this summer (after all the zoom meetings) outlining ways to share information and access to knowledge in areas that people don't talk as much about. People teach a lot about how to use herbs. People teach a lot about how to plant things. Grow things. Make things. But what about how to make community, create regenerative relationships that make communities stronger and not undermine them? How can we look at mutual aid, reciprocity, skill sharing, and social systems in a new way and give people ways to make fundamental and systemic change that impacts their whole community? I share this kind of thing one on one with people to help them work in their communities all the time, but there has to be a way to make it more community based and oriented while building upon those connections.

Abstract things are not as simple to teach - I get it. It is easier to say here is a recipe for how to make a salve. It is fixed, repeatable, the same for everyone, and easy. But, there are also 1,500,000,000 salve recipes out there. Is there a recipe for community building? Will it be the same every time for everyone everywhere? Nope. But when we want to make actual change we need to shake up the system or create a new one. So, I have been thinking of how to create something that does all of these things in an accessible way and it comes back to teaching. I want to be a part of something that might share the 1,500,000,001st salve recipe, but also share the recipe for regenerative living, livelihood, activism, simple living, reciprocity based systems, right livelihood and right relationships, and community building. 

Working on it. 

One of the things I like to do every year is to review what worked, what didn't work, what went well, what could be improved. One big goal in 2020 was to save more seeds to share out with people to grow their own gardens. So, while I harvested a lot of herbs that were shared out and saved, I also let a lot of plants go to seed and gathered plant heads in the autumn to save. From there, I processed all seeds through a little japanese screen system. 

The small screen system worked well, although I was out winnowing seeds in below freezing temperatures a few times when the wind was just right. From there, the labeling and bagging went well, and I saved thousands of seeds and stored them in the cold storage for the winter in bulk paper envelopes that were stored in larger airtight containers buckets and bins.  

As we hit the new year, I started bagging seeds down and labeling them all to share in seed grants. I divided saved seeds Into hundreds and hundreds of envelopes that I shared  throughout the US. I kept some of each plant seed type in the seed bank I maintain so that there is a backstore of seeds in case something happens. 

I saved easier seeds this first year I tried in bulk, and plan  to expand to include more plants I grow, and I hope to reach over 100 seed varieties saved next year. The key is to being mindful of the plants and where they grow, using permaculture and organic methods to maintain disease free healthy plants, to wait to harvest the heads until the right time, to fully dry all seed heads first, and to carefully thresh and winnow so that clean, dry, seeds are remaining, and then of course, store them properly. 

I love a challenge. I like learning new things, expanding and making systems that create sustainable sharable mutual aid systems and processes that shares the bounty with many, without overworking the few. While I would like a bigger seed cleaning system, my little screen set worked well, and I think is fine for a few thousand of each type of seed each year. 

Part of our plan is ongoing social permaculture, and the giving back and supporting community in all that we do. Seeds are a part of that system, and an important part of our master plan every year. 

I love planting season. Starting seeds is about what we will have to eat this year, in some part, about beauty or medicine or flavor or mini environments and ecosystems, in the rest. It is also about creating systems that support plants growing in a way that they need to thrive. 

I like the simplicity of plants. I like the complexity of plants. I like the chaos of plants. I like the order of plants. Plants create relationships and communicate with each other through chemicals released via rhizosphere and transported via soil fungi and through chemicals they release in the air. That is pretty amazing, isn't it? I like to think of plant communication more like our music and art than our speaking. As a synesthete, I see music as colors and wavelengths based on the tones and some sounds are perfect and clear colors along lines and others are more like sizzles or spots. Planting plants together that are together in the wild or that benefit one another makes me feel like they are experiencing a clear singular connection and do better together than alone. I imagine those threads of life under the soil creating this amazing network of life and microbia and electrical connections. 

So when planting season gets underway, I feel like every plant that goes Into the ground Is an opportunity to create something not only nourishing, and beautiful, but also doing something underneath our feet that is improving and changing the very nature of what exists where we are right now. Every time we plant something, the soil, the insects, the earthworms, the chemical components and minerals change. 

I am dreaming of sunshine and blue skies, warm sunshine, and green grass. But I am also dreaming of planting the plants In the ground. The trees, bushes, bulbs, food. The native plants In the woods and the prairie plants In the field. The food plants In the little beds, and the flowers around the fruit trees. Every plant is a step in creating a new soil and making things different from what we have and having the faith in plants to know what they will become  - this summer, next fall, in 5 years, in 20 years, in 100. 

I love driving through rural Wisconsin. You can tell where farmhouses used to be even in empty fields where no house stands anymore. Rows of lilacs all in the windbreak line, and the big wavy leaves of rhubarb. We leave something behind every time we put a plant into the ground, and we are changing things one way or another. Above and below. I wonder if someday someone will drive past my old abandoned house, and see a row of crooked and heavy laden fruit trees, and a woods lined with medicinal plants, and wonder who lived in that place. I hope my children stay here, though, and talk about the summer we planted that peach tree, or started that linden, or put that monarda into the soil. I wonder if my hair, my skin, my bits and pieces that come off me every day become a part of that plant that I touched and carefully put into that little hole. 

We leave pieces of ourselves everywhere we go in our actions, our interactions. In our art and music and words. In our children. I am reminded of this every planting season as I dig a hole and plant each and very plant. Thousands of times I repeat - dig and plant. It makes me think of what I am trailing behind me in my wake every day, and if it is changing what is beneath for the better. 

This is a work in progress as we update our seeds lists, plans for growing, and join a few trials to grow out new varieties for testing/research or seed purposes. 

Click to view the google sheet in progress: ​docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VxLb230ck2eiWdeCArtXjtVbn7CPJJ7bd54zOjI-C-I/edit?usp=sharing

I love spice blends. In addition to adding amazing flavor layers to foods, most spices have medicinal properties and support healthy digestion, immune support, healthy gut microbiome, and other benefits. Most cultures on the planet have some kind of common cultural flavorings, spices, and family recipes passed down generation to generation. I spent many years living in Chicago where there is rich cultural diversity and people from all over the planet bringing their food cultures and traditions with them. In Chicago, whole neighborhoods have formed over the last century, with shops and restaurants spilling out amazing aromas into the street. I spent many weekends wandering small neighborhood grocers, scanning the shelves for those treasured spices for weekend meals. While the prevalence of exotic spices often stemmed from the colonization of countries by Europeans, there is also a lot of proud food culture brought with immigration, spreading the amazing flavors, spices, blends, and ingredients as people bring their traditions with them. While I prefer to grow as much of my own herbs and spices as I can, I still love hunting down those rich and deep flavors such as green and black cardamom, turmeric, ginger, cocoa, coffee, smoked paprika and cumin, peppercorns, cassia, nutmeg, and other amazing flavors. 

I like making a lot of small gifts from the kitchen to create nice gift bags for folks. I give them as stocking stuffers and also love to have a few extras waiting for any last minute gifts needed for guests, teachers, neighbors, etc. While I make a lot of herbal support for gifting - herbal tea, elderberry syrup, boo boo salve  - I also like making kitchen spice blends and food blends (spicy reishi cocoa, spiced sugar, chai mix, peppermint bark, etc.). This is super easy to make and put into those little jelly jars with a bow. 

This winter, I decided to take a permaculture certification course to help me organize and expand Lunar Hollow. I have taken a class online via U of Oregon, and a free permaculture year class (https://www.permaculturewomen.com/)in the past, and wanted to move it up a level, and possibly even host educational events here to teach about what we do in addition to growing herbs.

One of the first projects is making a base map, so I spent awhile drawing and re-drawing our property. I have a few base maps, and then layers with terrain mapping, zone mapping, water and wind mapping, wildlife and external forces mapping, and more. I love this process, and working through what we have now, and then adding future plans and upgrades into that system. What I love about the good permaculture classes, is that is isn’t just about plants and soil. It is about using everything in your home and environment to better live in harmony with our environment, and also optimize and conserve energy and resources while doing so. The course I am in also looks to social currency and social permaculture, which if you know of my day to day work and life, is pretty much me. So, finding ways to also utilize resources and assets to contribute to the greater whole and community, is wonderful. I can’t wait to work through this and consciously review all of our big dreams like solar, rain irrigation systems, the bog garden, food and community herbalism, education, and sustainability (along with self-sufficiency).

This course also includes a permaculture mentor, and I selected a woman in the UP, who shares much of my regional climate. I plan to also include our dream plan in addition to the realistic plan, and see which I want to present for my final project. Some of our dream plan includes purchasing the two acres behind us (already zoned and plotted on their own) for additional land to grow more bulk herbs and have more animals, and of course to go fully solar. A solar powered herb drying shed is a dream, as is a commercial kitchen and outbuilding office/guest tiny house. Some are not likely to ever happen, some maybe we will see.

‘’it is a good time of year to start this, as I am planning the gardens for 2021, the seed starting schedule, and mapping where we are expanding.

So, these two sketches are my first two styles of base map. One is a rough sketchy style the other more saturated. These include primarily zones 0-4, with zone 5 outside of the main area here. I’m working on another master plan using the Permaculture template art so it will also have one version with the classic look for some of the future plans and versions as I work through them. I feel like I am off to a good start.

Spending so much time on this land and in this place this year has made us realize it is really perfect for us. We could use a few more acres, but the place, the view, the air, the trees, the animals, the privacy, the dead end road - it has really made this pandemic tolerable even in our lockdown. 

We all are grateful that we have this space, and, our original pre-COVID plan was to also use this for Herbalists Without Borders based education and events. Of course this property is still used for Herbalists Without Borders - over 1,000 square feet of this house is a dedicated donation storage and community apothecary space. Throughout the entire pandemic I have been intaking donations here, and then packing up donations and shipping to free clinics and for community outreach throughout the entire US and Puerto Rico. I have shipped something like $85,000 of donation value from my house in the past 3 months. Pretty amazing. But, we have had to do all this alone. The long-term goal is having training days and farm work days, planting days, plant walks, and distill hydrosols and all of that ... with people. The other part of the goal is to create other opportunities for my teens to work with other teens learning about plant conservation, habitats, natives, and how there is food and medicine all around us if you just know where to look. 

This is the time of year where the plan means looking to the next growing season. This year we didn't have the ability to expand as much as we hoped due to covid, but we did add the greenhouse and then enforce it all summer and insulate for winter. We expanded the orchard, the fruit canes, the perennial medicinals, and ground fruit. We added more mushroom logs (both blue oyster and turkey tail), woodland bushes, woodland medicinals, and started the native plant nursery for trees and medicinals that will take up to 2 years before they can be planted out. 

For 2021, we have a lot of goals, Including expanding on some flat areas, adding a forest permaculture format into the existing greenhouse, expanding around the greenhouse to have integrated plantings, create a seating area with a firepit in the greenhouse area, and then continue to expand the woodland and shade medicinals. 

One plan I didn't get to try this year was the bog garden using native Wisconsin tamarack bog plants, so I have seeds and will be growing plants from seed for that fun project. I completed an environmental and garden education program to get some more ideas for bringing kids into the mix, and have an open source plant walk app/wiki/platform in progress, so that is all great. 

We are also looking at significantly expanding our seed saving and seed grants. I manage a large seed library and seed grant program with Herbalists Without Borders where we share seeds out to communities to get gardens growing. By growing more seeds to save and sharing them out, we can increase the use of native plants and the use of plant medicine that is from our bioregion, and, that grow in this climate. 

So we are working on sketching out, planning, plotting, outlining, expanding and listing. I will be sharing the 2021 plan here soon, but until then, I wanted to share the photos of our beautiful view, the night sky, and this land we call home. 

​Happy fall. 

Living in a pandemic is a unique experience for us all, I am sure. And for us, with multiple high risk folks in the house, we are in long-term lockdown, and are still not going into buildings that are not home. This means we have spent the last 8 months living in our rural bubble. It has been interesting, hard, easy, wonderful, panic-inducing, and just something that I know we will look back on some day and tell stories of that year (or years) when the world stopped. 

We have always homeschooled (unschooled) and we already worked from home. We had a garden, we had chickens, and we have been a one car family focused on spending these years before our sons are adults as a tight family that enjoys spending time together and focusing on the important things. We already put work away at 5 and eat dinner and spend time together every night. We already take walks together in the evenings, and have conversations as the sun goes down. We already look forward to weekends so we can play board games, spend more time together, and bake together in the kitchen while we listen to music. 

We already  make sure to take time for the good things. We spend time reading books and talking about them, programming a new chicken coop door, walking the garden at night as the twinkly lights turn on and the cicadas and frogs sing. We already have games we play together and laugh loudly, sing goofily, and lose track of time as we talk sitting in the kitchen at night. 

We already spend time planning what to do next summer in the garden, save seeds, harvest food, can tomatoes, make pickles, dry and blend our own teas, and stock up a whole community apothecary to be prepared if we need to be for the unforeseen. We already have a seed library and seed bank in our home, we have an orchard, we wild forage, and we have our favorite stands of nettles, curly dock, cleavers, chickweed, wild grapes, and elderberry. 

We already live our lives like our home is our vacation. We already have a home that we all love, that makes us feel good, and that we enjoy spending time in. We already have routines in our life, and rituals that make each day something to mark and remember. We already celebrate life fully where we are, rooted deeply, and committed to being under-scheduled and focusing on our relationships with each other. We already don't take the privilege we have to live this life for granted. 

We already listen in wonder to the frogs singing each night, look up to the moon and the stars and breathe in the fresh air. We already look at the clouds and the sky, and enjoy the turkey, squirrel, bird, fox, coyote, deer, racoon, opossum, groundhog, and others that pass through this beautiful place. We already watch the amazing sunsets and sit at the window as the sun sets and the bats swoop through the sky and around the house finding their dinner. 

While none of this is easy - which is for another post - and we have times where we long for connection that isn't zoom or discord, or we wish things might be different, we are also so grateful that we have this time together, we have this land and this place, and we have this time with each other. One day when I am old and gray (ok, I'm already old and gray), and my children are adults and we are spread across the world, we will remember this time and how lucky we were to have this time at the cusp of adulthood. That we could pause this moment and find happiness, comfort, and connection even in one single place. That this world and this life as it is is enough, and that we can enjoy what we have where we are. 

​

As summer winds to a close and we look to fall and winter under our lockdown in our little world, we are looking forward to the change of seasons, autumn leaves, first snow, early darkness, a cozy fireplace, cold crisp air, and the moonlight reflecting off the snow. And, each month is one month closer to the end of this when we can resume our place in the outside world, even closer as a family, and, most importantly, still healthy and alive and together. 

One of the things I have been saying for the past several years (decade?), even before we had land, was that I wanted to have a botanical sanctuary where we grow medicinals, natives, and restore native endangered plants from our region. The past two years have had big changes moving to this property, and working to create beds, gardens, prairie, wooded areas, and encourage the continued growth of natives and planting even more, particularly of the endangered and at-risk plants. 

We have planted hundreds of medicinals from seedlings we started here, we have many food and medicinal beds, we have a woodland area with medicinals, mushroom logs, and wild fruit. We have a greenhouse, perennials that are ever expanding. We have done so much work, but we do always have more to do. We got to a place last winter where I felt we had done enough to qualify for a botanical sanctuary, and get our status out into the minds of our neighbors, so we have an awareness of our goals and vision for the future on this land. 

I am happy to say that we found out just last week that Lunar Hollow Farm is now officially a United Plant Savers Botanical Sanctuary, and, a Certified Wildlife Habitat. I feel like that classification ties in well with future educational offerings, projects such as the Open Source Plant Walk Project I am working on, the native nursery I have been creating, and the ongoing expansion of this work and sharing of knowledge regarding medicinal plant growing and native cultivation. We are here to steward the land, and support the ongoing healing of this soil and landscape to supporting plants, wildlife, and microbia that would be here naturally. Living with this in harmony with human interaction and the always present monocropped landscape of the Wisconsin rural areas, we are cleaving out only a small but important space. 

Our long-term goal here includes not only growing more self-sustaining foods for our own family, expanding the medicinal and native gardens to include more at risk plants, and to use this space to teach others about herbalism, plants, conservation, and more.

While the pandemic has changed our ability to have people here so far this year - we had planned on having people visit to help plant, learn more about medicinal plant growing, and to help with harvesting plants for Herbalists Without Borders clinic donations -but the land keeps growing and changing, no matter if one or 100 people are here. So, some ideas are in the works for more online offerings and the open source plant walk as app and wiki for all to use. 

This summer has been a good one so far with so many new plantings and systems setup. I plan to update the master plant list and share more about some of the work we have started to lead into the future of Lunar Hollow. For now though, we celebrate our status as a Botanical Sanctuary, and think of ways to share the abundance and beauty of this space with others!

Out in the country, property lines are not always perfect rectangles or squares. For our property, I imagine that breaking a few acres off of farmland involved odd surveying from 150+ year old lines combined with when the town added a road that used to be a driveway 100 years ago. So when they cleaved this land it had to be plots legally switched to rural residential. The hard thing about that is a) what in the world do you do with a point, b) add in township easements for plowing and roads and it is a weirder thing, and c) nobody thinks your land is a point and that it must be attached to these farm fields.

I Am lucky that in that pint there are also elderberries in there, Wild blackberries, nettles, ground ivy, white vervain, pineapple weed, motherwort, and cleavers. So I feel protective of that little rocky pile.

So, one of our plans is to create a split fence on both sides of the farmer easement (he gets a 30’ wide slot to pass through our land to access fields), Install signs, and plant into that area native flowers that are clearly intentional.

A future plan also includes plant walks and classes here as well as selling nursery starts of medicinals, so creating an area people can park is important so they don’t block the road. I would also love to Install a yurt if airstream up front as a workshop classroom guest room - maybe with a gazebo and outdoor pizza oven. Wouldn’t that be amazing?

So who has a farm sign? I’m thinking a farm sign up on that split fence would be good - and we can attach our certified wildlife habitat sign to that, monarch way station sign to that, and if we ever hear back on the botanical sanctuary application, the botanical sanctuary sign to that. Who has a good sign company that you are happy with?

Easements, pass throughs, zoning, odd shapes, and 150 year old rock piles is pretty normal in the world of rural living. Navigating that in a way that respects the land and plants living on it is a part of the rural juggling act. Working on it.

Odd shaped plots also makes drawing plans a challenge - the point is so long it is hard to get it to fit on standard paper without shrinking the rest down too much. Here is a plan with only part of the point!

We are over 70 days into our lockdown here, to keep our high risk people safe. Nobody has gone into a store or even for curbside. We use what we can have delivered (rurally), and have a quarantine process so we don't bring anything into the house. We live in the country so we have had to adjust a bit to get the things we need - particularly the gf/df/non-allergy things for Aidan, but we are doing really well and we are not really feeling anything too different since we already worked from home, homeschooled, and must be hyper-careful to protect Aidan from viruses in the winter. The biggest change has been that we cannot go to the Children's Hospital during this time, and Aidan is in limbo.

The good is that we are getting ourselves prepared for wave 2 and forward, including expanding our gardens to grow more herbs and food, to grow more fruit, and to include other necessities such as more potatoes, grains, oats, seeds. We are stocking up on canning supplies, fermentation supplies, grains, pectin, and other items in case there are shortages some day in the future. We had a cold storage room finished off last fall, and it is perfect for the large 5 gallon buckets of flour and dehydrated foods. I also store all the dried herbs in there so they are cool and dark. It will still double as a perfectly wonderful tornado shelter, too! 

All of this happened when I was starting seeds, so we have just started even more. I also anticipated a bit, and had pre-ordered all of my seeds, soil, fertilizers (kelp, fish meal), etc., back in January. Whew! I also pre-ordered a 7x15' initial greenhouse which we are setting up as a permaculture forest greenhouse, where it will be an enclosed raised bed growing things that like staying hot, and doubling for seed starting in the spring. We were waiting for the spring winds to be done, and will put up the greenhouse this weekend. 

Part of a whole foods pantry is kitchen staples, spices, and seasonings. Many pre-made mixes these days contain gluten or starches as fillers, not to mention spices that were ground up who knows how long ago and have lost their oomph. By mixing and grinding your own, you can create flavors and aromas for your foods that take your dishes to a whole new level. Also, buying bulk of individual spices to create your own blends can give significant savings over time, and come in much more affordable than the tiny individual jars at the store. Here are a few seasoning blend recipes to get you started.
 
Make enough for yourself, or double/triple the quantity and make to give.  A coffee grinder dedicated to spices is great for creating fine blends from woody herbs and spices. Just use one dedicated to spices. If you don’t have that, a pestle and mortar will work, as will pulsing with a food processor (just might require a combination of both to get it fine). 
 
Whether you use these to make a primary flavour or to sprinkle over the top, your dishes will never be the same. Plus, many spices and herbs have other properties that boost nutrition, digestion, and are anti-inflammatory. All a plus.  
 
Garam Masala
Garam Masala is a blend of spices often found in Indian and South Asian cuisines. Each region has their own blend, but the basics are fairly similar. This is a flavorful blend made with spices that can be found in most grocers or spice shops. Everything is listed by tablespoon and teaspoon because it doesn’t have to be exact. Use this as a guide. Garam masala is so good in rice dishes; added to soups and stews, and sprinkled over anything you roast in the oven.
 
3 Tbsp coriander seeds
1 ½ Tbsp cumin seeds
1 Tbsp sweet cinnamon chips (or a soft woody cinnamon stick)
2 tsp cloves
3 bay leaves
1 tsp cardamom pods (green)
½ tsp peppercorn (I like a variety of peppercorn types)
1 tsp dried ginger
½ of a nutmeg
Optional: 1-2 juniper berries
 
Toast all of the spices together on a medium-high skillet, gently, stirring. Be sure not to burn but just toast to release the aroma. Once the spices are warm and toasted, pour them into your spice blender and whiz until you have a powder. Store in an airtight container.
 
Lemon Pepper
This lemon pepper is more than just the generic salt from the store. This is a blend of salt, pepper, rosemary, lemon zest and peppercorns. It is very aromatic and is fantastic over meats before grilling or in a salad dressing.
 
Zest of 3-4 lemons (if tiny, use 4)
1/3 cup/80 mL of various peppercorns
5 large sprigs of fresh rosemary
½ cup/120 mL of celtic sea salt
 
Zest your lemons. Whiz your pepper, rosemary, and lemon zest in a food processor to crack the peppercorns and blend. Spread onto a parchment lined sheet and place into a 225ºF/100C (Gas Mark ¼) oven for 20-30 minutes until dry. Once the lemon zest and rosemary are fully dry, pour into a food processor or spice grinder and blend more finely before stirring into your ½ cup of sea salt. Store in an airtight container.
 
Dukka/Duqqa
Dukka is an Egyptian mix of herbs, nuts, and spices. This version is nut free so it is safe for nut-free homes. This uses pumpkin, sesame, and sunflower seeds instead of the nuts, giving the dukka a rich, deep, flavor. It is delicious as a crust for meats, as a dip with bread and olive oil, or simply sprinkled over vegetables, salads, or soups. 
 
1 tsp sunflower seeds
¼ cup/60 mL white toasted sesame seeds
½ cup/120mL pumpkin seeds
2 Tbsp coriander seeds
1 Tbsp cumin seeds
1 tsp black peppercorns
1 tsp smoked paprika
1 bay leaf
 
In a dry skillet on medium-high, toast your coriander, peppercorns, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, sesame, cumin seeds, and bay. Stir often, so they don’t burn. You are toasting to warm to release the aroma and oils. Pulse all of your toasted ingredients in a food processor or spice grinder with the smoked paprika. Pulse until you have the consistency you prefer. Coarse is great for dishes, more fine is wonderful for bread and olive oil appetizers. Store in an airtight container.
​
 
Making your own spice blends and pantry staples can be very easy and the reward is so much more flavorful than you can find in most grocery stores. 
 

It felt so odd typing 2020 into the title. Can you believe we are almost at 2020? That is amazing. I am excited to enter this new decade in our space, expanding and honing our vision for this land.

This is the time of year where any spare time is spent looking throughout seed catalogs, comparing the seeds I purchased last year with my notes on how things did where, seeing what I still have some seeds for, and what I need to purchase. We had so many things do so well last summer, and we had a lot of new things go into the ground we won't see a harvest from for several years. Some of our woodland medicinals fall into that category as they take several years from seed - and we have some from bare root and some from seed. We may not see Goldenseal for awhile, but we know it is there. 

The plan for 2020 is to expand all of the garden areas, increase the forest guilds, plant around the whole back garage building, plant more natives and water loving plants in the moist areas, and more drought tolerant natives where it is dry. I love posting my lists to the blog because is it a great thing to have when I look back next year, comparing notes and memories. It also makes me feel more accomplished when working on a few acres, because when you don't plant in rows, sometimes it looks like not a lot is there, when in actuality it is a vast amount of plant materials, but spread out over land as plant do naturally in the wild. 

It feels like we have a small part of the acres planted, but when I look at that list I feel pretty satisfied that we have been working forward in our 15 months living here.  One thing we are working towards is creating a botanical sanctuary space where we can give plant walks and where we work to preserve wild plants from our region and county. We are lucky to be very near a large state wildlife area that is several thousand acres with no trails, no parking (other than a few gravel spots on the highway). In studying some of the rare Wisconsin plants found in that area, I am able to focus also look to grow some of these endangered plants that are found within a mile of our land. Our area is a part of the wetland drumlin complex left when the Wisconsin glacier receded, and we have tamarack and mixed deciduous forest, drumlins (our house is along the edge of a drumlin), and the wildlife area even has a tamarack bog. Yes, I am a botany geek. It has so many unique grasses, sedge, and plants such as sensitive fern, marsh ettle, bellwort, bloodroot, blue cohosh, rue-anemone, canada mayflower, and even a rare bog rosemary. Wisconsin even has an orchid species, that has been reported in that area. We know that area also has muskrat, otter, mink, deer, cranes, wood ducks, fish, and many other animals and species that reflect how amazingly diverse this area has always been. If we can plant and diversity even a few acres of land, we will have a pretty spectacular place here. Big goals. One step at a time.