Tending Seeds: Adventures in Gardening, Homesteading, and Herbalism

Hi friends! Happy New Year! We're back with our first episode of 2024 where we reflect on what we accomplished in 2023, share some big life events that happened, and then dive into our goals for this coming year. We talk about goals for our land/homestead, the farm business, our tattoo studio, our health, and more. We'd also love to hear about your goals for this year as well! We think speaking our plans aloud helps with accountability and it's also fun to see the commonalities in goals across our whole community. This year is going to be AWESOME!

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Please consider supporting the show by checking out our onlinefarm shop! All of our seasonings, including our smoked jalapeno salt and smoked garlic salt, are back in stock and ready to ship.

You can also follow us onInstagramandFacebook.

Please share the podcast with a friend so we can reach more fantastic like-minded people!!

Hey friends! Mike is back on the podcast with me to discuss essential tools for your homestead. We start off by talking about hand tools and then progress to battery-operated power tools and corded power tools. Mike answers some of my questions and we share things we've learned over the years. We think this is useful info even if you aren't homesteading yet because it's great to have a basic toolkit no matter where you live! We'll be doing a second tool episode covering specialty tools and also answering any questions that you all send in, so feel free to message us through our social media if there's something you'd like us to cover!

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Please consider supporting the show by checking out our online farm shop! Pre-orders are open for our quarterly seasonal box of herbal products. This box ships in time to receive it before the winter solstice, Yule, and Christmas -- so it also makes a great gift! It comes with our best-selling Winter Wellness Tea, elderberry syrup, and lots more. Check it out!!

You can also follow us onInstagramand Facebook. (You'll notice we've switched our farm name to Nordic Fox Farm -- we talk about this in the intro to the episode! New website coming soon!)

Hey friends! October 20th marks one year of us living off-grid on our land in Colorado, so we thought it would be nice to take an episode to reflect on everything we've accomplished so far! We also dive into how our lifestyle has shifted living so remotely, some of the unexpected challenges we've faced, what we really value and consider to be luxuries now, and lots more. At the end of the episode we also touch on some tough news regarding our pig herd.

This episode is dedicated to Franklin, Clementine, and their piglets <3

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Please consider supporting the show by checking out our online farm shop! We've got loads of seasonal goodies stocked up there for the fall and winter.

You can also follow us on social media as @foxandelder.

Hi friends!! I’m recording this intro on the summer solstice, looking out at the garden and just really loving life at the moment. This weather is absolutely amazing. We’ve gotten a TON of work done on the homestead recently and we’ll share about that in an upcoming episode. We’re also getting fun new summer herbal products listed in the Fox and Elder shop, including our summer solstice boxes which we have just a couple of left.

Today I have Natalie, the Alaska Redhead, joining us on the podcast. I found her through a mutual friend and immediately knew I had to have her on the show. I’m so glad to have been able to strike up a friendship with her and convince her to come on and share her experiences with you all.

Alaska is one of those homesteading destinations that has become more and more popular in recent years, but there are some big challenges to consider if you’re thinking about moving there! Natalie and I dive into those and she shares some of her challenges in living off grid in Alaska. She has some great insights to share and I hope you enjoy our conversation!

I hope everyone is doing well out there and that your seedlings are healthy and happy. Be good to each other!

Until next time, keep your hands dirty and your heart open.

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Find Natalie on Instagram: @alaska.redhead and @nataliesoffgridkitchen

Natalie's Alaskan Life blog

Natalie's crochet Etsy store

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Find Sara on Instagram: @foxandelder

Check out our farm's herbal products: Fox and Elder shop

Our newest seasoning blend: Herbs de Provence

Today is our 50th episode!! I have Mike on the podcast with me again and we're diving into all of the different parts of our off-grid infrastructure. We share what has worked, what hasn't, and things we wish we had known ahead of time. Some of the topics we cover include:

• road access to your land
• hauling water
• septic vs composting toilets
• generators
• camper batteries
• battery tenders
• solar power
• off-grid internet options

We hope this episode will be really helpful to you if you are considering homesteading at some point, or are already homesteading and looking to possibly change up some of the things you're doing! We are definitely not even close to being experts, but always happy to share whatever knowledge we can in the hopes it will save you from some of our own mistakes!

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If you’d like to support the podcast, please spread the word about it by sharing it on your social media!

You can also support us by checking out our online farm shop. We have lots of great herbal offerings in stock and pre-orders for our summer solstice box will be opening up soon.

Until next time, keep your hands dirty and your heart open.

Hi friends! I hope the month of May has been treating you well! Things here are looking great – it’s finally warm enough that we have some seeds started and sprouting, and we were invited to vend at a local market for a spring event last week. Our farmers' market also starts up at the end of this month and we’re looking forward to being there every Saturday!

Today’s interview features two awesome guests who I’m excited to introduce you to:

Stephanie Thurow is a Certified Master Food Preserver and Master Gardener Volunteer from Minneapolis, Minnesota. She is a homesteader, author of bestselling cookbooks Can It & Ferment It, WECK Small-Batch Preserving, and WECK Home Preserving. You can find here on the Minnesota from Scratch blog, or on Instagram under the same name. Stephanie hopes her experience with homesteading will help others reach more of their goals. When she isn’t in the kitchen preserving, she can be found in the garden with her hens, teaching food preservation classes, or at the lake with her family and friends.

Michelle Bruhn homesteads in suburban Minnesota. She's a local food advocate, Master Gardener Volunteer, writer, garden educator, and farmers' market manager. As the founder of ForksInTheDirt.com, an information hub for garden and farm-to-table living, her passion is helping folks "dig" their food. She can also be found at ForksInTheDirt on Instagram. When not in the garden, Michelle enjoys spending time with her backyard flock, family, and friends while immersing herself in nature (usually with a foraging basket in tow).

Their book Small-Scale Homesteading covers topics such as:

• Gardening tips and tricks: from composting, soil health and what plants thrive best during the different seasons.

• All things preserving: Canning, curing and how to keep your vegetables last year round.

• Raising chickens: how these feathered friends can inhance your homestead.

• DIY products and recipes: healthy alternatives to everyday cleaning products, lotions and soaps.

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If you’d like to support the podcast, please spread the word about it by sharing it on your social media!

You can also support us by checking out our online farm shop. We have lots of great herbal offerings in stock and pre-orders for our summer solstice box will be opening up soon.

Until next time, keep your hands dirty and your heart open.

Today I’m excited to welcome Angela Ferraro-Fanning to the podcast. She is a self-taught first-generation farmer who runs Axe & Root Homestead, a six-acre farm in central New Jersey. She grows and preserves her own homegrown produce for her family and runs a farm bustling with Clydesdales, geese and ducks for eggs, an apiary with ten beehives, sheep, and a small orchard. She shares her love for self-sufficient living with others through social media as @axeandroothomestead, her books and online homesteading classes, published articles, and public speaking. She is also the cohost of the HOMESTEADucation Podcast and the author of the Little Homesteader children’s book series.

Angela joins us today to talk about her book, The Sustainable Homestead: Create a Thriving Permaculture Ecosystem with Your Garden, Animals, and Land.

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We're celebrating spring with a 10% off sale over at the Fox and Elder online farm shop! Check out our Good As Gold herbal body oil and our Nettle and Seaweed Seasoning Salt, which I love to put on everything from omelettes to popcorn. Use the code SPRING10 at checkout.

Please help spread the word about the podcast by subscribing, rating, and sharing with a friend or three.

Follow us on all social media (IG, TikTok, FB) etc at Fox and Elder.

Hi, friends! We're back with our second episode with my partner, Mike, as a guest. We're continuing this series discussing the process of restarting our homestead out here in Colorado. Today's episode focuses on our actual move from Tennessee to Colorado and some of the big decisions we had to make and the logistics that we had to organize. I hope this episode is helpful to anyone who finds themselves in the position of needing to move their homestead in the future. And I hope everyone else finds it entertaining to hear about our adventures!

Some topics we touch on :

• Deciding when to actually make the move.
• Deciding where/what to live in once we got to Colorado -- we bought raw land so we were starting completely from scratch!
• Working to get our TN homestead on the market to sell.
• Moving in stages -- we needed to have infrastructure ready to go for the animals before we brought them out.
• Our first work trip -- what we accomplished; help from friends.
• The actual move -- worrying about our animals; finishing fencing in the dark.
• The rush to beat winter -- getting ourselves situated; not letting solar equipment freeze.

The cover photo for this episode is the first selfie we took on our new property, the morning after we arrived and started stumbling around our land for the first time. If we look sleep-deprived and a bit wild-eyed, it's because we were!

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As always, we appreciate your support of this podcast and our work! Please check out the spring seasonal items in the Fox and Elder shop! Lymph Love, our favorite herbal vinegar, is back in stock. We also have violet leaf salve and calendula salve available in two different sizes now – both are great if you’re dealing with dry skin from winter still. And of course we still have our normal stock of delicious herbal teas and tinctures. Thanks so much for supporting our farm with your purchases! It means the world to us, especially as we work to get our farm re-established in a new location this year, which comes with a lot of expenses.

If you're enjoying the podcast, please share it with a friend or three to help us reach more listeners!

Until next time, keep your hands dirty and your heart open <3

I’m so excited to welcome Dylan and Mickenzie of Nashville Farmacy to the podcast today! This is the final interview that I recorded back in Tennessee, and some of the only guests that I was fortunate enough to get to meet and hang out with in person! 

In today’s conversation, we talk about what it’s been like establishing their new homestead, their passion for sharing and teaching others about mushrooms, some of their favorite mushrooms, running a gourmet mushroom farm, and how to grow your own mushrooms. I hope you’ll hop on over to their website to check out their offerings, including some of their grow kits if you want to try your hand at growing some shrooms! Also make sure to give them a follow on their Instagram. Enjoy!!

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It’s the end of March, but we still have over 3 feet of snow on the ground at our place in Colorado! I’m itching to get the garden going but it looks like I’m still going to be waiting a while. Our kune kune Clementine gave birth to five super healthy and adorable piglets last weekend so that’s keeping us busy in the meantime. If you want to see some really cute pictures, check out the Fox and Elder Instagram and Facebook.

We’ve also released some of our spring seasonal items in the Fox and Elder shop! Lymph Love, our favorite herbal vinegar, is back in stock. We also have violet leaf salve and calendula salve available in two different sizes now – both are great if you’re dealing with dry skin from winter still. And of course we still have our normal stock of delicious herbal teas and tinctures. Thanks so much for supporting our farm with your purchases! It means the world to us, especially as we work to get our farm re-established in a new location this year, which comes with a lot of expenses.

Our next episode will be another joint episode with my partner Mike as we continue to talk about our move from Tennessee to Colorado and transitioning to off-grid life here.

Hope you’re doing well out there! Love extra hard on the people you care about, and plant some good seeds – both literally and figuratively.

Until next time, keep your hands dirty and your heart open <3

Today I'm so happy to welcome my partner Mike to the podcast! This is our first episode together in what will be an on-going series talking about our move from homesteading in Tennessee to now living off-grid in Colorado.

In this episode we're talking about why we wanted to move West, what we were looking for in a piece of land, some of the properties we fell in love with, and various obstacles to actually getting a purchase to happen. And of course we talk about the piece of land we ultimately ended up purchasing and are now recording this podcast from :)

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Pre-orders are now open for our spring herb box -- packed with seasonal herbal products to help you transition from winter to spring. Check it out here!

Please help spread the word about the podcast by subscribing, rating, and sharing with a friend or three.

Follow us on all social media (IG, TikTok, FB) etc at Fox and Elder.