Visit Us at the New Blogstead - We're moving!

Dear Readers,

If you've noticed the blog was a little quiet, you weren't the only one!  We're moving to a new blog address called Farm and Hearth! 

Head over to www.farmandhearth.com and leave a comment on our blogwarming post - you will be the start of something big! And follow my Instagram feed for crazy-delicious food!

But what do I mean, big?

photos by Sami Roy Photography

During my husband's deployment through 13-'14, I spent less time on the computer and more time filling my hours with our baby, volunteering on New Earth Farm in Eastern Virginia. An organic, biodiverse, sustainable, water-conserving farm led by Farmer John and Farmer Kevin and their team, this is a farm that is shaking things up. We troweled in the dirt, washed eggs, worked the farmer's market stand, dug potatoes, chased sheep and watched lambing, picked kale with red-numb fingers in December and harvested tomatoes in sweat-sticky August. I started working at the farm as a fermentation and food preservation expert, and following the vision of our farm manager Kevin, we developed an entirely new facet of the farm called the Food Lab.  Here, in an airy, high-ceilinged building designed by interned architects and built entirely by donations, we experiment with food, create, invent, fail and laugh, and I teach classes in our new Food Lab - kombucha, advanced kombucha, sauerkraut, charcuterie, pasta, canning, lacto-fermentation ... and I take the classes mobile, too, teaching at Williams-Sonoma, Whole Foods, Norfolk Botanical Gardens, local garden clubs, private classes, area shops and markets.

I finished my 200-hour yoga teacher training, took a prenatal yoga teacher training to add to my Simkin Center doula training and then immersed myself in a few other teacher trainings both in Virginia and in Seattle, meeting Manju Jois, Troy Lucero, Suzanne Hiite and other yoga legends (I am heading off to the Baron Baptiste Level One training in August 2014! Very excited). I'm still writing for the San Francisco Book Review and their Alphabet Soup and Critical Eye blogs, and I began writing for a magazine after they came to the farm for a photo shoot and a four-page spread on the Food Lab.  Journalists and magazine writers from around the world started calling for media visits every week; schools drove buses of children out for tours. All - and I mean all - the top chefs in our area, keen on the best tasting, freshest produce and the unusual weeds, bugs and herbs we could provide, started descending on the farm and hammering us with questions, the most passionate of them digging in the dirt themselves and foraging with us for wild plants. They started inviting me in to their kitchens for private, pre-hours sessions with them, working to create the most delicious, unusual, ancient foods together. Farm Table events, where brilliant chefs designed a menu based on whatever we had to harvest that day and fourteen paying participants attend to cook and eat with the chef, started selling out back to back.

Whole Foods, Williams-Sonoma, local goat farms, butchers and pork farms, Bonfire Magazine, and other wonderful area providers and organic farms joined the charge as class sponsors, providing ingredients, tools, publicity, whole-hearted support. A photographer volunteered her time to come shoot events, edit the photos and get them back to us - she shot all the pictures in this post!  An appliance store donated a dishwasher. Area chefs donated used tools. Farm visitors donated cash, kitchen gear, time to paint and sweep and mop, just plain shook our hands and encouraged us to keep doing what we were doing.  Contractors gave tools and materials for our building, time, skill. With a massive group effort, the building was put together, the classes fell into place, and the people started coming.

With the scope of the blog ever evolving and my audience constantly growing, the name of the blog has itself evolved and I've had to move to a different platform - quite a daunting prospect in the blog world, but I am ready to take it on with your faithful reading support! All the good information on this blog will stay here, safely housed and accessible for us to search, read and bookmark, and the best posts will also be imported over to the new blog platform to find a fresh, new look.

Watch in shock and awe as farm-tested recipes straight from the field roll out, photos and news clips and tutorial videos, hilarious and piquing interviews, even horror stories roll out on the new blog! You'll even start seeing things for sale. Events will be posted on the blog so you can find when a class is coming to a city near you, and is a cookbook in the works?  I can't say anything officially. But maybe we've finally heard your demands? Class tours will start to open up nationwide as I do a West Coast series in August in Seattle, Washington! And you can always visit us on the farm for a tour, a class, or just lunch with the farmhands - every day, at about noon. We'd love to have you.

Mrs H
www.farmandhearth.com
instagram.com/foodlab_newearthfarm

My Reading Basket (Edition One!)

Thanks for reading this post, I'm so excited to visit with you!  

After you've gleaned all the good information you need, visit our new blog platform at www.farmandhearth.com to read even more fascinating tidbits from the kitchen and the fields. 

Dear avid readers and part-time literates,

Polonius: What do you read, my lord?

Hamlet: Words, words, words.

I love seeing what other people put in their grocery carts.  I love seeing what they plant in their garden.  And I love seeing what they are reading!

Don't worry, I won't recount for you what is in our pantry right now (you might not all be as weird as I am!). Rather, I want to share a few of the books in my reading basket right now, and ask you what you are are currently reading!

In this modern era, we have books from the library, books we bought at the store or received by mail for review, Nook books, and audio books - so I, of course, take advantage of all these avenues for word input and have something going in each category.  I'm including Amazon affiliate links for each book in case you want to click through and read reviews or buy the book for your Kindle or whatever.

Listening in my car

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs  |  I'm only a few chapters in.  It's very entertaining!  I'll warn gentle readers that, so far, I have encountered a few instances of language.  It's also a little scary, so if you have young ones I would suggest reserving this for your own personal reading or drive time!  So far, it is a wonderfully written, vivid mystery!

Listening on the Nook

The Curse of the Pharaohs by Elizabeth Peters  |  The second book in the acclaimed 19-book series based on the doughty character Amelia Peabody and her archaeological enterprises in Egypt during the Victorian period, I have read the first six books and own the entire series.  I haven't read them in a while, though, so before I picked back up on the series I wanted to listen to the books and refresh my memory.  The book plays during the day (in fact, it's playing right now!), and makes great entertainment while I'm washing dishes. You can download the Overdrive Media App to your smart phone, laptop, computer, or reading device and use it to check out eBooks and eAudiobooks from your local library.  This is a tip my mom shared with me, and it has filled my life with free and wonderful literature!   

Reading on the Nook

Wheat Belly by William Davis, MD  |  This controversial book is surprising, shocking, and not surprising at all!  I am two-thirds finished with the book and enjoying it immensely; you will probably see a full review on it later in the blog, as it has already impacted the way we eat (and yes, I am aware of the arguments against the book - I love controversial books and blogs!).  

Reading for the blog

The Home Creamery by Kathy Farrell-Kingsley  |  Publishers have generously sent me rafts of books to review for the blog - and I can't wait to share the entire list with you (most of them are accompanied by giveaways!  Hurray!).  I am not sure yet if this book is my favorite on home creamery work yet, though.  I've made about half the recipes in the book and had to supplement them with information from other books.  I know Storey has a second book on home creameries, so I may check that one out before I settle the review.  

Reading for the Sacramento Book Review

Once Upon a Flock: Life With My Soulful Chickens by Lauren Scheuer  |  I just finished reviewing this book, and I can't wait for the review to be published at www.citybookreview.com.  I thought it might be a mildly entertaining, and maybe cute book about chickens, but it was so much more than that!  It was, in fact, a moving story and an anthropological and zoological study that made me realize that chickens are not just egg-laying creatures, but truly soulful beings with little minds of their own!  It was emotional and it was touching, and it left me yearning to start my own home flock!! 

Reading for fun

The Other Side of the Dale by Gervase Phinn  |  Compared often to James Herriot's All Creatures books, this story chronicles the adventures of a school inspector in North Yorkshire in days of yore.  The stories are humorous and colorful, the writing is clean and fresh, and - I'm about a third through this book - so far, everything is clean and wonderfully family-friendly.  

Reading from the library

The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom  |  I have only just cracked the cover on this, but I can't wait to read it.  It's set in old-time Virginia and the main character is a white slave.  

Reading for education

Educating the WholeHearted Child by Clay Clarkson and Sally Clarkson  |  A gift from my parents, this book is especially useful if you plan to school your children at home.  I have only just begun to wade into it, but the Clarksons are acknowledged pioneers and innovators in the field of home education!  A worthy read!  

A Charlotte Mason Companion by Karen Andreola  |  Another staple for the homeschool parent, this book is filled with revolutionary (to a country steeped in pen-and-desk tradition) concepts for education.  

Reading in the kitchen

Prairie Home Cooking by Judith Fertig  |  I cycle through my cookbooks and periodically re-read favorites to plumb them for new concepts and recipes I may have overlooked on the last circuit.  I am currently re-reading PHC, one of my favorite books, and one of the first in my collection.  It was a gift from my grandma and I treasure it!  

There are more books, many books in the basket and on my kitchen counter, but of course I am always seeking further recommendations!  Every once in a while you just hit that perfect, golden book that lives on and on as a classic family favorite!  

What are you reading right now in your various categories?  Do you have a reading basket, or a shelf of books waiting to be consumed, or an Amazon wishlist?  Do you read for pleasure, or just for school or work?  Are you reading any of the books I mentioned here, and do you have further suggestions for me? 

Reading words, 

Mrs H
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Myths About Large Families - Your Questions, Answered

Dear gentle reader,

Have you ever met somebody from a big family?  Are you from a big family yourself?

There are lots of myths and legends regarding big families, or even just kids in general.

"Kids are too expensive.  We can't afford to have another."

"Have you seen these two bicker?  We couldn't handle having a big family fighting like that all the time!"

"The kids couldn't all have their own room.  Growing up, that was important to me; I wouldn't want to deprive my kids of that advantage."

This, and many other myths, are heard day and night by big families.  I myself am the second of eight - and you know how much that experience meant to me!

My parents have heard it all - every snide remark, every jab, every rude comment.  They take it all in stride as you know, letting the thoughtless and uneducated remarks of the intelligence-impoverished roll of their backs.  But the questions, while sometimes impolite and intrusive, are often simple curiosity or uninstructed ignorance, and in truth they do deserve to be answered.  Who better to answer these questions than my parents, practiced veterans of society's attention and commentary?

And answer it, they did.  Written by my dad, click here to read the answers to the thirteen biggest myths concerning having a large family, and leave your comments and thoughts at the end!

Do you agree?  Do you disagree?

Mrs H

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Let's Talk Chalk: How to label your home, and a free giveaway of your choice!

The Wednesday Review: 

Reviewing books, products and more you may be interested in

Dear jarred,

Since virtually everything in my kitchen was either purchased in a bulk 25-lb sack or a 5 gallon bucket, or came straight from a farm and went into my dehydrator or was ordered online and arrived in a cardboard box wrapped in plastic, it stands to reason that most of my food is transferred into containers such as jars, tubs and plastic bags, and then joins the ranks of other jars, tubs and plastic bags in the cupboards and in the refrigerator.

I'm always running into the irksome problem of how to attractively label them!

I received a label maker as a gift, and I LOVE it! I use it to categorize my files, I smack names on top of cans of pumpkin-butter and jars of coffee beans, and I even label shelves so guests know where to find things (and replace them, hopefully!).

But what about big tubs?  What about jars that live on my shelf and need to be read clearly, from a distance, or that sit on the counter and should (in my hopes and dreams!) look ultra-cute?  What about containers whose contents are constantly changing or being updated, like when the coffee was last ground or when I last used the sourdough starter, or how recently this container of leftovers went into the fridge?  This was my kitchen dilemma, and it was mostly answered with sticky notes and cheesy taped-on pieces of paper.  Alright, it worked, but it wasn't very nice looking, and it was exceedingly annoying to have to keep re-taping on the paper when it ripped off from being shoved into a small space one time too many.

Let's Talk Chalk!

A friend introduced me to an Etsy store, after hearing me gripe about this issue.  I almost fainted when I saw, for the first time, things I'd only dreamed existed, living in real life in front of me!!

Let's Talk Chalk! is a business run by a mom and her daughters and their products are ... Unbelievable! Beautiful stickers (which easily peel off to place elsewhere, if you change your mind) with markers that can be erased with a damp rag.  The marker doesn't smudge once you let it dry for a few seconds, so even grabbing a tub by the label won't mess up your name tag.

I like to label my jars with what is in them, and where I got it (sometimes even what I paid for it!) so that when the time comes to refill it, I know where to go or what shopping list to add it to.  Sometimes, that source changes over time, so a printed label on a jar would need to be completely replaced - now, I can just wipe off the source of my sugar, and replace it with the new store I purchased it from!

Keep forgetting when you last refreshed your sourdough?  Not a problem!  Add the date, and when you feed it or use it again, just swipe away the date and write the new one!  No labels wasted, no time spent printing or taping on a new one.

And it looks horribly cute, to boot!

There are more than just kitchen labels here, too!  I'm labeling a gallon jar of cloth-diaper detergent and including a list of ingredients and measurements, and how to run a load of diapers!  These stickers can go on jars, bins in the craft room, boxes of office supplies, baby bottles, kids' drawers, storage tubs.  There are fake mustaches for party humor, t-shirts with chalk labels you can erase and rewrite (I'm the birthday girl! Welcome Home Daddy! Baby Due in Three Weeks!), a large chalkboard decal for the fridge or pantry (grocery list?  The contents of your chest freezer? Homeschool schedule for the day? Days left in Daddy's deployment?), simple round labels for just about anything under the sun, chalkboard wine charms (these work great on coffee mugs with a handle, too - so no more losing your hot cocoa on Christmas Eve!) ... and so much more!!!

The most beautiful gift tag of all?

A wide decal perfect for the fridge, bathroom mirror, the front of Mom's notebook

Petite labels for spices, jars of homemade toothpaste, containers of erasers...

Adorable labels for glasses at a party, jugs of variously flavored kefir, Tupperware tubs of leftovers

A large calendar that you can update, erase, change, and never need to replace!!

How else could you use mini chalkboards and labels?  Signs at a farm stand?

Keeping score during a game when the original sheets run out (or for those of us who shop for games at the thrift store!)?

Signage to direct guests at a wedding, label the gift table, placecards or Reserved for Family signs?  I don't think there is any limit to the uses!

These chalk labels are of superb quality and are delivered to you from a family store - supporting a small, wholesome business while making your house efficient and adorable?  I think this is a double win!

But it's even cooler than that.  They want to host a giveaway for you!  This giveaway is extra-awesome because instead of me choosing what you would like for your giveaway, you'll simply go to her online store and choose $25 worth of product!  After a winner is chosen by random selection, I'll send you a message and connect you with Pattie at Let's Talk Chalk! to place your order.  (Of course, if you decide you need more than $25 worth, just place your order and she'll give you a $25 discount off the total.)

Enter the giveaway! 

1. Visit the Let's Talk Chalk! Facebook or Pinterest site and follow one or the other (or both).  They post beautiful and clever ideas on their Facebook and Pinterest sites, and you'll be inspired!

2. What would you use your chalk labels for?  Leave a comment below with your idea or creative use, and be sure to use a current email when you do so - I'll be using that e-mail to contact you when you win, so it should be one you check!

The contest will end February 27th, 2013 at midnight EST! 

Labeling away,

Mrs H

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Writing Letters - An Art, A Pastime, Our History

Dear reader and writer,

E-mail, Facebook, and of course online blogging are great outlets for much of our interpersonal connections. Living several thousand miles away from my family, and with dear friends dotted all over the globe, I love having social media to keep in contact with people whom I might not otherwise hear from for a very, very long time!

There is still value in handwritten letters, though; they were once a record of the times, as we now read entire books comprised of letters Mark Twain or Louisa May Alcott wrote, and are fascinated by the quotidian events of their now historic lives.

This writing prompt from our short stories blog (which is in temporary hibernation due to extenuating circumstances!), encouraged readers and writers and desiring-to-be-authors to pick up the pen (the literal pen), and compose a handwritten letter to somebody.

And mail it.

I love mailing letters!  I write several every week, including thank-you notes for gifts and kind gestures people have made for our family, as well as chatty missives to my grandma, friends and family members. Sometimes we includes jokes, humorous pictures or games from magazines, recipes, family photos or anything else we can stuff in.

Stationery and cards live in a small box on my dresser - they used to be in a boring
box, until my mom-in-law gave me a set of cards and envelopes in this pretty one! 

The dresser is convenient: I can write brief letters after the baby lays down for
a nap, or write longer ones in the chair and then quickly address and stamp them here

In the back, I have an old address book, and an envelope of necessaries!

The address book was from an old house, built in the 1930s in Coronado, CA
and belonging to the original owners until I visited at the estate sale in 2011.
This address book was still empty, and I knew I would need it.   

This envelope holds various stamps (I use the simple ones for business transactions,
and the cute ones - most of them supplied by my mom-in-law! - for personal letters).
It also holds stickers for sealing envelopes, and address labels.  The address
labels were free, thanks to some various charitable organizations that somehow
obtained our name and address.  

Letters waiting for a reply are stuck in the front of the box, a little sideways, so
I can see them until I make the time to sit down and reply!  

I love this truly personal interaction!  It's such a thrill to get a letter or package in the mail - I settle down with the baby on my lap and we tear it open and enjoy it fully.  Every single one is so special and so interesting.  I am interested in the choices people make in stamps, and stationery, and pens, and how they write things and even how their script looks!  You can learn a lot about a person from a letter that you can't pick up from a typed message online.

When my husband was in boot camp, and over the course of some of his Navy deployments, letter-writing has been our primary source of contact.  Perhaps it hardly needs saying that I have treasured and saved those tender notes, and will reread them many times over the years.  They are precious symbols of our love that can be shared with future generations (well ... some of them!), and they contain so much about our daily lives that seems inane now but is of increasing interest as time goes by.

Do you wish you had letters from your childhood?  I know I do!  When is the last time you wrote a letter?  Who would you like to write a letter to today?


Mrs H

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