Tending Seeds: Adventures In Homesteading And Herbalism

Today I have a really great guest for you! His name is James Miller and I actually met him as a tattoo client. We did a large piece that took several sessions and so as I was tattooing him we had some really amazing conversations that then led to me wanting to bring him on the podcast. James was here in Colorado to work on a local farm as a WWOOFer. Now what is WWOOFing? WWOOFing stands for World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms. This is an organization that networks small farms with individuals who are interested in working on farms. This usually isn’t paid work, but instead a pre-set arrangement of working a certain number of hours per day or week in exchange for meals and housing, plus the knowledge that you will get to pick up along the way. So WWOOFing can be an amazing opportunity for someone who is interested in traveling all over the country, or even the world, and learning some cool skills as they do so. It’s something I was looking into doing when I was younger so when James told me he was a WWOO

Hi, friends! We’ve been working hard this month getting back into the swing of things. We spent four days vending at various markets this month and March and April are slated to be busy as well. We also had the official grand opening of our farm store in Hotchkiss and it’s been so amazing to connect with people in person when they come in to browse our teas and other herbal products!  We’re getting ready to jump on our next project, which is getting the greenhouse built next month! We’re also getting some seeds going indoors in the meantime, and then they’ll move out to the greenhouse which we hope to have done by mid-April at the latest. This will let us get a HUGE jump on the growing season, as we can’t really put many plants outside until the end of May.  And as we wait for spring to arrive, I’m having fun editing some of the great interviews I’ve had time to record these last couple months, including today’s wonderful convo with Lisa Fazio. Lisa is an Irish/Italian American folklore witch, herbalist, and

Hey friends! Hope you’re doing well as we wrap up January here. We have been SUPER busy with some big projects behind the scenes. One of them is that we now have our farm store open in Hotchkiss! For the last two years, Mike and I have, in addition to homesteading, had a small tattoo studio in Hotchkiss. Our lease was coming to an end and we had really outgrown the space so we started looking for something bigger. One of the things we were hoping to find was a new studio space that would be big enough to actually house both of our business! We lucked out and found a great commercial space that’s still on the main road through town and the property owner is super cool and very supportive of everything we’re doing. We've also been trying to find some time to pause and do some planning before things pick up steam here with markets again. I think taking the time to really reflect on what we’ve done before planning for the next season is so incredibly important and that’s why I’m so excited to have Jill Ragan of W

Hi friends! Welcome to our first episode of 2025! We're getting back to releasing two new episodes a month, and we have some awesome interviews already recorded and ready to share with you -- like this one! Today’s guest is Sarah Thrush, who I’ve been following for a few years over on TikTok. You might know her there as @peeliesandpetals and she shares tons of great information with her followers about food preservation. I was also able to snag a copy of her book, Preserving with a Purpose, and I have to tell you it’s quickly become one of my favorite books about canning! It covers all of the basics if you’re new to canning but Sarah also offers up a lot of kitchen wisdom and her recipes are not the same ones that we see time and time again in other canning books – there’s some really cool unique stuff in here that I am excited to try out for myself this coming year as we start bringing in the garden harvest. I loved having Sarah on the podcast, I think her knowledge and enthusiasm for the freedom that comes

Hi friends! I'm back with an awesome repeat guest today -- Natalie, the Alaska Redhead! Natalie is a fellow off-grid homesteader who lives in Alaska and was on the podcast a little over a year ago. We became friends and have stayed in touch, so decided to have an on-going series that we're calling Homestead Chats with Natalie and Sara. Today we catch up on what's been going on at each of our homesteads, how we made it through winter, our different crafty endeavors, and lots more! Hope you enjoy! ~*~*~*~*~*~ Find Natalie on Instagram: @alaska.redhead  Natalie's Podcast My Far North Cabin Natalie's crochet Etsy store Our farm shop is full of goodies for you! All of our seasonings, including our smoked jalapeno salt and smoked garlic salt, are back in stock and ready to ship. We also have seasonal offerings like our Pumpkin Pie Spice Blend and our Elderberry Syrup Kits, to get ready for cold and flu season. Your support helps us to keep growing, literally and figuratively

Hi friends! It's been a minute since our last episode but we have lots of fun progress updates to share! Things are moving along nicely with our shop build and we've been having a great season at different farmers' markets and festivals. Today I’m super excited to have Tenae Stewart on the podcast to talk about her book, Botanical Cocktails. Residing in California, Tenae is a cottage witch and astrologer who has previously published two other books, The Modern Witch’s Guide to Natural Magick and The Modern Witch’s Guide to Magickal Self-Care. In her latest book, she shares delicious cocktail and mocktail recipes with us that feature beautiful herbs that we can cultivate in our gardens or find while out foraging. I hope you enjoy this episode! ~*~*~*~ Want to connect with Tenae? You can find her on Instagram, or visit her website to get signed copies of her books. Our farm shop is full of goodies for you! All of our seasonings, including our smoked jalapeno salt and smoked garlic salt, are back in stock and re

We're back with our second episode in our Homestead Tools series! Make sure to check out Episode 53 - Essential Tools for Your Homestead if you haven't already listened to that one. Today we're moving past the basic tools that we previously covered and talking about some investments that can really help to level up your projects. Mike answers my questions about everything from cutting metal and welding to a variety of options for sawing your own lumber, and so much more! We hope this episode will be super useful for you. Here is the Miller welding app that Mike mentions. Our third installment in this series will talk about tool maintenance so that you can make sure to protect your investments! ~*~*~*~ Our new website and farm shop are finally up! All of our seasonings, including our smoked jalapeno salt and smoked garlic salt, are back in stock and ready to ship. Your support helps us to keep growing, literally and figuratively

It was a long winter but we're back with some great project updates now that the weather has gotten nicer and we can get back to work on our property! Spring means worktime around here for sure!! Mike and I share what we've been up to thanks to an excavator rental, and some tips for those of you who might also be renting large pieces of equipement. We also discuss the pros and cons of working with repurposed materials, specifically using old tires for building projects.   ~*~*~*~ Our new website and farm shop are finally up! All of our seasonings, including our smoked jalapeno salt and smoked garlic salt, are back in stock and ready to ship. Your support helps us to keep growing, literally and figuratively

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! ~*~*~*~ Please consider supporting the show by checking out our online farm 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 on Instagram and Facebook. 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! ~*~*~*~ 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

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

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 g

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! ~*~*~*~ 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

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 f

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. ~*~ 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

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 f

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!! ~*~*~ 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 we

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 :) ~*~ 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.  

Today I have a super fun interview for you about a different kind of growing – bonsai trees! I’m sharing a fantastic conversation that I had with Jerome and Mari of the Bonsai Supply. They are also the authors of the beautiful book, Freestyle Bonsai. In today’s episode, they’ll discuss the origins and history of bonsai, some common myths about bonsai, and the different types of trees that can become bonsai. Jerome and Mari also offer their thoughts on what tools you need to get started, and walk us through the process of tending to and pruning your bonsai trees. There’s a lot of great information here and you can really hear the passion that they both have for bonsai and their craft! Enjoy! ~*~ Check out Jerome and Mari's book, Freestyle Bonsai, and follow them on Instagram @TheBonsaiSupply. ~*~ We're having our biggest sale of the year over at the Fox and Elder online farm shop! All of our tinctures are currently Buy 3, Get 2 Free -- this includes all of our single herb extracts as well as our herbal formula

The Fox and Elder online farm shop is finally back open after our big move! Come check out what we have to offer this winter for teas, tinctures, elderberry syrup kits, and more. We appreciate your support so, so much! ~*~ For today’s episode, I’m thrilled to bring you a conversation with Tasha Greer about her wonderful book: Grow Your Own Spices. Tasha lives and homesteads in North Carolina and has so much wonderful experience to share with us. If you've ever wondered if you could grown spices such as ginger, vanilla, and cumin -- this one is for you! We recorded this conversation this past summer before I left Tennessee and I really hope you’ll get a lot from this episode. More than anything, I hope you’ll be inspired to work a few new spices into your garden plans for this coming spring! Enjoy! ~*~ Check out both of Tasha's books: Grow Your Own Spices and Weed-Free Gardening. You can also find her on Instagram at @exploresimplestead. ~*~ Please help spread the word about the podcast by subscribing, rating,