Beans are a big part of a whole-food plant-based diet. The easiest way to have them available is by canning dried beans. Since we have a glass cooktop, we do all our canning on it. Here is how we pressure can dried beans on a glass cooktop. It works great for us, take what you like and leave what ...
FlyLady System for Homesteading
"My house may be a mess, but you should see my garden" - can you relate? As a homesteader, we could add "but you should see my pantry, or my barn, or my cellar". It seems there are always more important things to do than cleaning and organizing the house. The FlyLady system comes to the rescue for ...
Why we heat the indoor garden with electricity
Every so often the question comes up on how we heat our indoor garden/greenhouse or why we heat the indoor garden with electricity. For those that don't know we are in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in Alberta, Canada. It is cold here. We use our indoor growing room year-round. In the ...
Cookbooks to Start a Plant-Based Diet
We switched to a plant-based diet a few years ago and have never looked back. Eating plants tastes good, feels good, and is good all around. We are sometimes asked if it was hard for us to change to a plant-based diet. Our answer is 'no' for two reasons: For one, we are both people who do not ...
Using a Water-Sealed Fermentation Crockpot
If you have followed our blog for any length of time you will know that we love fermented food. If you are new here, welcome! I would assume that you came here to learn about using a water-sealed fermentation crockpot. We have been huge advocates for simple fermenting using whatever pots, ...
Indoor Garden Update Fall/Winter 2019
In the summer of 2014, we started the adventure of converting an old garage into a food production place. As you will see in this indoor garden update fall/winter 2019, we have come a long way. The story When we first started we had big plans and zero experience in indoor gardening especially in ...
2 Top Things to Keep a Greenhouse From Freezing
When we started our adventure to build (well, more like rebuild) a 4 season greenhouse back in 2014, we were sure that heating would play the most important role in keeping the greenhouse from freezing in our cold zone 3 winters. Guess what, it is not! Are you surprised? Well, we did not ...
End Of Season – Garden Update 2019
The growing season of 2019 has come to an end, at least in the outside garden and greenhouse, time to do an end of season garden update to review our annual garden. What worked well in this year’s garden, and what we will be looking into doing differently in the future. Every year is a little ...
NFT downspout Hydroponics system upgrade
Nutrient Film Technique (N.F.T.) Downspout Hydroponics is an exceptionally simple hydroponics setup. Last winter we built a NFT downspout Hydroponics system to grow lettuce indoors all throughout the winter. We share a how-to here. Read that first if you are new to NFT Hydroponic. We are very ...
Plant Protection From Frost
Plant protection from cold and frost is an important subject for cold-climate gardeners. There can always be another frost after the "last day of frost" and before the "first day of frost". What are some easy methods to extend the growing season of the annual vegetable garden and grow healthy plants ...
