Arcadia Farms

If you’re not into starting seeds, my gardening posts have probably sounded like a boring broken record this winter. I can’t help it… getting the most out of a Michigan growing season partially hinges on how and when you start your seeds. Now is a great time to start seeds for your home garden. (Not sure you can grow a garden where you are? I’d love to help you create a FREE custom plan that you CAN do! Email me: katie@arcadia-farms.net) I’ve shared lots of info on seed starting, including post 1, post 2, post 3 and post 4. All the same, I wanted to talk to you about one other helpful seed-starting tip: soaking seeds.

Why Soak Seeds?

Soaking seeds before planting speeds up germination by stirring up the process of the dormant baby plant inside the seed’s hull coming to life. If you think about it, seeds are designed to withstand all that nature can throw at it – wind, cold, heat, animals, etc. Because of this, they have some natural defenses designed to keep them intact until they meet the right soil, water and heat conditions to begin growing. In nature, seeds get roughed up before they grow. In your garden, they’re relatively coddled compared to their wild relatives.  Plus once they get covered by dirt, the soil wicks away some of the moisture needed to start the growing process. Pre-soaking your seeds gives them all the water they need to get a jump start on life.

How to Soak Seeds

The process is pretty easy. Start with very warm tap water. Add the seeds directly and let them do their thing. The web is fully of inconclusive advice about how long seeds should soak. Here are the guidelines you should operate within. First, the bigger the seed and the harder the hull (shell), the longer they should be soaked. Second, you shouldn’t let you seeds soak for more than 24 hours because taking on too much water can make them rot. Turns out the old school practice of soaking seeds – like many other parts of gardening the way Grandma used to – is more art than science. You’ll have to experiment with how long to soak your seeds (use your garden journal to keep track of the results!). I’m aiming to soak seeds between 8 and 12 hours depending on the size of the hull.

Which Seeds Should I Soak

Because the purpose of soaking seeds is to break through that hard protective outer shell and to give the seed a good healthy drink before it is planted, small seeds are probably not good candidates for soaking. Small seeds – such as carrot and tomato – might benefit from 15-30 minutes of soaking but are too small to soak for a long period of time. On the flip side, pumpkin, cucumber, peas and beans will benefit from a good, long soaking (no more than 24 hours). Beet seeds and the like fall into the middle of the range and might be soaked for more like 4-8 hours.

Just like the “How to soak seeds?” question the answer to “Which seeds should I soak?” is inconclusive. Experienced seed-soaker Sally Roth offers this advice in her article about seed soaking at http://www.finegardening.com:

“I presoak just about everything except for the tiniest seeds. But I’m always careful not to presoak my seeds until the night before planting them in pots or in the garden. Once the seeds have swollen, get them into moist soil immediately, then keep them well watered until they’re up and growing. This simple technique can shave several days off the usual germination time.”

Anyone else out there have experience with and advice on soaking seeds?

Since it didn’t snow yesterday (yes!) I spent some time planting potatoes and lettuce in the main garden. Lettuce will go in under plastic row covers in some of our narrow beds (2' x 12'), along with spinach which overwintered and is already growing. I’m scheduled to plant lettuce in two additional narrow beds on the hugelkultur side of the garden… the problem is, they’ve not yet been built. (This past December we put in 4' x 12' hugelkultur beds but skipped the 2' x 12's since they were too narrow to dig with the bobcat.) I guess I better grab  my shovel and get on that…

Meanwhile, I cleared a blanket of leaves that have been keeping fall-planted onions sung over the winter.

I was also able to plant some taters. These are ‘experimental’ potatoes in that:

1. I’m planting eyes from spuds we purchased at the grocery store.
2. I’m planting them in hay.
3. I’m planting them outside the fence, intermingled with garlic in hopes that the deer will be deterred by the garlicky smell.

Planting from Potatoes that Sprout in the Cupboard

From everything I’ve read, the most reliable way to get great potatoes is by buying seed potatoes. That’s because some potatoes you buy at the grocery store have been sprayed with a chemical sprout inhibitor to keep them looking tip-top on the grocery shelf. Despite all of this sound advice, the potatoes we grew in our very first garden came from store-bought potatoes… and they were delicious! We typically buy organic potatoes so I thought I’d give it a whirl. Fortunately twice now I’ve discovered forgotten potatoes in the pantry with some hefty eyes on them. In one case I was able to simply cut the eyes out, store them in a brown paper bag, and use the potatoes for dinner. The other time they were way too far gone to be eaten. This afternoon I planted those whole. No waste here!

Planting Potatoes in Hay

Ever heard of planting potatoes in hay? The benefit is that its easy to “mound” the potatoes with more soil (ok, hay really) and its super easy to dig the potatoes up when they are ready to harvest. The danger in planting with hay (or straw) is that you have to make sure the potatoes stay covered so that no light gets to them. Potatoes exposed to too much sun will go green and become toxic. (Don’t eat green potatoes!) I planted our “experimental” potatoes in 1 foot deep holes outside the Main Garden fence and piled on about 8-10" of composted waste hay from Nacho’s (the bunny) cage. Nacho’s hay (and poo) has been composting all winter in a special bin. I think the recent sunshine has kicked the process into overtime because a good deal of it has already turned into soil.

At any rate, here’s a video about how and why to plant potatoes in hay.

Keeping Taters Safe from Critters

I’ve done some research about what deer will and won’t eat. Turns out – during cold weather when plants are scarce – they’ll eat anything green they can get to. During more abundant seasons, there are some things they’ll avoid, including onions and garlic. I’m interested in growing lots of storage potatoes this year but just don’t have the kind of room I need in our raised beds. So I decided to do a little experiment and place a few potato plants between sections of garlic. So now on the west side of the Main Garden I have alternating plantings along the fence – about four feet of garlic (which is coming up beautifully already!) and about four feet of potato plants (1 per square foot).  I plan to direct seed a few scallions in with the potatoes for extra insurance. Here’s hoping these city deer won’t get too curious!

Anyone out there have advice on how to best grow potatoes? Have you tried planting in hay or straw? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Did you enjoy this article? Visit www.arcadia-farms.net for more info on eating healthy, saving money and buying locally.   

NOTE: Ooops! Somehow I managed to only save this as a draft and did not publish it. This was supposed to be posted on April 1 (no joke). Keep that in mind as you read my "today"s and "yesterday"s. - Farmer Katie

Today’s Headline: No snow… (yet)! Today’s forecast for southwest Michigan was snowy. To be sure, it is cold outside (hovering around 30 degrees as I write this) but the sun is shining brightly. After a sustained string of sunny days, it’s a little hard for me to stomach the idea of snow. The good news is that Wednesday should be sunny and relatively warm (40’s) and then if the Mr. Weatherman is right, there’s no looking back! Farewell, winter – I’m ready for spring!

Our First Hugelkultur Planting

With spring on our doorstep, I’ve been super busy starting seeds. On Good Friday I planted about half of our peas. The most exciting thing about these peas is that they are the very first thing planted in one of our hugelkultur beds! To recap, the beds are comprised of pits (about 3’ deep) filled with rotted logs, branches and fall leaves which have then been topped with the very earth that was removed to make the pits. (For in-depth info on why in the world we would bury logs in our garden – and why you should too – click here.) On Friday I made a mound about 8-10” high with more topsoil and topped that with 6 cubic feet of organic garden soil (purchased from Lowes). My plan was to create the mounded part of the beds with compost but I have not yet ordered the compost. (Just like last year we’ll get it in bulk from a local supplier.) Because I knew a cold snap was coming, I covered the bed with a plastic row cover using our PVC hoops. (I had a fabulous helper!)

The row cover will also keep the deer and other critters from digging up my peas since there we do not yet have a fence around this part of the garden.

Seedlings

To date I’ve started onions, leeks, cabbage, cauliflower, kale, rhubarb, chard, broccoli, stevia, lettuce, peas and tomatoes. Frankly, this is the part of the season that keeps me on edge. Starting hundreds of seeds at a time while the weather is still touch and go provides lots of challenges.

My biggest issue is space. We live in a small house and have a very small greenhouse. Finding an out of the way place for so many seedlings that also has the warmth and light they need is difficult. Second of all, making sure I stick with my planned planting dates is hard for me. Life gets busy and despite the fact that I vowed not to do this again, I’ve already had a couple of days where I look at the calendar at 8:00 PM and think “Oh crap, I’m supposed to plant 200 seeds today!” Right now I’m way off schedule on planting chives, scallions and a few days off on lettuce, spinach and chamomile. The biggest issue is that I haven’t been diligent about making newspaper pots every day. The good news is I think I can go ahead later this week with direct seeding my chives and scallions (they are cool hardy) and I’m thinking of direct-seeding the lettuce and spinach under row covers. The only reason I was going to start chamomile this early is because it takes a while to mature and I wanted to give it a jump start. But since that is not a critical crop for our CSA, I think I will just direct seed it after the last frost date.

In further keeping-it-real news, my onions are not doing well. I planted about 450 seeds and I think about 30% of them are thriving. I think the culprit here is lack of light… they’ve been hanging out in my laundry room and there are so many that some are not in the best-lit places. Also my cauliflower and cabbage have not germinated well because they are in the greenhouse which drops down to about 50* at night despite my space-heater’s best efforts. I replanted cauliflower a couple of days ago and will be bringing those seedlings, along with the cabbage, inside to germinate. The good news is our kale is doing fabulously as well as our chard. Broccoli germinated just fine and the tomatoes are coming along. Once the night temperatures pick up (or I get my hands on a second space heater) we should have no problems.

Later this week I’m hoping to build shelves for the greenhouse to make better use of space (and get seedlings out of my dimly lit laundry room!)

The Garden Fence

Now that the direct-seed season has arrived (at least for my cool-hardy plants) we need a new fence ASAP. For those of you who are just starting to follow us, you might want to check out this post where I talked about expanding our garden. We’ve doubled the size of the Main Garden by adding 14 new beds – 10 of them are hugelkultur beds. The existing fence is still standing around last year’s garden. Besides needing to be expanded, it also needs to be improved. The posts are loose in several places and there are gaps (like, fawn-sized gaps) in the metal fabric in a couple of places.

Last fall I shared with our CSA members that we could use help in April with building the new fence. Several of them graciously said that they’d be willing to help when the time arrives. (Thank you!) We haven’t set a date yet but will soon. The fence will serve several purposes: Protect veggies from critters (like deer and rabbits), allow sun to reach our crops (by using welded wire fencing), provide a trellis to the north of the garden and create an attractive boundary for the garden. The attractive boundary is a driving force behind our need for some additional help, of the financial variety. Being good neighbors is important to us and since we’re a suburban farm, we want to create a fence that is as aesthetically pleasing (for our neighbors) as it is effective (for our crops). To make a prettier fence, we need a prettier penny. (And since we’re a start-up farm committed to operating debt-free, the budget is tight.)

The good news is that we’ve found a way to make a fence that is relatively low cost while still serving all the purposes listed above. And we’ll be able to make it modular so if we need to expand or move it in the future, all of the dollars invested in our project will not go to waste. All contributions (even $5) will bolster our ability to provide naturally-grown, locally-sold produce to our community. If you’re interested in investing in the naturally-grown, buy-local movement, here’s a great opportunity to make a tangible difference for just a few dollars! If you’d like to contribute, please email me at katie@arcadia-farms.net.  (P.S. We’re giving away some pretty cool rewards to contributors. More details coming within a few days on our very first www.kickstarter.com project!)

Here are some pictures to give you an idea of what we’ll be building.

There you have it… a little peak into the world of what we’ve been up to lately. What have you been up to around your homestead? Have you started any seeds indoors? Outdoors? Any other gardening activity? I’d love to hear what you’re up to!

Did you enjoy this article? Visit www.arcadia-farms.net for more info on eating healthy, saving money and buying locally.   

Last week I shared that we’ve been collecting maple sap for making our own maple syrup. It has been a great family-time endeavor and the first step – collecting maple sap – couldn’t be simpler. To learn how to collect your own maple sap, click here.

Our first batch of sap (10 gallons) has already been turned into 3 pints of golden, delicious maple syrup. (And a pint of that maple syrup has already found its way into a batch of oatmeal cookies!)

From my perspective, the second part of the process (boiling sap to convert it to maple syrup) has been pretty easy too. That’s because my father-in-law (hereafter lovingly referred to as “Papa”) did all the work. This is Papa’s third year making homemade maple syrup and he’s figure out a thing or two about how to make it work. You can learn from his experience (along with other tidbits I’ve gathered from the web and a book called Backyard Sugarin’: A Complete How-To Guide by Rink Mann) to discover how to make your own syrup too.

To start, I’d like to give you a general overview of how the sap-to-syrup process works. Put simply, you need to:

1. Collect sap from maple trees.
2. Boil sap so that the water evaporates and the sugary syrup remains.

Easy-peasy, right? Essentially, it is. But there are nuances to boiling sap that are critical to understand if you’re going to end up with maple syrup instead of a gooey, burned mess. As Rink Mann puts it:

“the process involves boiling the sap so that the water in the sap evaporates off in the form of steam, leaving the sugar behind in the boiling pan. Sounds simple, doesn’t it, and it really is, although at certain stages of the process , particularly as you’re getting your brew close to being syrup, there can be terrifying moments. Remember, we’re talking about starting with, say, 33 gallons of sap and ending with 1 gallon of syrup.”

 Click here for the rest of this article, which includes the following info:

• Sap storage
• Making an evaporator (includes videos)
  
• Boiling sap (more videos)
• Filtering syrup
• Storing syrup (and... more video)
  

If your household is similar to ours, the grocery slice of the budget pie is sizable enough to get your attention. Most “experts” recommend budgeting 14-20% of your take home pay for food (groceries, lattes, eating at restaurants, etc.). A recent study shows however that Americans are spending less on average than ever before on groceries – 11% of income. That might sound like good news, but consider the story behind the numbers.

A separate study from 2012 shows that while prices – for meat in particular – have gone down, American consumption has in fact gone up or remained the same. What happened? The advent of the factory-farm has succeeded in pushing the price of meat way down. A 2012 article by Tom Philpott (The American Diet in 1 Chart) explains the phenomenon well:

“American eaters have gotten a windfall from the the era of cheap meat that dawned in the early ’80s. Meat prices tumbled as small farms shuttered, to be replaced by massive factory-scale farms that stuffed animals with cheap, subsidized corn and soy and kept them alive and growing to slaughter weight with daily doses of antibiotics. Regulators looked the other way as these gigantic facilities created messes they didn’t have to pay to clean up. Meanwhile, as Mother Jones’ Ted Genoways showed in his blockbuster piece last year on Hormel, corporate meatpackers managed to bust unions, speed up kill lines, and drive down employee wages. It all added up to bargain-priced meat.”

Consequently, our consumption of processed (read: cheap) food has skyrocketed. In 1982, 11.6% of a family’s budget was spent on processed food and sweets. Today processed food tops the budget break down at 22.9% of the budget, followed by meat (21.5%), fruits and veggies (14.6%), Grains and Baked goods (14.4%), beverages (11.1%) and dairy products (10.6%). So in layman’s terms, we spend less money on food now because the bulk of our diet is ‘food’ processed and engineered with more regard to its cost than its quality.

Save Money, Eat Healthy

So what do you do if you’re interested in saving money AND eating healthy? Don’t despair  – here are some tips.

Cook at Home

When you buy pre-packaged food or eat at a restaurant, you’re paying for more than just the ingredients you consume. (Someone has to pay to keep the lights on, right?) With practice, cooking at home can be just as delicious (sometimes more delicious!) than eating out. Eating at home can save you up to $2,600 a year! And with some savvy, budget-friendly tips (like the tips you’re about to read) you can save even more money! If you’ve never been much of a cook, don’t let that stop you. (Everyone has to start somewhere, right?) I recommend beginning your journey into homemade meals by using a crock pot. It’s so easy – I promise – and the great-tasting meals you produce will give you a boost of confidence to try something new!

Make a Plan

Like a lot of things in life, it’s hard to win without a plan. Your grocery plan starts long before you jump in the car to head to Meijer. Here are some tips. First, keep a pad of paper in an accessible area (on the side of the fridge?) so that you can keep track of grocery needs on an ongoing basis. Did you use the last of the olive oil? Write it down now so you don’t forget it later. The next two tips go hand-in-hand – make a menu and check for sales. Making a menu (meal planning) helps you make purchases that will form complete meals rather than buying a bunch of things that sound good but don’t add up to a complete meal. Having a pre-made meal plan saves time as well because you don’t have to figure out what to make each night. Planning a menu around what’s on sale will naturally save you money. The next tip is to take stock of what you already have so you don’t buy unnecessary duplicates. All of this should be complete by the night before you’re going shopping: Menu created (check!); Inventory taken (check!); List created (check!). Now when you get to the store, you’ll be able to stick to your list without worrying that you’ve forgotten something, and perhaps with a little more resolve to skip over impulse buys! (You can also decrease impulse purchases – like a candy bar at the checkout aisle – by having a small snack before you go shopping).

Buy (and Preserve) Produce In-Season

There are lots of great reasons to buy produce when it is in-season. First of all, the taste is so much better than out-of-season veggies that you may never want to go back! Second, buying in-season, local produce (check out your local farmers market) is great for your community and area farmers. And third of all, it costs less to buy food in-season than it does to buy it when it has to be grown hundreds of miles away and shipped to you through the snow. And if you team up with tip #9 below, you could save even more money at the farmer’s market; Many sellers are willing to give you a discount for buying large amounts of produce if you ask politely. Worried about what you’ll do with all those [fill in the blank here]? If you can’t eat it all now, preserve some of it! Can it, freeze it, dry it. Don’t be intimidated – you can find tons of how-to help on the web (or by asking your Grandma). Then in January when you want wholesome [fill in the blank here] you can skip the trucked-in-from-California produce section of your grocery store and turn to your pantry instead.

Use Sales and Coupons

I confess – I missed the Extreme Couponing movement. I’m not coupon-wielding expert, but I do know that the Sunday paper is full of coupons. As long as those coupons are for things you will actually use, you can save money by using them. Consider taking advantage of frequency type clubs for items you usually buy or places you usually shop (i.e. “buy 10 get the 11^th free”). Meijer has a great website (and a great app for your mobile device) for looking up sales. Planning meals around what’s on sale can save you big bucks. If you can swing it, try keeping a “Sale Fund” set aside (perhaps $50 or $100) so that when a great sale comes up, you can stock up and fill your freezer. (Earlier this year we scored some unbelievable Buy One, Get Two type deals at Harding’s… our freezer has never been so full of meat!) Just remember – using a coupon to buy something you otherwise wouldn’t buy doesn’t save you money, even if you get 10% off.

Buy in Bulk

Our favorite place to buy in bulk is from Country Life Natural Foods in Pullman, MI. It’s quite a drive (about an hour) from our home in South Portage, but if you buy several things at once, the trip is worthwhile. We’ve saved money on organic Quinoa (a year’s supply for $30), a year’s worth of honey (1 gallon for $38.50) and 7 pounds of coconut oil ($12.90). They have practically everything you can think of and some of it is Michigan-made. Check out their catalog here. To save even more money, carpool with a friend (thanks Darci!) or take orders from each other and take turns doing the pick up. I’ve never tried it but apparently they also deliver for certain order sizes. We also now save money by buying our herbs and spices in bulk at Sawall Health Foods in Kalamazoo.

Leftovers? What Leftovers?

A great way to save on food is to avoid wasting it. Plan your meals to make the most of leftovers. Here’s an example from our life: Every other Sunday we have a roasted chicken for dinner with carrots, potatoes, peas, beans, onions or other in-season veggies. Monday I use the leftover chicken and veggies in a meal like chicken salad over spinach or a chicken pot pie. After that, I turn the chicken carcass into stock and make soup with it (sometimes using remaining veggies from Sunday’s roast). Even sour milk can be saved from going to waste! You can’t stretch everything that far, but there are lots of leftovers that would go great in an omelet, a salad or soup. If all else fails, send unwanted leftovers to the compost bin rather than the garbage can.

Brown Bag Lunch

A great way to bloat your food budget is to eat out for lunch every day. When my day job involved working from an office instead of working from my living room I discovered some tips to making the brown bag lunch work. I don’t know about you, but there were typically three reasons why I ate lunch at a restaurant instead of from a lunch bag. The biggest hurdle to jump is just remembering to bring a lunch. If you’re serious about saving money, taking a few minutes the night before to pack tomorrow’s lunch is key. Another issue: What’s in the bag just doesn’t sound appetizing. The simplest way to avoid that conundrum is to bring food you’ll look forward to eating! My main way of addressing this was to make fabulous dinners and make sure there were always leftovers for tomorrow’s lunch.  The other reason I skipped a bagged lunch was because I just needed to get out of the office! In warm weather, you can accomplish the same thing by taking your lunch to a nearby park. In yucky weather, sometimes just sitting in your car provides enough peace and quiet to count as “getting away.” I also made sure to bring or keep healthy snacks at work to curb my desire to buy a little something in the afternoon. I always had something sweet (yogurt, a cucumber, dried fruit, etc.) and something salty (crackers, mixed nuts, etc.) on hand to keep my snacking healthy and cheap.You could save more money by stashing homemade snacks like granola.

Frozen and Dried

Frozen and dried fruits and vegetables are less expensive than fresh and in some cases contain the same amount of nutrients. Resealable packaging helps you avoid waste. For tips on how to store frozen vegetables so they keep as long as possible, click here.

Use Cheaper Protein

Meat is expensive. If beef and chicken are choking your budget, try getting your protein in other ways such as beans, eggs, quinoa or legumes. If you grow your own (including raising backyard chickens for eggs) think of all the money you could save by opting for non-meat alternatives. For fabulous egg recipes, click here.

Shop at Home

Starting this spring, we hope to transition to a family that produces more of our food rather than buying it elsewhere. What if you could remove vegetables, fruit and herbs from your grocery list because you’re shopping in the backyard? Now think about what a difference it would make to take eggs, milk, cheese, butter, yogurt, bread and maybe even meat off the list? We may not all be able to raise our own meat birds or raise goats for milk, but almost everyone (even apartment dwellers) can grow fresh herbs and vegetables. By using an intensive planting method (like Square Foot Gardening) you can grow a surprising amount of food in a small space. Start small with a garden size you’ll be able to easily manage. I think you’ll be amazed at how much you get – and how much you’ll save!

Did you enjoy this article? Visit www.arcadia-farms.net for more info on eating healthy, saving money and buying locally.  

If you’re a gardener, you know that gardening brings more than just fresh veggies into your life. Spending some time outdoors, digging in the dirt and tending to your plants can merit health, mental, financial and communitybenefits. Here’s a ‘lil infographic to illustrate the point. (Click on the image below to enlarge it)

Easter is coming! On Sunday March 31 our family will be celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ. While the Easter Bunny doesn’t make an appearance during our celebration (we prefer to shoot any giant rodents found sneaking into the house) we do incorporate things like Easter baskets, dyed eggs and getting all dressed up to have breakfast with our friends and family at church. Since we’re focused on avoiding processed food and artificial dyes, I spent some time looking for more natural ways to fill Owen’s basket this year. Here are some celebration ideas your family can use as well.

{P.S. I hope to make Owen’s basket as local as possible. If I have time, I’ll post pictures and sources for Owen’s local-centric Easter basket before the big day!}

Naturally Dyed Easter Eggs

Artificial dye is poison. Did you know that some artificial dyes are banned from inclusion in our cosmetics and medicines, yet food manufacturers are permitted to include them in our food? Many of these same substances are banned in other countries. Why? Because they have been linked to health issues like cancer and hyperactivity in children. For more info on the hazards of artificial dyes (and ideas for natural food dyes) click here. For more on how to dye your Easter eggs naturally, check out the video below.

Cake (Pancake?) Filled Eggs

Another fun surprise you could put together would be baking cupcakes inside real egg shells. I love this idea! Owen and I enjoyed doing this project together. We tried a little variation – first we dyed the eggs, then we baked the cupcakes inside them. We learned that natural dyes don’t withstand the heat of baking quite as beautifully as artificial ones. (That’s why this post doesn’t feature any of our ultimately brownish-greenish cupcake eggs!) I’m going to try filling some eggs with pancakes to eat on Easter morning… we’ll see how that turns out.

We also tried a slight variation of the recipe included in the tutorial you see below. Here’s our own twist on the recipe created by the Cupcake Project.

What you’ll need:

• 9 large eggs (Only one will get used in the cake.  The rest are just used for the shells.)
• 1/2 C flour
• 1/4 tsp baking powder
• 1/8 tsp baking soda
• a pinch of salt
• 1/3 C real maple syrup
• 1/4 C unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1/2 tsp homemade vanilla extract
• 1/4 C vanilla or plain yogurt

We mixed the dry and wet ingredients separately and then mixed them together with an electric mixer. Also, if you have trouble getting the egg to come out of the shell, try poking a teeny-tiny hole at the other end and blowing it out (Owen loved this… despite thinking it was disgusting). Also, my skills with a piping bag are about as great as Kanye West’s public speaking abilities, so I opted to use a medicine syringe (the kind you use for giving a toddler pain medicine) instead – worked beautifully!

Non-Candy Easter Basket Prizes

A chocolate bunny and jelly beans are usually staple candies in an Easter basket. Here are some basket ideas that will make your kids “hoppy” without the sugar buzz-and-crash routine following typical sweets.

Sidewalk Chalk

Homemade Bubbles

Sealed container + cute label + bubble wand (check the party store) = tons of fun for little ones! What if it’s cold outside? Are you kidding – have you ever experienced the fun of frozen bubbles? Regardless of what the weather’s doing, this one is a total win!

All-Natural, Chocolate-Covered Sunflower Seeds

As yummy as they are colorful!

Homemade Treats

What kid wouldn’t like to get a stack of cookies as a gift? Try our own minimally processed (no processed sugar) cookies or perhaps some homemade granola.

Seeds

Some plants are super easy to grow. Owen has his own garden (4 x 8 raised bed) and loves sharing cucumbers with his friends during the summer. Give your little one some cucumber, watermelon or sunflower seeds and initiate them into the wonder of spring.

Dinosaur Egg Cucumbers… What kid wouldn’t want to go dinosaur egg hunting in his own backyard??

[pin]

Stuffed Animals

Turn your child’s drawing (no matter how wild!) into a stuffed animal. So cool!

Jump Rope

This jump rope (found on Etsy.com) is personalized.

Sports Balls

Warmer weather is coming, so give your little one something to play with outdoors. A frisbee or a kites are great too!

Books

Crayons

These crayons are all natural. You can find more natural crayons on Etsy.com in many shapes, sizes and colors.

Craft Supplies

All Natural Candy

Ok.It’s candy, I know. But if you absolutely can’t manage to go without giving your child sweets for Easter, why not buy allergy-sensitive, all-natural treats? Here’s a source.

Resurrection Cookies

We’ve never made resurrection cookies before, but it’s a tradition I’ve heard about from family and friends. The recipe and baking process are used as an illustration for the story of Jesus sacrifice and resurrection. Pretty straight-forward, family-friendly stuff. We may give it a whirl this year to see if there’s a way to make it with less (or no!) sugar. For a pictures and instructions, click on the image below.

Wish List Wednesday | Raised Garden Beds

Welcome to another Wish List Wednesday! On the third Wednesday of every month I’m sharing about all sorts of things I’d like to have, try or know more about. So far I’ve brought you lists on things from solar-powered garden gadgets to garden apps for your mobile device. To see all of my Wish List Wednesday posts so far, click here.

Today’s wish list is all about raised garden beds – various ways to build them, along with some snazzy accessories to make garden more enjoyable. I’m a big fan of raised beds. To learn more about the advantages of gardening in raised beds, read the Try Square Foot Gardening section of this article.

Raised Bed Ideas

Herb Spiral Made with 2 x 4?s

Use a Living Hedge

For those of us who grew up in the 80?s – LOOK – we can now have a grown-up cabbage patch!

$10 Raised Beds – Made from Cedar!!

Straw-Bale Raised Beds Have Unique Advantages

We’ve got more! Click here to see 19 additional pictures of raised garden beds. Our collection includes unique, beautiful and practical solutions to get your creativity flowing!

About a month ago I shared info on how to create your own homemade laundry detergent and fabric softener. We’ve been using this detergent since mid-February and it works great! Even though we won’t run out for months, I recently bought supplies to make another batch. This time I’m going to try making detergent with Fels Naptha soap. (I already had three bars of soap so I just needed to buy borax and washing soda).

To have a full year’s supply of homemade laundry detergent, I’m going to need to make a third batch. When I get there I’m gonna break all the rules {BWAHAHAHAHA!} and use baking soda… well… kind of…

While meandering around the world wide web checking out detergent “recipes”, I happened upon this little gem: A tutorial for making your own washing soda!

Click here for the tutorial.

At the beginning of this year Arcadia Farms teamed up with two other local growers to respond to a proposal for providing fresh, naturally and locally grown veggies to a local childcare facility. We’re so excited to let you know that our growers group will be providing fresh veggies to the precious little ones of Adventures Learning Centers (in Portage) as part of their Encouraging Adventurous Eaters Project! I’m really excited about veggie brokering (helping other growers sell their produce) and expect that this will be a great partnership!

My father-in-law (hereafter lovingly referred to as “Papa”) is currently in his third year of making homemade maple syrup from his own trees. Last year he made an abundance and we’ve been blessed with as much free, pure maple syrup as our little pancakes hearts can handle. I’ve been eager to try making our own syrup ever since it dawned on me that we have some maple trees of our own (four of them, in fact). I’m especially interested in making my own maple sugar. Since this is my first year and I’m getting a late start, I doubt I’ll end up with a large volume of finished product. But just like everything else, you’ve got to start somewhere! I’m hoping I’ll get enough experience this year to be able to make a decent supply (maybe a whole year’s worth?) of maple sugar next year. Next year maybe I’ll even wear this t-shirt while I work.

Why would I want to make that much maple sugar? Namely because I think it would be a fabulous, “healthier” alternative to highly-processed, non-local cane sugar. Pure maple syrup is also way better than a bottle of anything Aunt Jemima can cook up. Have you ever read the label on store-bought syrup? Here’s the label from a bottle I found lingering in the disarray of our fridge (soon to meet its destiny in the garbage can):

Boo. My maple syrup will contain only two ingredients: Maple syrup and love.

So far, maple sugarin’ (<– said with my best hick accent) has been pretty easy. Here’s the skinny on what we’ve done so far and how you can make your own pure maple syrup too!

How to Make Maple Syrup and Sugar

The basic concept of making maple syrup is easy. First, you gather sap from maple trees. Next, you boil the sap down until the water evaporates and the sugary-sweet syrup remains. To make maple sugar, you continue to boil the syrup until it crystallizes. The general rule is that you’ll need about 40 gallons of sap to get 1 gallon of syrup. That 1 gallon of syrup will net you about 8 pounds of sugar. Of course there are details and nuances to the process that you’ll need to know, but that’s the process in a nutshell.

Papa lent me a book called Backyard Sugarin’: A Complete How-To Guide (by Rink Mann) to help me get started. The book is short, to-the-point and a good practical guide. I spent about 15 minutes reading before our tree-tapping adventure yesterday and felt fully equipped. Most of the information I’m going to share with you in the rest of this post either came from Papa’s advice or this book.

Click here to read the rest of this article, which includes the following headings:

• How to identify maple trees
• When to tap your trees
• How to tap your trees
• How to store sap
• Next steps
  

I’m not a scientist by trade or education, but I have to say that I nerdishly enjoy experiments. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I enjoy continuous improvement and believe that trail-and-error lessons are one of the best ways to make things better.

Gardening is no exception to the “learn from your mistakes” rule. In fact, some of the best gardeners I’ve met tell me that their ‘secret’ is to simply observe nature and do their best to follow it. Observation is key to good gardening.

All the same, if you’re like me you’re likely to forget next year what you observed this year. Enter the garden journal!

Why Keep a Garden Journal

A garden journal is a tool you can use to keep track of important garden stats and observations such as temperatures, rainfall, planting dates, fertilizer applications, pest control measures and more. Being able to look back on this information will help you to plan for next year (“Did our pest-control methods work or not?”) and it will help you to identify patterns in your garden that you otherwise wouldn’t detect. In general, a garden journal allows you to record your successes and failures and details that may have impacted the outcome.

How to Keep a Garden Journal

There are many ways to keep a garden journal. Your journal can be as simple as a notebook you make daily observations in or a complex binder with sections for different topics. The main purpose is to provide you with relevant data that you can use to plan (and improve!) next year’s garden. Start simple. That way, you’ll be more likely to stick with it. And after you discover the value in garden journaling, you can always add more detail later.

Click here to read the rest of this article, including links to free garden journals.

A few weeks ago I shared on our Facebook page that I was getting excited about ordering seeds for 2013. Our friend and CSA customer Joli Lorion-Fytczyk commented asking about what sorts of plants to grow in a shaded yard. What a wonderful question! She got me thinking about what types of things they could grow at home. If you have a heavily shaded yard, these tips could help you too.

So what can you grow in shade? Here are ten veggies that can grow in 3 to 6 hours of sun.

1. Salad Greens (leaf lettuce, arugula, endive, cress, and radicchio)
2. Leafy Greens (collards, mustard greens, spinach, and kale)
3. Broccoli
4. Cauliflower
5. Peas
6. Beets
7. Brussels Sprouts
8. Radishes
9. Swiss Chard
10. Beans

After talking with Joli about factors that influence her garden space, I’ve put together a few Shaded Vegetable Garden Plans that with any luck (fingers crossed!) will bring her and her husband Josh some veggies this season. (Because they are also our CSA customers I tried to choose plants that we are either not growing at all or are growing in limited quantities. That way, they’ll get more variety out of their summer rather than heaping amounts of the same thing.) The varieties I selected were chosen either because they are especially shade-tolerant or because of their beautiful color. Here are some of the factors we discussed and that you should consider for your garden.

Click here to read the rest of this article, including 6 tips for a healthy, shaded vegetable garden and free, printable pre-made garden plans.

Last week I shared that I brought home two large boxes of frozen grass-fed beef only to find that our second freezer wasn’t working. Our best guess – thanks to input from a friend and reader – is that the garage freezer stopped working because it is attached to a refrigerator which also stops working when the temperature outside is colder than the temperature inside the appliance. We expect it to start working again once the weather warms up. I wasn’t about to let hundreds of dollars of meat go to waste so I got busy clearing space in the kitchen freezer. (Our neighbor graciously offered to store half of the beef.)

My kitchen adventures that day included dehydrating veggies, toasting hot dog buns into breadcrumbs and stumbling upon a sourdough starter lingering in the back of the fridge. The starter had been there since September… obviously I forgot about it. No worries though – the flavor of sourdough just gets better with age.

Click here to read the rest of this article, including info on:

• Why sourdough bread is tolerable for some with gluten intolerance
• How to make sourdough bread
  

When I was growing up my mom always had a countdown to spring. I’m not a fan of cold weather, or snow, or the cold-meets-muddy mess that is early spring in Michigan. For all those reasons I always joyfully joined into the countdown. And for all of those reasons I was always sorely disappointed. Here’s why: Mom counted down to The First Day of Spring… as in the little square on the calendar that tells us the day of the astronomical vernal equinox has arrived (March 20 this year). In Michigan, that usually means it is still cold, possibly snowy and muddy beyond belief. Once I became a teenager and wised up to all of this, I vehemently refused to participate in the countdown to avoid the imminent disappointment. I’ve learned that it’s best not to expect spring until May.

Expecting that warm weather won’t be here until May has implications for our greenhouse. In order to plant by the phases of the moon and have my transplants ready for the garden by the time our last frost date passes I have to start seeds as early as next Monday (March 11). We don’t have room in our tiny house to store the thousands of seeds I plan to start in March and April so they need to go elsewhere. The greenhouse is naturally a good candidate. This time of year there should be plenty of light to keep my seedlings happy during the day, however, the temperature is still well below freezing most days. We need a heater.

Sustainable Heater?

Enter my desire for low-cost, sustainable processes. We have an electric space heater in the greenhouse which did a fine job of heating our 6’ x 6’ space this fall. I was hoping to find something a little more sustainable – or at least less expensive – to do the job. Here are some of the things I considered (solar powered heater, terracotta pot heater and rocket stove) :

[pin here]

Choices, Choices

Of all the options I decided to try the terracotta pot heater. Online reviews from other users seemed to indicate that the heater didn’t give off as much heat as they had hoped but it still “worked.” One person said it could be used to heat a small room. A 6’ x 6’ greenhouse is a pretty small room so I felt optimistic. Plus I already have plenty of pots so materials wouldn’t’ be very costly. Materials include:

• Two terracotta pots (10? and 12?)
• Lamp
• Heat bulb
• 2” threaded bolt (1/2 inch diameter)
• 8 washers
• 4 bolts

I decided to use a light bulb instead of a candle because I felt the energy would be more consistent and then I wouldn’t have to buy a supply of candles. (If I ever needed to use the heater with a candle instead of a light bulb, that would still be an option.) We’re preparing for chickens so I recently bought a pack of two 250W heat bulbs. Using a lamp I already own, I tested the heater by placing a large pot over the bulb. Presto – heat!

Next I went to Home Depot and bought the bolt and a handful of washers and nuts.  I used the bolt to thread the 10” pot inside the 12” pot.

Then I setup the lamp (used an extension cord from the garage), surrounded it by 6” pots placed upside down (like a tripod) and set the threaded pots over the lamp (resting on the 6” pots).

In very little time the pots began to heat up – a lot!! I even burned myself on the bolt once. But alas, after several tests I determined that the heater at best was making a 1-3* difference in the air temperature of the greenhouse. And that at best difference was happening in the afternoon when I need it least. At night time (when I need it most) there was no measurable difference at all. Even if I had two or three of these bad boys, I don’t think it would help.

Bummer.

Oh Mr. Sun

The good news is that since I was monitoring the greenhouse temperature closely for several days I noticed that the sun has reached a point in the sky where it is adequately heating the greenhouse during the day. Today it is 100+ degrees in there with just solar heating! So long as we continue to have moderately sunny days, I think I’ll be able to get away with letting the sun keep my plants warm (above 60*) during the day and using the electric heater at night. If time allows, I’d like to try making a small rocket stove to use at night. No promises there, but if it happens, you can be sure that I’ll share my findings with you.

Does anyone have tips for how they heat their greenhouse? Any creative ideas you’d like me to try?

Did you enjoy this article? Visit www.arcadia-farms.net for more info on eating healthy, saving money and buying locally.