Tending Seeds: Adventures in Gardening, Homesteading, and Herbalism

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 from preserving food for your family is really contagious and I hope you will catch the bug as well! Enjoy the interview! Connect with Sarah Thrush: Instagram - TikTok - Get her book! ~*~*~*~*~*~ 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 Elderberry Syrup Kits to get ready for cold and flu season. Your support helps us to keep growing, literally and figuratively Use code PODCAST25 at checkout to save 10% on everything in the farm shop! You can follow us on Instagram and Facebook. Please share the podcast with a friend so we can reach more fantastic like-minded people!!

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 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 Use code PODCAST24 at checkout to save 10% on everything in the farm shop! You can follow us on Instagram and Facebook. Please share the podcast with a friend so we can reach more fantastic like-minded people!!

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 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. You can also follow us on Instagram and 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!) /// Hello from the future!! /// Fox & Elder is now Nordic Fox Farm! Find our online farm store at NordicFoxFarm.com Join our mailing list for 10% off your first order! You can also visit our shop in person at 148 E Bridge St, Hotchkiss, Colorado. Follow us on social media: FB * IG * TikTok

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. ~*~*~*~ Find Natalie on Instagram: @alaska.redhead and @nataliesoffgridkitchen Natalie's Alaskan Life blog Natalie's crochet Etsy store ~*~*~*~ /// Hello from the future!! /// Fox & Elder is now Nordic Fox Farm! Find our online farm store at NordicFoxFarm.com Join our mailing list for 10% off your first order! You can also visit our shop in person at 148 E Bridge St, Hotchkiss, Colorado. Follow us on social media: FB * IG * TikTok

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. ~*~*~*~ 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. /// Hello from the future!! /// Fox & Elder is now Nordic Fox Farm! Find our online farm store at NordicFoxFarm.com Join our mailing list for 10% off your first order! You can also visit our shop in person at 148 E Bridge St, Hotchkiss, Colorado. Follow us on social media: FB * IG * TikTok

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! ~*~ As always, we appreciate your support of this podcast and our work! Please check out the spring seasonal items in the 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 /// Hello from the future!! /// Fox & Elder is now Nordic Fox Farm! Find our online farm store at NordicFoxFarm.com Join our mailing list for 10% off your first order! You can also visit our shop in person at 148 E Bridge St, Hotchkiss, Colorado. Follow us on social media: FB * IG * TikTok

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 :) ~*~ Please help spread the word about the podcast by subscribing, rating, and sharing with a friend or three. /// Hello from the future!! /// Fox & Elder is now Nordic Fox Farm! Find our online farm store at NordicFoxFarm.com Join our mailing list for 10% off your first order! You can also visit our shop in person at 148 E Bridge St, Hotchkiss, Colorado. Follow us on social media: FB * IG * TikTok