The Herbal Academy and Homestead Bloggers Network $297 Giveaway!

The Herbal Academy provided me with this promotional information, giveaway, and offer to share with my readers. Affiliate links may be in this posting. Thanks for supporting my blog.

Perhaps you, like myself, have been on a mission to incorporate a more natural approach to your family’s wellness. You’ve revamped your homemade meals with fresh, healthy ingredients, researched holistic ways to approach common ailments, and tried using essential oils and herbs in your own health routine!

Sound familiar?

I know it can be challenging to begin this holistic voyage! How do you start? Who do you trust?

If you have a desire to move from the unknown to the confident, I have great news for you today!

The Herbal Academy just announced the release of their brand new foundational herbal programs today including, get this, new printed versions complete with textbooks, topic specific companion booklets, and compiled recipe and monograph books!

There is truly nothing like these printed programs available that I know of!

The revised herbal programs boast of the very latest research available and feature expanded lessons, fresh videos, hundreds of recipes, new multimedia resources, and experiential exercises that will take your learning off your computer and into your kitchen!

Early-bird registration is NOW OPEN with two enrollment bonuses including $25 off your tuition and a $70 herbal goodie bag with a print package purchase! Hurry because early bird pricing ends February 20th!

Explore the new programs here!

The many new features of the newly revised Introductory Herbal Course, Intermediate Herbal Course, and Herbalist Path Packages include:

● New lessons and expanded lessons
● Brand new compiled Recipe and Monograph Books for each program
● Dedicated and beautifully presented Materia Medica charts for each body system
throughout the courses
● Hundreds of Expanded Herbal Monographs
● Fresh downloadable booklets highlighted in each course
● Dozens of new videos added throughout course units
● All new media and learning charts
● New experiential exercises
● The revised courses include the very latest research, presented in a clear, easy-to-
digest way!
● You’ll also notice dozens of new educators in the courses, including herbalist-adored
Guido Masé!
● Longer installment plan options offering more manageable monthly payments!

ENTER TO WIN!

One (1) winner will receive a Complete Enrollment in the Introductory Herbal Course (value $297) courtesy of The Herbal Academy in collaboration with Homestead Bloggers Network. Giveaway ends February 13, 2019 11:59pm.

Click Through Here to See the Course Syllabus!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

DISCLOSURE/DISCLAIMER: I wrote this post to let my readers know about this course and giveaway. My thoughts are mine and my family's own opinion and have not been altered by anyone else. Affiliate links may be in this posting. Thanks for supporting my blog.

The Herbal Academy Botany & Wildcrafting Course Kickoff!

The Herbal Academy provided me with this promotional information and offer to share with my readers. I am getting something for free in return for posting this information. Affiliate links may be in this posting. Thanks for supporting my blog.

The Botany & Wildcrafting Course, curated by the amazing Herbal Academy team of herbalists and botanists, is now open for registration at an introductory price of $149 ($50 off right now)!! I reserved my seat in class, and cannot wait to begin this journey. To give you an idea of what is included in class, lessons cover topics like using the dichotomous key for plant identification, identifying botanical families and patterns in nature, drawing herbs, making a pressed herbarium, wildcrafting for wild edibles and herbs, drying herbs, and much, much more.

If you too are interested in learning more about botany and foraging, check out the course page here: https://theherbalacademy.com/product/botany-wildcrafting- course/

CLICK HERE to ENROLL!

DISCLOSURE/DISCLAIMER: I received this course for free for posting this information. My thoughts are mine and my family's own opinion and have not been altered by anyone else. I did not receive any other compensation for doing this review. Affiliate links may be in this posting. Thanks for supporting my blog.

7 Simple Secrets For Infusing Healthful Herbs Into Your Family’s Life

Do you want to go beyond store-bought remedies, capsules, and tinctures?
To integrate healthful herbs into your family’s life?

Kimberly Gallagher from LearningHerbs will show you how in a free webinar this Thursday:
“The Nourished Herbal Kitchen Tour: 7 Simple Secrets For Infusing Healthful Herbs Into Your Family’s Life”

In this webinar Kimberly Gallagher will share…

• A tour of her kitchen and how she designed it to integrate nourishing herbs into her family’s diet
• How to go beyond store bought remedies, capsules, and tinctures 
• How to make 7 family herbal staples...including nourishing herbal infusions, potent herbal vinegars, super bone broth, sweet herbal honeys, seaweed sprinkles, pestos, Hailey's favorite Chai, and more!

Kimberly will share her favorite recipes, step-by-step...so you can start building YOUR family's nourished herbal kitchen the next day.

Kimberly will give a tour of her kitchen and share her favorite recipes, step-by-step... plus, if this webinar is anything like previous ones, there should be LOTS of cool giveaways!

Ready to build your family’s nourished herbal kitchen? Go here to reserve your spot:
learning-herbs.com/t?orid=240373&opid=35

Can’t wait to see you there!

P.S. During the webinar there will be a live Q&A. So start jotting down your questions now, and don’t forget to sign up by going here:
learning-herbs.com/t?orid=240373&opid=35

DISCLOSURE/DISCLAIMER: My thoughts are mine and my family's own opinion and have not been altered by anyone else. I did not receive any compensation for doing this post. Affiliate links can be found in this post. Thank you for your support of this blog!

This Powerful Ingredient Will Supercharge Your Smoothie #EarthDay #wildfood #greensmoothie

Did you know?

• Stinging nettle is a super source of vitamins, minerals & nutrients MORE powerful than most veggies.
• Nettle leaf supports healthy energy levels. It’s great if you’re feeling run down.
• And one really DELICIOUS way to get your nettles is making a smoothie!

Yes, it’s sting-free and perfect to make for Earthday because right now is stinging nettle season and hey, it is green!

In this free video from LearningHerbs, John and his daughter Hailey show you how to harvest nettles and turn them into a delicious smoothie called “The Earth Shake.” 

Opt-in and learn how to make it in this new video from LearningHerbs:
http://bit.ly/nettleshake

To make it easier for you in the kitchen, LearningHerbs has also included a printable recipe card. This way, you don't have to take notes!

Get the recipe here now:
http://bit.ly/nettleshake

DISCLOSURE/DISCLAIMER: My thoughts are mine and my family's own opinion and have not been altered by anyone else. I did not receive any compensation for doing this post. Affiliate links can be found in this post. Thank you for your support of this blog! 

Foraging with Kids by "Wildman" Steve Brill Book Review

We received this book in eBook format free from "Wildman" Steve Brill to facilitate this review.

People these days have become so disconnected from nature. Our society has gotten so far away from gathering wild food. Foraging used to be a normal everyday occurrence, a way of life and a need for survival. Now it seems people are furthering themselves from this essential skill and losing touch with the natural world around them. Even agriculture is becoming far and distant for some. I for one, do not want my kids to grow up without this knowledge. I do not want this to become a forgotten skill.

My girls, Zari & Teela, last year with Dandelions

I love the outdoors and sharing my love of the outdoors with my kids is something I treasure. I love getting outside and learning hands-on and so do my kids. I love seeing the wonder on their faces when they are learning something new about the plants and other things that surround us. I admit that I sometimes am learning right along with them. My favorite subject was and still is science. It is the joy of seeing my kids having fun while learning that makes me also love homeschooling and drives me to make their lessons more of a enriching experience for them. Children definitely make everything more interesting and so much more enjoyable.

My hobby as a forager began when I was a child also. I learned about some edible and medicinal plants in Girl Scouts and later I picked up a book about edible flowers from our local library and devoured the contents. I don't really remember the title to the book but it had recipes too. I loved learning about how violets, dandelions, roses, and nasturtiums were all edible and what you could do with them besides add them to a salad. It was fun because the food involved something out of the ordinary for me.

Foraging is a wonderful survival skill, but it also teaches children (and adults) about all kinds of other needed skills as well. It teaches about: following directions, cooking and eating natural foods, where food really comes from, making discoveries, exploring, observation, collecting, and being in nature, etc. When you are teaching your child you can also dive into other things related that ties in with it like: science, health and nutrition, stories, folklore, history, poetry, games, and art.

This book, Foraging with Kids by "Wildman" Steve Brill, is a wonderful learning tool to teaching your children about plants that can be foraged for food. This book is perfect for the beginner of foraging with children or those that are beginners who want to teach children. It covers only those plants you can find just about anywhere with no poisonous look-alikes, especially edibles that kids tend to like a lot. It has a total of 76 wild edible species from the contiguous United States and Southern Canada. These plants are organized by season and plant type so you can easily identify the plant. It will take you through identifying characteristics, botany basics, where to (and not to) forage, how to forage without destroying the plant and wildlife surrounding it, a list of items to take with you foraging, and pictures of each plant to help you along the way get to know these plants well. Still a word of caution, you need to always verify a plant’s identity with 100% certainty before you eat it!

Foraging with Kids also has some wonderful tips, poetry, stories, folklore, history, games, activities, science, and recipes scattered throughout its pages. Each story, folktale, or blip about our history is surrounded by dashed and dotted lines and has a picture of a slightly open book with a dragon on the cover on the page so it is easily found. The science experiments and lessons are circled and have a funny anthropomorphic cucumber?? that is looking through a magnifying glass on the page. The recipes in this book are found with a drawing of a baby looking at a cookbook that says Cooking for Kids on the cover. They are all whole-food vegan (no animal products) recipes. Some have ingredients that you might not have available to you in your kitchen, but are easily found and bought at a health food store. These are all wonderful recipes without all the refined, processed junk and fillers.

My girls, Teela & Zari, this year with Violets

Dandelions and Violets are my daughters' favorites so far that we have found in our own yard. I love them too! Now that it is Spring I want to go out searching for more wild edibles with my kids. I enjoyed reading this book! It has a lot of great information packed into the 392 pages. I loved the stories and folklore and can't wait to try some of the recipes once I get to know each of these plants well myself.

BUY IT
You can purchase Foraging with Kids by "Wildman" Steve Brill for $54.95 for the print version or $12.50 for the PDF downloadable version.

DISCLOSURE/DISCLAIMER: I received this product for free to facilitate my review. My thoughts are mine and my family's own opinion and have not been altered by anyone else. I did not receive any other compensation for doing this review.

The Harvest - September and October 2012

During the month of September and October we were very busy picking, harvesting, foraging, gathering and wildcrafting. We picked apples and pears off our trees and grapes off our vines. We picked plums from the neighbors trees that they wanted us to help ourselves to and I gathered up fallen walnuts from both our many Black Walnut and English Walnut trees. I have also been trying to educate myself about the flora and fauna in and around Portland and Rainier Oregon, where I live. I am learning a lot about canning and dehydrating too.

We made Golden Plum fruit leather in my dehydrator and it turned out a to have a gorgeous stain glass look to it. All I did was wash them, peal the skins off, pit them and mush up the plum fruit in a bowl or if they were really ripe I just mushed them with my fingers and spread the mush out on the fruit leather tray somewhat. It is fine if it has juice in the tray with it because that will get dried also. So yummy and without any additives or extras.

We canned pear sauce and dehydrated pears too. I don't have a proper water bath canner or a good canning rack, but we used what we had and got the job done. The dried pears turned out really chewy, but still really good.

I have a handy dandy Pampered Chef apple peeler that gets the job done quickly if I want apples peeled and cored. My Nesco American Harvest Food Dehydrator is perfect for making yummy apple chips! The kids helped load them onto the trays and then they were dried. We like to bag them up and freeze them. They stay crispier this way.

We have different varieties of grapes that grow on our grape arbor. The grapes are really good straight off the vine too. We made both white and red grape juice. After we plucked a bucketful of each variety off of our grape vines we washed, sorted and de-stemmed them. I used my Vitamix to blend it a little in batches then we placed it all in a big pot on the stove to boil while stirring. Then we strained it all through our strainer (we don't yet have a food mill) and bottled it.

We gathered and foraged loads of walnuts from our trees that had fallen to the ground too. I don't have pictures of the walnuts yet, but I will get some.

We also love to visit local orchards, farms and "u-pick your own" places to get things we haven't yet grown at our place. Since I am still learning I love to take photographs of plants and identify them to see if they are edible or medicinal or useful in another way. This is a fun hobby of mine that I want to soon get really good at.

What have you picked, harvested, foraged, gathered and/or wildcrafted this year? Have you made anything special out of the things you got? How have you preserved your harvest?