Our little farm stand is finally open for business and I could not be prouder. I’ve dreamt of creating a space for my Franklin neighbors to have access to local organic food and goods since we moved here in 2015. Franklin, WI has a population over 36,000, yet we don’t have a local farmers market to call our own. Putting together this farm stand has been my way of filling that void. Of course, Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither was our stand! So today I wanted to show you all the work we put into it to make it a reality. Get ready for some serious before and after shots!
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A vital step in cultivating a successful organic garden is preparing. Preparing to me means figuring out where the garden will go, if the soil is in good shape for veggie growing, and what you need to build the basic structure of the garden. Preparing here we come!
To start at the very beginning in this garden blogging series, head over to this blog post.
Now that you are armed with all the planning knowledge to get started with organic gardening, it’s time to start plotting your garden beds. How you plot out your garden has a large effect on your overall success for the growing season. In this blog post, we are going to cover companion planting, square foot gardening, row gardening, and how to mimic nature to give your organic garden some serious edge. All you’ll need is some graph paper, a pencil, and time to dream of all the delicious things you can grow organically!
Here at Green Willow Homestead, we have 40 chicken mouths to feed (and counting!). Our chickens are definitely spoiled. We allow them access to pasture, they freely browse a MOSA certified Organic Chicken Feed, and we give them all our chicken-approved kitchen scraps. When I started to keep track of our expenses though, reality smacked me right in the face. We were spending nearly $175 a month on organic chicken feed! With 40 laying hens producing 3 dozen eggs a day, we technically can rake in $450 a month in egg sales, unfortunately, in the winter this just isn’t the case. Egg laying slows way down as we lose daylight, but the amount these cluckers eat stays the same. I had to put my thinking cap on. How can I cut my feed costs when egg laying can’t foot the bill? Enter a food waste recovery program!
To put it simply, a food waste recovery program is when you partner with a local business that produces food waste, i.e. a restaurant or food shelf, to collect what would otherwise go to a landfill and, instead, compost it or feed it livestock. This partnership can be set up however you want it to: you can volunteer for food waste, you can barter for it, or you can just take it off their hands no questions asked. There are two types of food waste in the restaurant business: pre-plate food waste, which is all the prep scraps that come before food hits the plate; and post-plate food waste, which is what the customer leaves behind instead of bringing it home as leftovers. Both of these options can be recovered in a food waste recovery program.
In this blog post, I’m going to take you through why food waste recovery is necessary, how we got started doing it at Green Willow Homestead, and what equipment you need for successful implementation.
In my last post, we talked about the biggest toxic offenders lurking in your kitchen cleaning supplies. In this post we are going to go over the cheap and effective toxin-free cleaners you can utilize instead. After spending years with generic cleaning brands, the switch can be a little bumpy. Due to this adjustment period, I want to take you through how what we use to clean our homes works on a technical level. Let's dive in!
I grew up with familiar names like Windex and Dawn in our cleaning supplies at home. These brands and many others are ones we’ve trusted to keep our kitchens clean and sparkling for decades. Unfortunately, the trust we have placed in these brands has been taken advantage of. Household brand names in our cleaning supplies are full of toxic chemicals and the findings only keep mounting. From heightened risk of miscarriage to developmental delays to cancer, nearly all of our common cleaning supplies are wrought with problematic ingredients that have dire consequences. I want to take you through the biggest offenders to give you a snapshot of what you are up against when you clean your home. In my next post, I’ll provide you with some easy toxin-free DIY or Conscious Consumer approved alternatives.
In Part One of this blog series we talked about why it's crucial to switch over to a natural hair care routine, in Part Two we set you up for natural shampoo success with the acclimation period, and now we are going to talk about the top five toxin-free shampoos and conditioners I've used. Let me be clear and state that everyone’s head of hair is different. There is no definition of a good or bad head of hair here. That’s why there are five choices and not one be-all end-all choice. I encourage you to try one, stick with it for a month, and then try another if it isn’t working for you.
Allow me to personally vouch for these shampoos and conditioners, as I have tried all of them for extended periods of time (at least 1.5 months). At the moment my hair is somewhat thick, un-dyed, medium length, slightly wavy, and gets greasy in about three days. My post-shower routine is to not blow dry unless I have to be somewhere special, which ends up being maybe three times a month. I used no post-shower product while implementing these shampoos and conditioners. I have blow dried with each of these products though, and all of them passed the test. Typically, post-shower I run a wide toothed comb through my hair as sparingly as possible. Next, I turn my head upside down and shake my wet roots loose from my scalp to give them some drying oomph. I look like a wet dog when I shake my hair out - I promise it’s fun! Then I’ll let my hair air dry. If I’m feeling sassy, I’ll twist it up into a loose top knot once it’s halfway dry with a singular bobby pin and let it get a slight curl to the ends. That’s it! Alright, let’s jump into my top 5 favorite toxin-free shampoos and conditioners...
Don’t be upset if you go to try natural shampoo for the first time and aren’t pleased with the results. For those that have tried natural shampoo already, you know how frustrating using a natural shampoo can be. Enter the acclimation period. Every time we make a change to our rituals or our habits, our body always needs a little time to catch up. Once I realized that results were not going to be instant I calmed down a touch. I had also experienced this acclimation period with natural deodorant and was met with success, so I knew there was hope if I stuck it out. When it comes to hair, sometimes acclimation can take two weeks, sometimes a month or more. The pain point here is that it sucks to have a bad hair day out in public for an extended period of time. Luckily I have a few hair care tricks and perspective shifts to push you through it!
There are many reasons why homesteaders decide to bring a rooster into their flock. For me, there was a moment last winter where I woke up in the middle of the night and thought, “I want to hatch my own chicks.” In that late night epiphany, I knew I had to get a rooster in order to make that happen, because, well, mother nature. Now I have four gorgeous roosters and will never go back to having just hens. Let’s break down the pros and cons of owning a rooster to help you decide if having one is right for your long-term goals as a chicken owner.
Whether you have long or short locks, finding a shampoo that actually works and is free from harmful chemicals can feel impossible. My own toxin-free shampoo journey has been rife with greasy hair, dandruff, and itchy scalp. I spent countless showers in hopes that a new random hippy dippy shampoo I found on Etsy would finally be my saving grace, but my early shampoo adventures wound up disappointing and left my hair feeling like it hadn’t even been washed. So why go to all the trouble of finding a toxin-free shampoo? As Part One of my Natural Hair Care Series, we are going to dive into the reasons why you should avoid these main culprits that are in generic shampoo and consider switching to a natural hair care routine. I encourage you to click the linked studies cited below and read further into the findings for yourself. Let's get started!
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Meet Kelsey,Thanks for stopping by Green Willow Homestead! From chicken rearing to composting, we've got our hands full and we love sharing what we've learned along the way. Follow along as we turn the 80 acres we call home into a farm that serves its community and a homestead that nourishes us throughout the seasons. Grab the EbookListen in!FREE Guide!Tune in to our YouTube ChannelInspirationsCategories
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Favorite Books of 20241. Erosion
2. Braiding Sweetgrass 3. As Long As Grass Grows 4. The Small Scale Poultry Flock 5. The Zero Waste Solution Archives
April 2024
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