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All blog posts
As you can probably guess, in this category you’ll find every single post from The Nourishing Hearthfire, from the very latest recipes and reflections, to my earliest blog posts, all in one simple category, sorted by date.
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German one pot beef and vegetable stew
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This hearty German one pot beef and vegetable stew, based on the German dish Pichelsteiner, is my favourite meal to make with beef osso bucco (sliced bone-in beef shin). The meat is first seared, and then slow cooked with the vegetables to tender perfection. The onions melt into the broth as the meat falls off the bone to form a sturdy broth that is full of deep flavour from simple, natural ingredients. A meal to savour and enjoy again and…
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Growing our homestead this past year… Achievements, failures, and goals for the year ahead
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This has ended up being quite a long post, as there has been a lot happening on our homestead in the past year. I’d like to try and share updates more frequently for this coming year if I am not too busy. We are in really exciting times on our homestead and I’d like to share a little about what we’ve learned and achieved. Growing our homestead Maremma livestock guardian dogs This has been a long story with some sad…
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Simple Flapjacks
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Flapjacks is a bit of a confusing name for this delicious slice. Some people use that word for pancakes, and other people know all about this delicious crunchy oaty buttery treat. This has been a favourite recipe for many years. At picnics it disappears very quickly, at my market stall I get complaints if I do not bring it along. When I want to make something really quick and simple for a treat, this is often what I turn to.…
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How to Start a Homestead: Priorities, Staple Crops, and Survival
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The best time to start a homestead was ten years ago, the next best time is now. This is what I would focus on if I were wondering how to start a homestead now. How to start a homestead: Animals for food and fertility Look at what resources are around you and find the right animal to make the most of what is growing where you live. If you’re starting with lots of pasture, cows and sheep are good choices.…
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Pickled Garlic Scapes
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When growing garlic, the flower stalks (also called garlic scapes) are removed soon after they appear, to direct the plant’s energy towards growing a bigger bulb. These garlic scapes are really tasty, and I use them in any recipe that normally calls for garlic. They can also be pickled or fermented to preserve them for later. This recipe uses the ‘hot jar, hot lid, upside down’ method that is used in many parts of Europe and Australia. If you live…
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Quinces: How to prepare, cook, and preserve them
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Quinces are an easily-grown fruit that’s often ignored in modern diets. Not many people know how to properly prepare them, and they can seem a bit fiddly and slow to cook compared to other fruits. I think it’s definitely worth learning to prepare and cook quince – they are like no other fruit, and there’s something deeply warming about the way they taste on a cold autumn day. My favourite way to cook them is to slowly simmer them in…
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My favourite tools for self sufficient gardening on rough land
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Here are my favourite tools for serious self reliant food gardening, with some notes about what I use them for and what to look for. These garden tools are suited to tall people and people with bad backs, and are tough enough to work on compacted soil and clearing scrubland. My four favourite tools for self sufficient gardening on rough land Metal broadfork A broadfork gently aerates soil without inverting it, giving some oxygen (but not too much) to the…
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Easy ways to preserve tomatoes off the grid
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How to preserve tomatoes off the grid In A Year in an Off-Grid Kitchen I included recipes for five of my favourite ways to preserve tomatoes with water bath canning – as rustic tomato passata, tomatoes in brine, pizza sauce, salsa, and tomato relish. I’ve recently tried a couple of different methods that I’d like to share here. These are excellent methods for preserving tomatoes without electricity or canning. Fermented tomatoes I’ve been intrigued about fermenting tomatoes for a while,…
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My favourite leafy greens to grow for survival, self reliance, and taste
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Some of my friends and readers are ordering seeds at the moment, so I thought I’d share some of my favourite varieties of greens to grow. The varieties below are all fairly easy to find at the moment from online seed sellers, and all are open pollinated, so if you end up liking them as much as I do, you can save seeds from them too. Why grow leafy greens? Greens yield a lot of nutrition in a small amount…
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Introducing… A Year in an Off Grid Kitchen!
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I’ve been quiet on this blog for the past few months, because I’ve been working on something very big… I’ve been busy creating a cookbook that teaches the kitchen skills that are most important on a homestead, as well as a huge amount of adaptable everyday homestead recipes. When the the panic buying, empty shelves, and restrictive rations hit earlier this year, it was not a problem for my family, because we knew these skills, and knew how to feed…
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Circular Chicken Tractor Gardening
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Chicken tractor mandala gardening I first found out about this way of mandala gardening from Linda Woodrow’s The Permaculture Home Garden. She provides a design for a complete system that involves fruit trees, wild animal habitat, annual vegetable beds, and chook fodder plantings, with chickens being rotated around in a homemade chook dome. It all fits together so beautifully, with each element benefiting another, and it inspires me to grow food in this way. I am in a colder climate…
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Young Liflin
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Note: If you’d like to learn more about how and why I keep dairy goats, I’ve had a couple of guest posts published recently on Practical Self Reliance, and Nourishing Days. These blogs have a lot of other good stuff to read about too. Liflin was born here, he’s the son of Snowy and Ned, and the cute baby goat you can see in my midsummer post. Last year we had high hopes for him, and he certainly tried his…
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