Food Hub Plant sale Saturday, April 23, 10am to 2pm 11819 NE Hwy 99, Vancouver, WA Local farms offer starts of veggies, berries, perennials. Reasonable prices, variety, sustainably grown, and supporting local farms! Hot coffee, hot cocoa, and treats made in the Second Mile kitchen For more info: secondmilemarketplace.com The Marketplace is a well-equipped, licensed commercial kitchen offering kitchen rental, storage, meeting space, and business development assistance. Our mission is to help creative food entrepreneurs launch, grow and thrive in their food businesses. The Food Hub is an online shopping platform where you can find the freshest and most unique food products from around Southwest Washington. Pick and choose from a variety of products that…
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Dirt Hugger Opens Landscape Yard
749 Snipes St, The Dalles, OR Mon -Fri 8am – 4pm 541-946-3478 Dirt Hugger, located in The Dallesport, WA, has produced organic compost since 2010 using locally available feedstocks such as fruit, wood, and beer yeast. They use their organic compost as the base in many soils and potting mixes. Each soil product is available in bulk, bags, or totes. They also offer rock, gravel, and a full line of landscape barks. Custom blends are also available. Their products are also available at retail outlets in The Dalles, Hood River, Bingen. Goldendale, Portland, Vancouver, and Boring For more info: www.dirthugger.com
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Buy Victory Panels
In the past ten years, we’ve installed solar panels on my house three times. This year we’ll do it again. We save for a while, buy panels, earn our money back on sunshine, electrify more systems in our house and then repeat. Through all the industry changes, the reduction in panel costs, and fluctuating incentives, I’m often asked, when is the best time to buy? My answer: every time. Every single time we spent money on solar panels it ended up being one of the best purchases of our lives. Why? Because financials are only part of the story. While solar panels can, and should, make some economic sense, I…
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Enough
“Only when all contribute their firewood can they build up a strong fire.”Chinese proverb. It was a beautiful, sunny fall day today, and I was out for my walk, reveling in the colors of the leaves and the crispness of the air, this being my favorite season. As I passed the neighborhood elementary school, I noticed that some classes were sitting outside, having lunch under a shelter. The kids were sitting on mats, all spread out per COVID guidelines, and appeared to be enjoying themselves. Observing this made me think once again about how adaptable and flexible we need to be to cope with the multitude of challenges, large and…
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Resolve to Use Herbal Alternatives
The world seems full of all sorts of chemicals these days. Big industry, agriculture, maintenance companies, and even the everyday family, use a variety of chemicals, many of which are irritating, bad-smelling, and even toxic. So what to do?!?! Let’s consider some herbal alternatives that are more natural, not too difficult to make or obtain, and certainly less toxic than many products on store shelves. In the garden: Many herbs are great companions to other plants, helping us use less or no pesticides. We have discovered that yarrow (Achillea millefolium) planted next to our roses can discourage aphids. Calendula (Calendula officinalis) – this sunny fragrant flower also known as pot…
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How To Make Fruit Kvass with Probiotic Benefits
Fruit kvass is a fermented drink that is quick and easy to make, loaded with digestive enzymes and probiotics, and inexpensive to create. For tens of thousands of years, our ancestors ate real meats, fruits, vegetables, nuts, grains, fats, oils, fish, and fermented foods. As fermentation was their only method of preserving fresh foods for future ingestion, these particular items were probably eaten daily. Our gut biome depended upon them. Fermented foods not only give us enzymes that will help us to digest our meals and probiotics to keep us well, but they make the vitamins and minerals in these foods easier for our bodies to assimilate. Even though we…
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Going Out Green
Choosing an Eco-Friendly Green Burial #1 Forego Embalming Embalming is used to temporarily inhibit the decomposition process and involves the use of formaldehyde, a toxic chemical that has been shown to cause higher rates of certain types of cancer in workers who perform embalming (Beane, Blair, and Lubin 2009). Depending on the circumstances of death, a dead body poses no health risk when kept in a 65° room for up to three days, and decomposition is slowed by natural cooling. What you can do: • Ask for the use of a refrigeration unit • Ask for the use of dry ice or Techni-ice • Ask that they use a nontoxic…
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Herbs For A Healthy Home
Strew the herbs; Stir the stew. Family to the hearth; Home is safe and sound. Keep your home safe and clean with these inexpensive and easy-to-make alternatives to store-bought cleaning solutions. The season for staying indoors is coming and that means stale air, insect pests coming inside, and germs flying about. Long ago, herbs were spread, strewn about the castle to sweeten the air, freshen living spaces, and ward off pests. An added bonus was that many herbs also protected family members and guests from bacteria and viruses. Herbs, such as sweet woodruff, catnip, spearmint, and conifer needles were strewn on the floors, hung as swags in rooms, or placed…
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We Have Solutions to the Climate Crisis
The emotional weight of the findings in the IPCC’s latest report is real, and the conclusion is therefore unmistakable: we must double down and act without delay. We have known for many decades that at some point, this day would come when the climate crisis was not a distant future occurrence but happening now. The only remaining question is, how fast will we take action to reduce the consequences of this planetary emergency? Now that the climate crisis has become too obvious for all but the most determined denialist to ignore, there are two types of risky reactions. The first is despair. Some will skip straight from denial to doom,…
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Build an Herbal Community
In times past, herbalism was a communal practice, especially for women of any group. Traditionally, they were the keepers of the home, midwives, and family healers. Hence, community members came to them when it came to the health and vitality of their families and neighbors. Herbal knowledge was gathered, collected, and held together in circles, where there was support and encouragement to ensure the learning was maintained throughout generations. However, as those who practiced herbal healing were persecuted and separated from their herbal community, the knowledge became isolated. Those who held the knowledge were less apt to share it, so much was not passed on. In the past decade, there…
