Now I'm Really Excited!
So as some of you know, my wife Penelope and I and our two dogs Malachi and Elijah moved out to Canada's east coast last March. We have a one acre slice of the Garden of Eden in western New Brunswick, just a football field from the border with Houlton, Maine!
We always had gardens at our home back in the city so digging up a garden when we got here was job #1. We had a pretty good harvest this past season and I have now added three raised gardens for this season's planting. Now that's something I'm really looking forward to!
I have also been doing a ton of blogging in my health and wellness niche and, in addition, I created a website I call "Homesteading Handbook". The lifestyle is pretty physical out here but I find that I'm enjoying it immensely and I'm also in better shape than I have been in decades.
Blogging about our new lifestyle just seemed to be a natural adjunct to what I was already doing! A really exciting part about this niche is that, due to economic factors and a desire on the part of many to simplify their lives, homesteading is gaining a lot of traction with increasing numbers of people. I'm looking forward to engaging with like-minded people interested in homesteading! Anyway it's time I got to the point!
We're surrounded by pretty thick bush here including lots of spruce. In my research on edible plants for the homesteading site, I discover that spruce tips are edible! Yes, in Scandinavian cultures, spruce tips were used to make a traditional fermented beverage known as “spruce beer,” which was consumed for its high vitamin C content. In fact, the vitamin C in spruce is significantly higher than you will get in oranges!
So, in addition to looking forward to spring and harvesting some spruce tip for a batch of spruce beer I'm also looking forward to more research on other the other natural goodies we can harvest and enjoy!
Recent Comments
38
Lovely. I am so happy for you and your family. The life, the environment, the beautiful scenery. All so good.
Thank you for sharing.
Tim
I’ve seen spruce beer in the store. Sounds interesting, Grant! You should do well in that niche as there is a lot of interest in the homesteading lifestyle. Thanks for sharing some of your adventures.
Susan
Hey Susan! Thanks for commenting! Yes it seems like many are interested in learning more about the lifestyle which is really neat...seeing if I can build a community of like-minded individuals...
Your photos remind me of my home in Minnesota and Oregon; here is a photo of Mount Hood, about an hour from where I live in Oregon. Enjoy! We have a lot of beers here, including wine farms in Oregon.
I will be visiting Bend in a couple of weeks, I lived there for 2 years with the man I am going to visit. Maybe I will move back?
I sure did love it there.
We had moved there together from Colorado, another spectacular state if I may say so.
Between the 2 states, I have seen some of the most beautiful terrain there is, and can hardly wait to see the snow covered mountains. We do not have those here in Mesa, Arizona. I would have to drive a couple of hours to see good snow.
Stacie
Hi Stacie, I live east of Portland, so Bend is almost three hours from here. Its far from me. Yes, Bend is beautiful there. They get more snow there. Not so much where I live. If I want to see the snow, I must have a friend drive me an hour east to Mount Hood. That photo is what I took when a friend drove me there to see the Mountain up close. That was more than seven years ago. Enjoy your trip to Oregon.
We're in the northern part of the Appalachian Highlands here so some tall ridges and deep river valleys...we're just a stone's throw from the St. John River Valley which is huge...the river empties into the Bay of Fundy...
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Great post!
We have been homesteading on two acres for years, and my interest lies in websites devoted to a more natural style of living. Currently, I am redoing my backyard chickens website, but I hope to start work on my other website soon, which will be about survival prepping. It's not the extreme you hear a lot about, but more from a homesteading perspective. My interest in homesteading comes from growing up in a farming family and learning how to use the land from an early age. We may not have hundreds of acres but we know how to homestead in small spaces.
That is awesome Nancy...we're going to add chickens sometime over the next year or two...we're not extreme here either...not 'off grid' we still have electricity and internet. We created three raised gardens at the end of the summer so really looking forward to this season's planting...mother earth yields a lot out of small spaces ..yes indeed!