Category — Gardening

I just wanted to give everyone a head’s up. If your looking for a gift that’s green, fun and teaches edible and medicinal plants you should check out this great board game. Wildcraft! includes a 20×20 inch game board, instructions, 4 player pieces, 52 plant cards, 52 trouble cards, 25 cooperative cards, and a spinner. It also comes with a downloadable story to enhance the story of the game.

Learn while you play with the Wildcraft board game.

Winner of Dr. Toy’s Best Green Product of 2009 and Mothering Magazine Best Natural Toys of 2008, Wildcraft! is

• Made in the U.S.A.

• Box/board made with 100% recycled chipboard.

• Printed with vegetable oil based inks.

• Water based coating on paper, no varnish.

• Forest Stewardship Council certified paper.

• All material is 100% recyclable

Wildcraft! is a great introduction to the world of edible and medicinal herbs for children of ALL ages.

They’re also giving away SEVEN highly prized bonus items.

* Bonus 1: Herbal Remedies for the Cold & Flu Season (PDF)

* Bonus 2: The Dandelion Activity eBook (PDF)

This 20 page children’s activity book is a nice
companion to the Wildcraft game.

* Bonus 3: Kids, Herbs and Health 90 minute mp3 Audio! (mp3)

A wonderful 90 minnute audio eClass on using herbs safe and
effectively with kids. Includes PDF transcript.

* Bonus 4: Herbal Medicine Chart

This 10 inch by 10 inch medicine cabinet sized chart is
from the Home Remedy Secrets Video eBook. It is located inside
the game box.

* Bonus 5: Herbal Roots Zine: Full Issue! (pdf)

This amazing magazine has over 20 pages of information,
games, activities, and recipes for the herb Calendula. Calendula
is an herb featured in Wildcraft. A great opportunity to learn
more about this easy to grow and versatile herb.

* Bonus 6: Herbal Gifts eBook  (pdf)

A 14 page eBook with many herbal gift ideas including, sachets,
herbal eye pillows, facial scrubs, oils, bee pollen candy, honey,
syrup, chai and more!

* Bonus 7: Understanding H1N1 and our Remedies from Nature (mp3)

This informative special edition HerbMentor Radio episode
covers h1n1, herbal prevention, and natural treatments.

That’s nearly $140 worth of goodies …and you get it all FREE
when you order Wildcraft at $19.99, nearly 50% off.

Learn while you play with the Wildcraft board game.

Curious about something? These are actual questions I get through comments and site searches. Some can be pretty strange. If you have a question or an answer just send it through the comment section of the Questions and Answers for Simple Living page or any post page.

Critter Queries

Q. How old are chickens when they go broody?

Q. Can I keep chickens in the garden?

Q. How long should my runner duck sit on her eggs?

Q. How old are Indian Runner ducks when they lay eggs?

Home and Health

Q. Can i put straight apple cider vinegar (ACV) in my ear?

Q. Can I leave ACV in my hair?

Q. Do the voices in my head bother you?

Learn and help us and others learn about homesteading, farming, gardening, critters and living the simple life. Post your question or answer today.

For a long time I’ve been wanting to start a strawberry patch. Finally, last spring we bought some plants from the county 4H. We prepared a bed down by the creek. Adding compost to the soil we planted them in hills. To keep the chickens out we built a primitive fence around the strawberry patch using sticks and twigs we gathered from the woods (this spring we rebuilt it using bamboo). Then we waited…

We waited for Spring to come around again, anticipating the ripening of our first Strawberries. We have been watching the strawberries flower and then develop little green berries for about a month now. Well, yesterday was the day. I went down to the garden and peered over the strawberry fence. There they were, nice plump red berries!

I was tempted to pluck one off and eat it right then and there. But this was a special occasion. I wanted to get some photos of them before I picked them. I had to wait a little while longer because Charley had gone to town and had taken the camera with him.

Finally, after supper, I took my photos and then picked 7 beautiful, red, ripe organically grown Strawberries. I enjoyed my 3 1/2 berries with a bowl of my home made cereal with a few dolops of vanilla yogurt and a little milk. Ummm Ummm Good!

I can’t wait to make pies, shortcake and ice cream with the strawberries we harvest. But, I need to remember to put some away for those winter time treats.

It’s very satisfying to know that the things we do here at the River Rest takes us one step closer to being self sufficient. Looking back, I see that we have come a long way. But we still have a long way to go.

There’s alot going on here at The RiverRest this spring. We’ve been busy getting the garden ready, preparing the soil and starting transplants. It seems like every year it gets bigger.

We had to find ways to keep the chickens out of the garden. All of the Bamboo that Charley and Tony cut and hauled here really came in handy. We used it to build a fence around the main garden and the Potato Patch. So Far So Good. We’ll be publishing our stick fence building experiences as soon as we get around to writing it. In the meantime, here’s some photos of our new bamboo fences.

Last year we built a primitive stick fence around the new Strawberry Patch. We used sticks, limbs and twigs from the woods. It lasted the Winter but was in need of some repairs so we decided to try something new with the bamboo.

Probably the most exciting thing to happen is with the chickens. Red, one of our hens, went broody. She started sitting on a few eggs so we jumped at the chance to let her hatch them.

I’ve got many things I want to tell you all about. Like about how our dog Pearl has become an egg retriever, making Dandelion Jelly and what to do with KnotWeed. So, please bear with me. I’ll get around tuit, soon, I promise!

Last year being our first to have chickens, we never really had a need to fence in our garden. Our chickens free range during the day. When we first got them they didn’t venture to far from the coop. They slowly widened their horizons, so to speak, and found the garden. By that time most of the plants were mature enough to withstand their scratching around in the dirt, though they took their toll on the more delicate plants. They really loved the potato patch.

“Chickens in the Garden!” became a common cry as one of us ran down to chase them out. It soon became apparent that we needed to find a way to keep them out. After a little research we learned that buying fencing material was going to cost a lot more than we could afford. But we were getting ready to plant strawberries and did not want the plants ruined.

In our efforts to be self sufficient we try to use resources that we already have on hand. So, looking around us, we realized that we have 30 acres of fencing material right here!

Weaving a Stick Fence

Charley and Tony gathered up the materials we needed. One Sunday afternoon the three of us went down to the strawberry patch an build a fence. Actually, we wove a fence.

Taking trees & limbs about 3 inches in diameter we build a frame consisting of 3 limbs for the uprights and 3 horizontal limbs to weave the smaller twigs through.

We had an assembly line process. Charley cut the limbs and twigs to size, I assembled the frames, Tony arranged the frames around the strawberry patch and began the weaving. As we got them ready, we tied the frames together end to end. When we had all the frames we needed in place, Charley and I joined Tony in the weaving.

For the weaving we used twigs about 1 inch to make smaller uprights. Using smaller twigs we filled in the gaps. The weaving works best with green, bendable twigs.

The result was a functional, affordable fence. It was rustic looking, but that’s what we like. It really cost us nothing but time and with a little tweaking has worked very well.

If you are thinking of trying this, I do recommend that you weave it pretty tight. Chickens can get through gaps you never thought they could. Test your fence. If you can move a twig, so can a chicken. Charley just recently wove some bamboo twigs in to make it a much tighter fence.

This ideas can be expanded into other parts of your garden. You can weave stick trellises, plant beans or other viney plants can climb over them & use them for support.

We plan to use the bamboo that Charley and Tony harvested at a neighbors property to fence in the larger garden. I’ll be posting on that at a later date.

Update: Below is a photo of the bamboo fence we built to replace the stick fence around the strawberry patch.