Living naturally... or trying to

Our life is crazy. I think we have mentioned this before. Some people think we make things harder on ourselves by doing so much by hand and from scratch. But we know the benefits of doing that. We try to treat illness and injury naturally. The food we eat tastes so good because we take the time to season it with fresh herbs. Our garden takes time to manage but the food and herbs that come from that save us money at the store and taste like different food. After eating home grown food the stuff bought at the grocery store tastes like cardboard.
We have been asked where we get all our information and our knowledge. That is a hard question to answer. Our cooking knowledge comes from many hours in the kitchen and experimenting with different herbs and spices. Some of it has been handed down through the family. Our health knowledge comes largely from the same sources. Although research from various sources has been done. Not that we could site any sources at this point. The biggest part of it is from folk lore, something we have learned not to discount. Old wives tales usually have some basis. Its just a matter of sifting fact from fiction.
One of our go to herbs is ginger. There are so many uses for ginger that its hard to narrow down what to use it for. We put it in most of our cooking because its good for the whole digestive system. Then there is garlic, natures antibiotic. We put that in a lot of our cooking too. Those go on and on. The herbs and spice that we use to season dishes usually have a purpose other than seasoning.
We also use some of them separately just for healing. Comfry is the one that comes to mind for that. Its best not to ingest comfry. But a poultice or salve of comfry works wonders for broken bones and strained muscles.

holiday specials

We have been so busy!  This is the season for local craft fairs and that is keeping us on our toes. But it is also lots of fun because we get to find out what kinds of things people want and what we can do to make more items that sell better. Last year Lisa made some pumpkin bags and we sold all 4 in one day last month (while taking orders for 2 others, that were a little different) so we started talking about different types of bags we could make.  2 are loosely based on a pattern, those are the pumpkin and monster, the snowman was a request and the cat was an idea we had.  And we are working on the design of a turkey bag this week, and a bunny one for spring Easter/ ostara baskets.
Here are some pictures of the bags. The cat bag has reflective yarn for the eyes. A touch we want to work into all the bags for Halloween safety by next year.