Here on the farm, most blackberries get processed into jam or flat frozen and saved for later use. However, baking with fresh blackberries is a joy and each year I come up with new recipes to try. This year my obsession has been Gluten-free Farmhouse Blackberry Muffins. These delicious muffins are gluten-free and easily made casein-free. They are made with softened oats and feature an oat strudel topping. Enjoy!

If you desire to go straight to printable recipe, click here. There is a typo in the recipe, and it says the recipe makes 36 cookies. Please excuse that and I will remedy that at a later date. It makes 12 muffins.

Oat Strudel Topping Ingredients:

• 1/4 cup melted butter or ghee

• 1/4 cup certified gluten-free rolled oats

• 1/4 cup coconut sugar or dark brown sugar

• 1/8 tsp. ground cloves

Muffin Ingredients:

• 1 1/4 cup milk

• 1 cup certified gluten-free rolled oats

• 1 cup gluten-free all-purpose flour blend

• 2 tsp. baking powder

• 1 tsp. cinnamon

• 1/2 tsp. baking soda

• 1/2 tsp. salt

• 3/4 cup granulated sugar

• 2 eggs

• 1/4 cup melted butter or ghee

• 2 Tbsp. maple syrup

• 1 tsp. vanilla extract

• 1 cup blackberries (thawed and drained if using frozen)

Step One: Make Strudel Topping

To make the oat strudel topping, melt the butter in a pan on the stove over low. (Mossygoat Farm is microwave free so we will always have stove top instructions). Add the oats, coconut sugar or brown sugar, and the ground cloves. Stir to combine and set aside in a cool place or refrigerate until needed.

Step Two: Soak Oats in Milk

In a small bowl, combine oats and milk and let sit at room temperature for 20 minutes.

Step Three: Mix Muffin Batter

Preheat Oven to 400℉

In large bowl, combine gluten-free flour blend, baking powder, cinnamon, baking soda, and salt. In a small bowl, cream together the melted butter or ghee, sugar, eggs, maple syrup, and vanilla. Add the egg mixture and the soaked oats to the flour mixture and stir to combine. Gently fold in blackberries.

Step Four: Prepare Muffin Cups

Prepare 12 muffin cups and divide batter evenly. Sprinkle with topping.

Step Five: Bake and Enjoy

Bake muffins at 400℉ for 20-24 minutes or until toothpick inserted in middle comes out clean. Remove from oven and cool for 15 minutes, remove muffins from pan and finish cooling on a wire rack.

Substitutions and Recipe Notes:

• Any brand or homemade gluten-free all-purpose flour blend will work for this recipe. Do not substitute coconut or almond flour. If the gluten-free all-purpose flour does not include xanthan gum, add 1 teaspoon.

• Raw goat milk was used in the muffins above, but any milk or non-dairy milk substitute will have similar results.

• Butter and ghee are preferred for the recipe because of their natural buttery taste. However, melted coconut oil or melted margarine can be used for the topping and melted coconut oil, margarine, or vegetable oil can be substituted for the muffins.

Mossygoat Farm & Wild Wisdom Wool Home

Originally published 1/9/2022

In our picture-perfect Instagram and Pinterest led lives we are bombarded with perfect images. People are less prone to show their first attempts and their many tries. The internet helps with this societal problem of feeling that we have to be an expert in everything.

Our culture is a culture of extremes. We have cupcakes frosted so well they look like books, or hamburgers, or fish. We have gymnasts who fall into the splits and instantly pop back up on their feet. We have horses that do high school movements at liberty. Amazing feats performed by talented people. We see these examples of par excellence thrown at us daily in the media. Some of them are great ideals to hold ourselves up to but we must look at the finer details. There is a process to get to these amazing feats. They are not accomplished instantly or on the first time.

In our fake media world of perfection, I am left wondering: What happened to real? What happened to realistic expectations? I started this blog partially to help fellow homesteaders have real life expectations on what to expect with this lifestyle. The simple life is not an easy life and expecting perfection from yourself will only make it harder.

I am a farmer and a lay baker. I do not professionally decorate cakes and honestly, I have no idea how to properly decorate a cake. I have never made a geode cake before, much less a geode ice cream cake. I am showing you my first attempt. This cake is also mostly frosted by a 15 year-old boy for his birthday. There is a lot of love in this cake and represents a day of fun in the kitchen I shared with my son. I am astounded at the result.

Before I continue with the tutorial, I want to add that I personally do not recommend making a geode cake from an ice cream cake. The geode part of the cake takes time to decorate, and this time only caused the ice cream layer to melt. The cake was taken out of the freezer for ten minute increments only to have to be put back into the freezer again. However, it can be done. It requires patience and a sense of humor.

How to Make a Geode Ice Cream Cake: First Step, Bake Your Cake

Because this is a geode ice cream cake, the cake will be frozen. Frozen cakes naturally condense and become denser during the freezing process. I suggest you use a very light and airy cake recipe if you want a more cake like texture in the end. For this cake, a vegan gluten-free chocolate cake recipe was used. It is rich chocolate cake, and it created an almost fudge like texture and taste when frozen.

Grease the bottom of two cake pans. Cut out parchment paper to fit the bottom of your cake pans and grease again.

Make a double batch of the cake recipe you are using and fill the cake pans evenly.

Bake your cakes as directed. Cool for 15 minutes before removing them from the pan to finish cooling on a wire rack. After 2 or 3 hours of cooling, cover your cakes and place in the freezer overnight. If you stack your cakes in the freezer to save room, be sure to separate them with a layer of parchment paper.

How to Make the Ice Cream Layer

The ice cream layer is best made in a spring form pan of the same size of your cake pan. Dairy-free ice cream will work just as well as cow or goat milk ice cream. Do not use soft serve. I used one half gallon, or two quarts, for this ice cream layer. You can use more or less depending on the size of your pan and how deep you want the ice cream layer to be.

Let the ice cream soften on the countertop at room temperature for 10-15 minutes. Line the bottom of the springform pan with parchment paper. When the ice cream is thick enough to spread, but not liquid, transfer it to the springform pan. Spread the ice cream to the edges and smooth the top. Place in freezer overnight to refreeze.

How to Make Amethyst Candy

This cake is made using homemade hard candy instead of rock candy. I do not live anywhere near a store that sells rock candy. I think my homemade amethyst hard candy was an excellent substitute. It also gave way to crystals that were more varied in size and shape than store bought rock candy.

In nature, all geodes are different and are filled with many different rocks and minerals. This particular geode cake ended up being filled with amethyst. Geodes can contain quartz and other clear crystals as well as jasper, agate, and chalcedony. If you want to get behind the chemistry of rocks, all of those minerals are related and are basically some form Silicon Dioxide, or SiO2.

I initially wanted to imitate a botryoidal chalcedony geode. Botryoidal is such a fun word. It simply means bubble like. Here is an excellent example of botryoidal chalcedony from Adventure Boy’s collection.

I could not devise a way to freeze the candy bubbles without them flattening. I settled on amethyst. Although this was an imperfect geode cake, it was important that the geology of the cake be correct. Notice that the cake is chocolate cake. This is because chocolate is brown and the dirt the rock is in is brown. The geode cakes we viewed on google images for inspiration all featured a gold border. Although this creates a visually stunning cake, most geodes do not have a gold border around the minerals. Below is an amethyst geode from Adventure Boy’s collection.

Here is a full tutorial and recipe for making homemade amethyst hard sugar candy for geode cakes. No matter what hard candy recipe you use, be sure to line your pans with aluminum foil and lightly grease the foil. I used a 11” x 7” baking dish to get larger crystal sizes. A 13” X 9” baking dish would be acceptable as well.

Remove your amethyst candy from the foil. Lightly hit it with a mallet to break it apart in pieces. Place the pieces in a ziplock bag and hit with a mallet again until you get the size of amethyst you would like.

Sort the Amethyst pieces by size to be sure to get the perfect mixture of large and tiny crystals.

How to Assemble the Ice Cream Cake:

Now it is time to assemble your ice cream cake.

To assemble your cake place one cake layer so the flat part (bottom) of the cake is facing up. This creates a nice flat surface for the ice cream to sit on. Frost this layer to 1” from the edge. Remove your ice cream from the spring form pan. Place your ice cream on top of the frosting.

Frost the top side of the second layer of cake before adding it. This top side will actually be placed upside down on the ice cream layer. This makes a cake easier to frost smooth because the smooth side will be facing up although that comes down to preference.

From the top of the cake down you will have: cake, frosting, ice cream, frosting, cake.

Creating the Geode and Frosting the Ice Cream Geode Cake

Many geode cakes have the geode opening on the side of the cake. This birthday cake is not very tall. It only has two cake layers and one ice cream layer. The geode opening needed to be on the top of the cake. We will temporarily ignore the geology fact that geodes are round. After much discussion in the household, it was determined that digging a hole in the middle of the cake would look weird even if it was more accurate. A jagged line was cut from the first cake layer and ice cream was scooped out. In hindsight we would have made this opening even more jagged because the frosting and amethyst crystals smoothed the details out.

After cutting your geode open, return the cake to the freezer for a minimum of half an hour. If at any point you find your ice cream is getting soft and “squishing” out the sides simply scrape the sides clean and return your cake the freezer.

Your whole cake now needs to be frosted, including in the geode crack. It is the frosting that holds the amethyst crystals in place. After frosting your whole cake, return the cake to the freezer for 15 minutes to firm up your ice cream. You do not want to freeze the frosting fully because your amethyst crystals will not stick.

After 15 minutes in the freezer, it’s time to decorate the geode! This geode has a light purple rock layer surrounding the crystals.

When your cake in finished place it in the freezer for at least 2-4 hours to finish freezing everything. Remove from the freezer 15 minutes before serving. The ultimate irony is that in the end, after trying to keep the cake frozen while decorating, you need it thaw slightly before cutting.

Yes, I am actually publicly showing this geode cake.

How do you embrace imperfection? By doing it and sharing your results with others to encourage them to do it too. Is this a perfect cake? Oh my gosh, no. Did both of us learn something about cake decorating? Yes! I want to encourage you to try. Even if your cake is imperfect, there is love in it. Birthdays do not need perfect, they need love.

Thank you for reading and please subscribe for more feral farm advice or consider buying me a cup of coffee or making a purchase from Wild Wisdom Wool if you further want to support quietly wild. Thank you, I truly appreciate you being here.

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Wild Wisdom Wool

This could be the part of the story where I mention the dashboard calendar of his lackey with the naked wife photos, or when Roy took over two hours to fail load a bull in a trailer, swearing and telling dirty jokes the whole time and then I came along and had the bull loaded by myself in 15 minutes. But this isn’t about Roy stories (everyone in my town has them), this is about homesteading with nature. This is the story of how I got our first cows. Molly Moo, a Dutch Belted, had an Angus cross heifer and there was some disagreement with the owning parties on if the Dutch Belted group owned the heifer or if the Angus group owned it. The solution to the problem was to not pay us rent but instead pay us with cows and quite honestly, I was perfectly happy with that decision. We had cows! The worth of the cows was well above the agreed upon rental price and was something I had envisioned for our property but didn’t feel like I could afford it at the time.

But here is the thing: I love cows! I love cow kisses and cow love and everything cow, but my property doesn’t love cows.

Mossygoat Farm is located in the Pacific Wet West in the foothills of the Coastal Mountains. We are less than 10 miles, as the crow flies, from Laurel Mountain, which set a rainfall record in 1996 for the highest annual rainfall in the continental U.S. when it received 204 inches of rain.

One of the first things I learned about owning cows is that they ruin my pastures. One winter while owning Molly Moo we received over 100” of rain. Molly Moo was a smaller cow, weighing in at about 800 pounds, but she carried high environmental destruction. I don’t have a barn large enough to over-winter cows, sheep, and horses so the cows stayed in the field with natural shelter. The area around the eating stanchion became what I call mud-soup, and you can see it in the above photo.

This was a cattle farm in the 1960’s and 70’s when a judge and gubernatorial candidate lived here. His daughter visited us one day and told the story of how her dad would get so mad at the mud that he would just pour random patches of concrete to help combat it. I can confirm that yes, we do indeed have random squares of concrete.

I noticed that my 3 horses had less of an environmental impact than 2 cows. I also noticed that the parts of my property with sheep did not show winter pasture damage.

When I sent the last of my cattle to freezer camp it took 3 years for the land to recover. In the history of this property before us, it also was a sheep farm in the 80’s and 90’s. I am somewhat convinced that the property itself wants sheep and it took about 5 years of living here to figure that out.

Living with nature extends to plants as well as animals. Learning what the land wants can take some time and I can’t tell you how many trees and plants I have unsuccessfully planted, even native ones, to learn this lesson. I am not prone to putting large amounts of foreign inputs into my garden or orchard. I will add wool pellets and homemade compost and call it a day. I could fight what the land wants and plant eggplant and peppers and add more inputs or I just could be happy with what is easy to grow here, on the Mossygoat soil. I will never have a peach tree, but plums and old variety apple trees thrive with no intervention. Squash are successful but tomatoes are iffy. I have learned to figure out what environment a vegetable is native to and if it matches mine, then it may be successful. A vegetable may grow in my USDA zone but that is a temperature-based zone and has no bearing on the actual growing conditions.

I focus on native plants, but I swear my property has rejected native plants as well. I have a row of evergreen huckleberries that have not grown more than a few inches in the 10 years I have had them. I have added natural inputs to make the soil more acidic, I have made sure they have the proper sun/shade ratio, and have chosen to both water them and not water them. No matter what I do I cannot make these evergreen huckleberries grow! The resident deer may be involved in this but that’s a different story.

When you start living with nature and tending the land you begin to notice what the land wants, and you stop fighting nature.

If you want chickens on your homestead, make sure you are getting breeds that match your environment. A hardy Buff Orpington may not be the fanciest looking chicken around but is well suited for cold. Emus may sound like a great money making venture but if you live in Montana, I would think twice because the environment emus thrive in is vastly different. Yes, you can theoretically grow olives in my area, but I would focus on filberts instead unless you have the financial capital to lose an entire olive orchard.

Learning to work with nature, instead of trying to force nature to do something it is not designed to in your area, should be the default path to follow but I am constantly amazed at how many people do not follow this simple advice.

Thank you for reading and please subscribe for more feral farm advice or consider buying me a cup of coffee or making a purchase from Wild Wisdom Wool. Thank you, I appreciate you being here.

Wild Wisdom Wool

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Tractors are a farm item that many people feel they can’t live without, but tractors often come with debt. Horse farming is often advertised as an alternative to expensive tractors but as someone who initially set up her farm for horsepower and who is well familiar with the cost of owning horses, I will say firmly that they are not less expensive, they just don’t use gas.

Mossygoat Farm is run entirely with the cheapest tractor with a front loader and a backhoe that we could buy at the time, a John Deere 1025R. The salesperson literally guffawed at us when we mentioned both that tractor and horse farming because real farmers buy real tractors (you know, the ones that require a farmer to go $200,000 or more in debt setting the farmer up to having to farm to pay for debt).

The problem with a small tractor is that it lacks the horsepower (pun intended) to run a small baler. Or maybe the industry hasn’t come up with a baler that can be run with a small tractor. Also, balers are expensive! The consumer market is slowly catching up to the reality of small farmers and walk behind balers are becoming more available. I dream of this. But in the meantime, we store our hay loose, something that has been done for millennia and is still done in many parts of the world.

This week I saw an Instagram reel about someone who cut green grass, bunched it up, tied it up, and called it hay. This is not how you make hay and a person who does that is setting themselves up for sick or dead animals. It’s time that I republish an article I wrote in 2023 in hopes that any aspiring homesteading or small farm hay makers will see the proper process, and not what is outlined by hustling homesteaders trying to make quick buck off of video content.

Foraging for Hay

We have a little secret to share with you today. The secret is that you can fill your hay barn without buying $50,000+ of specialized equipment to bale hay. In fact, all you need is grass, a little ingenuity, and ability to perform some labor intensive but very satisfying work. Hay is dried cut grass. It really is that simple and with hay prices being at an all-time high, foraging for hay may be a viable economic solution for many small-scale farmers and homesteaders on a tight budget.

Mossygoat Farm has a hay backstory. We were fortunate to purchase our wildstead in 2015. That summer we were cutting grass in the fields and leaving it on the ground, and at the same time buying baled hay for our critters. This continued for too many years to admit. Even a seasoned forager sometimes takes a while to figure it out. On day one, we knew that we had acres of hay, but we never connected the dots on how to get our field’s bounty into our hay barn without a big tractor and implements. Years into life on our wildstead, the “aha moment” had finally arrived, we connected the dots and came up with a hay foraging plan.

Our push mower was a mulcher model, so we knew that would give us clippings and not hay. When push comes to shove, dried mulch mower clippings are still hay. We gave our riding mower a go at it on the field grasses. The results were mixed, but the riding mower worked for cutting hay. At Mossygoat Farm we also are very fortunate to have a subcompact tractor (John Deere 1025R) with a brush hog attachment, and we gave that a go. Both a brush hog and a riding mower will cut grass into smaller segments than using haying equipment or cutting by hand. The length of the cut grasses is still very acceptable as livestock hay. In fact, senior horses with poor teeth may actually appreciate the shorter length because it is less to chew.

Hay Foraging Steps

Turning dry grass to stored hay is pretty straightforward. This is how we forage hay at Mossygoat Farm:

• Day one: Cut hay.

• Day two: Flip hay. Check moisture, this step may also extend to day three.

• Day three: Harvest hay. Again, check moisture after any morning dew has evaporated.

• Day four: Store hay. Good day to start the process all over again.

Before you forage for hay, make sure that the grass you plan on cutting is safe for animals. While the grass cut for hay does not have to be completely weed free, it does have to free of all poisonous plants. Walk the fields to become familiar with the different species of plants growing amongst the grasses. Lawns are a great hay resource as well but only harvest lawns that use no chemicals and familiarize yourself with the endophytes that could be present in lawn grass on the fescue. Pregnant mares especially cannot eat endophytes without risking severe pregnancy complications.

Hay is cut anytime from Spring to Fall. The grass height should be 15-18” minimum before you cut. and you need a week of dry weather over 70 degrees. Wetter climates or areas with irrigation will get more cuttings than dry areas. If a field is particularly wet, wait for it to fully dry out before cutting. There are parts of our fields that we do use a riding lawnmower for, set at 4” height, but use the tractor/ brush hog for the bulk of the hay cutting.

A common practice in many areas of the Western United States is to only cut hay once a year. If you plan on one cutting, to maximize the amount of both hay and nutrition, plan to cut after the seed head has formed but before the hay is dried out. Foraging for hay after the grass is dry for the year is still acceptable but the hay will have lower protein and nutrients. Low protein hay can still be fed to all livestock, but supplements and lick tubs should be used in conjunction.

If you are unsure when to first cut hay, pay attention to when your local hay farmers cut. Even if the process of foraging for hay is slightly different, the timing is usually the same.

Day One: Cut Hay

The first step in foraging for hay is to cut the grass. If you don’t have a tractor for this, you can use a sickle, scythe, or a riding lawnmower with no bag attachment. Push mowers tend to mulch the grass. Also think about the prevailing winds for your cutting path. You want the wind to be your ally when flipping your hay.

If you use a riding lawnmower with a side discharge, then you need to make sure that the cut grass is being dried on a cut area and not on long, uncut grass. The dew and moisture on uncut grass will not allow the cut grass to dry and it may possibly mold. Foraging hay is work, strategize your mower cutting and minimize your labor where you can.

When cutting, flipping, and gathering acres of hay, focus on small areas and not the whole field. Cut the area of grass that you can realistically manage to rake and gather in a day. The possibility of rain is always a consideration for anyone who cuts their hay. The hand foraging method, as described, has some time consuming and labor-intensive steps to keep in mind.

Day Two: Flip Hay

The cut grass exposed to the sun will dry quickly in warm weather, but the side facing the ground will be slower to dry and be exposed to the dew. On day two of hay making, flip the hay so that the ground side faces up. Again, nothing fancy is needed except hard but satisfying work. Although you can purchase a specialized rake for this, a classic leaf rake works fantastic. Go along your cut rows and flip the hay over with your rake. Trust your instincts here. Assess moisture, you may want to flip again and allow hay to dry for about another day. At Mossygoat Farm our foraged hay is not baled. If you own or build a manual baler, a moisture meter is highly recommended for testing your hay prior to harvesting.

Day Three: Harvest Hay

Now it’s time to gather your hay for storage. Before you do so, make sure that it is ready. Allow the morning dew to dry before this process. Pick a handful of hay up and twist or bend the stalks. If it is dry and crisp, it is ready. If the hay easily bends or seems wet, then flip it again and let it dry another day or two until it is crisp. Be cognizant that some areas may be wetter or drier than others.

Do not gather and store wet hay as it will mold and may potentially cause your hay pile to spontaneously combust. The same is true with baling wet hay. Loose hay has more of a latitude with the moisture levels because more air circulates around loose hay than it does baled hay, however, moisture content is still of utmost importance.

Use what you have to transport your hay to the barn. Load your truck, trailer, or tarp and move hay from the field to the barn. Look around and pick the most economical (both time and dollars) solution for you. Space permitting, your hay, when brought to the barn should be spread out to a degree to guarantee only dry hay is stored.

Day Four: Storing Loose Hay

Before you remove your hay from the field, there are a few things to keep in mind for winter storage. If you have a dirt or concrete floor storage area, keep your hay elevated, because bare ground, even in enclosed barns, often has moisture that can ruin hay. The cheapest way to do this is to lay down a single layer of economy tarps then line the floor with pallets. Ask around because some used, but 100% fully intact, pallets can be picked up for free at many farm and feed stores. Pallets will, floods notwithstanding, keep your hay dry and safely away from ground moisture.

One of the limitations with storing loose hay is that it takes up more room than baled hay. If your hay barn has three walls you can stomp compress your loose hay pretty well. The way our hay storage area was arranged, we had to make a third wall from “free” pallets to hold the hay pile in place better. After you pile your hay in your covered storage area, you can watch young ones have fun when you let them jump on the hay to compress it down. Truthfully, it’s kind of fun to do it yourself too. Don’t be deflated when your 8-foot-high pile of hay suddenly turns to a four-foot pile of hay when stomped.

And that’s pretty much it. This method takes more time and more muscle but significantly less money. Have fun foraging. If you don’t have enough land to forage your own hay, think outside the box. There may be someone in your community that has a chemical free and physically harvestable grass field that they will let you “clean up”.

Happy foraging!

To further support quietly wild and my quest to teach the art of homemade living, please consider buying me a coffee or making a purchase at Wild Wisdom Wool. All support is appreciated. Thank you for being here and reading. ❤️

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The Wild Wisdom of Sheep

Most people don’t think of domestic sheep as having wild wisdom, they are domestic after all. In fact, sheep were one of the first domesticated animals and we have been using their milk, meat, and wool for over 10,000 years. Also, sheep are not known for their great intelligence so some people may have a hard time believing that they carry any wisdom at all, much less wild wisdom. But deeply ingrained in their sheepishness is the ability to deal with water, which is wild wisdom that the world desperately needs at this current moment in time.

Maybe it’s the popularity of the TV show Yellowstone, maybe it’s the popular prairie loving homesteaders, or maybe it’s the timeless love of Laura Ingalls Wilder, but prairie living is trending on social media. The fact is, it’s pretty easy to romanticize prairie life with its wide open spaces…. and dryness. But the reality for many is that we don’t live on the prairie and there is a lot of mud and moss. Maybe that’s the point of the prairie aesthetic, there is no mud. Mud isn’t pretty and it can be quite hard to deal with when living with it on a daily basis.

Dealing with wet soil can be difficult and gardeners seem to deal with either flood or drought. Is there ever the perfect amount of water in an environment? Not really: but sheep can help. Sheep and mud go hand and hand, especially the breeds whose origin are in the marshes of England or NW Europe such as the Romney and Icelandic. However, all wool sheep have the ability to help gardeners with their overabundance (or under abundance) of water.

For as long as humans have tended sheep, wool has been used in the garden. It’s a mulch, slug repellent, and helps keep the soil from getting too hot or too cold or too wet or too dry. Using wool in the garden is a bit of rural wisdom passed down from generation to generation, and this wisdom was gained from the sheep themselves.

Their wool is what keeps sheep warm and dry in harsh environments as well as cooler in the summer. Although the sheep may not know the technical terms: wool is both hydrophobic (water-repelling) and hygroscopic (moisture-wicking). These properties in wool are seen in both wool as a garment and wool in the garden in the form of wool pellets.

Sheep have adapted through the ages to live on wet, environmentally sensitive land, as well as cold, mountainous regions which are equally, if not more, ecologically fragile. Cattle originated in the dryer environments of Turkey, Pakistan, and India. This is a very important distinction when discussing wild wisdom. Both sheep and cattle and have cloven hooves. However, the amount of pressure in pounds per square inch a sheep hoof puts on the ground is half of that or less than a cow. This becomes very important in wet and mountainous environments where heavy cow hooves can do large amounts of environmental destruction. This is of course a generalization of both sheep and cattle, and nature always provides a paradox. There are desert sheep as well as wetland cattle (Scottish Highland). In choosing a proper protein source for a given environment, several factors have to be considered, and sheep often have a lower environmental impact than cows on coastal wetlands.

Sheep have fallen out of fashion in the United States. In fact, the average American reportedly eats less than a pound of lamb and mutton a year. Wool as a textile has also fallen out of fashion. Wool yarn has been largely replaced with cheaper acrylic yarn. Acrylic is a petroleum based fiber: in essence, plastic. Wool clothes which provide natural temperature regulation and water resistance have been replaced with synthetic fibers: in essence: plastic. Wool has a historically bad reputation for being itchy and uncomfortable when in reality that itchiness is coming from the harsh chemicals used to clean the wool as well as the type of wool being used. Modern advances and breed specific use of wool have mitigated these historical problems.

Sheep and their wool carry wild wisdom and usefulness and can help be a solution in moving America into a plastic-free and more environmentally responsible direction, we just have to listen.

Thank you for reading,

The Wild Wisdom Shepherdess

To further support quietly wild and my quest to teach the art of homemade living, please consider buying me a coffee or making a purchase at Wild Wisdom Wool. All support is appreciated. Thank you for being here and reading. ❤️

Wild Wisdom Wool

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because if you listen closely

you can hear the barnacles sing

-

quietly wild

because eagles have their own magnificent call

and it’s not the one you hear

on your tv

-

quietly wild

because the puffins started

disappearing

long before any human noticed

but the earth wept

and wants us to grieve with her

-

quietly wild

because the loudest voices

of the politicians and celebrities

the influencers

and the news anchors

drown the quiet voice of nature

-

quietly wild

because the real world

is not found on your phone

and joy doesn’t come

from stranger’s likes

-

quietly wild

because there is more to life than

spreadsheets, profits, and efficiency

ask the salamanders

and the butterflies

the turtles and the damselflies

-

quietly wild

because there so much beauty

in a world seemingly gone mad

-

quietly wild

because if you can be anything

in this precious life

be real

-

quietly wild

because to be real

is to be free

-

quietly wild

- loving words written by The Wild Wisdom Shepherdess while standing in her kitchen making biscuits

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Thank you for being here

Eight Habits to Embrace to Make Homemaking Happier

Homemaking can be overwhelming and it’s not all together natural or fulfilling for everyone. To tell you the truth: it can be mind numbingly repetitive. Homemaking is an art and it needs to be learned and practiced.

I had an aha! moment one day while doing dishes. I told my husband he gets to do all the fun projects while I was stuck with dishes and cleaning, and I was jealous of him. He said, “ok, alright, you can do my projects.” He then listed everything he had planned that day. He was going to start the day with taking the bathroom drainpipe off to clean it out and that was a highlight. Fixing the electric fence was somewhere in there as well. I realized that it wasn’t that he did things that were more fun, because I definitely would rather wash dishes than clean a pipe out. I was jealous because his tasks were more varied and feature an end point. When the pipe is fixed- it’s fixed, and when the electric fence is repaired-it’s repaired. But when the dishes are done you can expect more dishes. He can stand back and look at a job well done. I get more dishes. (Yes, for the record, my children and husband both do dishes as well). I also do many of the barn chores which also are very repetitive. No matter how many times I clean a stall a day, I will always go back out to the barn to see more poop.

I vowed that day to make peace with repetition. The problem isn’t the type of work but the attitude behind the work.

Here are eight habits to embrace to make your homemaking happier and less overwhelming.

Habit 1- Fold Laundry as it comes out of the dryer.

It takes less then 10 minutes to fold a load of laundry. 15 minutes if you have to go out to the clothesline to get your laundry. But then you can use magical folding skills and fold it as it comes off the line. Don’t believe me that it takes so little time? Time yourself.

Why does this habit make for happier homemaking? If one load takes 10 minutes and you have five loads piled up to fold, then a simple short task becomes an ordeal.

I challenged myself to do this one new habit for one week. I was amazed at how much simpler and less overwhelming laundry became. I still had neatly folded piles of clothes on my folding table (pool table) waiting for other people to put away, but they were folded and waiting.

Habit 2- Make sure dishes are done before bedtime.

I never understood shining my sink before bed. However, I do make it a habit to make sure dishes are done before bed. Why? Because if I wake up to a sink full of dishes it starts my day off wrong. I have had more than one absolutely ruined day all due to waking up and seeing lots of work (dishes). I can get snapped easily into a feeling of overwhelm and dishes are one of my #1 trigger. Once the feeling of overwhelm begins it can be hard to get out of it.

Why does this habit make for happier homemaking? Dishes are never ending. If you are human- you eat, and if you eat you have dirty dishes. Starting a day off fresh helps keep a happy attitude.

Habit 3- Get dressed every day in the morning before you start your day.

No, you don’t have to wear shoes. I don’t even go out to the barn in my pajamas to feed, I always get dressed first. It makes me feel like a real person.

Don’t give up on yourself and fight the homemaker frump! Brush your hair and wash your face. Wear stylish clothes that make you feel good about yourself. Pretty aprons help too. It is easy to get in a funk when you are at home all day caring for other people. Getting dressed every day is a small way to care for yourself.

Why does this habit make for happier homemaking? It’s easy to get lost in homemaking as something you do for other people. Getting dressed and caring for yourself is something you can do for you. Small things can add up really fast when caring for yourself.

Habit 4- Don’t compare yourself to others.

Um, people, I think the above photo is actually what we expect our lives to look like. Real life is messy. Embrace the mess. Don’t compare yourself to other people.

How many times have you hopped onto Instagram and saw really super clean and lovely homes only to feel bad about your homemaking? Or how about those people who seem to do it all while you are struggling just to get out of bed in the morning. Your home is full of love no matter what it looks like. Yes, you probably could do better. I know I could do better. Are your children loved, clothed, and fed? Then you are on top of the curve.

Why does this habit make for happier homemaking? Comparing yourself to someone else serves no point. Being a homemaker and a stay-at-home mom can be lonely and it’s easy to feel like you are failing. Viewing other people’s successes can put added pressure onto yourself. That pressure doesn’t need to be there. There is no award when you die for the cleanest home. However, raising happy children is reward onto itself which gets passed down to generations.

You also don’t know the story behind the photos you see on Instagram. Maybe there is a housekeeper. Maybe just out of view of the photo is an absolute mess. Maybe they have a hoarder room. Maybe they have more support at home from extended family. Maybe it’s a lie and their life is nothing like that. Maybe they are really superhuman, with superhuman house cleaning skills. In that case just be happy for them because they will struggle elsewhere in their life.

If an Instagram account or blog makes you feel bad about your homemaking, then unfollow it. What you see online needs to inspire you, not make you feel bad. Surround yourself with people who make you feel good.

Habit 5- Do something creative and/or intellectual every day

Make it a point to be creative or to do something intellectual EVERY DAY. No, mindlessly scrolling Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok does not count here. Why does this habit make for happier homemaking? Doing at least one creative and/or intellectual thing a day keeps your brain happy and thinking when you are stuck in repetition. I enjoy logic puzzles and the word games books. I read, quilt, and sew. Writing this blog has been amazing in making my brain feel happy. I’m a fairly intellectual deep thinker in real life and I am happiest if I am using my brain. If you feel stuck in repetition and feeling like you are going mad, you should have something you can quickly pick up and do, be it a knitting project, a sewing project, or a book to read.

What podcasts can you listen to while doing dishes? What games can you play as a family? Is there a craft can you learn? Stretch your brain and practice creativity. Your brain will thank you with added happiness.

Habit 6- Have a daily rhythm.

Rhythms are not schedules. A schedule would say “Breakfast at 8:00 and do laundry at 10:00” while a rhythm will say put a load of laundry in after breakfast and put it in the dryer after lunch and fold after dinner. If you are like me, you will have to do more than a load of laundry a day, but you get the idea. Rural home management can be hard.

Rhythms don’t have to be something you do every day. I make phone calls on Monday and water my house plants on Tuesday and Friday. Having typical days that I do something ensures that I do them. I don’t always have phone calls to make on Mondays but if I do….they get done on Monday.

A rhythm is a flow of your day rather than a set time to do each item.

Why does this habit make for happier homemaking? Having a daily rhythm gives your day flow and takes away some of the anxiety of trying to figure out what to do when. You can always break your rhythm and be spontaneous but having a rhythm helps get things done.

Habit 7- Planning

I get it. Wild child here! Planning doesn’t feel very wild. I (don’t want to use the word hate) really dislike planning. However, I am the queen of what I call the Color-Coded Calendar of Craziness. Without my color-coded calendar, things wouldn’t be done on time. You might say I would be a mess of a human without my calendar.

Planning can be as simple as having a grocery list and a brain dump list of things to do or you can meal plan and chore plan and use a full planner. As a homeschooling mom, lesson planning is a MUST, even if we don’t follow the plan every day. Plans are made to be broken but without a plan I am lost.

What does this habit make for happier homemaking? Failing to plan is planning to fail. I can’t stress that enough in homemaking and homesteading. Mom brains tend to have five gazillion things going on in their brains at once and moms need to be the master of multi-tasking. Planning helps you fight overwhelm and get things done so you can enjoy the final habit to embrace to make homemaking happier.

Habit 8- Embrace the art of doing nothing.

This is the most important habit of all. Homemaking is never ending. Homesteading is never ending. There is ALWAYS something to do. I can wake up and start doing chores and do chores until bedtime. Humans need down time. Doing nothing needs to be in your rhythm of the day. I have to add something important to this habit though: Get rid of the guilt of doing nothing! Don’t feel bad about taking down time. Don’t feel like you “should” be doing something. In fact, abolish the word should out of your life. The word should just adds guilt.

Instagram, Facebook, and watching tv plays into your doing nothing time. Mindlessly scrolling can be an unhealthy habit but it also can help us just turn our “doing” brain off. Reading, crafting, and creativity count too!

Think of your days as balancing in breaths and out breaths. Your days should breathe. Active times such as gardening, outdoor play, and cooking should be followed by relaxing, computer time, or a sit down family dinner. Breathe in..breathe out…and balance your day. Your body will also tell you if you need down time. Listen to it and don’t feel guilty about taking some down time.

How to practice these habits.

I forget things if I don’t write them down. Use habit #7 to start and list what habits you want to practice. Keep this list prominent so you can see it. You can even post it on your refrigerator. Remember to take baby steps. Start one habit at once instead of eight. If you add habits in slowly you are more likely to keep them.

I hope you liked my list of eight habits to embrace to make homemaking happier. Let me know what habits you have to make your homemaking happier.

If you want to further support my work, consider buying me a coffee or making a purchase from Wild Wisdom Wool. Thank you sincerely for being here.

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Wild. It’s a word that has been with me for decades although I haven’t quite known what to make of it. All I knew was it was part of my story. The importance of story has also been with me for my life.

“There are no truths. Only stories.”
― Thomas King, Green Grass, Running Water

“you have to be careful with the stories you tell. And you have to watch out for the stories that you are told.”
― Thomas King, The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative

Since my last essay Books That I Feel I am Supposed to Love but Don’t, I have spent a lot of time with Wendell Berry trying to dissect my boredom with words that should excite me. It took quite the personal deep dive to do so. My mind can go in some deep, deep weird areas and I went so far down into existential crisis with this essay I felt like Derek Zoolander looking into a puddle and asking, “Who am I?”

I came to the conclusion that it’s not Wendell Berry, it’s me, it’s my story and being tired of being told what my story is and needing to tell my own wild story out loud.

I have sat with this essay for over a month, this is how it originally started…

Maybe the world would be a perfect place if all of us had no desires other than walking behind the plow of a horse. Maybe all the troubles of the world would magically disappear if we simply moved America backwards in time to an idyllic pastoral view of perfection that lives in one man’s head. Or maybe it’s time to recognize the problems that do bereft the world and move forwards, not backwards, to create a world in harmony with nature that everyone can enjoy. Emphasis on the word everyone.

It boils down to the fact that Wendell Berry does not speak for me. If anything, I view him as an old white boomer, the same generation who I feel great harm from and have spent most of my life healing from.

To continue the college story that I started in my last bookish essay: I dropped out of Lewis & Clark College in the spring term of my sophomore year. I told myself (and my parents) that I would return there in the fall, but the truth was that I was deeply unhappy although deeply unhappy is an understatement and I was actually drowning in a world I did not belong in. My perfect sister graduated with a chemistry degree from L&C, and it was expected that I follow in her footsteps. I really wanted to be a biology major so in order to make my father happy I became a bio-chem major instead. I had no one to mentor me, no one to protect me from burnout, only people standing there telling me I wasn’t good enough. My first year in college I took 19 credits a term and moved to 21 credits a term my sophomore year. I was surrounded by privilege and partying, and I did not understand my burnout at the time. Everyone else seemed to be there putting little effort in their college and here I was flunking organic chemistry and crying myself to sleep every night.

But what does this have to do with Wendell Berry? Read on.

We usually don’t choose our triggers; we just deal with them as they come up.

I transferred to the University of Oregon to major in environmental science. I still remember the day I told my father this news. No daughter of his was going to go to a state school (said with spitting hatred), he’s an important businessman and he has a reputation to uphold. The yelling, the demeaning, the blaming, the yelling, the humiliation: it was awful and it’s burned in my memory. I largely don’t remember my childhood, but I remember this.

In my brief time between Lewis & Clark and University of Oregon I was a waitress at a dude ranch in Yamhill, Oregon where loggers came in twice a day to eat. One of the most striking things about this was I learned that they consider themselves environmentalists and they took pride in working outside.

What? I was the environmentalist, how could these dirty guys in their corks and cut off hems consider themselves environmentalists when they cut down trees for a living? But these people were real and treated me like a human, something I did not get from the fake business world of my father. I grew accustomed to the loggers. I didn’t agree with everything they said, but they were real and their lives were tied to the land that they truly loved.

Wendell Berry talks and people listen and this is born from a privilege that comes from being an old white guy who was a Harvard professor and got a Guggenheim. Yes, he is very intelligent, well educated, a poetic writer, and I probably should offer him more respect than I do. But Havard and a Guggenheim fellowship represent to me the world I desperately needed to escape. Even if Wendell Berry writes the opposite, he very much represents what tried to suffocate me. You could argue that he left that world and I will counter that the size of voice he has is because he still lives in it.

I have concluded that I don’t have to like Wendell Berry’s essays. In my head I associate him with a world that needs to die, a story that needs to stop. No argument, not even his own words, will convince me otherwise. I am ready for new voices in the back to the land, agrarian, or outdoor world. I enjoy the small voices from people who have seen hardship and talk about the negative but revel in the positive. I enjoy hearing the voice of people who have risen from abuse or struggled under abject poverty. The people who are so tied to the land they can’t leave. These are points of view that aren’t often talked about and are covered up when they don’t fit the dominate narrative.

Also, while I agree with Wendell Berry in so many things, since it’s coming from me, someone who isn’t a Harvard person, it somehow doesn’t count and my birth family likes to remind me of that fact. I have been called stupid to my face because I only have a B.S. degree and I don’t drive a BMW or am employed as a knowledge worker. If I were smart I would be a knowledge worker like all the other smart people. In the end, it isn’t about Wendell Berry or his message; it’s about me and the healing I need to do.

Yes, I have something personal against BMW drivers- I will be sure to publish the essay I wrote simply convince myself that I am an okay person even though I don’t drive a BMW.

I realize these words are my opinion about not an author but rather a set of stories that I have been sold, and I will never claim that anyone else needs to share my opinions. I don’t believe in telling other people how to think or live because we are all on our own path carrying our own stories. I carry deep distrust for people who say, “this is how it is” or “this is how it should be,” full stop. All I am going to say is, “this is how it is for me and maybe someone will resonate with these words.”

FWIW, in my prior essay I also talked about how I found Braiding Sweetgrass fundamentally unreadable. I was happily surprised to see a whole r/unpopular opinion thread titled “Braiding Sweetgrass is a pretentious book.” Someone mentioned in that discussion that books like this can seem patronizing if you already have held that worldview for a while and have investigated the nuances. I truly think this is another reason I do not enjoy these books.

Wild Story

Wild is word that has been with me for decades although I haven’t quite known what to make of it. All I knew was it was part of my story. Slogging through my dislike of Braiding Sweetgrass or boredom with Wendell Berry, as well as a random person’s internet comment on reddit, has led me to clarity in my own life.

I am not all farming, homesteading, and sheep although to many that is what my life looks like. I run Mossygoat Farm, home to Wild Wisdom Wool.

I believe in hearth keeping and home making but who am I to tell someone else how to make a home? My house is probably dusty and cluttered although I do try to keep it clean and ordered. The internet has reduced home making to cleaning a house and cooking meals when in reality it’s far more spiritual than that. Homemaking is about finding and caring for your true self and holding space for others to do the same. But when I sit down to write about that all I can come up with is house cleaning.

I believe in wild, open spaces. I make yearly pilgrimages to these spaces as this is where I feel most alive. However, my life is also grounded in the practicalities of life at Mossygoat Farm, a piece of land I have been called upon to care for. In the pandemic madness we almost did sell the farm to move to a house for sale in Diamond, Oregon- population 5 (it actually has 80 people if you consider everyone who has the Diamond zip code).

But while I love the high desert of Oregon, I also don’t know how I would live without the coast. Mossygoat Farm is about 25 miles inland and even that seems too far sometimes.

I am human and multi-faceted like the rest of us. This Substack is my wild story that I am sharing with the rest of you in case you find inspiration in any of my words.

Welcome to those on The Wild Path trying to find their own wild story. Subscribe to join in my story and if the words inspire you please consider buying me a cup of coffee. Thank you.

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FWIW, I spoke out against MY college experience. I want to say that I am in no way anti-college. I was saddened to read on Substack a few weeks ago farmers that were saying no kid should go to college, even the ones interested in careers that require college degrees because there are other similar jobs they can get without degrees. There is a small anti-intellectualism undercurrent in homesteading and small farming that sometimes rears its ugly head. I am the parent of an Eastern Oregon University student. Yes, a state school, and I couldn’t be prouder. Everyone is on their own path. Some paths include college, some don’t. In the end I am happy that my path included college, my path just took many turns. I have one kid on the college path and one kid not and both are acceptable.

If anything, I am a deer and not a wolf. I was told once by a shaman that my totem animal was a deer. This didn’t sit right with me initially. My sister, the perfect one in my parent’s eyes, collected stuffed and figurine deer. If anyone belonged to the deer it was her. This same shaman told me I would marry someone from Eastern European descent, a person who would share a dream with me and here I am married to someone with Czech descent, a person who I did indeed share a dream with. We actually had the same dream one night. I can’t describe the shock I felt when we woke up and discovered this fact. The shaman told me not to be friends with people who hunt deer and largely I am not. I have eaten roadkill deer twice because there is no sense in wasting good meat, and I tried to do so with as much respect as I could in case I was eating one of my own (dark, I know).

I was a freshman at Lewis & Clark College when I first read the book Women Who Run with the Wolves. The Trash Queen was my roommate and she recommended it. She was rich, beautiful, and privileged (although not really all that nice of a person) and she was the daughter of the owner of a large Southern California trash company, hence the name. The Trash Queen told me it changed her life as a woman and that it liberated her and that all women should read it. All the other privileged girls at Lewis & Clark (who really were not all that nice of people) were reading it and they talked about how life changing the book was. Really, it should have been up my alley: the wild women archetype runs deep in me. But deer are wild too, as are butterflies, caterpillars, fish, eagles, and a whole host of other animals from large to small.

I didn’t actually ever enjoy the book but so many people found the book life changing (or so they said) that I played along with the game. I thought I was supposed to be a wolf. I started collecting little wolf figurines. I got a wolf ornament for the Christmas tree. This all made sense in my 18 year old brain and it’s not until many many decades later that I understand why I didn’t like the book.

But first, here are some more books I never enjoyed.

I was at the Fort Vancouver gift shop when I picked up my now long thrown away copy of Braiding Sweetgrass. I was so excited to finally own it and read it because I heard how life changing the book was. There are those words again: life changing. World view changing even. Except I found the book fundamentally unreadable. I slogged through the first two chapters and couldn’t continue. I kept in on my shelf for a few years out of guilt because everyone else sings the praises of the book. In the end I threw it away. Yes, as in putting it in the trash and not donating it like I usually do. Please don’t judge me but throwing away that book was liberating. I also threw away my high school yearbooks recently and refuse to apologize.

I tried countless times to read Braiding Sweetgrass. I still feel guilt that I couldn’t even read it. The smattering of negative reviews on Goodreads makes me feel slightly better, but still.

Anything by Sharon Blackie is also something I am supposed to enjoy. Archetypes and myth are right up my alley, yet I find no resonance with her words. This leads me to Wendell Berry. Everyone loves Wendell Berry. I recently purchased The World-Ending Fire: The Essential Wendell Berry because I still feel like I am supposed to love him as well but as I make my way through the essays, I find them readable, but not life changing and not something I need to go back to read again and again. I am not quite slogging through the words, but they don’t bring me feeling either and I think the book is a little boring. Blasphemous words for some to read, I’m sure.

[Keep a look out for my next essay where I will delve further into why I don’t enjoy either Sharon Blackie or (and especially) Wendell Berry]

Oddly, if I became stranded on a deserted island and could have only one book to read for my entire life it would be The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, a book people tend to hate vehemently. One of my copies was given to me by a brief high school boyfriend who stole it from the Vernonia High School library. I have reread this book so often that I had to tape the entirety of the cover to keep it held together. Eventually I had to buy a new copy to read but I still have my original.

But I digress, I just wanted to show that I do love books; I promise that I really do.

I’m still struggling as to why those books stand out to me as books I never enjoyed. At almost 30 years post college I tried to reread Women Who Run With the Wolves. I made it through the first chapter when I realized I wasn’t a wolf and I read no further and donated my copy so maybe somebody who is a wolf can read it. I would love for someone to read the list of the other books and say, “Hey Kimberly, here is why those books don’t resonate with you.”

Life is too short to read bad books, including bad books that everyone else loves. I have aired my dirty book hating laundry publicly in preparation of talking about books I do love. Maybe I should also write about books I’m not supposed to love but do. I’m sure Lolitta by Nabokov would top that list. The subject matter hits closer to home than I care to admit and is….really really tough. The book shouldn’t exist but is so expertly crafted to sway the reader in favor of a monster that it is a must-read book in my opinion. Yes, even after all that has come out with the Epstein Files and maybe especially because of it.

I consider Mossygoat Farm to be a literary farmstead, and books have played a large part in who we are and what we do, just not the books I feel were supposed to shape my worldview.

Welcome wild book lovers to this space and I look forward to more book talks in the future.

-Kimberly

If you enjoy my writing and want to support Mossygoat Farm, please subscribe or consider buying me a coffee (at this point, it’s to help fix my two septic systems).

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Rumex crispus is commonly known as curly dock but it is also known as yellow dock. Don’t let the word “yellow” fool you because the seed and flour from this plant are red; it is actually only the root that is yellow. Curly dock is native to Europe and Western Asia, but it is considered to be an invasive weed in the United States.

The plant sends up stalks of dark red seeds in the late summer or early fall. The seeds will remain on the stalk until early spring, making this an excellent plant to forage when others are unavailable. You may even see the long stalks poking out of snow in the winter. It really is quite striking to view in a field.

Curly dock is a member of the buckwheat family. Buckwheat, and other members of this family, do not contain gluten despite having “wheat” in the name. In fact, neither buckwheat nor curly dock are grains, but rather they are seeds.

Foraging for Dock Seeds and Making Roasted Dock Flour

To make this recipe you will first have to forage the seeds and make your flour. When foraging you need to remember to share with the animals. We left one stalk on each plant for our animal friends, but if your goal is to eradicate curly dock by preventing seeding, then feel free to take it all.

After you have gathered your stalks, you need to separate the seeds from the stalk. Simply run your fingers down the stalk letting the seeds fall into a large bowl.

The next step is toasting the seeds- but be warned that it is very easy to burn them. Place your seeds single layer on a cookie sheet and toast for 3 minutes. I have a countertop toaster oven and used the toaster setting. I toasted my first batch for too long and they started smoking. I burned my second batch as well at toasting for four minutes. Three minutes seemed to be enough time to dry them enough to allow for easy grinding and to bring out their deep flavor.

I am just going to add another little bit of warning: dock seeds do not smell that great while being toasted or when using a grinder. Actually, they smell a little like burnt rubber. My daughter started grinding the flour in a coffee grinder, and I thought that she burnt out the motor. The motor ended up being fine, it was just the smell of the dock seeds. Do not let the smell throw you off at this stage, it has NOTHING to do with the final flavor of these roasted dock flour brownie bites.

To grind your toasted seeds, you first need to make sure they are fully cool. Grinding creates heat and if you grind a hot product you may end up with too much heat. You can use a grain mill, coffee grinder, or the dry attachment of a Vitamix or another strong blender. Remember: that smell is in no way indicative of the final product.

Making the Toasted Dock Seed Brownie Bites

Homesteading Confessions

I believe in truth in advertising: it is easy to get overwhelmed with the thought of projects such as making your dock flour from foraged seeds and baking brownies. What you see on this page, condensed into one easy to read recipe, was a project that took place during a two-month time span.

First, I had the idea that I wanted to make dock seed brownies. I was scanning Pinterest and found a post about using dock seed. It took about two weeks of wanting to harvest the dock before I finally sent my daughter out to do it for me. She loves foraging so she happily did that. I then had a large grocery bag of dock in my kitchen for probably a couple of weeks. The bag started to get in the way and finally I decided to toast the seeds. I burnt two batches. I threw out the burnt seeds and let the successfully toasted seeds cool. I placed them in a bowl, my favorite mixing bowl actually, and put them on the counter which is where they stayed until I really needed my mixing bowl. Once the flour was ground, it got stored in a cupboard for weeks until I decided to make brownie bites.

Why am I telling you this? Because I know how little time many people have. I do not want to leave anyone with the impression that I have whole days free to work on projects like this. I did little by little as I had time. If you have a day to spend only foraging, making wild dock flour and brownies then that is wonderful! I usually do not and I wanted to be very clear the amount of time that elapsed from start to finish for this project. Many of my projects are done exactly this way, step by step and day by day.

Thank you for reading and enjoy! If you find these articles helpful and would like to help contribute to Mossygoat Farm, please consider buying me a coffee (or contributing to fixing my septic).

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Even though I wrote this in May of ‘22, this is a continuation of the conversation I started last week with my article “Making Peace with the Word Homesteading”

The Wildstead Chronicles

Making Peace with the Word Homesteading

I believe it was January of 2022 that I decided I wasn’t a homesteader. I decided this while standing in the feed room of my barn getting ready to feed the goats, sheep, and horses. I’m sure I had to walk past my ducks on the way to the barn as well. You see, my ducks like to try to convince me that they are starving and demand to be fed every time I se…

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4 months ago · Kimberly

Maybe you have noticed something recently: the corporatization of homesteading. I know I have. You also can call it the rise of the homestead hustlers. Maybe they have always been there, and I am just noticing it, however, with the rise in popularity of homesteading I do think it is becoming more prevalent. I received an email in my inbox that really got me thinking about this topic and how it is a trap for many homesteaders.

The Dream

Let’s start with the email that got me thinking. Some of these famous homesteaders are selling you a dream, complete with an emotional docuseries. Selling a dream is easy. Selling a reality is not. Everyone wants to hear the fantasy that you too can be rich off the land; you too can own acres and acres of property that will yield an endless bounty. All for the low price of you buying a product they are selling. They will sell you the knowledge so you can live rich like them.

Maybe someone should start a new blog: homesteading for the working class. Or maybe, homesteading when money is perpetually tight because it all goes right back into your homestead. Homesteading for homeschool families living on a single income could be another blog name. Would you read such a blog? That is hitting closer to home for most homesteaders. There is no hustle in such titles.

That homesteader you love to follow, the one who you just paid $14.99 to tell you how to set up poultry net? They are laughing at all the way to the bank because they mastered a simple thing and sold their mastery. I am going to let you in on a little homestead secret- you too can master things and do so without paying someone $14.99. You can take that $14.99 and invest it in your own homestead, maybe even by setting aside some money to buy poultry net for you to master.

Yes, you can. I promise.

The Reality

You are not living a docuseries set to the perfect soundtrack and what you need to know about these emotional docuseries is that you are looking at the lives of people who are hiding something from you: the truth.

Take a look at some of the details. Sell eggs they say, yet they don’t sell eggs and they make their money with their online presence. Heating with wood is easy they say, as they post a video showing 8 hired men chopping wood for them. Buying property is easy they say, but they aren’t telling you they had tech money or sold a lot of expensive real estate to buy their property. Everyone should practice permaculture they say, yet they show a million-dollar property and even more millions in renovations put in. They didn’t happen to show you the stables, pool, and tennis court because it wouldn’t fit in with the narrative.

As a homesteader, a blogger, a person firmly entrenched in middle class life, married to a husband who worked hard over the years so that we could afford to live on a single income, and a farm owner. As all of the above, I want to tell you to - the dream they are selling you is not reality.

The number one thing you need to know about homesteading is: it’s hard. Let me repeat that.

HOMESTEADING IS HARD.

Paying $14.99, $99.99, or whatever amount to another homesteader to sell you a dream is not going to make it easier. Experience and time will make it easier. That money and time is best spent living your best life, not the best life someone is telling you is the best life. You also need to know that no amount of money is going to save you from making mistakes. Canning jars will break, the best of plans will go awry, and animals will die. You can’t escape that; it’s part of homesteading.

The Encouragement

We at Mossygoat Farm did it. We own income producing acreage and a homestead. We did it without large inheritances. We did it without involving ourselves in a multi-level marketing scheme such as doTERRA. We did it coming from a working and middle-class background. We did it with a single income for a family of four and we did it without social media.

YOU CAN DO IT!

But step away from the dream and focus on reality.

Yes, we did it because we dreamed. But we didn’t let other people dictate our dreams and we didn’t listen to homestead hustlers. The only way to succeed in homesteading is by doing it your way. The only way to discover your way is by doing it.

Becoming a successful homesteader takes time. You will fail along the way. You will also be successful along the way. You will have good times and bad times. That’s true of life no matter if you are a homesteader or not. But the only thing that is going to make homesteading easier and happier is experience. Enjoy your homestead journey and focus on you and your family.

Happy homesteading everyone and be on the lookout for more Monday Homestead Inspiration.

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There was a whole series of events that led to me making this decision in my barn and seeing rat poo on my barn window ledge was the proverbial nail in the coffin. I was recovering from Covid and still deep in the Covid brain fog. Livestock does not regard if you are sick or not- they have to be fed and watered and stalls have to be cleaned every day, no matter how you are feeling or what you are going through in life. I was slogging out to the barn at least six times every day in 34 degree rain. I couldn’t do my barn chores in the typical two or three times a day because I was so exhausted from Covid. And then I saw the rat poo.

What type of person has rat poo in their barn? Seriously, what kind of person am I to have rat poo in my barn?

Now the reality is, if you have a barn in the Pacific Wet West, chances are you have rat poo in your barn, and I don’t care how rich you are and how above rat poo you think you are. I live on the liminal space between forest and field and this is where the wood rats love to roam. Wood rats poo and I had a wood rat on my window ledge who did just that.

But what does rat poo have to do with homesteading?

In 2021 I started a blog for our brand new Mossygoat Farm website. At the time we were still figuring out a solid way to produce solid income for the farm, and I knew blogging could increase our SEO on our website. At this point in my life, I had never heard of homesteading. Maybe I had but I really never paid that much attention. As soon as I found out about this whole community, I felt kinship. I started blogging about homesteading and sharing recipes as well as holistic livestock and horse keeping tips. These were my people!

Except these people don’t have rat poo on the window ledges of their barn.

On that fateful Covid brain fog filled day, I was thinking about how Mossygoat Farm isn’t self-sufficient. We still go to the grocery store once a week like normal people. I barely canned anything in 2020 due to it being 2020. We were in-between having animals to slaughter so we didn’t have a freezer full of meat. And to top it all off, I had rat poo in my barn.

Clearly, I was a homesteading failure and wasn’t homesteader enough for the homesteader club.

Eventually my brain fog lessened, and I began to think clearly again but being disillusioned with the homesteading world never left me. I began seeing things that didn’t settle with me. I saw a homestead blog list minks as a North American marsupial. I read homestead horse keeping advice that was just plain wrong and misinformed. A big-name homestead Instagram influencer was talking about dry canning meat. There was so much wrong, and even downright dangerous, information coming from internet “homesteaders” that I instinctually wanted to distance myself from these people. Do not dry can meat people! Just…do not. And no, a mink is not a marsupial, the only native American marsupial is the Opossum.

I began to see the whole homesteader community as a pyramid scheme where the only way to make money homesteading is to create content about homesteading to lure other homesteaders in. I will talk about this in my next essay “Selling You Reality” which I wrote in May of ‘22 after the brain fog was fully gone. I was so curmudgeonly about homesteading, and still am, that I considered calling this newsletter The Homestead Curmudgeon.

I started calling things everything but homesteading:

Wild Wisdom

Rural Wisdom

Country Dweller

Agrarian Living

Seasonal Living

Making a Home in Nature

The list could go on, you get the point I’m sure.

And now fast forward to 2026 when even some big-name people in the community are stepping away from the word homesteading. Homesteading also has largely been politicized so if you admit to pulling weeds people assume you are standing there in your garden packing at least 3 guns and 6 knives wearing a MAGA hat.

How? How did we get here?

I bought my 20 acres because I wanted my horses with me and I was tired of boarding them. Boarding barns in this area are always so drama filled, and the horsemanship tends to be atrocious. I had no grand plans of being self-sufficient or anti-government sentiments or anything of the ilk. Initially, I just wanted to live with my horses and eleven years later, I just want to live with my horses, sheep and goats, raise meat that isn’t tainted, and produce wool pellets.

So, why am I using the word homesteading again if I am so anti-homesteader? The reason is because it’s so politicized. I live in Western Oregon, which is what I will call hyperpoliticized. Every.single.thing.is.political. Everything. And I mean everything.

An event happened at a fiber festival that shook me to my core in all the worst ways. I was not there, but I got the gist from social media and saw the fallout. The gist is that this fiber festival coincided with a No Kings Protest and some vendors were giving financial bonuses to those who participated. The fiber festival said no, please don’t do that because this is not a political fiber festival. The response of the vendors was telling the fiber festival that by not being political that you are being political and siding with a fascist regime.

This is ridiculous people. I refuse to participate. (Picture is from the movie The Darjeeling Limited and is roughly what is happening in my head as I say this)

It’s time we take homesteading back from the influencers and media who led this lifestyle so astray. It’s time we give homesteading back to the people who live with the land instead of those who live online. It’s time we start talking about what homesteading really looks like when you separate it from any politics or aesthetic. It’s time we start focusing on real factual information and not just parroting what other people have to say. It’s time we stop inventing crap (like dry-canning meat) just so it appears that you have something new or controversial to say.

Homesteading used to be called homemaking, back to the land, country living, hobby farming, subsistence farming, or a whole host of other names based on why you were living that way. Really, homesteading should just be called life. I personally chose to live my life with horses and sheep and apparently that makes me a homesteader. So be it.

If you ask me in real life if I am a homesteader, I will say no. But I think I have enough knowledge to add to the homesteading conversation to help steer it in a different direction, a human direction, and one based on the land and the animals we care for. Now, more than ever, is the perfect time to start living with the land and making a home in nature. My goal is to keep wild & rural wisdom alive in the age of technology. Most people call this homesteading. I’m finally at peace with that word. Let me say it again.

Homesteading.

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You can use fresh or dried elderberries for this homemade happy treat. Fresh elderberries are always the best, but that is not always possible. Fresh elderberries are always best but dried elderberries will work in this recipe as well. I use 1/2 cup dried elderberries, which is about 3/4 cup fresh. Use more or less according to your taste. If you are using dehydrated elderberries, you will first need to rehydrate them. Soak 1/2 cup elderberries in boiling water for a minimum of half an hour.

Gluten-free Elderberry Orange Pound Cake

Author: Kimberly Fulmer

Ingredients

Pound Cake

• 1/4 cup ghee

• 1 cup sugar

• 2 eggs

• 1 1/2 cups gluten free all-purpose flour blend

• 1/4 teaspoon salt

• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda

• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder

• 3/4 cup milk (goat milk or alternative milks are ok)

• 1 Tablespoon apple cider vinegar

• 1 teaspoon orange extract

• 1 teaspoon vanilla

• 1/2 cup dried elderberries (3/4 cup fresh)

Frosting

• 3/4 cup powdered sugar

• 1 Tablespoon lemon juice

• 1/2 teaspoon orange extract

Instructions

Pound Cake Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and generously grease a 9” x 5” loaf pan.

2. If using dried elderberries, place them in a medium bowl and cover with hot water. Let stand for 1/2 hour to rehydrate. Drain.

3. In a large mixing bowl, cream together the butter, eggs, and sugar until smooth.

4. Add 1 Tablespoon apple cider vinegar to the 3/4 cup of milk and let stand for 5 minutes.

5. Stir in the milk to your butter mixture and beat until smooth.

6. In a medium bowl, sift together the gluten free all-purpose flour blend, xanthan gum (if it is not in the blend), salt, baking powder, and baking soda.

7. Slowly stir the dry ingredients into the butter mixture. Stir in orange extract, vanilla, and drained elderberries.

8. Pour mixture into a generously greased 9” x 5” loaf pan.

9. Bake for 1 hour or until toothpick inserted into center comes out clean. Place a piece of aluminum foil loosely on top of the loaf pan after baking 1/2 way through to prevent over browning of the top.

10. Cool the pound cake in the pan on a wire rack for 10 minutes before removing it from the pan. Cool completely on a wire rack before glazing.

Glaze Instructions

1. In a medium bowl, whisk together the powdered sugar, lemon juice, and orange extract until smooth.

2. Pour over the top of the pound cake after it is completely cool, letting the glaze fall over the sides.

3. Let the frosting set up for 10 minutes before eating.

Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoy this recipe. It is one of my favorites. To support The Wildstead Chronicles and Mossygoat Farm please subscribe or consider buying me a cup of coffee (or more likely a bale of hay).

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This may be how it works for a select few, but this isn’t actually how it works for the majority of people. If you are just an average human who decides to spend 10 minutes in the forest, more than likely your mind will revolt on you. Did you turn the oven off before you left? Did you pay that bill that was due yesterday? What did the tone of voice of your coworker mean? Did you do something wrong? What’s for dinner? What is wrong with the world and how can I solve it?

The inner mind dialogue can be maddening. So you scream to yourself to stop your mind and listen to the trees. You may hear the wind or the birds but not nature talking. So you start to worry that you are listening to nature wrong and then the inner monologue may start again. Does this sound familiar?

Nature works in mysterious ways. There are no sudden answers. Usually, it is more like a slow awakening. It may take months or years and the process unfolds over your lifetime. As you slowly start to connect with the beauty and simplicity of nature you may actually think you are going insane because nothing makes sense anymore. The insanity of the world becomes in stark contrast to what nature has to offer.

Your first attempt at connecting with nature will not make you a changed person. At least, not in an obvious way. A very small part of you changed, a part so small you may not notice. When you spend more time in nature another small part of yourself will change. And then another small part. And then another and another and your connection will grow. One day you will likely stand there and look back at your life and realize how much did change.

You will start to recognize the call of the eagle in the distance and notice the small wildflower at your feet by name. You will get sudden realizations. You may realize your coworker is toxically narcissistic and wonder why you didn’t notice before? You may realize that your job is dead end, and you have to do something else. These recognitions and realizations are signs that you are indeed connecting and listening to nature.

Connecting to nature is slow. It is mundane. It is beautiful. Do not put expectations on yourself on how it should go or the timeline it should take. There is no set path so just enjoy the journey.

(all photos taken at or near Mossygoat Farm nestled in foothills of Oregon’s Coastal Mountains)

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Wild Widom is not gained from books or computers. Wild Wisdom is gained from a life lived in nature. Hours, days, months, and years spent exploring everything our wild natural world has to offer.

Wild wisdom is not just plants but all of nature. Finding your first wild turtle, learning the call of the Eagle, exploring the liminal spaces.

Wild wisdom is gained from a life spent off the beaten path. When you step away from the highly filtered and tech-centered world, you never know what you are going to find. But it is guaranteed to be real and to connect you with what it means to be human. We are not separate from nature, we are nature. We do not need to reconnect. We need to remember.

There are no filters in a life lived wild. Nothing to hide behind. Wild wisdom is not always pretty. Sometimes it’s quite dirty and raw. It’s always hidden where you least expect it. Embrace the dirt.

There is no app for wild wisdom. You will not find it on social media.

Wild is not an aesthetic. Wild wisdom is a life lived without filters and in full color. There is no such thing as wild aesthetic. Nothing truly wild is white-washed and over or under exposed. Everything is perfect just as it is. When did we as humanity get so afraid of looking at imperfect or unfiltered photos? An aesthetic is just building up false expectation of what it means to be human. Embrace the imperfect because it’s real.

There is no path to having wild wisdom. There is no one way. No one can sell it to you. It is found everywhere. The desert, the prairie, the forest, and yes, even the city and suburbs. For some this may involve traveling the world. For others, wild wisdom is found close to home.

Starting a path of learning wild wisdom does not take money. You do not need to be independently wealthy. Wild wisdom can be a family affair. All of the photos on this page were taken with an older iphone, and taken on Mossygoat Farm, near Mossygoat Farm, or on family camping trips while rockhounding and caving in the state of Oregon. What wild wisdom does require is an adventurous spirit and a willingness for self-education.

Welcome friends on this path of wild wisdom.

If you liked this post and are drawn to the path of wild wisdom, please subscribe or consider buying me a cup of coffee (or a bale of hay more likely). Thank you!

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Are you ready to take your horsemanship to a new level? Are you seeking to overcome perceived emotional and physical challenges to have the best partnership you can with horses? Have you been searching to restore art and magic as an equestrian?

If you answered yes to any of these questions you are probably ready to rewild and restory horsemanship.

I dare you to unlearn your multiple internalized “isms” as well as let go of your anger, fear, and lack of trust in yourself that holds you back. No deadlines, no stress, no pressure. You can learn how to listen to your horse, your body, and your soul and return to the path of horsemanship you are meant to walk.

There are just three tenants that must be followed in order to rewild horsemanship: be present, be yourself, and love.

Be Present: A new way of working with horses

Redefining horsemanship demands that you be present in the actual experience you are having, not the one you prefer to have, or the one you see someone else have. Horses are waiting to help us find ourselves again and pave the way to healthier relationships with them, ourselves, and ultimately help heal our Earth.

Be Yourself: I give you permission to be you

There is only one you. You are perfect just the way you are. You are unique as your horse. Be wild. Be Wonderful. Be Free. Hold your head up and face the world as yourself. Your wisdom holds the key to your own path. Listening to the echoes of horses will help you find your path again. You may feel imperfect, flawed, fearful, or lost. That’s okay! You are right where you are supposed to be. Start right now and right here.

Love: The only way to approach life

There is no photoshopping while rewilding and restorying. No filters. This is a raw place full of mud, blood, sweat, and tears. I was once told there is no tears in dressage. There is too! It’s okay! Once we get past our complaining, past our fears, past the black and white, and past the judgements we can open ourselves up to finding center, finding our ground, finding our intuition, and finding our WILD. Love and acceptance is the only way to grow in the art we seek with horses.

The Importance of Story

Dressage, and horsemanship in general, is not a method, not a way, but a story. A story we can write ourselves for ourself and the horses we care for. When we begin to rewild and restory horsemanship, we start walking the path of harmony with ourselves, horses, and the Earth. We become dedicated to the voice of the horse and ultimately the voice of ourselves that we have forgotten how to listen to.

We need to redefine who we are compared to the natural world and who we are compared to Horse.

We need to look at the direction we are taking our horses and redefine our relationship to them. For truly, they have lost their use to mankind. We, ourselves, are separated from our natural world. Horse is still wild in their heart, and they are the key to finding the wild in our heart however that may look for you. It is not about freedom for we are all free. It is about wild.

To rewild horsemanship, we must explore self and the horse human relationship. Your logical mind has taken you far in this world. For this journey you must let go of your logical mind and embrace story, lore, and myth.

The Power of Story: An Essay

I picked up a book by Mark Rashid and opened it up. Words on stark pages. Stories. Rambling talk. What? But I read on. I learned. In those stories is horsemanship. Not a method, not a way, but horsemanship.

I could parrot George Morris, Bent Branderup, or Pat Parelli all day. You probably would think what I good rider I am because I have all this knowledge I can parrot. But learning doesn’t come from parroting. Learning comes from life and experiencing. Until you get “that horse” you don’t know. You could have read about those types of horses and have some ideas of how to handle them, but you really don’t know. When things become part of your story then they are yours to keep, not someone else’s.

There is an amazing amount to be learned through story. Most people don’t write about the easy horses. “I rode in textbook equitation and my horse responded in a textbook manner.” True, these books can be helpful. George Morris’s Hunter Seat Equitation comes to mind. Because I can no longer support George Morris as a person I suggest you buy the book used. It is a must read, even for dressage riders.

These manuals help you, the human. But I guarantee you that your horse didn’t RTFM.

The best stories have in them: “I didn’t know what to do.” “I messed up.” “The horse refused.” Those are the true learning moments that serve as the catalyst for change. This is where the heart of horsemanship lies. It lies in the unknown. That actually is a very uncomfortable place for many people. We want to know!

Journal Exercise:

What is your horsemanship story so far? What events in your story are the most memorable? Journal your story. Draw your story. Be creative! Don’t get caught up in perfection. Just draw.

Where are you in your story right now?

Do you remember moments in your horsemanship journey where your horse refused? How about when you really didn’t know what to do? Write about it.

I hope you enjoyed this. Please take the time to do the journaling exercises before joining me for Part II where we will talk about perfectionism and social media.

If you enjoyed this and found it helpful, please subscribe and consider buying me a cup of coffee (or a bale of hay). Thank you.

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Without further ado: what is real learning and what does a dying $10 dairy steer have to do with homeschooling?

Bottle baby dairy steers often come from harsh confinement conditions. They are available in my area for as little as $10 each. This adventure started with the simple idea that we could bottle raise some cast-off steers and fill our freezer with meat, but what ensued was some pretty deep, life-long lessons.

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Real learning is a buzz term in the homeschool world. But what does it look like? There are so many books out there about homeschooling: how to homeschool, how to plan curriculum, how to do nature study, how to raise wild children, and how to unschool. The list is endless. But what is real learning and how do we plan for it? Here is a hint: the answer is not in a book.

We are so devoted to our children, to the perfect homeschool plan, or to a homeschool lifestyle, that we forget to see the forest through the trees.

We homeschool our children to keep them wild and to give them the freedom to be themselves. But in the mire of nature studies and main lesson books, we lost our own wild. Homeschool moms easily are lost in a sea of dictation, copywork, and history timelines.

Where is your wild? Where is your real learning? How do you share real learning with your children?

It happens when you least expect it.

Life isn’t always magical. You aren’t always skipping down a nature path and doing poetry tea times. Sometimes life is raw.

Sometimes you are napping against your washing machine holding a dying bummer steer you bought for $10 and were planning on eating anyway. Let me tell you, that is the opposite of magical learning. There is no glamour in that. Especially considering that the calf died on a floor littered with signs of the valiant efforts made to save it: medicines, feeding tubes, syringes, and a dead calf. All in front of my dryer. But often learning doesn’t happen how we want it to.

In that moment my children learned veterinary medicine, the effects confinement dairying had on this days old calf, animal husbandry, as well as deep, deep lessons in compassion, caring, and empathy. The lessons were learned far better than if they had read about it in a book.

Real learning occurs in the raw moments of life:

• Visiting a dying grandmother.

• A mom and children eating Thanksgiving dinner alone in the Pig N’ Pancake.

• Figuring out how to homeschool as a single parent when schools are shut down.

• Having your family’s life turned upside due to pandemic job loss.

Real Learning happens in the happy moments as well.

• Eating the first strawberry you grew yourself and discovering how different it tastes.

• Swimming your first stroke in a river by yourself.

• Watching your queen cat give birth.

• Finding an injured animal and caring for it before you can get it to rehab.

That is real learning. You can’t plan for it, and you can’t read about it.

Don’t get caught up in what other people tell you real learning is. Real learning takes place caring for an ill calf, desperately trying to save its life. Real learning is not Waldorf, or Charlotte Mason, or radical unschooling. It is life catching you off guard.

Real learning occurs between the lines, during the in between moments of life. Real learning cannot be planned, it just happens. Our homeschool activities are just supplements to real learning. Nothing we plan will substitute.

Relax dear mom, if life catches you off guard and your homeschool isn’t Instagram perfect, your children are still learning. Take a deep breath and embrace real learning.

This is Bambi, another $10 Jersey Steer, he lived to a healthy age before visiting freezer camp. If you want a homestead tip on how to name animals that you are going to eat: don’t name them Bambi. We actually had to start calling him Bamburger to remind ourselves. Thank you Bamburger, we are grateful.

Thank you for reading The Wildstead Chronicles, if you found this helpful, please subscribe or consider buying me a coffee (or a bale of hay). Thank you!

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Enjoy!

Ingredients

• Potato masher or a fork for mashing the banana

• 4”x 8” bread baking pan

• 3 to 4 ripe, but not rotten, bananas

• 1/3 cup ghee (or butter or margarine)

• 1 egg

• 3/4 cup sugar

• 1 teaspoon vanilla

• 1 teaspoon baking soda

• 1/8 teaspoon salt

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose gluten-free flour blend

• 1/2 teaspoon xanthan gum ONLY if your flour blend does not already contain it. When in doubt, leave it out.

Step by Step Tutorial:

1. Gather your ingredients and preheat your oven to 350 Degrees Fahrenheit.

2. Using a potato masher, mash peeled bananas in a large bowl.

3. Add the ghee and continue mashing the mixture together.

4. Sprinkle the baking soda and salt over the top and mix in with wooden spoon.

5. Add flour and stir until everything is well combined, the batter will be lumpy.

6. Pour batter into a greased 4”x8” loaf pan. Bake for 1 hour. Cover with tin foil halfway through to prevent over browning the top if needed. Cool on wire rack and then remove from loaf pan and serve.

I hope you enjoy this easy recipe! If you find this recipe helpful and want to help support the Wildstead Chronicles and Mossygoat Farm please consider buying me a coffee (or a bale of hay). Thank you.