mountainjewel

Growing Yardlong Beans: Easy Gardening Success

When it comes to beans, there are so many varieties it will make your head spin. Bush, pole, spotted, striped, green, red, yellow, black, white, and variations ...

Building a Duck Coop for (Basically) Free

Over the last few years we have sought to grow, hunt and forage as much of our diet as possible. While greens, deer meat, small game, root crops, mushrooms, her...

Seeding the Permaculture Nursery at Mountain Jewel

This year at Mountain Jewel we have been busy planting seeds for the future. Along with various vegetative propagation techniques, we began to establish trees f...

Hello from Mountain Jewel

Greetings Hive! We've been following the news and are very excited about the new community buzzing over here. In our opinions, it is a much needed break from a ...

Dancing with Winter's Death

Adult Soldier Fly resting at the edge of the composting toilet after laying her eggs. It used to be I only dwelled in fields of wildflowers at the peak of summe...

Ancient Nuts Underground

Imagine our ancient hominin ancestor, Paranthropus boisei, foraging for food over 1.5 million years ago in East Africa. With 5-6 hours a day allocated to food a...

Stone Cooking Pits and Hide Tanning: Primitive Skills Inspiration

Welcome to the time of the woodstove. Stacking wood, cold mornings, copious amounts of tea, of winter dreaming. Welcome to book after book, abundant rest after ...

Building the Walls of the Slip Straw Sauna

Slip straw is a technique that we've come to love over the years. It's a great blend of natural building with conventional stud framing. Also known as light cla...

Travel with the Birds | A Trip Back in Time! Old Stone Fort State Archeological Park

Have you ever felt like you’ve stepped back in time? >We had the opportunity to visit a special place while we were on the road this summer. Visiting State and ...

Teaching Natural Building in the Ozarks

Natural building is people's building. Just watch this singing Tibetan group building a rammed earth house if you don't believe me: If I could pin a catch phras...

For the Love of Clay Plaster: Building a Sauna

In Finnish tradition, when one first moves to the land they build a sauna that they can use and live in the first year while getting their feet on the ground. I...

Selected Pawpaw Cultivars Will Blow Your Mind!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMSLCKRhDqM We’ve come to know and love the North American indigenous fruit, the wild Pawpaw, Asimina triloba. From it’s pleasin...

Leeks: Self Propagating Alliums In the Permaculture Garden

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSj5vstGPNQ We love leeks! Not only are they delicious, the Mother plant produces numerous babies each year which keep the plant...

What do you think will save us, if anything? (in terms of climate action)

My facebook acquaintance Jack posed the following questions on his feed and I really appreciate the ways Jack digs deep and asks the hard questions surrounding ...

Lending a Hand with Lime Plaster on Straw Bale

Earlier this week we traveled to friends’ house to do a “blitz” to finish the scratch coat of lime plaster inside their straw bale home. We know well how much a...

Are we waiting to appreciate the now?

The fact that so many of us are postponing our satisfaction, happiness, contentment or joy is heartbreaking. We are waiting for the right conditions to arise be...

Prayers are not enough - Re: the Acceleration of Violent White Nationalism in the United States

While thoughts are prayers are undoubtedly good things to add to any situation, especially a travesty such as the one in El Paso and then followed up at the Gil...

Season of Harvests

Not sure how this double posted from my blog! Enjoy the tomato twice over! As we transition into late summer, I can feel fall in the air. Through the cooler mor...

Season of Harvests

As we transition into late summer, I can feel fall in the air. Through the cooler mornings and evenings, the slower growth of the grass and plants and by so man...

3 Year Old Ozark Food Forest & Permaculture Gardens

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6Zb5perFmU Come with us as we tour the summer gardens on our Ozark Permaculture homestead. We are in our 4th summer and focus o...