Cultures for Health Water Kefir Starter GIVEAWAY!

Wellness Mama is having a giveaway from Cultures for Health of water kefir starter! I have never made this but really want to! It is like healthy soda pop.

Spring Foraging Fun - Chickweed!

I just learned how to identify chickweed - lobed leaves, starry white flowers(buds in my case!), fine hair on one side, and lack of sap when stem is broken. It is a bit tricky to pick it out among all the other weeds, but not too hard. I just gathered enough for a batch of sun/moon powered tea. Right now I am drinking sun/moon violet tea (from dried violets a friend got me from a middle-eastern store) and the taste is SO superior to the boiled water version. Chickweed contains natural saponins (you can use it as soap) which break down bacteria (and some people say fat cells too) and other nasties, a general nutritious detoxifying herb.
Today I also made cinnamon rolls - the recipe from the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook, but with stevia/erythritol and I added raisins. They were delicious!

Silly critter!

So I had seven garlic plants growing outside in a 5-gallon bucket, right? Well now there are only six, and a hole where one was. I think it was a squirrel or a rabbit. Mom says the squirrel with garlic breath is the guilty one, I say I can't catch a squirrel to check! I hope whatever it was leaves the rest alone, though! Oh, and I planted some parsley which just started to come up!

MadeOn DIY lotion bar kit GIVEAWAY!

Click here to enter a contest to win a $30 value kit to make your own lotion and lip balm! I'm so excited, I love making that sort of stuff!

Mini Cows!

Mini Cows!
It turns out that Jersey cows used to be a lot smaller before people started breeding them to be bigger. These mini cows come up waist high and are adorable! They can give 1-2 gallons of milk every day. I want one!

The World According to Monsanto

I just watched a documentary called The World According to Monsanto. You can probably guess from the name what it's about. I learned a lot of interesting and scary things, and lots of things I already knew. Did you know that the idea that GMO crops are 'substantially equivalent' to their conventional counterparts is totally made up? Or that rBGH gives cows mastitis and puts pus and IGF-1 in the milk? Or that small farmers across the globe have their families' health and business in danger because of GMO crops? Or even that Monsanto started out as a chemical company, not an agricultural one? Watch the film here:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6262083407501596844#

What I'm Knitting

I currently have nothing to spin, so I am knitting a top-down seamless raglan pullover out of brown Lion Brand Fisherman's wool. Maybe SOMEDAY I will actually manage to spin enough for a sweater! But for now I can just knit. I am almost done with the first sleeve, and my hair is a mess. You can see me modeling the unfinished sweater. I know it's a bit late for wool sweaters, but the last two years we have had a March blizzard - PLEASE not once the tomatoes are planted!
This post is part of Woolly Wednesdays at Spinspiration.