We are a family of artist and designers by trade. We are hunters and gatherers by the seasons. Adventures when awake and sleeping. We are raising our children and practicing a way of life that embodies a reverence for the rugged common sense toughness our grandparents have while leveraging the understanding of how present day technologies put worlds of knowledge at our fingertips. We travel often to be engaged in different cultures. This is our plan for discovering ways of life to aspire to. From time to time, This study deepens a respect for our region and the cultures closest to us which shape us as a southern family.
Photographs, videos, and text present in this blog were created by us in effort to document, study and share what we learn together as a family.
We hope our efforts find you learning and practicing what it is you need to be doing to live your ideal life.
Bringing healthy food to the table, especially for the growing children, has never been this easy. We soak the seeds the first day for 24 hours. Then every morning and evening we fill the jars with water to do a shake and rinse. So, simply fill the jars, shake and pour the water out. once you’ve shaken the water out of the jars simply lay the jars on their side next to the sink. Keep them close and convenient. In six days you’ll have jars full of clean and organic sprouts for salads and sides. The nutritional value is exponentially higher when the beans open and the taproot grows. This is a great solution for anybody who feels they are too busy to grow their own healthy foods. With simple old-school methods no one has excuses and there is no light required. Moreover, the sweet and crunchy experience usually wins over the children.
From our experience, if you have an active lifestyle and need easily digestible foods that translate into quick and clean energy, this is definitely a route for you guys to explore.
I hope this message finds you guys excited about getting ready for the spring time.
-Stacked on top of one another with feta cheese and balsamic vinegar.
- On top of a rice cracker with bacon pimento cheese and fresh dill.
We culled our tomato plants to make room for dinosaur kale. We ended up with a bunch of green tomatoes in the process. They were green Boxcar Willie and Purple Cherokee tomatoes. This is one of our favorite things! Simple but powerful flavors with great texture.
We are going on five years of operating a small rabbitry for our backyard meat production. We are harvesting four times a year, on the quarter. Every harvest we are processing anywhere between 10 to 20 rabbits at a time. Our timing has become pitch perfect. Every harvest is followed by our does kindling liters a day or two after. It’s taken this long for it to become an exciting and natural part of our lives. It seems that our reasons for doing it keep changing over the years while simultaneously deepening our respect for life and nature. One of many examples is how we feed the rabbits in preparation for harvesting. In the beginning I did not care so much about the liver. Now a good liver is paramount. A beautiful and healthy liver is a byproduct of a happy and healthy rabbit. We finish our rabbits now for a week of eating beets, carrots, celery, lettuce, and tasty herbs from our garden. (this is one reason we don’t sell our rabbits because we are preparing them as if we were chefs first and farmers second) The texture and aroma of the livers, after sitting in the fridge drying for a day, is amazing! Generally, A liver pâté is 95% liver. I am more than willing to bet that buying average livers from commercial sources could never taste this good. The way we care for our rabbits, the methodical processing, the lack of GMO feed’s and hormones, with the abundance of love and respect given to our animals always come through on the health benefit and taste that our family works towards receiving.
Below is a recipe that if even loosely followed, would create an amazing results for you and yours.
I hope our latest post finds you figuring out what it takes to be living more sustainably.
Respectfully,
K
INGREDIENTS:
-250g of trimmed rabbit liver. (Trimmed, remove all the tough and string like bits so that it’s just the beautiful liver being used)
-6 tablespoons cream.
-3 tablespoons unsalted butter
-1 small onion, finely diced
-3 cloves garlic, finely diced
-½ teaspoon fresh thyme, finely chopped
-1 teaspoon parsley, finely chopped
generous splash fino sherry.
-salt & pepper
DIRECTIONS:
Melt the butter in a small pan until bubbling. Add the onion and garlic and fry gently for 5 minutes until softened to golden brown. Add the liver and cook for 2 minutes. Now, add the sherry, parsley, thyme salt & pepper stir for 1 minute then remove from the heat and let it sit for 2 minutes.
Place in a food processor, add in the cream and blend for a few minutesuntil the pâté is smooth.
Leave to cool for 5 minutes. Now you can place it in its desired container.
For the extra mile: Melt 4-5 tablespoons of butter in a saucepan, if you prefer you can add some finely chopped fresh herbs, and pour over the pâté to create a gelatinous coating that will float on top which will protect the pâté from drying or discoloring from contact with air.
Leave in the fridge for a few hours to develop in flavour and to firm up.
A perforated stainless steel tray sits above our sink holding our garden fresh veggies. This has been the best way to integrate healthier foods into our lives. Veggies seem to trickling in during harvest season .When pruning you take some, when watering you take a few, random times you see select ripened vegetables ready for the picking. In the afternoon, after watering the garden beds and tending to the rabbits we come into the kitchen to wash our veggies and our hands and place the freshly picked in the tray to dry. Now, it is convenient to satisfy your hunger with an easy vegetable salad with some red wine vinegar and if you have a rice cooker normally going like we do it’s easy to throw a ball of quinoa or brown rice into the equation. Out of sight is out of mind
Hope this post find you guys doing well and getting ready for the fall, campfires, and stargazing.
We filled several orders today. The children helped me put It all together this evening. It’s nice to get to the point where they become helpers.
The ModT5™ is a grow light system that I designed and patented. It’s designed to start gardens, propagate clones, or just keep herbs or cool plants alive in your home or office. It supports all of the growing industry standards such as seed trays, seed warming mats, and T5 grow lights. It’s modular and reconfigurable. I also designed a few accessories that can be 3-D printed and downloaded for free.
Made out of stainless steel, easily adjustable and and made in the United States.
If you’re a hobbyist, commercial grower, or are considering getting into growing your own food please check out our website: www.ModT5.com
If you feel like this tool is the one for you then type in the promotional code “growyourown” at checkout :-) The code little knock off 20% and last until April 16.
I hope our latest post finds you preparing for The growing season this year.
I am very proud of my daughter. Today she help me harvest our rabbits from start to finish. She’s witnessed it plenty of times but this is the first time she had hands on experience. She was excited to finally be able to help me in the process and it was a big confidence booster for her. She feels like she is contributing to the family and now calls herself the back-up butcher. She is only five but I don’t have a doubt in my mind that in the next several years she can handle this process by herself.
Understanding where food comes from is a very important lesson that ideally should be learned at an early age. This is something we believe is lacking in today society. Our actions, although Sometimes uncomfortable, are reconnecting the sacred bond we have with our environment. We find beauty, Independence, and enlightenment in doing so. Our methods are streamlined and ethical. The meat we consume in our household is free of industry byproduct.
We hope our latest post finds you enjoying this spring weather!
Respectfully,
K&J
A word on recent comments.
March 25th, 2016
We are usually complemented by those in our grandparents generation which is one of many motivations for us. We share our children’s enthusiasm for learning about our environment. In doing so, we are able to dive deeply, together, and experience, with all our senses, the knowledge that we attain transition into understanding. To gain this experience together is at times uncomfortable. We believe that it is experiencing the reality of life together as a family, even as uncomfortable as it may be at times, to be a strengthening bond that not only unites us but connects us with the long line of people it took to get us where we are now. Our daughter volunteered to do it. She’s has asked several times in the past but I have told her that she’s not old enough. It created a back pressure on her desire to be a helping hand in the family. She was truly happy to help and was very respectful. We believe it was a great confidence booster for her.
We do not judge those who speak negatively about some of the aspects of how we live and teach our children. We do hope that the reasons that motivate us to move forward in life change over the years.
Pretty proud of this:
We finally launched our modular propagation system for in-door growing and cloning.
Please visit our site for more information www.ModularT5.com
but here are a couple of the features:
- It’s affordable.
- Fits all the industry standard accessories like T5 lights and grow trays.
- Completely expandable as your needs change.
- Uses a tool-less design, so it’s easy to set up.
- Durable due to an all stainless steel construction.
- Made in USA
- And last but not least; stylish
The children are learning a propagation technique called cloning. Instead of growing from seeds, the practice of cultivation they are most familiar with, we thought it was an appropriate time to demonstrate a shortcut. We have several rosemary bushes on our property but one is larger, more aromatic, and more flavorful than all the rest. We explained to the children that the primary reason for this is because this particular Rosemary bush has superior genetics and “cloning” is a method of gathering and multiplying this bush into many others without the need for seeds. Because the natural rooting hormone is stronger in the lower branches we started by cutting them and placing them into a cup of water. Then we shave a bit of the bark off the ends, dip into a rooting hormone, and place the cuttings into the moist media. Once covered and placed under the light it only took a week to see the roots growing. Once we have roots on all the cuttings we now have clones… Genetically identical plants as the bush the clones were cut from. Now the children understand that successful growing is a byproduct of the propagation of superior genetics.