Stacey Lindsey

This is a great story. It’s valuable to double check.... heck triple check before one assumes death.

Pulled pork is such a great meal to make that’s yummy and can last several meals! We just made it a couple days ago and have been enjoying it for lunch and dinner!

I have found that the instant pot is the easiest way to make pulled pork!! And this is my favorite recipe. https://recipeteacher.com/best-damn-instant-pot-pulled-pork/

The one thing that I do different from his recipe is that I dear the pork in my cast iron pan then put it in the instant pot and deglaze the pan pouring all the good stuff into the instant pot. The pulled pork only take an hour and a half to cook and it’s sooooo tender! I’m allergic to garlic and onion so I even made my own barbecue sauce this time that turned out great!

I’m enjoying several of these ideas. I live in a tiny house and don’t have room for a tree any more, so in my quest to find a new option I’ve decided that I’m going to make an evergreen garland something like the picture below. I can make it any length I want to fit my space, I can use all local plants, and I don’t have to kill a tree for it I can just gather branches.

Another idea that I’ve seen done is to plant an ideal Christmas tree evergreen in your yard somewhere that you can see from your living room windows, and keep it well pruned so that it has the classic Christmas tree shape. Then you just decorate it each year. It stays alive, you have a beautiful tree to decorate, and you can sit in your living room admiring its beauty as it gets to live outside. This is also safer because so many other tree options are a real fire hazard in the house.

A few decoration ideas for an outdoor tree.... you can smear a mixture of peanut butter and bird seed into pine cones you find on the ground and then tie them into your tree, this way local birds become your tree decorations. If you live in an area that gets snow you get your tree flocked for free.

To answer your question about harvesting a tree from the woods locally, I would personally say that as long as you are doing it with intention and awareness then it’s fine, because you will be making sustainable decisions.

Thank you for sharing your experiences! The thing that strikes me from each of your replies is that gardening is challenging for so many reasons, whether that’s insect pests, invasive plants, chickens or deer. Often the plants get along relatively well, it’s all the other factors that we have to manage. I am going to give it a try this spring and see how they do together.

I have a theory that strawberries and asparagus could be good garden bed mates, but I am wondering if anyone has experience growing them together? Would the strawberries steal all the nutrients? What are your thoughts on this pairing?

I really enjoy reading about everyone’s tea mixes. I’ve made all kinds of blends from my garden and wild harvesting.

One thing I would like to share is the device I use for brewing any of my loose leaf blends (home made and store bought tea blends). A friend bought me the IngenuiTea teapot years ago, and it has been one of the most useful gifts I’ve received! There’s plenty of room in the pot for the tea to release all of its goodness, and then you just put it on top of your cup and it strains as it fills your cup with yummy tea!

You do have to watch it though, if you aren’t paying attention it’s easy to overflow your cup. I live in a 200 square foot tiny house, so anything that’s in my kitchen has been deemed essential, this little tea pot is one of those items.

These are stock photos of the IngenuiTea pot, and for some reason they photograph it without tea in it.....

I like your latest version. It looks great and I think that the W is very visible. With a logo like that I don’t think that something like the W has to be glaringly obvious, it’s just a nice feature of the design.

Plums are wonderful trees to have in your orchard. I recommend both www.onegreenworld.com and www.raintreenursery.com as resources for wonderful varieties of plum. Personally I love the shiro and  Blau de Belguique plums.

It looks like Oxeye Daisy leaves to me. While it might be a charming flower it is indeed quite weedy.

 A couple years ago I did a bunch of research into the various options for a healthy mattress. I came to the conclusion that a latex mattress was likely the best option for what we wanted, but when looking at the various price tags I thought “there’s no way that we will find one that will even come close to our budget.” So I let go of the idea for the time being.

 Within a year we were shopping for a new mattress at our local furniture store, expecting to invest around $500 in a conventional mattress. The Universe was looking out for us and the store actually had organic latex mattresses! And huge bonus, they were on sale because they simply weren’t selling in our poor rural community.

 We did end up investing $1,000 in that mattress, which I believe was at least 50% off. That’s seriously one of the best $1,000 investments I’ve made in my life! It’s the best mattress I’ve ever slept on!!! One of my great joys in life is creating a cozy “nest” out of my bed, and this is the best nest I’ve ever created!

 I believe our mattress is a Omi, but I so seldom get to see the mattress itself (it has a mattress cover on it to help keep it clean) that I forget what brand name is written on it. I will say that I absolutely do not find it easy to move. It’s one huge piece of latex, not several pieces with a removable cover. So it’s kind of like moving dead weight. But I would happily deal with that one short coming for the few times a mattress has to be moved in it’s life.

 I would highly recommend a latex mattress to everyone. It’s such an amazing sleeping experience!!