Snapshots from "Homestead Camp"

This week we held our second annual Homestead Camp here at Little City Farm.  It was the idea of our daughter, to bring together other kids in the 8-12 year old range in a creative "farmstead" setting while sharing some of the projects that we like to do around here.  The outdoor day camp was held each morning, including co-operative games, garden harvested snacks (like herbal sun tea, pesto and a rainbow veggie platter, made by the kids), and a hands-on activity from the day's theme - including pollinators (making seedballs); natural plant dyes (tie-dying a favourite shirt), natural fibres (making a branch weaving, and felting a bar of soap); and finally wood-fired baking (making pizza in our outdoor oven)!  What fun!  We hope to do this again next year! 

For the fall, we have kids Waldorf-inspired art classes and mother-daughter herbal immersion classes coming up again; as well as our new line-up of family homesteading classes like cheesemaking, sourdough, kraut for kids, and more!  Registration will be open soon.

Here are some snapshots from our days at Homestead Camp this week:

Practical Home Herbalist wrap-up

A few weeks ago we had our last session of the 4-part Practical Home Herbalist series.  For this spring series, we had  a great time meeting with 10 wonderful participants, to learn about home herbalism in a hands-on small-group learning environment right here at Little City Farm.  Each class we tried to use herbs from the garden, or wildharvest from nearby, then turn these seasonal herbs into remedies to last all year round (salves, tinctures, syrups, infusions, decoctions, sprays, liniments, and more).

For our last session we tackled remedies for winter care, including making tinctures and glycerites, elderberry syrup and throat lozenges (pastilles).  To end the final session of the Practical Home Herbalist we always share a potluck lunch, with a beautiful spread of herbal-inspired goodies featuring herbs we talked about in the classes.  This time participants made dandelion pesto, lavender-infused cupcakes, nettle dukkah, lemon-thyme scones, mint-chocolate flourless cake, nettle-kopita...mmmmm!  Thanks to all of you who participated in this spring series, and thanks to Natalie Nunn for the amazing photography.

FALL 2017 SERIES - PRACTICAL HOME HERBALIST: For those who want to learn more or enroll in our upcoming Fall series of the Practical Home Herbalist please visit the Little City Farm website here.  There is limited space as we want to keep this a small-group learning environment.