I was super excited to come across a giant clump of wild grapes last Autumn Equinox- we made it into some beautiful purple ink that also smells amazing! Ink is such a fun easy project to do with kids and wild grape ink is a perfect fall project!
On ethical foraging and thankfulness. It’s important to help kids understand the ethics of foraging- why we leave some behind, what animals depend on the same foods that we like, and not being greedy. I’ve struggled with ways to communicate that to my kids- they are too young to get into percentages, and being thankful is still pretty abstract... so recently we’ve started making little offerings to thank the forest for our treats. It gives them something tangible to wrap their minds around and helps them to understand- while also being fun to make! This one is for the spiceberries we picked on our hike- and they reminded me several times to leave some for the animals so I feel like it’s working!
That chill in the air feels amazing, but it also means it's elderberry syrup season again! I add it to my tea in the mornings and I have been experimenting with a jam version that is more palatable to my kids. (The gummies are a little too palatable!!) I use a different proportion of honey to elderberry than what I most often see floating around the internet, roughly half raw local honey to half of my herbal concoction. Most recipes I see say 4:1 tea to honey and I suspect that this is in an effort to reduce sugar content, but the honey in this case is both adding benefit (especially for us allergy sufferers) and serving as the preservative in which case reducing it is unwise. One of the…
My oldest’s bday is coming up at the end of September and we broke out this countdown I made last year. There are little clip art raccoons behind all the doors (his favorite animal) and now my youngest wants one too! Both my kids are obsessed with counting down to their bday and keep a list of numbers that they cross off until their bdays independently so this fancy version was a big upgrade. You could cut doors on any drawing or clip art piece and make your own! Happy fall!!
We are so excited for the Harvest Moon! The Harvest Moon was so named in Europe because the light of the full moon allowed farmers to work into the night to bring in the harvest. After the harvest was finished it was a time of celebration and rest. This full moon is always the one closer to the Autumnal Equinox so it’s most often in September, but sneaks into October every now and again. In many Asian cultures this full moon is known as the Mid-Autumn Festival. It’s is traditionally celebrated with mooncakes (which we have made one of our traditions too!) Have you ever looked up at the man in the moon? What westerners refer to as the man in the moon, many other cultures refer to the rabbit…
Foraged spicebush tea with a multiflora rose syrup. The hips sweeten after a frost, as do the little carrots we wrestled out of the garden. A beautiful way to celebrate the shift to teh colder months. Foraged Spicebush Tea Spicebush is a plant that grows wild all over the east coast. In the fall it produces bright red berries that make a lovely spice, but the thing I like most about it are it's twigs. You can find them even in the dead of winter and they make a lovely gentle flavored tea. It immediately makes me think of tromping through the woods with my kids. We like ours sweetened with a little bit of rosehip syrup or honey. My kids love foraging it and drinking this tea! Ingredients: dried…
