20 Things Country Girls Know: A List You Haven’t Read Before. For those raised where there are no stop lights, where you wave at every passing vehicle (probably referred to as a rig) because that’s the polite thing to do, and where you can name every single kid in your class and probably your whole school, there are many truths that you manifest that are different than that of our more urbanly raised Wildflower sisters. This is not going to be a post about 4-wheel drivin’ or mud on your boots. It will be about matters of the heart and of practicality, which are the prime ingredients to growing any Wildflower, right?

1. Your actions stick with you. When you are from a small town where you attend school with the same kids in elementary, middle, and high school, being awful to someone isn’t a sin that is forgotten, even if it is forgiven. Your choices stick with you, year after year, for better or for worse. Choose wisely, regardless of where you put down roots, Wildflowers.
2. An Appaloosa doesn’t change their spots. Country girls have lived with the same folks for a really, really long time and they know that it is a very rare thing indeed for a person to change. Girls who were mean in high school will probably be mean in the future. Boys who are good to their mommas will likely always be so.
3. Cowgirl boots and a lifted pickup with sassy bumper sticker does not a country girl make. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and that’s how a classy country girl should interpret those who haven’t an ounce of rural living or common sense to their credit and still hope to be part of the club. As Dr. Seuss said, “Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.” Be you, Wildflowers, wherever you are, and be the best You you can be.
4. Never say whoa in a horse race. If you are working, striving, and aiming towards a goal, keep after it. You don’t win by slowing down. That’s not to say all of life needs to be a race, but if you’re in one, don’t slow down.
5. Courage is being scared to death and saddling up anyway. John Wayne said a lot of things, and this is my sister’s favorite. Courage doesn’t mean doing something difficult. It means facing fear and not letting it win. Accepting fear as part of the experience, and owning the fact that often times what is necessary isn’t comfortable (and can be downright terrifying) is part of living life fully, being a grownup, and being a stand up person. Saddle up, and be better and stronger for doing so.

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10 Easy to Grow Vegetables for your Fall Garden is a post that will help you decide what to plant for the easiest, best yield for a successful Fall garden. Read on for the list and for some helpful resources perfect for beginners!

 This post contains affiliate links. 

Confession Time: You may remember me saying that despite being a canning blogger I don’t have a garden. I don’t have a garden yet because I have a 12 foot hand-dug well that likely wouldn’t support a big veggie garden. I have no fences and many wild creatures great and small that would love to eat whatever I planted, and truthfully, I haven’t the thumb for it at this phase of my life. My kids are little and I recently killed the pretty pink cactus in my shower. I have been growing sprouts in a mason jar on my countertop BUT, Wildflowers, I have friends in high places indeed.

My friend Teri Page of the blog Homestead Honey is an amazing gardener and I asked her to share her best gardening tips for us in a  guest post. She knows her stuff, has the right thumb for the job, and has written a fantastic post (with a rad resource at the end! Don’t miss it!) for you all. I’m so grateful for her expertise. Read on for her post; thank you Teri!

10 Easy to Grow Vegetables for Your Fall Garden

Fall gardening is a great way to increase your harvest, save money at the grocery store, and enjoy garden-fresh produce year-round, but if you’re new to fall gardening, it can feel a bit overwhelming! What do you grow? When do you plant it? What about frost? Today I’ve put together a list of my top ten easy to grow vegetables for your fall garden, and I invite you to check out my eBook, Homestead Honey’s Guide to Fall Gardening for step-by-step advice on how to select the best varieties, when to plant, and how to protect your crops from cold weather. 

To start, I recommend taking a look at what your family really enjoys eating and select a few favorites from the list below – no sense in growing food that won’t be enjoyed! For instance, I know that turnips will do really well in my zone 5B garden, but my family does not love them. Instead, I’ll focus on growing beets and greens that I know we will all enjoy.  

Next, take time to select varieties that will do well in cold growing conditions. Seed variety names like “Arctic King” or “Winter Blend” are good clues to cold-hardiness.  

Ready for a few easy-to-grow vegetable ideas for your fall garden? Keep in mind that this list is not at all exhaustive. I’ve suggested plants that have done well for me in my garden in Northeast Missouri. In planting a fall garden, I battle extreme heat, drought, and a fairly high pest load, so if I can grow a successful fall garden, I know you will be able to! 

Ten Easy to Grow Vegetables for your Fall Garden 

1) Lettuce 

Lettuce loves cool weather, so it’s a great choice for your fall garden. I have enjoyed picking salads from the garden through the end of December when I protect beds with floating row cover and clear plastic. 

2) Spinach 

If I had to pick one vegetable for my fall garden, it would be spinach. Enjoyed fresh or cooked, spinach thrives in cool weather, becoming even more sweet tasting after frost.  

3) Mustard Greens 

I like to add a few varieties of mustard greens to my salad blends, to add a bit of spicy kick. They endure the cold quite well, and grow quickly in the late summer and early fall. 

4) Cilantro 

Cilantro is a true cold weather plant that, in my zone 5B garden, will last well into the winter months, even without frost protection. I like to let cilantro re-seed itself by leaving plants in the ground to flower and produce seeds. In the spring, cilantro is often among the first plants to germinate.  

5) Garlic 

Homegrown garlic far exceeds the flavor of anything you will find at the grocery store. Its cold-hardiness makes it an excellent choice for your fall garden. Although you can also plant garlic in the spring, for a later summer harvest, my preferred method is to plant garlic in the fall and let it overwinter, harvesting it in late June. Check out my Ultimate Guide to Growing, Harvesting, and Storing Garlic for more detailed cultivation information! (https://homestead-honey.com/2015/06/21/growing-harvesting-and-storing-garlic/) 

6) Beets 

Beets are one of my favorite crops because you can enjoy the green tops and store the roots for months in cool storage. Beet seeds will need lots of consistent moisture to germinate, but they are a relatively easy and quick growing crop.  

7) Mache 

Mache, also known as corn salad, is a cold-loving green that makes a lovely addition to salads. I will sow it in the fall for fresh eating, and again in the later fall to overwinter for early spring greens. 

8) Kale 

Kale is a powerhouse vegetable that grows year round, gets even sweeter after the first frost, and re-seeds itself in the garden. I love to plant Lacinato and Red Russian kale, but I’ve also heard great things about Vates. Sow your kale in succession from early spring through early fall for a variety of sizes for salads, smoothies, and stir-fries. 

9) Chinese Cabbage 

Chinese cabbage is one of my favorite cool weather vegetables. We sauté it in stir-fries and also enjoy it fermented into Kimchi.  

10) Radishes 

For a quick-win fall crop, be sure to add radishes to your list. In fact, sow radish seeds every two weeks, and enjoy continual harvests.  

 

For more inspiration, pick up a few seed catalogs (High Mowing Seeds is a great one for fall gardening because they sell many cold-hardy and short season crops that do well in Northern Vermont) and start browsing!

Use this list as a jumping off point, and dive into Homestead Honey’s Guide to Fall Gardening Ebook for more detailed guidance on how to plant a successful and bountiful fall garden. Happy growing! 

Wildflowers, this ebook has me thinking of all the ways I CAN garden…I’m so inspired that my husband is going to think I’ve lost my mind! Teri makes a daunting process much simpler and I know so many of you would love to dive in with her to eat fresh, home grown veggies all year long. Imagine the money you’ll save! Get the ebook here!

Teri Page is the creator of Homestead Honey (https://homestead-honey.com) where she writes about gardening, homesteading, fermentation, foraging, and off the grid living. She is the author of Family Homesteading, which is now available for pre-order (https://amzn.to/2O1EpFK)! Teri is also a life and business coach who enjoys working with women who are ready to live their homestead dream!

This post will share some of our favorite resources for identifying wildflowers in your area and includes both helpful apps and books that are sure to educate and inspire.

This post contains affiliate links. All opinions remain my own.

I called upon my friend Emily who is a flower enthusiast and budding flower entrepreneur (follow her lovely Instagram here!) to help me write this post. These are the tools she and other flower lovers like her use to identify flowers both while out and about and at home after a hike.

How to Identify Wildflowers with Apps

That Garden App is the go-to app on Emily’s phone. It is simple to use. Take a photo plant or butterfly, and the app brings up a list of possibilities. You confirm your matches, and the app saves all your photos so you can look back to see what you identified last week or month. And, this app opens a search page for the plant where you can learn more. This app is free and is endlessly helpful for quickly identifying the plant in front of you.

Garden Answers is another helpful app. Similar to That Garden App, it creates a photo album with results of your plant searches and helps you identify quickly the plant or flower you are seeing.

There are lots of flowers or plant ID apps out there and they all do about the same thing. Get a free one as an app is a preliminary stage in plant ID and the real investigation happens at home, with a good book. A beverage to enjoy while reading is optional but encouraged.

TIP: If you have a general idea of the flower you are trying to identify (based on an app or your own previous knowledge) you can use the books mentioned to refine your definition. In one sense, the app can be used “in the field” and the book (heavier and not as portable perhaps) can be used to narrow down your results after your trek.

How to Identify Wildflowers with Books

One book that is very helpful is the “Field Book of Western Wildflowers” It is organized by family (like rose, peony, dogwood, etc) and it has detailed illustrations and a thorough description to help you decide the family and name of flower you are enjoying.

 

“Western Garden Book” by Sunset is not only for identifying wildflowers but is a very in depth resource covering cultivation, flower identification, planting zones, growing information, water & sun information, and more. It discusses wildflowers, trees, plants, shrubs, fertilizer, lawn information, planting instructions, weed advice, etc. This is the book for a Dear Reader who has a green thumb and wants to learn more about gardening as well as plant identification. It is weighty, has beautiful photographs, and is a wealth of information.

The National Geographic Pocket Guide to Wildflowers is easy to take along on your hike or picnic, has beautiful photos, and is very thorough as well. This would make a great gift for a friend and is the way you could identify a flower if you have no cell service, no storage with which to take a photo (me, 90% of the time), or a dead phone (me, 50% of the time). Sometimes technology fails us, but this little book won’t.

 

California Foraging is for the Wildflower reader who is interested in nibbling on the edibles afield. This resource is indispensable for identifying plants that are safe to eat. If you aren’t in California, get a book that is specific to your area.

 

Before you pick some wildflowers to arrange and enjoy at home, check to see if they are protected. Sometimes wildflowers are better left to grow undisturbed and in any case, snap a photo and share it on Instagram using the hashtag #thedomesticwildflower so we can see it!

If the flowers on your jaunt are more likely to be planted by man rather than the man upstairs, The Little Guides: Flowers is my favorite resource. It was given to me by my dear friend Abby years ago. She’s the one who said to me a little over a year ago, “let me build you a blog!” and I said yes and here we are. How funny it is that she gave me this way, way before I ever dreamed of having a blog called The Domestic Wildflower, back when she and I shared membership in a scholarship program, several Chico apartments, a trip to Europe, and years of friendship. She’s also a great book chooser 🙂 Grab yours by clicking the link below!

 

For bouquets of wild plants that you are sure are safe and legal to collect, find what you think is beautiful and arrange it however you would like. I wrote a post here about wiring wild plants to wreaths and arranging them in metal buckets that I think you’d enjoy. Check it out!

How to Plant Your Own Grasses

If you are interested in diving into planting grasses, check out this gorgeous infographic shared from https://agreenhand.com/how-to-grow-grass-fast/ !

Please share in the comments below which resources you love for identifying plants in your area!

If you loved this post, you should read how I made homemade lilac syrup here.

This post will share an inspiring little collection of essays, those that have been the best loved on the blog, and how to get your hands on the ebook.

It is currently February, and we have had a wet, long winter by all accounts. It is kind of dreary out, I’m sick of sweeping up the dust from the wood stove, and I’m really missing fresh tomatoes and strawberries.

I’ve written many encouraging essays for this blog and for other sites that had absolutely nothing to do with canning, sewing, or the like. When I started this blog it was when I had a one-year-old and a three-year-old, and I needed a creative outlet that I could do silently when they were napping. The sewing machine was too loud, cleaning also was too loud, and I found that a wave of words flowed forth every day at nap time. It felt so good to write whatever was on my heart and since you can’t encourage a toddler to be potty trained or inspire them to eat their veggies, I had to inspire you Wildflowers, I guess.

I compiled into an ebook all the essays that have been best-loved, pinned and re-pinned, and shared all over.

Get the ebook here! 

Yes! I Want Instant Access!

If ebooks aren’t your thing (they weren’t mine until my youngest started noticing that my lamp was on to read a paperback- now I have to read on my phone, much to my dismay) I would be so honored if you’d share this post with your friends on Facebook (hallelujah for a break from political shares!) Pinterest (my fave!) or otherwise.

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Thank you, readers, for helping me make this blog my favorite way to spend nap time.

The cover image for this ebook is of me of course, and I’m wearing the back interest tank I made for this sewing post. It’s one of my favorites 🙂 Thanks to Della of Circle Bar Photography for always making my projects look way more polished than they really are. She’s the best.

Here’s to springtime is right around the corner, Wildflowers!

Tips for Buying Vintage Silver Jewelry

This post will share expert tips for buying high-quality vintage silver jewelry that you can enjoy for a lifetime.

As luck would have it, I’m allergic to nickel which is the metal that most inexpensive jewelry is made from. That means that my whole life, I’ve ‘had’ to wear jewelry that is real silver or gold (of course, I could have gone without adornment, but what fun is that?). As luck would also have it, my husband has been and continues to be a pretty darn good shopper when it comes to gift giving and has given me a wide range of baubles, both new and vintage, over the years. If I have to while away some time scrolling the internet while waiting at the DMV, it won’t be on Facebook; it will be pouring over the gorgeous Instagram boutique accounts featuring vintage silver jewelry, rad vintage cowboy boots, and other treasures from yesteryear that are both beautiful and functional.

I decided to interview my favorite boutique owners, since they buy silver all day, every day, what a girl should look for when scoring their own silver heirlooms. Both Goodbuy Girls and Three Wolves Trading have delivered high quality, as-described vintage goods, had great customer service, fast shipping, and have a wide range of items I think you Wildflowers would love.

Here’s what the experts say to look for when buying your own vintage silver:

If possible, talk to the seller. Ask about the origin of the item and how they came to own it in the first place. Ask about the age of the piece and if it has been repaired or cleaned.

Check for a stamp that says “sterling” or “.925” or a maker’s stamp. These stamps can be very valuable in dating and assigning a value to an item. It is important to remember that for Native American pieces, many weren’t signed until the ’60s or 70’s so if it is lacking a signature, that probably just means it is older, which would likely increase its value. Furthermore, if an item is “coin silver” or lower grade sterling, that is still a high-quality metal that will stand the test of time. Don’t shy away from a piece just because it doesn’t have a stamp. Stamps are helpful, but not definitive. You can use white cloth, like a piece of white flannel, for example, to rub the piece. If a black smudge appears, the item at hand is real silver because silver oxidizes, or turns black (like your apple slice that turns brown) when exposed to oxygen.

The Navaho and Zuni tribes are known for a jewelry style called “needlepoint and cluster work” (no embroidery hoops here). Navaho designs tend to have bigger stones and heavier than Zuni pieces which tend to be the most intricate. Very fine Native American silver jewelry was made between the late 1800 and the late 1970s. This site has a ton more information on tribe specific hallmarks and styles.

 

 

Look for signs of wear and tear. Vintage silver should look worn, not super shiny. If it is really shiny, ask the seller if it has been cleaned. If it hasn’t, it may be newer.

Terms to look out for and avoid at all costs include “resin turquoise” (a faux, made in China plastic stone), and “nickel silver” which indicates it has zero real silver. If the item is very lightweight, especially a large item like a cuff, or if it is very shiny, it is most likely a knockoff. More information can be found here.

Compare prices. Check the price of the item against similar pieces of the same size and style. If it seems too good to be true, then it probably is, and if it is way more expensive than comparable pieces, you might be being swindled.

Ask for the weight. The more silver in a piece, the heavier it will be. A lighter piece doesn’t necessarily mean it is lower quality, it just might be a lighter style, and the silver therein can still be of high quality. If you can hold the item in your hand, do, and notice how it feels and compare it to other items.

Check for cracks, loose stones, or warping. Cracks need to be repaired in order for the item to be worn safely. If the stones are loose, check to see if the bezel is covering (holding) the stone completely. Sometimes, especially with Native American pieces, the backing behind the stone can expand or contract, depending on the conditions the item was stored in, so just be sure the stone will stay put. It may need to have work done in order for it to be wearable.

And finally, to directly quote sweet Shea of Three Wolves,

“Go big or go home!  Have fun! Vintage silver jewelry is some of the most beautiful artwork there is out there. Find a piece or several that speak to you. And lastly, by God, WEAR THEM! Jewelry was made to be worn and shown off. You spent the money, so you might as well get your money’s worth! There’s nothing more depressing than a gorgeous vintage squash blossom sitting in a box somewhere in someone’s attic or the back of their closet! Rock your vintage pieces everyday!”

Now that’s some advice I can get behind!  

Follow these Instagram boutiques: Three Wolves Trading and Goodbuy Girls and buy with confidence. That’s where all my allowance money goes and when my daughter asks if she can wear my pieces someday, I can say honestly, yes <3