You have heard me talk about this guest, one of my best friends here in Montana is here to share what it’s like to live an organic earth friendly life… she is a total babe,  her house smells beautiful, she makes soaps, and aprons and shopping bags you’re gonna love! I know listeners are gonna love it because every time I see you I learn something new and you are great at keeping a budget and making things from scratch unlike me the junk food junkie, and you feed 2 kids healthy food!

Tell us a little about yourself.

I live in Montana, which I am very, very grateful for. I think, one thing that helps with the budgeting, is the slower pace of the lifestyle in Eureka, MT. Everything seems to be slowed down a bit …  I think when we slow down a little bit we can focus on the most important things that might not be so materialistic. I think that definitely helps … trying to find your center that slows you down…. and 

Movement

A huge thing that helps me with is exercise so staying on top of movement – whatever you enjoy doing … it doesn’t have to be going to the gym … having a membership …if classes work for you ….I personally take a few classes myself

I enjoy going outside everyday ~ walking or gardening, in the summertime… I really like to paddle board … in the winter time … I like to cross country ski … those are good outlets … to keep me balanced and slowed down…

I try to walk eery day it probably comes down to 5 times a week, because at the weekend sometimes it can just slip away from you …

I do yoga at least once a week, sometimes 2xs a week.

I like pilates it’s very good for you, strength training…

creates a lot of strength the under-used muscles to support the over-used muscles which is good for injury prevention ~~

That’s good to know cause I always think you are doing that all the time because you’re just so strong and toned!

Sometimes I do those twice a week. once a week is at least the goal, trying to walk almost daily – anything that is keeping the movement going… is good…

You teach yoga too….

I substitute teach when the instructors are gone…

I think that will change down the line…

I actually do like yogurt …  I’ll talk a little bit about that … but yogurt that is low fat, with fruit already in it, those things have a lot of sugar and chemicals to make them low fat … so if you are going to eat yogurt it should be full fat … there are several brands out there… of course organic dairy is better for you … if you can afford that, if not make sure it’s full fat, just look at the ingredients and see how much sugar is in there…

Is there a brand that you like…  sometimes I get mountain high if I’m at the grocery store… if Im at the healthy store I get Brown Cow…

I always feel so guilty when I eat Brown cow because they seem to have a lot of calories …

I don’t count any calories … 

I eat what I want whenever I want

I try not to eat high white sugar processed things

I eat a lot of meat as well, but also I have the good fortune of being from Alaska and I bring back 50 lbs of seafood for us for the winter… so I have a good supply of freshly caught salmon and halibut …we also get deer that we eat

I rarely buy any meat other then chicken from the store… that is a big thing … processed meats are full of chemicals etc…

Hippie Water

Everyday I create a water, in a glass quart jar. I start with citrus… usually lemon, sometimes I switch it up with an orange or lime but mostly lemon…

I slice the lemon in half in slices, put the halves in the jar

• juice the lemon
• go with some sort of fruit or cucumber
• today I put 3 large frozen strawberries
• and fresh basil
• lemon, strawberry, basil is delicious

I keep adding water to that all day…  keeps it fresh and helps you make sure your getting enough water… I also like lemon cucumber mint

• any sort of fresh thing
• lilacs when they are in bloom, they’re edible… they make excellent water! just go out an pick a few lilacs…. anything year round
• edible
• mint
• or parsley
• horsetail
• cilantro

very good for you … it very cleansing in a way, it helps to pull metals out of the body…

This is gonna work good for my Food Babe Way plan to drink more lemon water…

Ball or mason came out with plastic straws, there was really

Elderberry syrup

I made another things I like to do is make my own medicine

elderberries grow all over the united states

very easy to identify plants these days… see if they grow near by you ro not

didn’t have the chance to go explore,

ordered a pound of them from Azure

I like to make tinctures

alcohol based medicines

want to use fresh herbs and 100 proof vodka

fill your jar with your herb

fillto top with vodka

label it

saying Illl remember that months later your like what is this.

label what it is and date

they need to sit at least six weeks

then put in a dropper bottle

internet is full of information about how to make tinctures

susanweed has the best information for tincture making

I would suggest making tinctures

read how she says to do it

I made eldeberry tincture this eyar, I had some leftover elderberrys, I made elderberry syrup

I used

simmeirng

mixed well

let it cool, bottle it, label it, make sure you store it in the fridge

take a few teaspons of that on a daily basis. good

The cleaning spray, kind of a

hippie water

anything undertake sun that you can think of…

anything that’s in bloom

infused white vinegar

recently

I wanted to make a holiday vinegar

spruce tips

fresh cranberries

throw it in a jar

fill it with white vinegar

put it in a window for about 2 weeks, it it ends up sitting there for a month that’s fine too

works on everthhing…

spray that I use in the house

windows, mirrows. granite counter tops

works on formica

both in the kitchen

qworks great on my flattop elective

tup needs something scrbbly

pretty much everywhere

I am on kind of this rotation I need another quart jar

use the mason quart jars

one or two going all the time

when I strain one off, what do I want to make this

grapefruit part- use the

lime cilantro

grapefruite lavendar

now that it’s wintertime

wintertime wildcrafting

using more cedar and spruce

and just made juniper

any of those works

it costs pennies

and it doesn’t create

really fun to play around, the cranberry spruce…

soap making process of

is lengthy I like

consists of oils or fats

I just found a connection for buffalo tallow, gonna experiment and see where that ’s gonna go…

palm oil is not a very earth friendly thing to purchase

trying to move away from that, hoping this local source of buffalo tallow

consist of oil and lye when you mix these together the lye causes a chemical reaction that makes the soap hard

the cleaning and hippie water

you can mix anything you want into there

I currnelty offere

lavenda

patchouli orange

my favorite

lemon eucalyptus

peppermint poppyseed, geranium red clay…really looking forward to January when things sort of slow down, I can expereiemnt,

shows and markets

and we go to Alaska

summers over I have to prepare for the holiday season

I sell online, I do shows. people stop by my home

very busy

then it just gets poof

its slow for a few months

more natural

bar

infuse

the oils with real plants

instead of using essential oils. more of a plant based bar

made with essential oil

just what people want….looking forward to the plant based oils

take that oil make bars

new things

coming to soap line…

I think something that helps with budgeting and frugal living

I really enjoy having all of my time, be all of my time.

And in order to do that, I have to work from home, you have to be self-disciplines

makes simplifying all that more…

because I don’t want to spend a lot of time away form home… I am a single parent I like to be available 2 children and self and home 24/7…

frugal tips

definitely buying in bulk is huge

having a good source for bulk items

Azure standard…

you go to Azure standard.com

wholesale online store

have drop places just about all over the country

groups of small people who put together an order, and then it all gets distributed form a drop point

let’s say you live in post falls id, you could call azure and ask them, usually there’s an organizer, someboedy who puts together the order.

yuou order right online and pay with your bankcard, then when it comes deliver you get it much more affordable price… you can buy like a gallon of shampoo or condition

50 lbs of epsom salt

if you go through a lot of rolled oats

things like that…

azure standard

you can call them if you have any questions

if you might be

which is easy to come up with if you have a few people in the group

it comes once a month if you make your minimum

we don’t always come up

we tend to order 3-4 times a year.

my mom has one every month…

wrangell doesn’t have a food store to shop with

they definitely make their minima

20-40

fresh produce…

good stuff

I tend to get my nuts from Costco… there again you can buy a lot of bulk things…

another excellent source for herbs is Frontier coop

the option to get all the fresh seafood and deer….

that is very helpful… my fortunate situation

I also think it’s really important to create everything from scratch

when your not used to eating processed foods… if the children do want cookies, they actually have to make them, helps cut down on a huge …

She has a great cookbook… i am really so glad she created a cookbook, what was the one thing you cooked… join one collection… something I can say for living a more frugal life… it doesn’t have to be a set recipe… improvising, recipe calls for ginger, use garlic use green onino.. about improvising fro different ingredients. helps for living more frugarlly..

The huntress cookbook

One of my favorite recipes, is her salmon patties, of course you could use any sort of salmon, lb of salmon, like a filet, we cut the skin off, thinly cut skin off, make sure there aren’t any bones, have to pull othem out, just by hand, chop salmon into bite size pieces, wild salmon filets from costco, made this recipe out of those, chop them into teeny tiny pieces,

thinly chop green onions

tablespoon of fresh minced ginger,

soy sauce

avacado oil

mustard

1/4 cup cilantro

add 1/2 cup pancko= japanese bread crumb

form the patties into like burgers

so delicious don’t need a bun, from those and it’s good to put them in the fridge for an hour before cooking, but many times, I’ve made them without the time to chill

usually use avocado oil,

extra virgin olive oil

coconut oil

heat the pan then fry them

while those are cooking,

salmon doesn’t need to cook very long

need a few minutes…

also I make a little dressing

1/2 cup of mayo

lemon zest

chopped caper

lemon caper mayo

have a salad with it!

I’ve been making things actually my whole life, growing up in Alaska, there’s a lot of tourism, a lot of kids in Wrangell where I grew up, there was a lot of garnets… what ultimately the

we just wasn’t into doing that…so I started beading at a young age, a cousin of mine beaded a ring, I was probably about 10, I got a book from the library on how to bead, I taught myself who taught me how to bead earings…

who helped me

beading

so I started to bead earnings and I would sell those to the tourists, and here I am 1112 and I would make $50-60 off this beaded jewelry, that got me at an early age into

cereamic art in my late teens, then moving onto Montana

started making soap about 2000, then had the kids and quit doing the whole creative thing for quite a few years, and then probably about lets see, Josie is 8 when she was about 1 1/2 I read this article on aprons what fun I want to make some aprons and the whole thing came together for me and the whole vision came together for me and at thea moment I hadn’t even sewed an apron… my mom said I just made an apron, I’ll mail you the pattern and I’m still making that one todya.. the other patterns have evolved over the years.

the most popular online

was because the

we don’t hesitate to buy something when we need it for work

I waited tables for 15 years,

I created it,

They did!

They just sold them on their website…

they put in a wholesale order for half aprons

went back

nice to go together

to totally different things

it’s nice to have something small

that’s inexpensive that you need anyway

salves I kind of always made salves

when I was in high school, my mom and I took an herbal workshop together….we made a cottonwood bud solar

neosporing alternative, beofer we had tubes of who knows what

comfrey lavendar

chapped skin, chapped feet

eye makeup remover

arnica salve

montana arnica grows all over the place

the most beautiful medicinal flower

I love to go out and pick it all day long

soreness

sore joints brusining

things like that…

the reusable grocery bags

Im always promoting as little plastic as possible

Plastic is really

I know, I get so much enjoyment about putting fabrics together, that does a lot for tme there’s a couple of designers and fabric I love…. they’re like vintage walpaper… joel dewberry… I use a lot of his fabrics… I use main two fabric collections…

If you have a business to you have any advice for our listeners about how to sell extra produce or get started in the industry?

A huge vending tip for me… I like to make a list of all the things that I need, it’s easy to forget something when your blasting out of the market

for set ups

it’s good to have a lot of clothespins, for instance to clip things

another great way to create a unique sign, is find an old window different panes, painted it with chalkboard paint

sign

flip up sign

anyway you wanted

I guess, just displays, signs are really good, vista print you can make a banner behind you

moo.com

make some nice things there…

also having some sort of table covering to the floor or the ground.. nothing messy underneath you… table…

Final question- if there was one change you would like to see to create a greener world what would it be? For example is there a charity or organization your passionate about or a project you would like to see put into action. What do you feel is the most crucial issue facing our planet in regards to the environment either in your local area or on a national or global scale?

There is an organization

horo the earth

Winona LaDuke

that woman I could listen to that woman speak 24 7 the indigo girls in that organization…

look up their website

they seem very knowledgeable to me on what’s going on as far s the fossil fuel industry

how we need to back off of our fossil fuels and move towatds cleaner energy

we all rely on it every day

doesn’t mean we can’t

ween ourselves off of fossil fuels

with the load we have

on our planet

we need the planet to survive

mother earth can shake all of us off

we have to keep it in the ground

any less plastic we can use

anytime we can walk some where we should

if you gonna buy a new car

why not think about getting an electric car

changing your own electric to

they want you to have solar

ask your local phones…

electic company if they offer nay sort of incentives for solar

look up what it would cost

in the long run

a lot of people stop themselves form ding things by saying I can’t afford that…we need to say to do to get solar

what do I need to do to get an electric car

to invest in wind

if you live in a windy area

ask questions

lookk up numbers

find out what it does cost

maybe we have a payment plant

investing in solar now will end up

that’s it!

honor the earth!

Do u have an inspiration tip or quote to help motivate our listeners to reach into that dirt and start their own garden?

4

How do we connect with you?

my business is simply joesphine is my website

Im also simplyjosephine

The Organic Gardener Podcast is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com

If you like what you heard on the Organic Gardener Podcast we’d love it if you’d give us review and hopefully a 5 star rating on iTunes so other gardeners can find us and listen to. Just click on the link here.