FARMcurious
to educate, inspire and equip the urban homesteader
The FARMcurious Blog
How to peel a farm-fresh egg
Have you ever tried to peel a super-fresh egg straight from the backyard or farm and found yourself hovering over a piled of shredded egg pieces wondering what went wrong? Yeah, me too. I suspect all us backyard chicken-tenders have. Lucky you, I’m about to blow your mind with a little-known trick for peeling the freshest egg you can find. Here’s the trick: Cook the eggs to your liking: My preferred method of preparing soft boiled eggs is to add the eggs to cold water in the pan. Hell, add a little baking soda if you’re a believer. Turn… more
Cheesemaking – what to do with all that whey?
You’ve conquered your demons and made cheese- good for you!! (If you haven’t yet made cheese, join one of our classes in SF or check out our home cheesemaking kits – you won’t regret it). Now you find yourself with a pound of delicious homemade cheese and three quarts of whey! What to do with all that protein-rich goodness? First, some things to know about whey: Whey is milk with the fats and solids pulled out (the solids are now in your cheese). It’s primarily water but also contains lactose (milk sugar) which is water soluble and ends up draining… more
Our backyard homestead infant death trap
When you don’t yet have a child, you don’t really realize how toddler unfriendly your home is. It takes a pint-size visitor or two to open your eyes enough to see that your backyard homestead could be an infant death trap. I used to be of the rather selfish mind that it was the parent’s responsibility to keep their child safe and out of trouble when they visited my house. Now that I’m three months away from having a child of my own all the preconceived notions are melting away. This all came to light about a month ago when… more
Guidelines for Gift Swap/Seed Exchange at our Underground Homesteading Party
We’re hosting another Gift Swap event during our Underground Homesteading Party and we couldn’t be more excited! We’re also adding an heirloom seed exchange component this year so bring the heirloom seeds you’ve saved to trade with other enthusiasts! We’ve had a lot of questions regarding how the swap will work so we thought we’d include some guidelines. How it works: We anticipate this part of the event to last about an hour. Starting at 5:45pm you can begin setting out your items to trade. From 6pm-6:30 you will be able to walk around and see what items others have… more
Fishing for Answers on Nutrition
It seems the more we learn about nutrition and food the more we wonder what we should really be eating in an ideal world. The answers don’t come easily. For every study that indicates a benefit to a food, it seems there’s an equally good reason not to consume that item. In fact my best friend’s husband just produced the first episode of a podcast series on nutrition which touches on the challenges involved in choosing a meal in light of all the conflicting information available. While it’s true that I eat many things that don’t fit into the ideal… more
Holiday Gift Trade at our Underground Holiday Party
We’re hosting our first Gift Trade event during our Underground Holiday Party and we couldn’t be more excited! We’ve had a lot of questions regarding how the holiday gift trade will work and since it’s our first go at it, we thought we’d include some guidelines. How it works: We anticipate this part of the event to last about an hour. Starting at 5:45pm you can begin setting out your items to trade. From 6pm-6:30 you will be able to walk around and see what items others have brought. If you see something you like, write down your name and… more
Dec 10th – 2nd Annual FARMcurious Underground Holiday Party
Sample delicious homemade creations while you explore your homesteading wish list and learn a new skill! Our second annual Underground Holiday Party will be part DIY food demos, part holiday shopping and all party. Join us at the super swanky St Regis Hotel in San Francisco for an afternoon of tasty snacks and holiday fun. Schedule: 3pm – Cheesemaking 101: Making Fresh Chevre for your Holiday Celebrations 4pm – Home-Canned Goods as Holiday Gifts 5pm – Making Backyard (or Farmer’s Market) Fruit Wine 6-7pm – Holiday Gift Trade – bring handcrafted food items, body care products or other homemade… more
Results for the Eat Real Raffle!
Thanks so much to everyone who came to our Eat Real Fest booth and participated in our drawing! We had an amazing time meeting and talking to all of your and handed out hundreds of raffle tickets for our giveaway are are so excited about the drawing. Thanks especially to those of you who posted comments and photos to Twitter – the social media love was spectacular and let’s face it- we were way too busy to do our own tweeting! Here are some photos posted by some of our Twitter followers along with the results of the raffle: Without… more
Visit us at Eat Real Fest in Oakland and win!
Everyone loves a good contest right? We’ve been trying to think of a great way to host a giveaway at Eat Real Festival in Oakland and with the help of some Facebook friends, I think we came up with something really fun. There are three ways to enter: 1) Visit our booth at Eat Real Fest this weekend and spend money! For every $10 you spend you’ll receive a raffle ticket for a prize. 2) Visit our booth at Eat Real Fest and take a picture of any part of the booth, us or our products. Post the picture on… more
A Backyard Wine-Making Kit is Born
Last year around this time I wrote a post about my education in wine-making. I originally thought it would be great to carry a wine-making kit in the FARMcurious store; after all, I did already carry a beer-making kit. I saw that many of the brew stores had them for a few hundred dollars, which honestly seemed like a lot so I started asking questions. As it turns out making wine at home from grapes is a huge endeavor. You generally have to make it in large batches because you order the wine grapes by the pallet load when they’re… more
Follow