The silence and beauty of Winter penetrates me to my core. Dark mornings and long evenings filled with star and moonlight, crisp air, and the smell of woodsmoke ever lingering. Winter far from the country used to be something to bear, to endure and get through. Since living here on The Land, I feel so differently about this. Winter has become for me, what I believe it should be, a time of quiet reflection, of perpetual tea drinking, crafting, dreaming, cozy lantern light, soups, stews and bubbling brews atop the woodstove. Living here, we live by the season, truly, and I have come to appreciate and absolutely love winter for the strength and fortification it inspires in my mind, body and spirit through rest, deep nourishment and inward reflection.

The end of fall came this year and we were still very busy with the homestead life. There was many times I just wished for it all to slow down, I felt as the leaves had turned and fallen to the ground, as the energies of the plants went inward that I too should be doing so, but this year that happened to be push time when more than ever, food needed to be harvested and preserved (we got our garden out very late compared to a “normal” year) , our house was still being worked on, roots wild harvested, and animals butchered. Slowly things started being checked off the list and it finally started to slow down in December (well except for  getting firewood, ha!) and now we, including my husband thankfully, have been able to take it abit more easy, spend our time together, and treat the darkest days of winter as a way to enjoy and celebrate our harvest and hard work throughout the rest of the seasons.

This is our 4^th winter in our little offgrid homestead on the Land and I am so proud and blown away at how far we have come in such a short amount of time. We are learning so much and each year we get better at sustaining ourselves. I don’t yet know if I am ready to describe what a journey its all been, but I will say that it has taught me more lessons than I can count, and above all, that I am grateful, reverently grateful for it all.

This winter we have freezers* full of our own raised chicken, turkey, and pork along with bags of produce, lake fish and wild harvested berries.

*our small solar system wouldn’t run a deep freeze so we have freezer space at the other end of the land where there is in fact conventional electricity, however, The Land also has a huge solar panel system that actually feeds solar energy back into the conventional energy grid, more than cancelling out our conventional energy used. it is a radical thing really and a whole other topic.

In the winter my husband takes any chance he can to ice fish, we are blessed to live close to a large lake with good fishing. Often friends from our neighboring reserve will come drop off fish for us as well, cold water winter fish is super delicious. Hunting and Fishing are becoming more of a priority the longer we live here, I look forward to the day we get our first moose!

Also this year, my husband hand dug a root cellar and filled it full with our potatoes, carrots, rutabagas, turnips, and parsnips. This along with so much canned fruit*, garden pickles, wildcrafted berry preserves and of course all the homemade wine that our good friends and my man made this fall!

*we don’t grow the fruit ourselves, as we have yet to establish the small apple, plum and cherry trees that would grow in our climate, so we managed a wonderful manifestation! We wanted a “fruit guy” so to say and indeed we found one! We plan for it, and throughout the summer we get about 4 calls from our fruit lady, the fruit guy picks his orchard in BC, (our neighboring province to Alberta and closest major producing fruit orchards) brings it on a truck to our area and we show up and buy as many cases as we can of whatever he has at the time, (peaches, nectarines,pears, cherries, plums, apples) take it home and preserve it (dry, can, freeze). We cannot easily grow good fruit crops here (that’s part of why its so important for us to pick wild berries), and we do make use of whatever refuge plums and apples we can score from others in the area. It is also of value for us to get fruit this way at a lower impact and high quality. Beyond just environmental impact, we grow and raise our own food for quality as well. The state of the produce in the grocery stores in our northern area is dismal, plus it travels far, sits long and is over priced. Especially in winter. So we currently get the bulk of our fruit this way, and then there is one less thing we rely on the grocery store for. Oh sure, there are tons of things we will continue to eat from far away; citrus fruits, chocolate, spices, coconut, vanilla, rice, etc. However, as the majority of our food has become our own, the cost and impact of those foods from far away becomes harder to ignore. We are not perfect nor militant in our lifestyle however and I’ll probably always buy cocoa products as long as they are available to me, but now, I have a different mindset, and choose to see and treat these foods as the luxuries they are.

Food has become such a wonderful and potent way for us to honor the seasons. One thing that’s often softly simmering atop our woodstove in Winter is herbal vegetable broth or herbal bone broth for use in nourishing soups, stews and the like. Brewing broth is something I’ve grown to love, as it is indeed for us a simmering pot of our own making, and another way of celebrating our harvest and all the hard work we’ve done throughout the year. I take pride in being able to use near all ingredients blessed by our own hearts and hands.

Herbal Bone Broth.

Bone Broth is an ancient food and medicine. Humans have been simmering down both bones and herbs for nutrition and healing since there was a fire to simmer upon. For our ancestors it was a way to use all parts of the animal, as it is for us now. I have come to find a wholeness in this, I am glad to honor the animals we cared for by using more than just the meat on top. Bone broth is both nutrient dense and very easy for our  bodies to digest and absorb. It is  used largely in improving the health of the gut, joints, skin, and the immune system.

To make the below recipe vegetarian, omit bones and ACV, and simmer for a few hours only before straining, I was a vegetarian for 18 years before coming to the land and choosing to eat our own raised and locally hunted meat, and in the first year here before I ate meat, it was delicious herbal veggie broth that was brewed atop the woodstove and it is good and nourishing of course, but bone broth and the deep nourishment that provides to our bodies is a whole other medicine that I am grateful to be discovering.

Herbal Bone Broth Recipe

In a big Ole pot (24 cups of water or more) add:

• 2 or more pounds of bones(poultry, pork, beef) (pastured, organic and free range is what you want for this. Fish bones also work. If you can support local producers, please do). My favorite to use is the carcass from a roast chicken or turkey, or like pictured below, an old laying hen.
• 1 or 2 Tbsp Apple Cider Vinegar (the acid helps to break up and dissolve the bones, unleashing all its mineral goodness)
• a carrot, an onion, some garlic, a handful or more of dried celery and dried leeks (I also throw in any other vegetable scraps that haven’t gone to the chickens)
• 1/2 cup Garden herbs like Winter Savory, Oregano, Thyme, Parsley, Sage, or whatever else is in dried abundance from summer
• 1 1/2 cups wild herbs (aprox. And to taste, I’d say this brew is medium strength, one could make it much lighter or much danker by adding less or more herbs). Choices in my wildcrafted herbal cupboard* I often include are Chaga, nettle leaf and root, horsetail, Labrador tea, fireweed leaf, raspberry leaf, strawberry leaf, goldenrod leaf and flower, red clover leaf and blossom, dandelion root, rosehip, lambs quarter leaf and poly-pore mushroom.

*This is wide open for whatever is familiar and in abundance in your own herbal cupboard, use what you have and what you know. Each herb offers its own unique qualities to the brew and over time one learns about combining for flavor as well as medicine and nourishment. There has been a few brews over time that perhaps was too bitter from roots, or something about the taste didn’t work, and those broths were enjoyed by our shield beast Freya. It’s a process, and an art I believe, using your intuition and senses to blend, but also making do with what you have. Each broth turns out slightly different and I love intentionally and intuitively choosing the herb blend each time.

Cover with water and allow to come to a boil before turning down to low and simmering for several hours if a straight herbal vegetable broth, or for maximum potency of the bone broth, allowing to simmer for up to 48 hours before straining, using or cooling and refrigerating or freezing. If you are simmering for a long time you will need to add additional water as liquid steams off.

Stewing one of my old laying hens into herbal bone broth. I follow the instructions for bone broth above, except I add the ACV after the chicken is stewed and I’ve plucked it(for later use in soup). When I’ve returned the bones to the brew the ACV goes in.

For me, unless the woodstove is rip roaring and I can get a pot to boil upon it (which it can be on colder days when broth is so warming and comforting), I will bring the pot to a boil on the propane range and then set it on the constant heat of the woodstove to simmer for the desired amount of time. If it has been on a low heat for a while, I will always bring to a full boil again before consuming. Also, you can turn the heat off at night, just bring to full boil again in the morning or as soon as possible before turning it down again once more to slowly simmer.

The broth can be strained and then stored in the fridge for a few weeks. I don’t have a fridge so it gets used right away or frozen. The broth can be drunk by the cup or used as a base for soups, stews and grain dishes or whatever else you like. It’s nice to have on hand when sick and food is just too much, a cup of broth can be the perfect cure in those moments. Herbal Bone Broth for my family has become a nourishing winter staple and a potent and joyous expression of our life and work here on The Land.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this post! How do you  brew your bone broth? Any different tricks or tips? What herbs do you use?  Thanks, friends.