MOTHER EARTH NEWS February - March 2020

I come from generations of corn growers. Not corn in the modern commercial sense, but corn in the smaller, regionally adapted and cultural sense. For decades, I grew open-pollinated corns that my great-grandfather, grandfather, and father grew for study and for the development of cultivars they sold. My corn patches also grew the ancestors of those corns, gifted to my family through the generosity of the indigenous people who developed them. I grew corn because it fed me, grounded me, and connected me to my ancestors. In 2015, I stopped growing corn because a person I loved died. She died at home, with me and her family at her side. Feeling despair, I walked away from my corn patches that year and didn’t plant the following four years. My corn seed…

Our family of five — which consists of my husband and me and our three daughters — was itching to live somewhere with more room to roam and space to breathe. Last September, all the details aligned perfectly, and we purchased a picturesque stone house on 8.6 acres of ideal homesteading land, situated directly beside the Flight 93 National Memorial in Somerset County, Pennsylvania. We have many future plans for our space, but our first priority was to break ground for a large garden. Our neighbors helped till the land, and my husband installed a fence. Inspired, we sowed seeds, planted seedlings, and prayed they’d grow. My girls helped with every step of the gardening process as best they could. We’re finally tasting the fruits of our labor and couldn’t be…

“I dream of a farm with livestock, but for now, I’m making the most of my land and abilities.” Readers’ 50th anniversary letters are marked with a gold star.50 Homestead Hopes For years, I’ve read and admired the folks who’ve appeared in MOTHER EARTH NEWS, Grit, and Backwoods Home Magazine. I’ve longed to live on a farm and be self-sufficient. I’ve dreamed of having the freedom to rise with the sun and go to bed when it sets. In the late 1970s, my boyfriend and I bought a 700-square-foot cabin that sat on 7 acres. The property had a small spring-fed pond with a cistern. We both worked for the Navy back then, so we’d commute the 50-plus miles to work. Life was good, and, eventually, I got to stay home with our…

As the recipe, first dubbed “fire cider” by Rosemary Gladstar in the early 1970s, spread, herbalists prepared their own proprietary versions and took them to market. For example, herbalist Nicole Telkes, director of the Wildflower School of Botanical Medicine, blended “Texas Fire Cider,” which she regularly sold at her local co-op in Austin, Texas. Then, in 2012, a company named Shire City Herbals trademarked “fire cider,” and herbal businesses started to receive notices asking them to stop selling products by that name. Telkes reached out to resolve the issue, but Shire City maintained the trademark. Ultimately, Telkes, as well as Mary Blue of Farmacy Herbs and Katheryn Langelier of Herbal Revolution, who came to be known as the “Fire Cider Three,” began a campaign to render the fire cider name generic.…

During summer 2018, my husband and I began searching fora country home, and we found our dream house. It sat on a 2-acre lot with lots of open space, and was surrounded by trees on all sides. It was love at first sight. Then came the home inspection. Everything went smoothly until the end, when the inspector discovered a fuel oil tank buried in the front yard. A pre-sale inspection revealed that the tank was leaking, so the sellers had it removed and properly disposed of the contaminated soil. So, at the time of closing in June, we didn’t have heat. At this point, we decided our best option was a conventional electric heat pump. Our dream was a geothermal system, but we thought it would be too cost-prohibitive. I’m happy to…

Readers, to mark our 50th anniversary as a magazine, we’re reprinting some of the more colorful stories from our archive. This was originally published in the March/April 1978 issue. — MOTHER The advertisement showed a towel-clad model reclining on a redwood bench in a handsome paneled room. Healthy beads of perspiration trickled down her brow as she ladled water from a wooden bucket onto the stones in the heater. The caption read, “Build this beautiful, healthful Finnish sauna. Kits as low as $449.” [That’s nearly $1,800 in 2020 dollars.] I said to myself, “Sure would be nice to have a sauna like that, but $450? No way!” My pal Tom was unemployed at the time, and I was between jobs myself. We didn’t have that kind of money, although we dearly wanted our…