Wild + Whole

Trying to imagine my life without garlic is like trying to imagine my life in black and white. Garlic, second maybe only to salt, is elemental in what Jim Harrison coined “living vividly,” which is the closest thing I’ve got to religion, making garlic something of a sacrament—a daily one, in my case...

It seems like there are as many ways to prune a tomato as there are varieties of tomatoes. The size of your tomato depends on a lot of things including the variety you plant, soil quality, and climate in a given year. But in addition to these characteristics that are incredibly important, we’ve also...

Depending on who you ask, Northern snakeheads (Channa argus) are either the worst thing or best thing ever to happen to the Potomac River and the surrounding water systems. For 20 years, these “frankenfish” that can supposedly breathe air, walk on land, and massacre your small pets have been a hot...

Here’s an unfortunate idea most people who want to grow food for themselves live under: they think they don’t have the space to do so. In most cases, this simply isn’t true, but this mindset runs rampant in society, and in this writer’s opinion it needs to be changed. One way we can change it is by...

My family and I worked a patch of blackcap raspberries along a road winding through the mountains of central Pennsylvania. We’d waited until the heat of the July day broke with the evening to come pick. With only an hour of light left, we quickly tried to fill a gallon to freeze, and hopefully a cup...

Beans are thought to have been first cultivated alongside their sister crop, corn, around 7,000 years ago in what is now Mexico. Over thousands of years they made their way north on Native American trade routes with unique varieties developing along the way. Mature dry beans are packed with protein...

There are many great reasons to add sheep to your homestead. Whether you’re interested in wool, meat, dairy, help with weeds, showing, or all the above, sheep make useful additions to farms and homesteads of any size. Yet the choice between breeds can be tough. The American Sheep Industry...

Mugolio is my favorite party trick. It turns a bowl of plain vanilla ice cream into a primeval forest treat, a well-liquor drink into a top-shelf cocktail, or a humble chevre into a Michelin-star cheese course, and all for the cost of a few cups of sugar. It’s a rags-to-riches story that’s within...

Around 10,000 years ago in what is now Southern Mexico, subsistence farmers began experimenting with a scrubby wild grain called Teosinte. Over generations they selectively bred for larger and larger starch-filled kernels until they developed the ubiquitous grain that we now call corn. Corn gets a...

Ducks fill a niche on the homestead that no other animal can. Various breeds can either give you a whole lot of meat or a whole lot of eggs, but this article will focus on species that are classified (generally speaking) as dual-purpose birds, meaning you get the best of both worlds. You'll be...

Bánh mì, the Vietnamese equivalent of a hoagie, sub, or grinder, is a beautiful example of what happens when two distinct culinary cultures blend. Bánh mì translates to “baked” and “wheat” or “bread.” At its core, it's a french baguette filled with Vietnamese ingredients. Crispy bread, pickled...