Exciting Announcement!

Scent from Nature has a new website!

Many, many thanks to Jeff and Vaughan at Halogen Web Studios for their excellent service, product, advice, design, and most of all, patience. This has been a long process but was very much worth it! We're so happy with the website. Please check it out and let us know what you think.

North Woods Garden Update

Citronella to keep the skeeters away

My porch container garden. I will no longer refer to it as my "pot" garden. That was getting far too many raised eyebrows.

Lemongrass to keep the skeeter away. Do you see a theme here?

In addition to citronella and lemongrass, we've got rosemary, sage, lavender, lettuce, mint, lemon thyme, and bee balm.

Zucchini has been planted in the straw bales

Stair step containers contain lettuce, beets, carrots and zucchini

Four varieties of organic, heirloom tomatoes

It's looking like summer!

Straw bales have been planted!

Straw bales - zucchini, peas, beans, melon, potatoes and broccoli. I think it's broccoli. When I planted the seeds I didn't distinguish it between the Kale and now they look identical so we'll see!

Spring 2014 Firsts!

Spring took a while to come and now it seems to have passed quickly with Summer taking the forefront. Here are some Spring first in our balsam and birch heaven:

Last snowfall (18 inches!)  - April 25th
1st Mosquito spotted - May 18th
1st Hummingbird returned - May 18th
Heat turned off - May 24th
Leaf out began - May 25th
Unplugged the Wood Boiler which heats our home - May 28th

North Woods Garden Update

Soaker hoses were added to the bales along with stakes to string wire for climbing plants and cattle panels on each for the same reason.

The bale continues to be conditioned with an organic fertilizer and then soaked with water.

This fun planter will look nice with our veggies growing in it. Our sled dogs are lounging in the shade in the background - Points Unknown

We noticed that a few snowshoe hare were scoping things out. I would suggest staying far away, my little furry friend.

The final stage of conditioning is to add wood ash and a bone meal blend.

After the wood ash and bone meal blend are added, the bale is soaked again. In 5 days, we can plant!

A Garden for the Bees (and People)

One of our 4Inch pillars looks so nice resting on top of the beginnings of our garden

No soil? Use bales!

We've come to realize that if we want a garden up in our north woods paradise, we have to think out of the box and use a bale! You see, we have no soil to speak of so our research brought us to the use of straw bales for planting vegetables. Not only is this value to us but the blossoms will be valued by the honey bees.

It takes 10+ days to condition the straw bales to make them ready to plant. We've been using organic fertilizer and water in various amounts on specific days. Now if we could only get some nice warm temperatures so that the bales begin to "cook". With a low of 25 degrees expected over night, I think we're a ways off! Stay tuned. And if you'd like to her more regular updates, please "like" and follow us on facebook!

We did it!

Scent from Nature has finally gone off grid! That's right, we've finally made our move to the remote north woods of Minnesota's Arrowhead Region where we're thoughtfully handcrafting our pure beeswax candles using power from the SUN! How cool (hot) is that?!

We've also decided, contrary to our most recent post, that it's important to keep separate blogs for Scent from Nature and our other business Points Unknown; Dog-Based Adventures, rather than combine them into one "lifestyle" blog. What do you think? You can always check out what we're doing with the sled dogs by visiting the Points Unknown blog.

Simplicity.......

To help support our values and direction as we continue on our quest for a more simple lifestyle, we've combined our blogs. We will now post all of our lifestyle updates that include the goings on at Scent from Nature, on our new blog called Irish Creek Homestead. Please visit us there and follow our journey!