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  • Gardening with Kids: Bean Tipi

    Gardening with Kids: Bean Tipi

    Whether you’re in a postage stamp sized yard, or a pastoral acreage, creating outdoor nooks and play spaces is a simple and affordable way to add some magic to your children’s time in the yard.

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    You’ll need:
    • 6 bamboo poles, 6 feet tall (or other type of tall poles)
    • twine
    • bean seeds or plants (or those of another type of plant such as morning glory or black eyed susan vine)
    How to make the bean tipi:
    • Choose a place in the yard where there won’t be a lot of competition from grass, or dig up some grass and save yourself from a bit of mowing. Push the poles into the ground, angling them up toward the centre. Leave a bit more space between two of the poles to use as an entry way. Note that our tipi is not a traditional tipi shape – we were growing beans on the fence behind, and wanted to use that as the back wall, so only used four poles this year.
    • Once all the poles are in, gather the tops and use the twine to tie them together.
    • Tie a piece of twine to the top, and then zig zag around the poles, creating more surface area for the vines to grow up. The kids can help decide on a pattern and get involved in the action.
    • Plant your bean seeds or seedlings at the base of the poles, amending with compost. Mark with plant markers or popsicle sticks to keep them safe as they grow.
    • Now and then it can speed things along a bit to help the plants find the next ‘rung’ on the path up the tipi.

     

    Our kids spend literally hours in their tipi, with a blanket laid out nicely on the ground to sit on, a small table (old shoe rack – I love how they realized that and happily tucked their shoes on the bottom shelf) for snacking on, and a handful of toys. Even the cat couldn’t resist this cozy little nook in the yard…

    An added bonus: built in healthy snacks dangling right in front of the kids!

    We’d love to see photos of your bean tipi or other special garden play nook. Attach a link in the comments!

    bean tipi 7bean-tipi-snack-time

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    This post was shared as a part of Thank Goodness Its Monday.

     

     

  • Urban Sugarin’

    Urban Sugarin’

    maple syrup book loveDrilling the hole catching a dropwatching the ice flow chica in tree sap boiling over fire   filtering the syrupmaple syrup finished syrup in jar

     

    This post was featured over at Nourishing Joy.

     

  • Celebrating Easter Mindfully / Grandma’s Paska

    Celebrating Easter Mindfully / Grandma’s Paska

    Slippery, sticky, yellow dough. Exotic saffron. Raisins. Old coffee tins and pretty loaf pans. Generations of women’s hands kneading, shaping, tasting. This is something I want to pass onto our children, especially now that their great-grandma has passed. She would have been 99 this fall!

    I thought I’d share my grandmother’s original recipe (you can see her recipe card there in the photo below), as well as an updated version that subs a few ingredients such as unrefined sugar. Grab the printable Grandma’s Paska PDF to print out the recipe or tuck it away in your recipe folder on your computer.

    If you have a recipe or skill to share that was passed on to you by your grandmother (or grandfather!), please write to us at Heirloom Offerings :: The Grandma Project. We’d love to share your story and skill!

    tiny peasant paska ingredientstiny peasant easter paska yeasttiny peasant easter paska milktiny peasant paska yeast readytiny peasant paska butter sugartiny peasant paska egg whitestiny peasant paska saffrontiny peasant paska sift flourtiny peasant paska mixingtiny peasant paska mix whitestiny peasant paska elbow greasetiny peasant paska raisinstiny peasant paska kneadtiny peasant paska rest

     

    This post was shared as a part of Thank Goodness It’s Monday, Fat Tuesday, and Real Food Wednesday.

  • The Week in Photos

    The Week in Photos

    A lot of celebrating this past week!

    :: Herb Fairies Elder learning

    :: A lunch party for Mike’s birthday

    :: April Fool’s

    :: Superhero Swim party for the birthday boys

    :: Library visit

    :: Photos I found on my phone, taken by Cohen

     

    elder herb fairiescolouring ceruleamaking lemonadebirthday lunch april fool's googly eyesbirthday boy 4birthday boy 7birthday swim heroessuperhero swimmerstiny peasant swim superheroestiny peasant superhero cupcakes    tiny peasant superhero swim toweltiny peasant superhero swim towels    library visit
    Photos below by Cohen…

    art supplies cohen drawing stuff cohen luz in box cohen

  • Taking Back Quiet Time

    Taking Back Quiet Time

    Recently I’ve read strange phrases like ‘mamas reading time’, and ‘taking a quick cat nap on the couch’. Reading time?! For moms? During the day, with kids home? I guess it is possible, seeing as how this past year we entered a whole new world where Milo can play with the other kids, and really well on his own when those older kids are doing school stuff that he’s not interested in.

    But mamas with smaller ones, I know that we’re not all at that point where we can squeeze in those luxuries like pleasure reading, napping, showering, feeding ourselves well – and those of you who are homeschooling and/or working on top of the full time + overtime job that is parenting (home or away) – well, you’re probably laughing (or crying – hopefully not crying).

    I think it’s important to note here that whether you have one babe, or eight, whether you work from home, work out of the home, homeschool or not – this gig is tough, and we can all use an infusion of inspiration now and then!

    Let’s help each other out – share your ideas for quiet time activities – let’s take back quiet time. We don’t have to call it that – to the kids it can be No Mamas Allowed Time, and for us mamas it can be a Mamas Playdate – with Coffee + Chocolate.

    To start us off here are a handful of ideas that I could find photos for in the short term, and will post more in the future as I find them.

    Please share you own ideas for special quiet time activities in the comments – and how you like to spend those quiet moments…

    nature patterns shape patterns logic puzzles felt clothes line activity 2 felt clothes line activity transfering pine coneshammock chair story 2 block structure tiny peasant stacking stars zebra puzzle

  • Celebrating Easter Mindfully | Dyeing Eggs

    Celebrating Easter Mindfully | Dyeing Eggs

    One of my fondest childhood memories of Easter is dyeing Easter eggs in my grandmother’s kitchen, surrounded by family, while snacking on grandma’s famous Paska (Polish Easter bread).

    I recall the sweet, yeasty taste of the homemade bread, the smell of the local pickerel or ham we’d enjoy later at dinner, the whole boiled eggs carefully prepared for the dyeing and decorating – yet, in the middle of all of these wholesome parts of such a special celebration, a cardboard box is ripped open, some packets of chemical dies are dumped down onto the counter and then carefully stirred into warm water with vinegar.

    It wasn’t until I was in high school or university that I started to wonder if the chemical dyes on our egg shells could affect our health. Often those bright colours would indeed make their way inside the shell and onto the actual egg. 

    I now have children who also love the excitement of decorating Easter eggs as part of our celebration. I’m thankful that we’ve learned the skill of making homemade plant and food-based dyes that have beautiful results and provide us some peace of mind.

    Download our Natural Easter Egg Dye tutorial. Check out a whole food revamp of my lovely grandma’s easter bread recipe, and head back in time for our Natural Easter Basket Stuffers post.

     

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    This post was featured at Real Food Forager and Nourishing Joy.

    It was shared as a part of Montessori Monday and Thank Goodness It’s Monday, Fat Tuesday, and Simple Lives Thursday, Fight Back Friday, Unprocessed Fridays, and Simply Natural Saturdays.

  • The Week in Photos

    The Week in Photos

    Thank goodness for photos. When I look at these moments, I am so grateful for every single one of them, big or small. The tears I shed last week as I sat in the van willing myself to go be social with the kids after a tough morning… their tears… the squabbles, the messes – they don’t seem so bad when I pause with gratitude for these moments.

    Those tears and squabbles, messes and hard moments – they’re all a part of the package of living and learning together. They are how we grow to understand one another, love one another, and be better together. But sometimes after a day or a week of those moments, looking at these moments is like a sort of therapy. Joy therapy. Little buoys to keep me afloat after a tough week, and inspire me as we embark on the next. And it’s really not the photos – it could be written word, time spent remembering… it’s the moments, the experiences.

    This collection of moments is from the last two weeks, I believe…

    Some moments of note: Brother tag-team art project, a map of our neighbourhood in the works by Bre and Cohen, a walk to the hardware store with a grandma, a 7th birthday breakfast, homeschool co-op, the museum, lots and lots of plant learning love, and one pretty darn cool lego stop motion iPad rig.

    This was the first birthday crown I made, based on instruction in The Creative Family and other patterns online – Cohen has had it since he was tiny and each child has their own that is brought down for their birthday. I just LOVE this tradition. I also love the idea of sewing a button on the band for each year – which we have done with Milo, but nobody else. Ahem. That’s just how things roll around here!

    A couple other beloved birthday traditions are a slideshow of photos of the birthday boy or girl, and more recently, plain-paper wrapped gifts with drawings by mom and dad to be coloured in. I am always amazed at how excited they are to colour in the drawings, even though it means waiting longer to open their gifts.

    In case anyone is wondering, these are the face paints we use, and love.

    If you have a special moment (or a collection) to share, add a link to the comments, or share about them there.

     

    brother team art neighbourhood map project mama and boy game walk to hardware shopbirthday spelt waffle birthday slideshow  homeschool co-op animal lover homeschool co-op lego kids  museum fun   makeoversseedling station cohen berg hunee bee plant partshandprint flower garden handprint flowers labels handprint flowers tracing cowboy  stop motion rig

     

    Please note that we are a part of the Amazon associates program. If you visit Amazon.ca through a link on Tiny Peasant and make a purchase, our family will receive a small percentage of the sale. The products that I specifically recommend in blog posts are products that we love in our home – if they aren’t they are on my wish list and I will note that. Our bookshop (coming soon) has a mixture of tried and true, and wish list items. If you ever have any questions about a product we link to, please don’t hesitate to ask! Thank you for your support! 

  • Farm Learning :: An Urban Farm Site

    Farm Learning :: An Urban Farm Site

    This post is the second in a series of posts that share some wonderful places we visited on a trip to California that we won (for two) through Vita Health Fresh Market in the fall of 2012. We have been dreaming of living on a farm for about a decade and are always looking for unique learning opportunities. On this trip we visited several farms and fantastic restaurants, coming home refreshed and inspired.

    Pulling into this little farm oasis, tucked right into an urban setting, was exhilarating – yes, we get pretty excited about food and farms! Fairview Gardens is an educational urban farm site packed with learning opportunities, breathtaking beauty, and wonderful people. It’s also one of, if not the oldest organic farm in southern California.

    The staff were occupied with a workshop that was taking place right then, and so we set out on their well organized self-guided tour. There are informative sign posts set about the property with information on the animals, crops, and growing practices. Our self-guided tour took us around the farm to see the goats and their creative straw-filled adobe shelter, which wasn’t quite strong enough when matched against their horns. We had a chat with the chickens, and then wandered among the vegetables, herbs, and a variety of fruit trees – including pomegranates. There was something sacred about standing under the avocado trees, which had been planted in the 1950s. What had me almost weak in the knees, though, was the produce washing station. I’ve had designs on this kind of thing for quite a while – on a smaller scale.

    It was incredibly inspiring to be on this urban farm where so much learning takes place – we saw so much of our own dream of a farm education site being lived out there.

    Our tummies were rumbling after immersing ourselves in this delicious produce, so we popped into the Goleta Farmers’ Market. We made out like bandits with fresh sourdough bread, organic butter, avocado honey, almond butter, organic strawberries – all local – and then found the farm stand for Fairview Farms where we bought some carrots and a couple of gorgeous pomegranates from the very trees we had just seen at the farm.

    On a side note, the almond grower we met at the market also happened to tell us about a program called Mennonite Your Way – a hospitality network of folks open to sharing their homes with travellers. We used airbnb a bit which was great, but it was also neat to learn of this little program.

    About an hour of gorgeous roadside vineyards later, we rolled into Los Alamos, where we dined on the back patio of a quaintly stylish little eatery called Bell Street Farm and Market. It is the sweetest restaurant I think I’ve ever seen, and the food, with locally sourced ingredients, was amazing. The whole town of Los Alamos was out of a story book. Picture perfect storefronts, all with a western aesthetic. There were two or three restaurants in this tiny town, serving local organic food, to boot.

    Not that we could ask for anything more after a day like this, we stopped off at Avila Beach to dip our toes in the ocean and play in the sand – Mike, proudly donning his new Bell Street hat.

    tp fairview bike ride  tp fairview wash station tp fairview coop tp fairview boys coop tp fairview hello goattp fairview goats sidetp fairview goat sheltertp fairview tractor boystp fairview dad boys tp fairview mom cohen  tp fairview field stroll tp fairview field view   tp fairview producetp fairview pommegranate   tp fairview hives   tp fairview avocado tp los alamos signtp los alamos bell street pumpkin tp los alamos cerveza bell stree sandwich tp los alamos flatbread tp mike bell street hattp avila beach co tp avila beach mom milo

     

     

     

    * Photos by Kris Antonius and Mike Berg

    * We are not receiving any compensation from Vita Health Fresh Market for sharing stories about our trip or sharing their link. We have been happy customers of our local Vita Health Fresh Market since we were married almost twelve years ago, and still shop there today. The staff  there have seen us through two pregnancies and multiple food allergies and are so loving and kind to our children.

  • Seedlings

    Seedlings

    The seedlings from our germination experiment are coming along well! They’re likely much too early, so I’m not sure what we’ll do with them, but for now we’re enjoying the green that is adding some life to our living room. It’s lovely – if you can get past our ghetto grow light set-up! We have a hanging light rigged up along our curtain rod, with a grow-light in it. Not the prettiest contraption, but it works, and it’s another reminder that you truly don’t need high tech equipment and a lot of financial input – start where you are with what you have!

    The exciting thing has been to see the first true leaves emerge. The sad part was waking up to corn leaves that had been gnawed on by our cat, Luz. I guess it’s good that someone is getting an early taste of spring!

    tiny peasant transplants4 tiny peasant transplants3 tiny peasant transplantstiny peasant growing seedlingstiny peasant growing seedlings3

  • Celebrating Easter Mindfully / Natural Basket Stuffers

    Celebrating Easter Mindfully / Natural Basket Stuffers

    Tiny Maker Kit

    Whether celebrated for it’s religious significance, as a family tradition, or as a way of welcoming spring, we can all agree that Easter is about new life; blades of grass poking through freshly thawed soil, tender shoots emerging from a deep slumber, just as we breathe in the fresh spring air after a long, dark winter.

    Traditionally, children toting baskets and a sense of adventure would hunt for eggs – real, whole eggs – hidden in the grass. The eggs were, and still are for some, a symbol of new life. Somewhere along the way, whole eggs led to chocolate eggs, which led to chocolate bunnies, chocolate hens, jelly beans, marshmallow peeps, and well, you get the picture. The celebration of new life and a new season are easily lost in the sea of candy.

    As a child, I adored Easter. Certainly, I loved the chocolate and candy, but most of my connection to our family celebrations lies in the excitement of the treasure collecting and the feeling of transformation – of going to bed at night eager in anticipation of the newness and lightness that Easter would bring.

    As a parent, I want to bring that anticipation to our home, but I don’t want to bring the sugar. Over the past few years, I’ve come up with a few things that get a check of approval from our whole crew – kids and parents alike.

    Download our Natural Easter Basket Stuffers PDF to toss the sugar, and embrace the sweetness!

     

    Also head over to the Tiny Peasant shop, where you’ll receive 20% off all children’s kits – such as the Tiny Maker play dough kit shown above – they would make a lovely addition to any easter basket! Use the coupon code: SWEETEASTER until March 28.

     

    Check out the second post in Celebrating Easter Mindfully series :: Dyeing Easter Eggs Naturally

     

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    This post was shared as a part of Montessori Monday, Thank Goodness It’s Monday, Unprocessed Fridays, Fight Back Friday, and Simply Natural Saturdays.