Thyme To Forage

09/05/2026

I’ve received several comments suggesting that it’s hypocritical to create a Forest School curriculum using AI because of AI’s environmental impact, and I actually think this is a conversation worth having.

AI has an environmental footprint. Full stop.

It requires data centers, electricity, water for cooling, and physical infrastructure. And because AI is growing so quickly, it is becoming a major driver of NEW data-center demand. Those are legitimate environmental concerns, and I don't think pretending otherwise helps anyone.

But there’s some important context missing from the conversation.

Data centers existed long before AI. They power the internet we all use every day — social media, cloud photo storage, Google searches, streaming, online shopping, banking, email, websites, gaming, business systems and much more.

In 2024, ALL data centers worldwide accounted for roughly 1.5% of global electricity consumption.

And the irony isn't lost on me that some of the criticism about the environmental impact of my digital curriculum is being posted from smartphones, uploaded to social-media servers, stored in data centers, and delivered through telecommunications networks. 😅

That doesn't make AI's environmental footprint irrelevant. It just means this isn't as simple as “AI bad, everything else digital fine.”

I use technology as a TOOL to help me create affordable resources that encourage families to put the screens DOWN and actually go outside.

The end product isn't teaching children to sit in front of AI.

It's encouraging them to identify trees. Observe wildlife. Forage. Study fungi. Explore the seasons. Get their hands dirty. Spend time outside with their families. Develop a relationship with the natural world.

Could we have a thoughtful conversation about how much technology we consume and the environmental cost of AI? Absolutely.

But I don't believe using a modern digital tool to create resources that encourage hundreds of children to spend more time interacting with the real, living world somehow makes the mission of Forest School contradictory.

If anything, my goal with technology is pretty simple: Use it intentionally, then go outside.

08/28/2026

🍂🌲 IT’S HERE! The Autumn → Winter Forest School Bundle! 🌲❄️

160+ printable pages. Months of nature learning. Just $30. 🤎

I have poured SO much into creating this bundle, and I am incredibly excited to finally release it!

The Thyme to Forage Autumn → Winter Forest School Bundle was created for families who want more hands-on, meaningful nature study without spending hours planning lessons and searching for activities.

Inside you'll find 160+ beautifully illustrated printable pages, including:

🍁 Scavenger hunts & nature bingo
🌳 Trees, leaves, seeds, bark & forest studies
🍄 Fungi & forest-floor exploration
🐿️ Squirrels, birds & woodland wildlife
🐾 Animal tracks, migration & hibernation
🌲 Evergreens, pinecones & conifers
❄️ Frost, ice, snow & winter science
☀️ Winter solstice activities
📓 Nature journals & observation pages
🎨 Crafts & outdoor challenges
🎲 Games, charades & adventure cards
🎄 Woodland Christmas activities
📚 Field guides, reading logs & SO much more!

And this isn't a curriculum you have to sit down and complete from beginning to end.

Print what fits your family. Follow what's happening outside. Follow your children's curiosity.

See the first frost? There's a page for that.
Find animal tracks? Study them.
Notice squirrels gathering food? Follow that rabbit trail.
Need to get everyone outside for 15 minutes? Grab a challenge card.

You aren't just buying a stack of worksheets — you're getting months of nature-study ideas already planned and ready to print. 🌲

🍂 160+ PRINTABLE PAGES — ONLY $30 🍂

Perfect for homeschool, forest school, multi-age families, nature study, or simply getting your kids outside and exploring more.

👉 Grab the Autumn → Winter Forest School Bundle here:
https://square.link/u/iRc6U7Al

📩 PLEASE NOTE: This is a digital product personally fulfilled by me. Please allow up to 48 hours after purchase for your files to arrive by email. This is not an instant download.

Print a few pages. Grab the muddy boots. Head outside. Let's learn from the forest. 🍂🌲❄️

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08/22/2026

🌿🍂 WHO’S UP FOR A LAND STEWARD CHALLENGE?! 🍂🌿

I’m sharing a little sneak peek today because I couldn’t keep this one to myself. 👀💚

This Land Steward Challenge is one of the activities inside my brand-new Autumn Into Winter Forest School, releasing NEXT WEEK through Thyme to Forage! 🌲🍄

But I thought… why wait until release day to start exploring?

Save this picture, grab the kids, and join us in the challenge! 🌎🌱

There are 15 simple ways for children to practice caring for the land around them, including:

🌲 Planting or caring for a tree
💧 Protecting water
🦋 Planting for pollinators
🥕 Growing, harvesting, or choosing local food
♻️ Using resources wisely
🌧️ Conserving or collecting rainwater
🐦 Helping local wildlife
🌿 Removing invasive plants
🗑️ Leaving a place better than they found it
🤎 And more!

They don't have to complete every challenge.

They don't need acres of land, a homestead, or a forest in their backyard.

The whole idea is simply to help our children begin understanding: We aren't just visitors in nature. We have a responsibility to care for it.

Small hands can do meaningful work.
Small actions can make a difference.
And some of the most important lessons our children learn won't happen sitting at a desk.

They'll happen with dirt under their fingernails. 🌱

With binoculars around their necks. 🐦

With leaves, sticks, seeds, muddy boots, garden beds, compost piles, and a growing understanding of the little ecosystem right outside their door. 🍂

🌿 WE ARE STEWARDS, NOT OWNERS.
Respect the land. Protect the future.

And THIS is exactly the kind of learning you'll find inside...

🍂🌲 AUTUMN INTO WINTER FOREST SCHOOL 🌲❄️

Releasing NEXT WEEK!

Autumn Into Winter takes children on a nature-based learning journey from September through December, following the changing forest as late summer fades into autumn and autumn slowly gives way to winter.

We'll explore the changing seasons through hands-on nature study, observation, outdoor challenges, scavenger hunts, journaling, wildlife studies, trees, leaves, seeds, fungi, birds, weather, seasonal changes, land stewardship and SO much more. 🍄🌲🐦🍁

This isn't about recreating school at the kitchen table.

It's about going outside and experiencing the lesson.

And this Land Steward Challenge?

It's just one tiny peek at everything I've been creating. 👀💚

For now...

🌿 JOIN US! 🌿

Save the challenge and let your child choose their first mission.

👇 Then comment “WE’RE IN!” below so I know your family is joining us!

And if you know another family raising muddy-booted, nature-loving little humans, tag them and challenge them to join you. 🌲🤎

🍂 Autumn Into Winter Forest School — coming NEXT WEEK from Thyme to Forage. 🍂

Small actions. Big impact.

08/18/2026

🍂🌲 I’ve been keeping a little secret… and I’m finally ready to share it! 🌲🍂

With our sweet baby boy arriving soon, I knew that September and October were going to look a little different around here. I didn’t want to spend those first weeks worrying about creating curriculum drops, answering to deadlines, or trying to work when I should be soaking up that time with my family.

So instead… I’ve been working ahead. ❤️

And what started as “maybe I’ll make a couple months ahead of time” has turned into something WAY bigger.

🌿 AUTUMN INTO WINTER FOREST SCHOOL 🌿
September • October • November • December

Four entire months of nature-based, family-style Forest School curriculum — all bundled together and ready to print.

We’ll follow the seasons from the last warm days of summer all the way into the winter woods. 🍁

We’ll explore:

🌻 seeds, harvest & changing seasons
🍂 leaves, trees & autumn colors
🍄 fungi & the forest floor
🕷️ spiders, insects & decomposers
🐿️ squirrels & animals preparing for winter
🐦 migration & winter birds
🌳 bare trees, bark, twigs & buds
🌲 evergreens & pinecones
🐾 animal tracks & winter adaptations
❄️ frost, ice, winter weather & the solstice
…and SO much more.

But this isn't meant to be another curriculum that keeps your children sitting at a table.

These pages are meant to be printed, clipped to a clipboard, tucked into a backpack, and taken OUTSIDE.

Scavenger hunts.
Nature journals.
Mini field guides.
Experiments.
Observation activities.
Nature challenges.
Games.
Art invitations.
Seasonal studies.
And plenty of opportunities to simply slow down and notice.

I'm currently creating around 200 pages and activities for the finished collection. 😳🌿

And because I want to have this completely finished before I step away to welcome our newest little one, I'm officially opening:

🍁 PREORDERS! 🍁

✨ Preorder price: $24.99
🌲 Regular price after release: $34.99

When you preorder, you'll receive the entire September–December collection once it is released.

I'm sharing a few sneak peeks today because I seriously couldn't wait any longer. 🥹

This September Phenology Wheel is one of my favorites so far — children can revisit it throughout the month and actually WATCH the season changing around them.

That is exactly what I want Forest School to be.

Not memorizing nature. Knowing it.

Not rushing through a lesson. Noticing what's happening right outside your door.

And not worrying about "falling behind," because there is no falling behind when you're learning alongside the seasons. 🌿

Thank you so much to every family who has supported my little Forest School over the past months. Every download, share, comment, and photo of your kiddos exploring means more to me than you probably realize — especially as I prepare to step away for a little while and welcome our baby. ❤️

I cannot WAIT to send this one into the world.

🍂 Autumn Into Winter Forest School is coming, and I think it might be my favorite thing I've created yet. 🌲❤️

Comment “FOREST” below or message me if you'd like preorder information!

08/03/2026

Sometimes we think we need to know everything before we begin. We tell ourselves we'll plant the orchard after we've read one more book. We'll build the garden when we have more money. We'll create the life we've been dreaming about once we finally feel confident enough.

But landscapes don't ask us to be experts. They simply ask us to begin.

I have made mistakes. I've planted trees too close together. I've lost fruit trees. I've built gardens in places that later flooded. I've changed my mind more times than I can count. Yet I wouldn't trade those lessons. Because every one of them taught me something no book ever could.

Confidence doesn't come before the first tree. It grows alongside it. One season teaches the next. One success gives you courage. One failure gives you wisdom. Little by little, the landscape begins shaping the steward just as much as the steward shapes the landscape.

That may be my favorite part of this entire journey.

We think we're creating a landscape. All the while, it's quietly creating us.

🌿

This is a small excerpt from The Living Landscape Planner—a workbook I've been pouring my heart into over the past several months.

It's more than a garden planner or a design book. My hope is that it becomes a landscape consultation in a workbook... helping families create places that are not only productive, but peaceful, beautiful, and deeply connected to the life they want to live.

I'm hoping to have it ready before baby #9 arrives this fall, and I honestly can't wait to share it with you all. 💚

07/20/2026

🌿 Sneak Peek from the book I'm writing...

"There was a time when every sapling looked impossibly small against the open sky. You remember wondering if they would ever amount to anything. You worried about watering them enough. You protected them from deer. You mulched around their tiny trunks and hoped they would survive another winter.

Now their branches meet overhead.

The shade you once dreamed about has become so ordinary that you almost forget it had to be planted."

This chapter isn't really about trees.

It's about motherhood.
It's about seasons.
It's about giving ourselves permission to build slowly.

Because maybe the life we're trying to create isn't supposed to happen in one extraordinary year...

Maybe it's built one faithful Saturday at a time. 🌿

— From Chapter 4 of my upcoming book, The Living Landscape Planner

07/20/2026

Every year, when the elderberries begin turning that deep purple-black, I feel the same excitement.

Not because I know syrup season has arrived. Not because the pantry shelves will soon hold another year's worth of medicine. But because elderberries remind me of something we've forgotten.

Nature was never designed to produce only for us. It's tempting to strip every cluster from a bush while it's heavy with fruit. After all, we've done the work of planting it, watering it, pruning it, and caring for it.

But every year, I intentionally leave berries behind.

Some become food for birds preparing for migration. Some feed raccoons, foxes, and opossums under the cover of darkness. Some simply fall to the ground.

At first glance, that might seem wasteful. But it isn't. Those berries become next year's shrubs. They feed the soil. They nourish fungi. They return nutrients to the ecosystem that made this harvest possible in the first place.

A healthy food forest isn't built on the idea that humans should take everything.

It's built on relationship. Nature has always worked through generosity. The birds eat. The seeds spread. The insects feed. The soil grows richer. The plants become healthier.

And somehow there's still enough for us.

That's one of the biggest lessons the homestead continues to teach me. Abundance doesn't come from taking more. It comes from participating in a healthy system. So when I harvest elderberries, I don't ask, "How much can I get?" I ask, "How much can I gather while still leaving enough for everything else that calls this place home?"

Oddly enough...

I've never gone without.

Maybe stewardship has a way of multiplying abundance that accumulation never can.

07/19/2026

When most people imagine growing their own food, they picture neat rows of vegetables or an orchard where every fruit tree stands alone. It seems logical, but nature rarely grows that way.

Walk into a healthy forest and you'll notice something remarkable. Tall trees create shade, shrubs fill the middle layer, flowers attract pollinators, groundcovers protect the soil, fungi recycle nutrients, and wildlife plays an active role in keeping the system healthy. Nothing exists in isolation. Every plant has a purpose.

A food forest borrows that wisdom. Instead of asking a single fruit tree to survive on its own, we surround it with companions that help retain moisture, feed beneficial insects, build healthy soil, suppress weeds, and recycle nutrients. Over time the system becomes more resilient instead of becoming more dependent on constant human intervention.

That doesn't mean a food forest is maintenance free. Young systems still need watering, observation, pruning, and care. The difference is that your effort is invested in building relationships between plants instead of endlessly fighting against nature.

One of my favorite questions to ask before planting anything is, 'What would nature do here if I walked away for ten years?' The answer usually teaches me more than another gardening book.

When I design a food forest, I'm thinking far beyond next year's harvest. I'm imagining children picking berries along a shaded path, bees moving from blossom to blossom, birds finding shelter, healthy soil that grows richer every season, and a landscape that becomes more abundant with age rather than more demanding.

That vision changes everything. We stop planting collections of individual trees and begin creating living ecosystems.

Maybe that's why I love food forests so much. They remind me that the best gardens aren't simply built—they're grown through patience, observation, and stewardship.

If you've ever dreamed of growing more food with less dependence on constant inputs, perhaps it isn't because you need a better orchard. Perhaps you need to start thinking like a forest.

If you could replace one section of your yard with an edible ecosystem, what would you grow first?

07/18/2026

I have been down and out for a few weeks and have been focusing on healing and getting my energy back.

We have been thoroughly enjoying our goat addition and making all kinds of yummy treats!

Our milking girls have been doing great since starting them on our Dairy Doe Herb Blend 🫶

We have enjoyed incorporating our fresh goats milk into our products and I am soon ready to launch our first line of goat milk pantry items!

06/30/2026

Healthy animals are the heart of every thriving homestead.

We're excited to introduce our new Barnyard Collection—a line of handcrafted herbal blends created to complement the daily care of your flock and herd.

Our collection includes:

🐔 Happy Hen Herb Blend
A fragrant blend for freshening nesting boxes and adding a little herbal goodness to your hens' favorite laying spots.

🪶 Feather Fresh Dust Bath Herbs
A botanical blend designed to mix into your flock's dust bath for a naturally fresh and enriching addition to their favorite place to scratch and bathe.

🐐 Dairy Doe Blend
A thoughtfully crafted blend of nettle, oat straw, and raspberry leaf to complement the diet of lactating dairy goats as part of a balanced feeding program.

🌿 Now available in two sizes!

✨ Trial Size (1.5 oz) – $7
Perfect for trying a blend before committing to a larger bag.

🌿 Full Size – $35
Ideal for regular use around the homestead.

Each blend is:
🤍 Handcrafted in small batches
🌱 Made with thoughtfully selected herbs
🏡 Crafted with care right here in East Tennessee

Whether you're collecting fresh eggs, milking your favorite doe, or simply enjoying the daily rhythms of homestead life, these blends are designed to fit naturally into your routine.

Because caring for our animals should be just as intentional as caring for our families. ❤️

🌿 Available now!

Which one would you try first—🐔 Happy Hen, 🪶 Feather Fresh, or 🐐 Dairy Doe?