Happy 2021! We made it and things have been improving! We must continue to move forward as a society and I’ll do my best to make sure that happens. Supporting and advocating for local farms is one way I’ll continue to do that.

Supporting local farms and farmers DRASTICALLY reduces the amount of energy that goes into your food. Eating spinach grown 15-30 minutes from your house and delivered locally greatly cuts down on greenhouse gas emissions from trucking that same spinach long distances in refrigerated trucks. Also, it helps YOUR community! You can talk to the farmer! You can go visit the farm (if they say that is okay)! You can drive by the farm and see the crops grow!

This is a very short list of my local farms. I have missed many! I will update this list as I learn about more area farms. Here in Fort Collins we still have some wide open spaces in the surrounding areas that subdivisions haven’t swallowed up (yet!). The Front Range is rapidly changing and expanding and we need to preserve and help the farms!

Laughing Buck Farm – small teaching farm and horse stable and boarding in Fort Collins

Native Hill Farm – farm growing produce for consumers, restaurants, and area grocery stores, visit their farm produce stand Monday – Friday 10 am – 4 pm during the winter, 2100 CR 54G Ft. Collins, CO 80524 (NW corner of North Taft Hill Rd and CR 54G)

The Shire CSA – this is the one of several local farms I’m looking to directly support, it’s located right off a local bike trail and is 1-2 miles from my house! CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture and will be a small farm who supports itself by selling shares of the produce it grows. Upsides – super fresh produce, super local, your neighbors! Downsides – you don’t get to pick your produce but that just means you get a cooking challenge that week!

Whoa! There are way more than I even knew about around here! LocalHarvest.org has kindly gathered all the area farms and grocery stores and farms highlighting local produce!

Check out Fort Collins LocalHarvest.org farms and then check out your own area!

My semester is rapidly coming to a conclusion and I’m prepping for my many planned projects during my winter break. Baking, cleaning, fun, organization, and a few other categories will be completed!

We have had a rough start to 2020 in the Dr. Seth household; illness, disease, general funk, etc.. But we’re healing and looking to make the most of 2020!

From an Instagram friend and my goal is to watch out for all this behavior!

We have many triumphs and setbacks throughout our lives, certainly our businesses. If we learn from those and keep going, that is what sets us apart from those that give up.

I’m still working on me and this business and figuring out how to help the most people and truly have an impact on my community.

See y’all in Denver this Saturday for the Mile High Beard Bout!

Most everyone agrees that a meat based diet, especially conventional meat, is not great for Earth. Local meat, local and pasture raised, and lab based meat are all better alternatives. Even bugs!

There are those who choose a plant based diet over having meat at all. Lots of meat alternatives exist BUT we need to come up with different and/or better names for them. I had some “bacon” and as I was expecting pig based bacon, was disappointed. It tasted good but was not bacon. A friend ordered buffalo wings at a vegan place and expected something other than what he was served. There are good non-meat products that are tasty but we need to rebrand them because right now they do not fully replace our established meat products.

Please leave a suggestion or two in the comments!

I volunteer at my daughter’s preschool. What I see makes me sad. Not only do I believe preschool is not meant to be preparation for Kindergarten, but it is stifling our children and possibly doing harm to them. I might extrapolate this belief out even further when I see her in Kindergarten next year. I will preface this by saying that I am bashing teachers or the profession(I’m an ex-HS teacher), and while I could teach my daughter kindergarten, I know that is not my talent or part of my mission in this world. I am saying that our modern beliefs about school are hurting our children. I will explain what I mean.

My daughter is being taught and participates in circle time, story time, arts and crafts, following directions, social and emotional skills and self management at a play-based preschool. What makes me think that this is bad for her? Its the way that it’s taught. First off, there is not enough movement. I see, especially the boys, struggling with sitting still, paying attention and listening. They are often reprimanded, when I believe they are just being boys. I honestly don’t think circle time is appropriate for boys at this age, and it is only introduced so they can be successful in kindergarten. All they want to do is wrestle, play, run and take things apart. I believe in this way we are going against their natural inclinations and instead of capitalizing on their pedagogical development we are stifling it. There is a child in particular, who is not bad, but has the energy of what I could only imagine extreme sport participants have, get constantly reprimanded for being what I see a little boy. He is going to have a rough time in school and I pray that he will enjoy school in the future.

Preschool is meant for 4 year olds and not for Kindergarten. People believe that skills need to be taught in advance to “set” them up for success. But I believe this is wrong, in the fact that we should treat them like preschoolers, not kindergarteners. Four year olds are wild, imaginative, playful, active, silly and are testing the world’s boundaries of right and wrong. According to Louise Bates, four is the most violent time and time for asserting their power. But I often see this stifled. I believe there should be fun sword play, kids allowed to go up the wrong way on the slide, wrestling, and teaching appropriate touch (not just hands to self) and allowing them to move quickly. Now I understand the legalities behind some of these things and why they are not promoted in preschool, but often times they are also not allowed at home either. People think it’s feminism squashing our males and turning them into “sissies”, but I see it starting at home and in school. Boys, especially, are not provided an appropriate outlet for their energy. A friend, who teaches Kindergarten, commented that kids have no motor skills and are falling down when they run. I believe this starts when we start constricting their movement and motor skills from birth – from hand mittens to sleep sacks that don’t allow them to turn over. Why do you think baby helmets are the norm now?

What would my preschool be like if I chose to open one? One filled with “dangerous” stuff that most parents are fearful about. One that incorporates cooking, cutting, adventure, bugs, wrestling, movement, obstacle courses, nature, taking things apart, building things, being silly, telling tall tales, and learning about different life things: money, repairs, defending oneself, and introduce them to new things and development of sense of self.

Do I think these parents, teachers or schools are bad or even ignorant? No. Would my curriculum be hard to introduce to the masses? Yes. But I do think our society promotes things that are “safe” and for the common denominator versus would would make a child excel. This is why I also think we are doing so poorly in overall education. So while I side eye our education system and even “safe” helicopter parenting, you can side eye my parenting skill too.

Do you pause and reflect? Go go go, make make make, sell sell sell, buy buy buy is how our modern life goes these days. It is so easy to be constantly distracted and always focused on the next thing. But that pace is unsustainable and unhealthy.

Taking time to pause and reflect on you and your efforts is an important part of the creative process. What worked? What didn’t? What did you enjoy the most? The least? If and when you do it again, any changes? Who loved it? Who hated it? Both views are valid and need to be heard.

So this week, take 30 seconds to 20 minutes, sit quietly and contemplate your efforts and energies and goals for the past day/week/month. Be proud of your accomplishments. Be humbled and learn from failures. Be eager to accomplish and fail again. This isn’t easy, but worth it.

Happy New Year! We’re trying to buckle up and enjoy the ride ’round these parts.

My retailer list has drastically shrunk since being dropped by Natural Grocers and the Akinz pop up shop closing after its whirlwind one month. Online sales are still alive and well. Since soap takes a long time to cure (and apparently gets better with age per my source) I will need to have more soap on hand for the holidays. That said, I still have a few bars of Bacon and Beer Soap that did not sell in the Akinz store, so just add Beer and Bacon if you would like that bar for your future soap orders.

I’ll be updating more and giving things a good sprucing yo around here for 2019 and beyond!

Also I’ll be working on a vegan mustache wax for this lovely gentleman I ran into at the Portland Apple store.