Author: Alison

Before we read the books that our guest today, Chris Smaje, wrote, we knew we didn’t want a world where fake food, food manufactured in factories was what we ate as a society. We didn’t believe that protein made in stainless steel vats could give our minds, bodies, souls and communities what they need to survive and thrive. But what we didn’t know, is that manufactured protein, fake food or precision fermentation, however you want to term it, literally will not work.

If you’re bringing raw milk into your home, whether it is through a herd share, shopping from a local raw dairy or co-op, or you have a cow on the back pasture, it is inevitable that we start wanting to value-add that milk; both adding nutritional value to it by culturing it in our homes, and adding monetary value by making raw milk into what would be higher priced items from the store. In this episode Robyn who is the creator over at Cheese From Scratch on Instagram is here to teach us about creating your own cheese starter on the counter at home, and producing naturally fermented cheese in your own kitchen.

“I just can’t afford to eat ancestrally” is something that we hear all the time. And we get that, the mainstream, shop-bought side of ancestral eating can sometimes be eye-wateringly expensive. Notwithstanding that we’ve both been eating this way on a very tight budget for over a decade each. We’re going to show you that it is possible!

In a post-industrial world where globally imported subsidized factory food is perceived as the cheaper or only option for a budget, these are questions most of us have had at some point. In this episode Alison and I want to make the case that not only are there ways to eat an ancestral diet and save money, but you can actually save money BY eating an ancestral diet.

Just like the Ancestral Diet is so different from the standard American diet, so the ways our ancestors birthed bears very little relation to how modern industrialised communities bring the next generation into the world. In this intimate episode, originally recorded for patrons of the podcast, Andrea and I share our birthing stories.

Better Broths and Healing Tonics is a book that blew us away when we found it earlier this year. It is so thorough, so accessible and so creative – sharing many ways to make broths, and make them easy, plus incredible healing recipes for broth tonics, infusions, blends and meals. In this episode, Andrea interviews half of the pair that created the book, Jill Sheppard Davenport.

Rebecca Holden looks after a large organic dairy herd in Wales in the United Kingdom and makes raw, cheddar-style cheese from their milk. What made us want to bring Rebecca to you is an article she wrote for the farm’s blog which she called ‘Part of the Herd’ where she talks about the farm being an interconnected community and how she herself communicates with the cows and has become part of the herd.

Today’s episode is dedicated to covering the wide world of fermented drinks – all accessible to you, makeable in your own kitchen, right now. We talk about over 20 different fermented drinks, including scoby ferments, whey ferments, grain ferments, wild ferments and we tell you how you can incorporate these super-health-giving, delicious foods into your life.

We have a special bonus for today! Alison reads the article she recently had published in the Weston A. Price journal Wise Traditions: So Much More Than Porridge: The Rich Culinary History of British Oats Recipe for Traditional Scottish Oatcakes here Recipe for Naturally-Fermented Staffordshire Oatcakes here If you’d like to have a go at…

Have you ever thought the GAPS protocol might be for you? Are you considering trying it, or you’ve just heard about it and wonder how it fits into a healing journey? Are you struggling to bring grains into your diet without digestive issues, or wondering what you can do to replenish a gut system damaged by antibiotics? This is the episode for you.

Hilary Boynton is the creator of the School of Lunch, a week long academy held a few times a year that teaches attendees from around the world how to put together incredible nourishing ancestral traditional food programs that they can use in whatever application they need – in running a school lunch program which is what Hilary does in California, in a business, for retreats or wellness spaces, at home or wherever they wish to implement a meal program. In this episode I got to sit down with Hilary and ask her to give me a peek into what happens at their academy.

In this episode, Alison talks to Carwyn Graves, author of Welsh Food Stories, a beautiful chronicle of the ancestral food of Wales. They talk about food born from landscape, sustainability, women as the holders of ancestral heritage, fermentation, bread and much much more…

You asked for it, and we did it. We finally did it! Alison and I have written our first Ancestral Kitchen Podcast cookbook, called Meals at the Ancestral Hearth. It’s available now at farmandhearth.com/shop.