MENF and Other News

Hey, everyone! I hope you had a great weekend. I surely did!! This is what it looked like:

2014 Mother Earth News Fair. Puyallup, WA.

The Mother Earth News Fair (MENF) was AMAZING. I have many (many!) pages of notes from the presentations I attended, that I'll be basing upcoming posts on. All of the speakers I listened to were great, but I have to say that the two standouts were Toby Hemenway and Joel Salatin. Between the two of them, my head is still spinning with ideas!

There were so many great vendors and exhibitors, too! The poultry show hall was packed full of hundreds of beautiful birds, from chickens and roosters to ducks, geese, turkeys and guinea hens with their gorgeous feathers and not-so-pretty faces. There was even a show pigeon area, but I didn't have time to wander through there, unfortunately.

I sent a few tweets and instapics while I was there, but mostly I was rushing between presentations and trying to cover as much ground as possible. Next year, I'm definitely going to get a hotel room down there so I can attend both days. There's just too much good stuff to be seen, and I'd like to do it at a more leisurely pace. The day positively flew past and I had a wonderful time. There are 2 more fairs this year, in September (PA) and October (KS). I *highly* recommend checking them out, if you're in the area.

On to more news: I've been working hard at monetizing the blog; in order for this to be my new career, I have to find a way to bring in some money to support the work that I do. I didn't want to overload people with random ads, so with the exception of the ad feed from Google, I've been hand-picking affiliate programs to join. Affiliate programs (like the Amazon link, for example) pay small commissions on sales that generate from a given website. I list books and things that are of interest to me, but it's not limited to those items- all you have to do is start out here at the blog, then click on an affiliate link to shop at your merchant of choice. Then, they give me credit for the traffic when you make a purchase, at no extra cost to you. So please, check out the affiliates when you're looking to make purchases, and help me keep this going.

One of the affiliate partners that I'm excited to team up with is Craftsy. As a thank you for joining their affiliate program, I get to take one of their classes for free so I can do a post about it. I purchased a few classes over the winter, and I've been singing their praises ever since- so if you haven't checked them out yet, please do! This week, over on the FB page, I'll put up my three top choices and let you guys decide which class I take and then I'll do a post (or series of posts, more likely!) to share my experiences with you.

I also have a couple of giveaways coming up! I know I've mentioned them before, but I'm a huge fan of the Baker Creek Heirloom Seed company. I reached out to them last week about partnership opportunities, and they've graciously agreed to provide a copy of their hardcover book "The Heirloom Life Gardener: The Baker Creek Way of Growing Your Own Food Easily and Naturally", written by the owners, to be used as a giveaway prize! I'll review the book before the giveaway, so keep an eye out for that in the next couple of weeks. The other giveaway will happen this week on FB as well- it's a package of reusable produce bags that I got at the Fair yesterday... stay tuned!

What did your weekend look like?