2025 Editoral Roundup
Ingrid Butler: Bloom Where You’re Planted by Amanda Sorell in Mother Earth News. It’s one of my favorite articles of this year. It’s such a wonderful article on how to create a little piece of home with plants even though you might not be staying in the location for very long.
So it’s a very big hearted way of approaching the transience of sort of life as a renter and how you can, navigate that, to have your own special plants, whether those are medicinal plants or plants that connect you to home that you might be very far away from. It’s really beautiful and it’s very life affirming.
It’s one of my favorites.
Josh Wilder: Welcome to the Mother Earth News and Friends podcast. At Mother Earth News for 50 years and counting, we’ve been dedicated to conserving the planet’s natural resources while helping you conserve your financial resources in this podcast. We host conversations with experts in the fields of [00:01:00] sustainability, homesteading, natural health, and more to share all about how you can live well wherever you are in a way that values both people and our Mother Earth.
Kenny Coogan: Hello and welcome to Mother Earth News and Friends. I’m your host Kenny Coogan, and today we’re closing out 2025 with an editorial roundup. As temperatures drop we’re looking back in the past year for things that sparked curiosity and insight from our editors.
Joining me today are three editors from the Ogden family. Please introduce yourselves and tell us what titles you are working on.
Ana Skemp: Hi, I am Ana Skemp. I am from Wisconsin and I’m the lead editor for Mother Earth News.
Ingrid Butler: Hi, I’m Ingrid Butler. I work on Grit and Mother Earth News and I do copy [00:02:00] edits for Farm Collector.
Karmin Garrison: Hi, I’m Karmin. I’m in Texas. I’m the editorial director for our rural titles and the lead for Grit. I work on Mother Earth News, Grit, Backyard Poultry, Countryside, and Goat Journal.
Articles that Surprised Our Editors in 2025
Kenny Coogan: We’re gonna first discuss an article that surprised you, something that really wowed you, even as a veteran homesteader. Some new information that you received or you had in the back of your mind, but you had a little jog of memory.
Ana Skemp: I’ve been preserving food since I was a teenager and it’s something I love to do. I have a huge garden. We raise animals and the more food I have in my pantry that I’ve grown and raised myself for meals for my family, the happier I am.
So I’ve been freeze drying for just over a year now. And I’m referencing an article from spring Freeze Drying the Harvest, written by Alayna McDonald, and she outlines the process. She outlines some of her favorite things to make with her freeze dryer. And when I first started I was very skeptical.
I thought, I’m not going to like this. It’s an expensive piece of technology. A lot of us, I think grew up with the freeze dried ice cream and little silver pouches from NASA, and I didn’t have particularly fond memories of that, so I just didn’t see myself getting very excited about it. But I have, since I’ve started freeze drying, I have been able to preserve more food than I ever have in any other year past.
I use it constantly. I have a wider array of food than I’ve ever had before. I have ready to go meals in jars, like I have a bunch of lamb stew with vegetables all ready to go for my kids or me for quick meals. Making a beef stew right now as we speak, that has a ton of freeze dried heirloom tomatoes in it.
So the diversity of food, it lets me preserve the amount of preserving it lets me [00:04:00] do, and the flavor is literally phenomenal. So like the herbs taste almost fresh. The tea tastes like it’s just out of your garden. So that really blew me away and surprised me because I went into it thinking I wouldn’t like it.
Kenny Coogan: And you said it was the spring issue, but it was for Mother Earth News? Yes. Okay. Karmin, what was the article that surprised you this year?
Karmin Garrison: I’m gonna have to say the piece Thatching A Roof by Nathaniel Munro for Grit Magazine. I’m an avid DIY, I’ve built houses. I’ve built almost anything you can think of that could be built out of your backyard.
And thatching a roof is not a skill that I I would want to learn, but after reading that piece, I got outside and ended up thatching a chicken coop. That was a really cool piece. It was a really old, neat skill to [00:05:00] learn.
Ingrid Butler: So the article that surprised me was Winter Foraging by Dana Benner. Winter is one of those seasons I have deeply complex feelings about. As someone who moved to the Midwest from an area that did not have a true winter. It’s one of those things that I’ve been slowly acclimating to the idea of, and, so the idea that you can go outside and still find these wonderful fresh fruits, foods from nature that you can incorporate in wonderful ways. He has two recipes that I am keen on trying. I think it’s such a beautiful and open-hearted way of embracing winter, and I hope you read it.
Kenny Coogan: Just before we started recording, I mentioned that I just moved from Florida to North Carolina and we experienced our first freeze last night. So I am getting used to the weather once again after living in Buffalo, New York for [00:06:00] 22 years.
Articles that Inspired Our Editors in 2025
Kenny Coogan: Anna, what was an article that inspired you to take action, motivated you to help the planet ?
Ana Skemp: For this one, I chose Restoring Wild Rice Habitat by Sarah Hunt in the October/November issue. Oh, I’m worried. Ingrid, did you choose the same one? Good thing I got to go first. It’s really easy to feel overwhelmed and to give up because we have gigantic problems we’re dealing with, and it’s hard to know what you can even do as an individual.
I love this wild rice habitat because it tells the story of Leanna Goose and how she has chosen one lake close to her to remove invasive species from, and then reseed it with a native wild rice, and it’s such a simple action that’s really accessible by anyone. Choose that tiny little patch of dirt outside your back door and plant pollinator plants for example, choose one little section of woods and try to remove the buckhorn or [00:07:00] the honeysuckle or whatever it is. So I really like that small scale action that we can learn from. And I also love that she’s doing it with her kids. This is near and dear to me. I have a big family and during the summer months, we also invite local school kids out to our farm. To engage in farming, livestock care, gardening, habitat restoration. And one of their very favorite things in the world is to make balls of mud with native pollinator seed in them and chuck them into the area that we want to reestablish. Kids love doing that, and Leanna Goose does that with her kids too.
So you make a ball of mud and put your wild rice seed in it and then chuck it into the lake, and that little bit of extra mud and soil helps it establish, so it reminded me that is an activity we can and should all be doing.
Kenny Coogan: And Ingrid, that was your favorite inspirational article of this year.
Ingrid Butler: It was, and if I can add something to add a really beautiful summary of it, I love it for all of [00:08:00] those reasons. My, my also reason for loving it would be that. I love that it relies on indigenous ecological wisdom. It’s a reminder that you’re not starting this from scratch. There are people who have stewarded the land for generations and their knowledge is their knowledge and their, cultural appreciation for these plants and the wildlife and the environments that they’ve tended for generations is of course incredibly important to ecological restoration. And I love how that’s one of the little threads that are swimming through it.
Kenny Coogan: Do you remember what state Leanna Goose is in, in?
Ana Skemp: She is in Minnesota, the land of 10,000 lakes.
Kenny Coogan: I was always surprised that rice can be grown in cold climates.
Ana Skemp: So much healthier too. A lot of rice is healthy. Wild rice is one of my favorite foods in the whole world, so I’m partial to it.
Kenny Coogan: Okay. Karmin, are you gonna have a different [00:09:00] article that inspired you?
Karmin Garrison: I do. Mine is from Grit. It was Living on the Edge by Dana Benner, and Dana goes into how important wildlife is on the edge of our own habitats. And I have a personal passion for protecting and stewarding wildlife and. He just did such a beautiful job explaining the importance of the small critters on the edge of your field.
A lot of people hit wildlife and he covers how reckless and dangerous it is for these animals, these important animals to be living right there on our roads and humans not paying attention. It was just such a wonderful piece that really brings the importance of those small creatures. To the forefront.
I loved it. It was great.
Ana Skemp: Karmin, I need to share that article changed my life. Like I think [00:10:00] about it on a regular basis when I drive down the highway. And it’s just, it stayed with me. I think about it almost every day of my life in a really important way to me.
I highly recommend that one too.
Karmin Garrison: I absolutely agree. It’s gotten to the point where I’ve gone around my neighborhood ’cause I don’t live like super out in the country. I have a rural neighborhood. But I’ve been able to round up a bunch of my neighbors and we’ve created more pathways in our neighborhood. I’ve seen people just completely stop traffic to be able to let deer pass.
It’s been fantastic. So I agree, Ana, I think about it all the time, every time I leave my house.
Kenny Coogan: In last month’s podcast we talked about wildlife and interacting with people, and we talked about those ecotones, those transitional areas between two ecosystems, and that’s where you have the most biodiversity is when you have one ecosystem transitioning to another, which can also be at the edge of our homesteads. [00:11:00]
Karmin Garrison: Yes. And he does cover that in that piece. I’m super biased. I know, but everyone go read that piece.
Kenny Coogan: We’re gonna take a quick break to hear a word from our sponsor and when we return we’ll be talking about articles that our editors would want to share with their closest neighbors and friends.
Kenny Coogan: We’re back for our yearly editorial roundup, editors. What was an article that you’d want to share with your neighbor or that you would want your neighbor to know about? Something that you think everyone could benefit from reading. And yes, I do realize that there’s overlap between inspirational articles that surprise you and articles that you wanna share.
Articles That Our Editors Want To Share With Their Friends
Karmin Garrison: Okay, so I cheated. I picked two for this one. Mine is Chukar Hunting by Josh Lau and he tells a story of the first time he ever got to go chukar hunting and chukars are a type of partridge and the birds are ridiculing him the whole time.
It was just such a [00:12:00] funny story. Everyone that I meet, I’m like, this is the story you need to go read and it’s just a good adventure. The other one is The Greenhouse Project by Daniel Viamonte, and the story is, it’s just so heartwarming and shows how a family can just truly work together. They what started as a warming project for his wife’s orchid greenhouse turned into the largest independent rabbit processing in the state of Oregon and they just stuck it through a family. The original farmer just sold him the entire rabbitry farm for like a hundred dollars barn and all it was such a wonderful, heartwarming story and a lot of the editors voted together. That was our favorite of the year, and both of those were from grit.
Kenny Coogan: Okay, very good. Ingrid, what was something that you think everyone could benefit from reading?
Ingrid Butler: [00:13:00] I would have to go with Bloom Where You’re Planted by Amanda Sorell in Mother Earth News. It’s one of my favorite articles of this year. It’s such a wonderful article on how to create a little piece of home with plants even though you might not be staying in the location for very long.
So it’s a very big hearted way of approaching the transience of sort of life as a renter and how you can, navigate that, to have your own special plants, whether those are medicinal plants or plants that connect you to home that you might be very far away from. It’s really beautiful and it’s very life affirming.
It’s one of my favorites.
Karmin Garrison: It was such a sweet piece.
Ingrid Butler: It was, yeah.
Ana Skemp: I really enjoyed. I agree with both you on those. Mine is mine is a little more humble and driven by it tastes so good. So in the [00:14:00] February/March issue 2025, we ran an article on Homemade Chocolate Sourdough Bread. And it’s so easy. It turns out great every time my family adores it, it’s the perfect like afternoon treat without being like too sugary.
And the sourdough is of course, healthier for your gut. When I was trialing the recipe, I made it, everyone loved it. And I’ve literally made it dozens and dozens of times since then. There’s a little little bit of cinnamon and vanilla and the chocolate and the sourdough, and with butter, it’s just perfection and it’s the perfect time of year to make it again, so it’s back in my baking rotation.
Kenny Coogan: That wraps up our 2025 editorial roundup. A big thank you to our editors for sharing their favorite stories and insights from this year. We hope these articles inspire you as much as they inspire us.
Josh Wilder: Thanks for joining us for this episode of Mother Earth News and Friends. To listen to more podcasts and get connected on our social media, visit [00:15:00] www.motherearthnews.com/podcast. You can also email us at podcast@ogdenpubs.com with any questions or suggestions. Our podcast production team includes Kenny Coogan, Alyssa Warner, and myself, Josh Wilder.
