Happy Mission Monday! It’s never too early to start planning your meals for the holiday season. With so many organic foods available to cook with, how do you fold organics into your favorite holiday meals?  We want to know how creative you get during the holiday season. Do you focus on deserts during the holiday season by making warm organic pies that your family craves each year? Or do you stick to a classic dish such as your famous organic casserole made with a secret ingredient that your family gobbles up every Thanksgiving? We hope you take a moment to answer and play along on Twitter or Facebook.

Today’s challenge: How can you fold organic dishes or ingredients into your favorite holiday meals?

If you’re playing along on Facebook, simply comment in our Mission Monday post (include link) before 11:59 p.m. ET tonight to be entered to win!

If you’d like to play along on Twitter, simply tweet us your answer with #wildoatsmission #sweeps by 11:59 p.m. ET today to be entered to win! (include link)

Good luck! Full Sweepstakes rules and details can be found here Twitter and Facebook.

Being healthy over the holidays would be great! But here’s a special telephone conference just for you, as part of our Wild Oats Community, to hear how to be healthier all winter!! 

Join us on Tuesday, November 18, 2014 1:30pm PT / 4:30pm ET for a fun, Interactive Social Conferencing Event with Wild Oats Blogger, Dr. Daria. She was an ER doc for 20 years (so she has seen just about everything) and is also board-certified in Integrative/Holistic Medicine.

This 25 minute event will be like nothing you’ve experienced before as Dr. D. will take us through some topics about our immune systems. She’ll be polling the group frequently, and based on our answers, she’ll cover different things. What kind of things? Well, here are some possibilities: 

• What is our immune system?
• What are the benefits of a healthy immune system?
• What are the dangers of a weak immune system?
• What is an auto-immune disorder?
• What can I do to support my healthy immune function?
• Do children need extra things to support their immune function?

The Maestro Conference technology we’ll be using takes the concept of Crowd Sourcing in a whole new direction! You can just listen in or help guide the conversation to focus on what you want to hear about in real-time either on your phone or computer and the results will be available instantly! 

You’ll have your own personal access code so each person gets one vote. The 25 minutes will fly by and you’ll definitely learn a few things as the group, you included, chooses what topics to cover.

To reserve your seat at this Special Event Register Here and get on the path to a healthier immune system and a healthier holiday season.

The other day my daughter came over to help me put the yard to bed. She mentioned before she arrived that she was going to bring some things to make a “mineral broth.” I have made soup stock, and bone broth, but I had never heard of mineral broth, so I was eager to see what she was up to. By the time she had unpacked all of the bags and boxes, my kitchen looked more like the farmers market than the farmers market. Everything was scrubbed and chopped into large pieces and set into a 12 quart pot to simmer, while we headed outside. I cracked the kitchen window slightly and spent the next several hours being seduced by the amazing smell that wafted out across the yard. She added a red beet to the already dense and spicy concoction – and the smell of allspice, garlic, clove, onion, beet, carrots, parsley, yams, kombu, potato, black pepper, bay and leeks, teased at our senses as we took down spent flowers and cut back an overgrown hedge.

I can’t say for sure if it really is magic, but by the time we finally came in to taste it, I was definitely under it’s spell. It was so nicely balanced, vaguely sweet and stocky with a perfect mix of spices and a hint of green. The yams and potato lent a familiar comforting air. I think I’m about ten years younger for having inhaled the invigorating aroma, and with a weeks worth of vegetables in a pot, I’m guessing a good bit healthier for drinking it too. I enjoyed sipping it the rest of the day. Sorry to say it’s almost gone now, but if you want to make some earthy magic of your own, here is a great Fall recipe for Magic Mineral Broth ala Rebecca Katz.

http://rebeccakatz.com/soups-broths/magic-mineral-broth/

Of the many things I take into account when moving, access to green space is top of mind. I’ve had the best-case scenario-a yard and room for a full garden, the worst-no outdoor space to speak of, and the compact option- a planter garden on a terrace. However much space one has to work with, it is worth the effort- some studies show that access to green space actually makes people happier than money, and for a longer period of time.

Access to green space has been shown to offer a host of benefits for mental health and performance, such as reduced stress, improved mental clarity, resulting in improved performance at work and/or school. Studies consistently demonstrate that living closer to urban green spaces is linked to lower mental distress (such as anxiety or depression). As American’s are moving en masse to cities rather than away from them, this is no small consideration for us urbanites. Where urban planning has yet to catch up, urban gardening can step in.

This weekend, I replanted my terrace pots with buttercrisp lettuce and Russian red chard, renewed my herb garden with rosemary, lime thyme and sage, and planted a camellia plant for the tantalizing scent it gives off. My mother, visiting from out of town, added snapdragons to the base of my three rose plants, a touch of whimsy that makes me smile each time I look at them. I trimmed back the garlic chives and African blue basil plant, which has become a miniature basil tree, flowering year round and doing its part for the bee population. I repotted jade, the heartiest plant I have ever encountered, and bid farewell to last season’s straggling kale.

It was a glorious few hours of plant shopping, dirt hauling, shoveling and sweating, digging and planting and watering. As I went, focusing on the tasks at hand, watching my wee garden transform, I noticed how relaxed I was. How much fun it is to have a little dirt under my fingernails, how happy each individual plant makes me just to observe. Every time I step out my front door, I am thrilled again- checking each plant to see if it thrives, inventing new ways to use the herbs, dreaming up dinner party menus.

I am not the only one to have noticed- bees, birds, and butterflies have taken to visiting, each one offering an invitation to a moment’s meditation, another formidable ally on the path of wellbeing.  Whether you start with one plant or four, for flowers or food, give it a shot- even a little green goes a long way.

For some tips & tricks on setting up an urban garden of your own, see here and here, a few fall planting ideas here, and here. To find your regions “hardiness zone”, click here.

Farmers today have a lot of resources to help them navigate the challenges of raising healthy crops and livestock.

Land grant universities, the Cooperative Extension Service, and federal agencies offer a wealth of technical information regarding everything from the depth of planting seeds to the optimal time to cut their alfalfa.

As I sat at a kitchen table with an English organic dairy farmer last month, I was reminded that organic producers have another resource as well.

I was sharing a cup of coffee with Adam Philham and his family. Although still a young farmer, Adam was one of the pioneers in organic agriculture in his corner of Southwest England. He took the leap of faith in 1998 and converted his dairy herd to certified organic status.

I asked Adam where he turned to develop the knowledge needed to successfully incorporate organic practices. Adam thought for a moment, then answered, “Well, I asked my grandfather a lot of questions. After all, that’s the way they farmed before all these chemicals came along.”

The university extension service provides a lot of valuable information for farmers these days. It’s nice to know that the Extended Family Service still can play an important role.