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| Message | Posted on | Last post by |
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| [+] survival » Deep Pantry for people who like food (Go to) | Kathy Gray | |
We solved the lack of freezer space problem by stocking up on the few grains we use in January. That way we can freeze the grains in the coldest part of the winter. We put them in buckets, seal them for storage, and then set them on the bulkhead steps of our basement for a week. It is cold enough to freeze everything and also critter resistant. A shed, out building, or porch could be used to freeze the gains if you have enough of a cold snap to freeze it all the way through. |
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| [+] survival » Deep Pantry for people who like food (Go to) | Kathy Gray | |
Here are some reasons a household may want to store large quantities grains, legumes, and other shelf stable ingredients. Food allergies and dietary restrictions. If you have to be very careful about which grains you can eat buying in bulk saves money and insures you have the ones you can eat if the supply is seasonal or inconsistent. If you are growing your own grains, legumes, and other seed based crops you generally harvest the crop all at once and need to store it. Ideally so you can use it till the next year's crop is ready. Some households are large and it is a time saver to buy in bulk when you are cooking for larger number of people. It saves you time to go and get the supplies if you do once every few months or twice a year. If you live in a rural area and the local supermarket is a 45 minute drive buying in bulk reduces fuel consumption. If you also produce some of your own food it make sense to buy in bulk for the things you do not produce to reduce long car rides to get supplies. |
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| [+] meaningless drivel » You know you're a permie when... (Go to) | Tereza Okava | |
I had this experience at a Boy Scout yard sale. I found an Erathway Seeder with plates for $6.00. They asked me what it was since I was so excited to buy it. |
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| [+] gardening for beginners » Is there an easy way to grow celeriac? (Go to) | Kate Muller | |
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I am just harvesting my celeriac now. I start my seeds under lights and they take the same amount of time as parsley. I start them indoors in late February and transplant them out in late May. I harvest them in October and I have found they will take a few fall frosts. The greens will be damaged but the root base part is fine.
I try and get to harvesting them before the tops are damaged so I can dehydrate the leaves. I tend to not water them enough so the stems are hollow so I give those to the chickens. Harvesting them is a bit of work because the roots are great at holding onto compost. I have a washing station outside so I can keep the soil in the garden. I have harvested them in November and kept them in a cooler on my porch for a couple of weeks. Some are stored in zip top bags in my fridge and the rest are chopped, blanched, and dehydrated to use in soups, stews, and sheppard's pie. |
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| [+] meaningless drivel » You know you're a permie when... (Go to) | Tereza Okava | |
I am feeling this so hard right now. The garden is getting overrun with runner grass right now but there is also so many wildflowers, herbs, and random veggie volunteers all over the place. |
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| [+] financial strategy » Financial Independence, ERE, scale (Go to) | Anne Miller | |
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Your Money or Your Life.
A classic book that has a great approach to analyzing where your spending is going and tracking it so you can focus on how you are spending your money. It talks about not only paying down debt and saving but also making sure you can spend money on things that mean the most too you. It plays well with permaculture principles. I need to reread it so I better focus on my long term goals. |
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| [+] meaningless drivel » You know you're a permie when... (Go to) | Tereza Okava | |
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You know you are a permie when you host your FRC robotics team's end of season party and don't get to sit and eat because you keep having to give garden tours, answer gardening questions, dig up excess volunteer plants to send home with people, and share raise beds design plans. While everyone else is eating the salad from the garden or watching the frogs in the garden pond I am running around showing people all the plants, pond, earthworks, solar, chickens, greenhouse, and other projects we have at the moment. They want to have another party at the end of the summer to see how all the projects are progressing.
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| [+] financial strategy » What would you do with a million dollars? (Go to) | Riona Abhainn | |
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$1,000,000 would speed up the plan we are already working on.
Pay off mortgage Renovate house with high quality, low maintenance, and long term durability materials. The work will be done with aging in place in mind so we can grow old here. Finish the various outdoor projects including fencing, food forest, carport or garage, garden pond, and water storage high on the hill. After that it would be figuring out an investment strategy to cover our living expenses, taxes, old age medical costs, and having excess to donate organizations we want to support. |
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| [+] woodworking » Sharpening Chisels Video (Go to) | Clay Bunch | |
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Here is a video of a demonstration my brother did on sharpening chisels. It goes over using stones and tips on sharpening both straight and gouge style chisels. He goes over how to do it with with and without a griding wheel. My brother's knowledge comes from restoring 18th and 19th century antiques with my father and a group of amazing craftsmen from around the world. He goes over low cost old school methods and some of the pros and cons of grinding wheels, clamps, stones, and polishing compounds.
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| [+] food preservation » Sources for small batch canning? (Go to) | Dorothy Pohorelow | |
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I had my husband build me a recipe scaling spread sheet. This way I can scale up or down any recipe that I am making. It has been a life saver during harvest season when I am trying to figure out what to do with all the abundance.
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| [+] food preservation » Sources for small batch canning? (Go to) | Dorothy Pohorelow | |
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When I pressure can meals in jars I tend to make my own recipes. I do follow recommended safety procures on what you can and can not pressure can and how long the foods need to be canned. Chili is my favorite home canned meal in a jar. I have found I don't like most meals in a jar recipes that I have tried so I tend to can various ingredients separately so I can easily throw together a meal.
I have the following books Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving The All New Ball Book Of Canning And Preserving: Over 350 of the Best Canned, Jammed, Pickled, and Preserved Recipes I want pick up the The USDA Complete Guide To Home Canning to add to my library. Much of the canning information from the USDA ca be found on various State Cooperative Extensions. I can broth/stock throughout the year because is is so useful to have shelf stable ready to use. Chili happens in the fall when I up to my eyeballs in home grown tomatoes, peppers, tomatillos, onions, and garlic. It is great to have an easy heat and eat meal over the winter when we are super busy. Canned chicken and turkey chunks. Super versatile and easy to do when you catch a deal on poultry. Potatoes get canned when we are not eating them fast enough or my mother in law brings a 50 pound bag from a local farm. These are chunked and are great in soups and as mashed potatoes. |
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| [+] meaningless drivel » You know you're a permie when... (Go to) | Tereza Okava | |
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You know you are a permie when your batch cooking for a busy winter weekend looks like this.
Tomato sauce made from the following Home grown and home canned Upstate Oxheart tomato puree Home grown Dehydrated oregano, basil, garlic scapes, green onion, summer squash, and wine cap mushrooms Sweet Italian sausage from your friend's farm that used locally sourced food waste and raises the pigs in the woods. Ham and potato soup. Left over ham from our big family gathering Ham and pork stock I pressured canned from the pig we get from our friend's farm. Home grown potatoes stored in our basement Home grown and dehydrated carrots, summer squash, lovage, green onion, and garlic scapes. Heavy cream from the amazing grass fed dairy farm in town. A little rice flour to thicken it Salt and pepper to taste Grass fed, raw milk, cheddar cheese served on top. Chicken veggie soup. Home pressure canned organic chicken thighs I bought on marked down at my local supermarket in the summer. Home pressure canned turkey stock from the extra bones my husband brought home from helping a friend harvest their home grown turkeys. Home grown and dehydrated carrots, parsnips, celeriac, kale, summer squash, wine cap mushrooms, green onion, thyme, lovage, and garlic scapes Salt and pepper to taste. In less than 30 minutes on a very busy weekend I have put together 2 gallons of soup and enough tomato sauce for 2 lasagnas that I will finish making on Sunday. Next on the cooking list is dealing with the 8 dozen eggs our hens have gifted us, |
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| [+] urban gardening » Best Crops for a Survival Garden? (Go to) | Kate Muller | |
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| [+] urban gardening » Best Crops for a Survival Garden? (Go to) | Kate Muller | |
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When we bought our home 9 years ago we had a goal of growing all the vegetables and herbs we eat in a year. After 8 seasons we have achieved this goal along with producing about half the fruit we eat in a year and a small harvest of hazel nuts.
Have back ups. In any given year some things have an amazing bumper crop, other things barely produce or flat out die on you. We have trialed many varieties of various veggies to find the ones that grow the best in our yard. This has included trying over 30 different sweet bell peppers to find 3 that thrive in my cold wet climate and sandy soil. Not all 3 types do well every year. It all depends on how cool and wet the spring is, when plants drop flowers due to hot temps, and how late the first frost is. I plant all 3 types knowing that one of them will most likely have a bad year. This way I still have bell peppers no mater what the weather does. I do this with just about all my plantings. I generally have 2 to 4 varieties for any given veggie. I am fortunate to have enough room to plant the various varieties away from each other to simplify seed saving. Those that I don't have multiple varieties of I do grow other veggies that can easily swap out and use in various recipes. I am giving up on growing potatoes due to the large amounts of work keeping bugs and disease off the plants. (I also can get low cost potatoes in large quantities from my relatives in Maine.) I will continue to grow parsnips, rutabagas, sweet potatoes, diakon radish, and celery root. One or more of them veggies can be swapped out for potatoes in most of my recipes. Be prepared to take advantage of the bumper crops by learning to preserve what you grow and how to cook with the preserved produce. Learning to cook from scratch with fresh and your preserved ingredients can save a great deal of money on groceries let alone keep you alive when you can't just go to the store and buy groceries. Our large garden has been a major asset in the era of supply chain shortages and ever rising food costs. |
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| [+] sewing » Where can I find a sewing pattern for this kind of dress? (Go to) | Kristine Keeney | |
That is one of the brilliant things about making your own clothing is the ability to alter the pattern to exactly how you want it so go ahead and change the waist height. I would make the altered pattern in less than loved fabric like an old bed sheet to test and finalize your changes before you start the making the garment in the fabric you want the finished piece in. |
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| [+] projects » Homesteading in the Live Free or Die state. (Go to) | Kate Muller | |
I bought mine as small seedlings. They didn't grow much this year but they didn't die either. |
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| [+] sewing » Where can I find a sewing pattern for this kind of dress? (Go to) | Kristine Keeney | |
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Here is an option that is close to what you are looking for and should be fairy easy to find in the US.
It is a Vogue Sewing pattern that is princess seamed along with darts instead of 2 sets of seams to form the bustling. It also has a pleated skirt option. https://somethingdelightful.com/vogue-patterns/v1737 If you wanted you could swap skirt from the dress above and use this Vogue skirt pattern to have a more pleated skirt with pockets. https://somethingdelightful.com/vogue-patterns/v1890 |
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| [+] cooking » Organizing recipes to use up (whatever) (Go to) | Anne Miller | |
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Documenting and organizing my recipes is on my to do list. I love your idea of having a bunch of recipes organized by ingredient.
I could see putting a binder together for food preservation based on type of garden produce we grow here. It reduce my panic levels when I have a huge harvest or a slightly damage harvest that has to be preserved that day to salvage as much as we can. Most of my go to recipes are on my computer but I really should print them out and put them in a binder. I could see having one for regular meals based on type of dish or cooking method. They are not in any sort of order and I just use the search function to find what I am looking for. I do have a spread sheet that my husband set up for me to scale recipes up and down. This is really useful when I am preserving the garden harvest so I can easily figure out how much I need of each ingredient based on how much I have to process. One of my friends keeps all her recipes in 2 binders. One has recipes that are tested, their favorites, and are used regularly. The other binder has recipes to be tried or need tweaking till they can be added to the other binder. They have eliminated all the other cook books they used to own to simplify their lives. |
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| [+] decision making » How did you get started before you got started? (Go to) | John F Dean | |
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I also recommend learning food preservation techniques before you have the large garden full of produce that needs to be dealt with.
Starting now will give you time to acquire the tools and equipment and storage containers slowly as you learn the process. Canning, pressure canning, dehydrating, and fermenting all have a bit of a learning curve till you get the hang of it. Starting before you have a garden also allows you to start finding the various things you need second hand or free if you are lucky. Learning to cook from scratch and how to adapt recipes to use what you have on hand is very useful when you are producing a bunch of you own foods. Meals tend to be more seasonal and recipes often need to have items substituted to use what is on hand. Understanding basic cooking principles goes a long way to avoiding last minute trips to the supermarket. |
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| [+] food preservation » No one Warned you about all the dishes! (Go to) | Erin Nakamura | |
When we first moved to our current homestead my husband foolish joked that I could set up a store and start selling canning jars. We had around 200 at the time. I told him we didn't have nearly enough and he looked at me like we would never use them all. Up until this point I had been slowly collecting them when I found them deeply discounted, in second hand shops, yard sales, flea markets, and thrift stores. Somewhere around our 3rd or 4th year of gardening my dear husband realized that my stash of jars was not nearly enough to preserve all the yummy food we were producing. |
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| [+] food preservation » No one Warned you about all the dishes! (Go to) | Erin Nakamura | |
With my small kitchen this time of year the dinning room and the living room both wind up getting used for storage, food prep, seed saving and small garden tool storage. Their is no doubt our house is a farm house this time of year. When it isn't harvest season most of this stuff lives on shelving in the basement. |
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| [+] food preservation » No one Warned you about all the dishes! (Go to) | Erin Nakamura | |
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Homesteading creates a mountain of dishes all the time.
You have this dream of growing and preserving most of the food you eat and you set off to build you Permie homestead. As the years go by you start producing more and more food. You expand and diversify the foods you produce. You learn to cook everything from scratch and to use what you have on hand. This alone creates a ton of dishes that need to be washed. Add in fermenting, dehydrating, water bath canning, pressure canning, and freeze drying into the mix and you have even more dishes, jars, bottles, trays, canners, bowls, knives, cutting boards, crocks, kitchen gadgets, and cookware to clean everyday. This all gets to an insane level when you get to the point of growing all the veggies you eat and about half the fruit you eat in a year. Living in a cold climate with a short growing season you can easily spend 45 minutes a day just washing everything for just 2 people. It will be a long 2 months of harvesting, cleaning and preserving all the amazing foods we produce and the only part I hate about it is all the time washing all dishes. |
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| [+] food preservation » It's a gift of food that has me in a panic! (Go to) | Mercy Pergande | |
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I would sort out a bunch of the best looking carrots, rinse them off and put them in zip top plastic bags and store in the veggie drawer of the refrigerator.
The next batch would be scrubbed and them run through my food processor with a slicing disk. Blanch the carrot disks and freeze some of them in meal sized freezer bags. I would put the rest of them in the dehydrator. Dehydrated carrot chunks are great in soups and stews in the winter. The rest would be shared with friends and family. |
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| [+] small farm » What are the benefits to having a pond onsite? (Go to) | Jeff Steez | |
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More benefits of our pond.
Another benefit of the pond is the reduction of mosquitoes. We thought we would have a bigger problem with them with the addition of the pond. Since we built in lots of shallow areas for plants and other aquatic life the mosquito larvae have too much competition to thrive. My husband added a shallow gravel filled area with some bigger stones you can sit on with your feet in the water. This area of the pond is an absolute favorite of children and dogs to play in.  |
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| [+] meaningless drivel » canning jars (Go to) | Gina Jeffries | |
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In my area wide mouth canning lids are running between $4.99 and $5.99 a 12 pack.
Wide mouth quart canning jars are $15.00 to $19.00 a 12 pk. I have been squirreling lids and jars for years. My mother in law loves shopping at yard sales and thrift stores so and she picks up jars for me when she finds them cheap enough. I do miss the days when you could find sales, clearance, and coupons for canning jars and lid. I once scored boxes of regular sized ball lids for $.17 a box when our local Lowes discontinued them. I recently bought bulk packages of lids through Lehmans.com They are US made and heavier duty than Ball canning lids. While not the cheapest they do come in large bulk packs if you are looking to stock up. |
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| [+] small farm » What are the benefits to having a pond onsite? (Go to) | Jeff Steez | |
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We put a natural swimming pond in the middle of front yard garden. We are on a deep well for the house and we recently installed a shallow well high up on our hill side. The pond has a large shallow area that is full of pea gravel and aquatic plants that hosts 4 to 5 of frogs and toads.
Benefits of our current pond. A plunge pool to cool off in the heat of the summer. The gutters of our house are hooked up to it so we don't have water pooling around our foundation during major rain events. We built a patio space next to it so we can chill out while watching the frogs, fish, birds, and dragonflies use the pond. The frogs, toads, birds and dragonflies dramatically reduce the insect damage to my veggie and fruit plants. This work force is amazing and I want to add another pond to the backyard to get the same benefit. The pond over flow waters a swale and swale berm full of fruit trees and shrubs. I use the pond water for irrigation for the plants near the pond which reduces well water use. I have a water source to use in a power outage. While it would need to be treated to make it safe to drink it is a nice back up to flush toilets and such when the power is out. My cat loves drinking out of the pond. He also loves all the critters the garden and pond provide for him to chase. You can grow edible fish in the pond. We will be adding a second pond to our back yard and want to stock it with at least native catfish. If you have a fire the fire department can use that water to help put it out. It can help create season extending micro climates to keep slightly warmer loving plants alive over the winter. Our pond berm is one of the last places to get frost damage in the fall. |
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| [+] tiny house » Need Help - design elderly living home space with full offerings of an autonomous home in spare room (Go to) | Greg Payton | |
For wheelchair access you are going to need 60" minimum to be able to turn around. They do not turn on a dime since they only have castor wheels on the front. Your pathways will need to be 48" wide to accommodate a wheel chair and make life easier with cane or walker. Use a smaller stackable washer and dryer unit. They are easier to use than full sized stacking units. Are the accordion doors easy to use one handed left or right. Moving the bathroom between the bedroom and living spaces could allow for the only interior door to be bathroom door. |
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| [+] tiny house » Need Help - design elderly living home space with full offerings of an autonomous home in spare room (Go to) | Greg Payton | |
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I come from a family with a lot of physical limitations and I have some thoughts on design choices to make aging in pace easier.
Bathroom suggestions. Look up ADA bathroom designs to get ideas for the configuration. The shower needs to be big enough to easily fit a shower chair and possibly a walker at the same time. They will need 60" by 60" turn around space in the bathroom and space next to the toilet to transfer from the chair. While your parents may not need that space now it will make a huge difference if they are ever injured, have a joint replaced, recover from a stroke or other aliments one is more likely to have when they are older. Retrofitting an ADA bathroom is very expensive so I would make the space and build it to handle a wheel chair now. Make the shower floor level with the floor so and next to the toilet so it can be a roll in shower and double as space for a wheel chair to turn around and have room to transfer from the chair to the toilet. Use a shower curtain over a door design to save space and increase mobility tool options. Install a shower head on a hose. This makes using a shower chair far easier. Set it up so the person shower can easily reach it while sitting or standing. I find free standing shower chair is easier to use than a fixed location bench. Go with a tall toilet with and allow space for grab rails. Ideally the sink could be used while standing or sitting and go with leaver style faucet handles. Kitchen I would look into having an open space under the sink so one can sit on a stool while using the sink. freezer on the bottom refrigerators are must if you are in a wheel chair. Pull out cabinet shelves or drawers are easier than deep shelved cabinets or high up shelving. Having smaller and lower pull out counter that can be used for food prep while sitting down is extremely useful. It will allow them to keep cooking even if they can't stand for long periods of time. This makes a huge difference on those bad days. Built in drawers under furniture like the bed will help maximize storage. Adding as much lower height storage as possible. Spend the extra time and money to source easy to use with limited mobility hardware for door, drawer pulls, draw slides, handles, and light switches. These little details make a huge difference when your dexterity is not what it used to be. Entrance ways should be ramps with smooth transitions through doorways. This makes using canes, forearm crutches, walkers and wheel chairs far easier. Can you make and outdoor entertainment space for them to use in good weather? We added this to our garden space and it makes having gatherings far easier than buying a bigger house. Could folding chairs and drop leaf tables be used instead of lots of couches for visitors? |
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| [+] projects » Homesteading in the Live Free or Die state. (Go to) | Kate Muller | |
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Here are some spring updates.
We added a second chicken coop and upgraded the covered part of the run. The covered run is covered in left over plastic from our greenhouse project. This is where we have the food a water for the birds. It main function is to give them a dry place to hang out in bad weather. We also have been clearing out the vines and invasive over grown stuff so we can add a food forest to the back yard. 
This area is now sprouting cover crops. We still need to add fencing so we can plant in the fall or next spring. 
One day this pit will be another garden pond. We have too much going on this year to work on it but it the end location for a drainage ditch we are adding along our driveway. The greenhouse. My husband built me these beautiful raised beds and it is amazing. I am a very spoiled gardener. 
We added a partial shade garden to an unused part of the front yard. 
There are Paw Paws, currents, jostaberries, apples, peaches, and apricots planted in it so far. I need to add more to it but the annual garden is keeping me a little too busy. 
Mu husband did a major wedding and pruning of the raspberry patch. It is doing so much better and we should have a good harvest this year. 
The asparagus patch is still very much a mess. If we can keep the larger weeds at bay all season I will be happy. 
The garlic is doing amazingly well. At the time of this posting I just harvested all the scrapes. I make and freeze a large batch of pesto and dehydrate the rest. I love garlic scapes. 
We added another asparagus patch and planted strawberries along with the asparagus. I need to take more pictures of the other projects we are working on. It is a busy year and I am hoping to be better about documenting it. |
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| [+] projects » Homesteading in the Live Free or Die state. (Go to) | Kate Muller | |
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I should have been a little more careful in what I was wishing for. Now that we are into our 9th growing season our permaculture farm is really starting to thrive an flourish. I am discovering when the diverse mix of perennial and annual crops gets to the point where they are producing enough that you no longer need to buy fruits, veggies, and herbs from outside suppliers like farm markets and super markets. This is great and has been our long term goal. Of course in a cold wet climate with a short growing season you only get about 5 months of the year to get the food you need for the other 7 months.
Now that my spring producing plants are established and cranking out enough food to carry me through the year if I can get it preserved. Of course the addition of the green house had been an amazing addition for extending the season of fresh veggies which has added an additional layer of work and complexity. I am finding the work load of food preservation this early in the season to be a surprising amount of work since I am still working on getting the spring planting in. So am working on finding the balance to make all of this work. I will need to since we are also working on add a food forest to the back yard. So far we have done most of the earthworks, water catchment, and planted cover crops. This summer fencing, more cover crops, and dealing with the invasive unwanted plants will keep us busy. The plan is to add the trees and shrubs next spring. In the mean time I need to take more photos. |
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| [+] meaningless drivel » You know you're a permie when... (Go to) | Tereza Okava | |
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You know your a Permie when your father in law wants to talk about national politics and what he and I are doing in response to it. I explain that my strategy involves the following:
Keeping an eye on local politics in hopes of not getting more regulations and higher property taxes. Volunteering in my community and teaching interested friends how to garden. Working on projects with my neighbors and becoming better friends with them. Converting more of my yard into food producing plants with the plan to share the excess production with friends, family, and neighbors. Buying as much as I can from local farms in the area to reduce my needs on food that depends on long supply chains. Cooking and preserving more home grown food make use of all our food production. Making homestead improvements that reduce energy needs and lower our daily cost of living including solar, more water catchment, and fencing. All of this improves my quality of life and increases my resilience no matter what happens inside the DC beltway. What really makes me a permie is that my father in law got it and had an Ah-Ha moment right then and there. He finally gets why we are living this way. We not only like gardening, its health benefits, and the fresh food but also makes us more resilient while navigating the current chaotic and potentially difficult times. |
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| [+] homestead » Best homestead conveniences (Go to) | Honey Rowland | |
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I have a bunch of physical limitations so I am all about the right tool to make the job easier so I can keep doing all the things.
We have a short growing season and a long cold winter so harvest and preservation season is a 2.5 month marathon. 14 cup Cuisinart food processor Saves time, my hands, and the parts go in the dishwasher Immersion blender canning tomato sauce. Paired with a very large heirloom oxheart tomato that has very few seeds and soft tender skins makes canning 50 to 112 quarts of tomato based products easier. 2 dehydrators The dishwasher. I can hand wash everything but during the fall harvest season I spend 45 minutes or more a day just hand washing everything. An adjustable height table that I can stand or sit at to do food prep. 5 to 6 gallon stock pots, 13 quart mixing bowls, and a giant colander to with them. Fermenting lids and glass weights for wide mouth canning jars. They are the easiest way I have found to ferment foods and 1/2 gallon canning jars are a convent size for our house hold for fermented foods. I love my washing machine. It sucks to hand wash your clothes when you have lots of damage to the joints in your hands. Roomba. It is a luxury that I only got because because it saves me energy so I can do more valuable things with my limited functionality. Automatic chicken coop door. This makes having laying hens so simple. A network of garden hoses with splitters and high quality shut off values all over the 1/4 acre garden so I never have to drag a hoes more than 25' during the growing season. We just added a hand dug well high up on the property to make watering even easier. Meadow Creature broadfork is great for the garden beds, removing good sized rocks and unwanted shrub root balls. Small folding stool that I use to garden on when working in my raised beds with wide woodchipped mulched pathways. I have a fainting problem so I can work far longer sitting down than I can standing up. |
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| [+] forest garden » High Calorie Crops In Forest Garden (Go to) | Kate Muller | |
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What kind of woods are you looking at? If it has recently been logged and there isn't much high quality trees left I would design the site to improve access, water retention, and create a zone one space for your calorie dense annual food crops.
If you manage to acquire a site that has not recently been torn up by logging I would do what my aunt and uncle did. They bought wooded lot to build a passive solar home on in the 1980s. It had 7 acres of woods and they hired an arborist to come through and teach they about the trees they had. The trees were marked in different colored paint to signify if they we diseased, damaged and should come down or if it was a rare tree and should be cared for long term. They high graded the wood lot and designed the house to only need a cord or 2 to heat it over the winter. The floor joists and much of the lumber for the house came from the house site. 30 years later the trees are more impressive than ever. We only have a couple of acres and we live on the border of suburban and rural living. Right now we are working clearing the back half of our property of the low value trees and doing some earthworks so we can plant a food forest. It is a rather steep hill so some terraces, swales and walking paths need to be built. I will be planting it in cover crops, annual flowers, and extra vegetable seeds I have this year. Some of this will be and the rest cut down for mulch. Next spring we will be planting all the long term trees and shrubs. Since it will still be sunny to dappled sun for a few years. I will be using the space the trees don't need yet for flowers, herbs, veggies, and seed saving crops. Some of the yard between the house and the soon to be food forest will be made into raised beds for zone 2 type annual plants like winter squash, sweet potatoes, potatoes, parsnips, and celeriac. We currently have most of our annual veggies and fruit production in the front yard. The food forest will mostly be nut trees with mostly native fruits as understory trees. The shrub layer will have lots of fruits and hazelnuts. I expect these shrubs to eventually die out as the canopy fills in but I want the production in the mean time. While the hill is sunny I will by growing annual and perennial plants in the space in between the rows of trees. Our friends who have 200 acres of woods an hour away from me in a rural area have a very different approach their farm. They primarily raise animals on food waste from restaurants, supermarkets, breweries, and diary processing companies. They use pigs to clear out brambles and other low value shrubs and plants in their heavily forested farm. They use electric fencing to keep the animals where they want them. Once the pigs have cleared out the under brush they go in an remove the less valuable trees to create savannah style pastures for cows, turkeys, chickens, and the recently added sheep to their pastures. All these animals are rotationally grassed spring through fall. All the nuts and fruits that fall from the trees they have kept feed the animals in the fall. |
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| [+] projects » Homesteading in the Live Free or Die state. (Go to) | Kate Muller | |
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The chaos in the first couple of years came from several different factors. We did the earthworks with help from friends. They made the hugle beds wider than I requested not realizing that with my physical limitations (due to a connective tissue disorder) that I was injuring myself trying to reach the center of them. So we figured out rather quickly that we needed to adapt our design. We have embraced constantly redesigning our systems and work flow. We try not to make anything too permanent. The other big factor was learning our new site. The soil and water situation were very different from my previous gardening experience.
We know I am going to continue my physical decline and a lot of our design decisions are based on me being able to keep gardening. My husband builds infrastructure a year or a season ahead so we ready when plants or animals arrive. We always try incorporate being able to change things. We are both big proponents of iterative design. We are just starting to work on the back part of the property because we needed to learn more before planting food forest. We are currently working on the earthworks and will plant in cover crops and annual flowers this year. We won't plant trees and shrubs till next spring. This will give us time to make changes and remove any vines and shrubs that pop back up. Picking one or 2 projects to add each year makes management easier of existing systems easier. Spreading the workload over a year makes it much easier to add new elements while not getting overwhelmed. It also helps that we both work from home. I will post updated photos when my FRC Robotics Team is done competing this weekend. |
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| [+] projects » Homesteading in the Live Free or Die state. (Go to) | Kate Muller | |
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The greenhouse project is coming along. We still need to get electricity out there for the fans and vents but that will have to wait till the ground isn't frozen.
In the mean time my husband built me these beautiful raised beds. I am a very spoiled gardener. 
The beds are 16" tall 3' wide and have 1/4" hardware cloth in the bottom. I also painted bone sauce to the underside of the wood that frames the top of the beds to discourage nibblers. These beds are for season extension of annual veggies and take up about half the greenhouse. The rest of the greenhouse is storage at the moment. We want to get a year of temperature data before we start adding long term perennials to it. 
I have some cold weather crops started and they have survived the last couple of days with low temps of 17 F without any additional protection. These include snap peas, spinach, arugula, diakon radish, kale, and pac choi, and swiss chard. The 2 sad looking plants in the back of the bed are a bay laurel and a rosemary in pots that I tucked into the bed for the winter. They are not quite dead and the rosemary is starting to add new growth. They are normally annuals where I live so I am hoping will survive long term in the greenhouse. |
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| [+] urban » Preventing food shortages and being self sustainable. (Go to) | Heather Staas | |
Tattler Lids and Harvest Guard lids are reusable canning lids made here in the US. While a freeze dryer is an easy and very expensive option it does require being able to store the dried foods in moisture proof container that is free of oxygen. Canning jars with lids, oxygen absorbers, and Mylar bags are all part of freeze drying storage. Dehydrating is a great way to preserve a lot of garden produce to use over the winter. It is also really good practice to learn how to cook with foods that need to be rehydrated before you sink serious money and energy into a freeze dryer. It is a great way to preserve a bumper crop of produce and the stored food takes up way less space! I can fit 18 to 24 bell peppers into a pint jar after they are dehydrated. We use eclectic dehydrators due to our humid climate. I set my dehydrators in the spring and start with herbs and spring greens. This way I am preserving what I need for the winter before my main veggie crops need all my attention The regular harvesting of the herbs also shifts the flowering of the plants later into the summer which the pollinators appreciate. I also dehydrate excess spring greens that do well in soups. Bunching onions, kale, spinach and pac choi are all easy greens to dehydrate and save for soups and sauces over the winter. Winecap and other mushrooms go into the dehydrator if don't eat them all the day we harvest them. As the summer production starts I start working on dehydrating summer squash. I grate it and dehydrate it. It is great in soups, stews, tomato sauces, and I use it instead of lasagna noodles in a lasagna. It tends to thicken things a bit while adding extra veg to meal. Fruit is favorite to dehydrate. Cherries are our favorite but we dehydrate just about any fresh fruit that we can't eat fast enough. Apple and Pear slices, blueberries, strawberries, currants, and grapes all become snacks for winter eating. Raspberries don't dehydrate well as a snack food so we can them into pie filling or jam instead. I don't bake but I am assuming you can bake with dehydrated fruit too. As I get into fall I will dehydrate veggies that I use in meals where they are slow cooked and or a specific texture isn't required. Tomatillos, peppers, and green onions are dehydrated for winter chili. You can also do tomatoes but I prefer to can them. Hot peppers can easily be smoked on the grill and then put in the dehydrator for various smoked pepper seasoning. We keep a coffee grinder just for spices and dried peppers to make my own seasoning blends. Carrots, parsnips, celeriac, kale, spinach, pac choi, summer squash, garlic scapes, celery, and onions are all great for this. I rehydrate them before adding them to recipes and it makes it fast and easy to cook over the winter. If you pressure can your own stock and bone broths you make soups all winter long from leftovers in less than 5 minute of prep work. Having some large stock pots for blanching and a food processor for chopping large volume of produce is a huge time saver. Of course these tools are great for any food preservation method. I keep my dehydrated goods in canning jars and use my very good condition once used canning lids for these jars. I keep them in a cool dark part of the basement and easily get 2 years of storage. |
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| [+] projects » Homesteading in the Live Free or Die state. (Go to) | Kate Muller | |
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Here is the beginnings of the 2022 garden season. I am starting lots of extra seedlings this year and currently and starting a bunch of extra early stuff in the greenhouse.
I am sharing seeds with friends and hosting a tiny seed swap this week. It should be fun. I will be growing more than ever. I am hoping to not only supply al our veggies for the entire year but also produce enough to give some to friends and neighbors. We are still eating primarily from last year's production. I did break down and buy some frozen broccoli last week. It is the first veggies we have purchased since July of 2021. Other than broccoli we on track for not needing to buy any veggies till we can start harvesting early spring crops. |
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| [+] sewing » Shall I make a hexi-quilt? (Go to) | Tereza Okava | |
I am slowly working on a 1" hexi based quilt. I am in no rush to finish it either. I printed the papers pieces on card stock I have left over from another project. I cut the Hexagons, triangles, and jewel shapes with a pair of scissors while listening to audio books. Getting a hexagon shaped paper punch makes it easier to use junk mail post cards for your papers. I chose to glue baste my pieces. If you baste them with thread you can save a bunch of money and use up random bits of thread on spools and bobbins. You can use the older hand me down spools of thread that your sewing machine doesn't like for basting thread. It is your quilt and if you enjoy the process more than finishing the quilt on a schedule than make the quilt how you want it. Scrap quilts historically were made slowly as you accumulated the fabric and found time to cut and assemble them. If you to make it out of 1" hexagons go for it. I have an ever growing pile of 1" hexagons to make several EPP quilts out of and I have a pile of papers to make 1/2 hexagon based quilt out of. |
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| [+] introductions » Hello from New Hampshire (Go to) | Julie Anne | |
Hi Kate, Thank you for your tips. I got several job offers last summer, but couldn't even find a rental in some places! I did explore around somewhat, but stayed mostly in the south. I'll check out the north this summer. How did you go about investigating the towns and how they handle zoning and permits and such? I think it's such a shame that they don't allow tiny homes. Plenty of trailer parks, though. :( I searched each town's website to figure out what the zoning and permits requirements were. |
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