I think gardeners' reluctance to try wheat and other grains is not so much concern about how much space it would take, as confusion about, or bad experience with, the processing of the wheat. I've grown wheat and rye as cover crops many years, and allowed small patches to mature to try to get grain. I did once get enough rye to at least have my own cover crop seed for the next year; one year the wheat all fell over and disappeared while I was waiting for it to get the ripeness Logsdon calls for (afterward I suspected the problem was probably mice, or birds); and then one year I got almost a gallon of wheat berries. But when I decided to try using some, months later and pulled the pantry out of its dark place in my pantry I discovered it was full of bugs and mold. Either it wasn't dry enough, or I imported the bugs to start with and their work  caused the mold. I think I could maybe prevent this in small batches in the future by freezing the grains (except those set aside for seed) for a few days before storing. I haven't given up.  And I get around the difficulty of threshing (winnowing is easy with a fan and a couple of vessels) by just giving sorghum heads, and oats to my chickens. Incidentally, I recently decided I should replace the 50# bag of emergency wheat berries deep in my pantry with a fresh one, and started giving the old berries to the chickens. I thought it best to soak the wheat berries, and often have whey to use for the liquid. I also throw in some whole corn, which they seem to turn up their beaks to, in favor of cheap no-doubt-GMO but cracked corn. They LOVE it and eat it all, Wheat is higher in protein than corn. Probably even home raised open-pollinated dent corn

Last year I tried making teepees with a pole at the top between them, for beans. The problem was that the beans could set fruit higher than I could reach, and then stop producing. Usually I do pole beans, rarely bother with bush beans because the latter do produce much sooner, but they produce for only about three weeks, and they're so close to the ground that the beans get moldy often. Pole beans take longer to come into production but then they produce for months, and they're easier to pick and don't get moldy. I use a heavy wire fence. I have some field fence wire left over from making tomato cages, so I stretch a ten foot section between two metal T-posts in a different garden bed each year, through the middle of the bed. I plant peas on one side early (I plan to do it today actually, March 21st) and then after the peas have begun producing I plant the pole beans on the other side. That way when the peas get old and I rip them out, the beans take over the job of creating shade for what else is in the bed--things like lettuce and spinach, perhaps brassicas (but I quit planting them in this bed because they didn't seem to do well).
This year, I decided that while I give away a lot of those pole beans, I never seem to have enough peas. So I made a new trellis. My plan is to put the snow peas on it and the sugar snaps on the old one. Then I'll plant runner beans, which I've been wanting to try, on the other side of the new trellis. What I did is cut a 13 foot section of that old field fence, and doubled it over and bent it into an A-frame shape. I pushed the prongs into the ground about two feet apart in the middle of a bed. This gives me a wire crosshatch four feet wide and six feet tall on each side. We don't have much wind here during the growing season, but I thought it might need some bolstering, so I added a wire to each side and fastened them on about 18" up with thin wire. When I say I used "a wire" I refer to what I've tried using as a support for row cover or tulle--the squared U-shaped wires left from campaign signs--someone gave me a bunch. I discovered last year that they aren't tall enough for brussels sprouts--I had to pull them off and then the worms devoured the plants. But a couple of these helped strengthen the frame. Whether it's enough I'll have to see--I may need to add a leftover tomato cage or even a metal post for further bulwarking. I'm also thinking that this trellis might work for things like certain summer squash that grow long vines, or small melons, or cucumbers...

Someone I communicated with in New Zealand sent me pix showing how he had reused refrigerators and freezers that no longer worked, for food storage in a shed. The metal boxes are good for mouse exclusion. Fridges and freezers are also well insulated, which wouldn't be true of the dryer--but maybe you could make it so? I've saved a stash of mailing envelopes and the fluff our dog pulls out of stuffed toys, in the idea that someday I'll use them as insulation...

I question whether filters suffice to keep toxins out of the air when garbage is burned. Other than that, though, I'd like to see everything mentioned for Germany adopted here in the US. Sounds like things are still getting better there, too, whereas here any little advance is met with lobbying to reverse it, usually successfully. Looks like the key in Europe is pu nlic pressure, which means the difference is more effective propaganda in the US.

All this makes me want to try making an arch out of  cattle panels--but we don't have any left. I have used what I think is called field fencing--it's not woven and it's not welded, it has little wire twists at each joint--to make three kinds of trellises.
1--I make tomato cages out of these. Count ten joints and cut off a section, then cut off the heavy wire at the end with the bigger squares. Roll it into a cylinder and use a pliers to bends the ends around to fasten it. Now you have prongs sticking out from the large-square end, to push into the ground. The upper end has squares too small to easily pick tomatoes through, but that doesn't matter as you can just reach in through the top. These have been going strong for 14 years now. I use these for the bigger peppers too.
2--I run a fence between two metal posts down the middle of one of my permanent beds each year and plant peas on one side, then pole beans on the other side toward the end of the pea season, so the beans can take over the job of making shade after I rip out the peas. I grow things like lettuce, radishes, spinach, maybe brassicas or celery, on either side.
3--yesterday I made a new trellis, so it is untested. Realizing I never have enough peas, I made a sort of teepee--just bent a 13' stretch of this fencing in the middle to push the ends into the ground to form an A-shaped tower about 6 feet tall. I can maybe grow the snow peas on one side and runner beans on the other later; I figure I can use it for stuff like small melons, cucumbers, and some of the rampant summer squashes. Possibly could also grow lettuce under it in midsummer. But I'm not sure about its stability. I tried pushing wire hoops in on each side. These are the support wires from campaign signs--someone gave me a bunch and I thought they'd be good for holding tulle for insect exclusion or reemay for winter protection, but the trouble is they aren't tall enough for some things like the brussels sprouts I tried last year. But maybe tying the taller A-frame to these will improve stability.

Ha. I just posted a long explanation of my system, inappropriately at the end of a thread about tilling...I think others have given you all the tips bout SPEED. The question of enough is maybe another matter--you need more materials to have more total compost. One possibility is leaves. I compost these separately to make leaf mold; I think it was Elliot Coleman who said it should be done separately from other compost but now I can't find the reference. it takes two years if whole, one if they're chopped. I used to use a lawnmower for this, now a borrowed leaf chopper. I also have piles of dead branches and such in the woods, as well as ordinary compost piles by each garden. They vary in how long they take. The two bins (made of concrete blocks) above my main garden cycle through two or three piles a year; they get a lot of weeds, and spent hay mulch, as well as kitchen scraps and the proceeds from cleaning out my chicken coop. I only turn them two or three times, maybe once a month. All my piles get pee dumped on them, in a sequence. So the fastest pile is the one above my main garden and it might be ready in two months at the very least. But I'm saying...if you have enough stuff going through your piles, it doesn't matter if it takes longer, because the time passes all by itself, and then you're glad to have the compost, Like if you spot one of those tree trucks on a local road, and ask the driver if they need a place to dump wood chips. Usually they're happy to bring you a load. Even with pee dumping, this stuff will take a few years to be ready. But--next thing you know, those years have passed, and you thank your younger self for scoring you this resource. So, my overall point is that while you said your question is how to make compost FASTER, your real question is how to have more of it. If you have enough material moving through your composting system, it soon won't matter if it takes longer to be finished. Although right now you might need to resort to buying compost, a dubious proposition as there are no regulations on what can go in it. But if you gotta, you gotta. Just make sure you have enough compost piles going that you won't have to do it next year.

Roberto, I thought I didn't have to worry about composting that sawdust because it supposedly HAD been composting for 30 years--but maybe that isn't enough, in the absence of nitrogen. Incidentally, according to the Teaming with Microbes book, there may be a difference between what's good for woody plants (like my fruit trees) and forbs--if I understand right, woody plants like fungally rich compost and garden plants like bacterially rich  compost. Might there not be an issue even with wood chips on the surface as mulch, sucking nitrogen? Also incidentally--I have about ten compost piles. Three are next to my gardens, composed in part from weeds and remains from my gardens, and fed into the gardens, But a few are in the woods surrounding my clearing, composed of rotting branches, maybe supplemented with leaves or diseased garden plants or their mulch. There are three bins of chopped leaves too. We collect pee separately from the composting toilets, and dump it in sequence on all these piles to speed their decomposition. But this means that the humanure is not all that rich in nitrogen and phosphorus, so if I want to goose any orchard tree a bit more, whose growth is lagging, I give them animal manures (which will be richer because the pee is always absorbed by the bedding). The two other garden piles and the leaf piles decompose and get used once a year. The pair of bins above my main garden cycle through two or three piles a year, because they get much more weeds as well as the proceeds from cleaning out my chicken coop and kitchen scraps. The piles in the woods, after 6 or 8 years, I move the pile beside itself, and collect the rich compost underneath. I am not a patient person, but I have learned this trick--years pass all by themselves, and next thing you know your piles of woody stuff or wood chips have composted, and you're glad to have it, and thank your younger self for stopping the tree truck and asking the driver if he needed a place to dump wood chips. But I did learn another lesson here, about where to have him dump it: if it's on the edge of woods, the local trees smell it and by the time it's ready they've thoroughly infiltrated it with their greedy roots, masking it hard to collect your share.

Redhawk, I might try that with one bed--I do have access to a chip pile about 3 years old. i hesitate to do any more, because about 25 years ago someone offered me sawdust from an abandoned sawmill, supposedly 30 years old. I put it three inches deep on top of my bed, then tried working it in...and my garden was weak and yellow for a couple of years after that. I wondered if maybe the sawdust included black walnut...or wasn't really so well composted--but it made me very leery of using sawdust or woodchips in the vegetable garden. I do mulch my berry patches with wood chips.  And  put a little heap of them under each fruit tree...mostly I fertilize the trees with humanure and then mulch that with leaves, and then cover that with rocks and logs to keep the chickens from kicking everything all over.

Interesting thread. I have long running arguments with my neighbor about this--he never tills, while I turn my permanent raised beds once or sometimes twice a year, with a shovel, and usually till my flat space (for growing corn and sorghum mostly) usually twice a year. Although our gardens are only 700 feet apart, his is sandy and mine is clay. I think this is why I do better with some tilling. I consider it necessary to work some organic matter (some combination of manure, leafmold and compost, depending on availability and the following crop) into the soil at least once a year and often sand as well (another thing we argue about because he believes the claims that "clay plus sand equals bricks." Whereas I have seen some studies that say otherwise but more to the point, the proof's in the pudding--my soil is much better, more friable, with sand as well as organic matter added. I'm in West Virginia, we get 40" of rain a year so I don't irrigate much but my gardens, like all land in WV are sloping. I note that the beds slump downhill over time and I need to bring soil back to the upper part of the bed. So I do have some erosion.
This past fall I managed to skip tilling the flat space. I had put cardboard down between the rows of corn, and around the butternut squash on the end, covered lightly with manurey hay. And weeded a time or two. So I was able, right after harvesting most of the corn in late September, to pull up all the cardboard and scatter rye and vetch seed, working it in somewhat with a rake, (and covering spots that didn't rake in well with what compost I could scrounge, so they retained enough soil and moisture to sprout. So I got a good cover crop without tilling, and removed the cornstalks in February. I often have trouble getting cover crops in because a crop is in the way, until it's too late (we didn't have a killing frost until mid November last year.) So I'm still learning how to manage things to minimize tilling. I question whether the additive would work into clay soil without tilling, but think that when you improve the soil you should be able to get by with less and less. What I really wonder about, with larger farms, is how they can replace mulch. I consider mulch a necessity--I think some no-till farms are using herbicide, which I consider worse than tilling. I think organic ones are using plastic mulch, also unsustainable, especially if the plastic only lasts one season and then blows away to land in waterways. You could hoe, that's what people used to do, but then you're leaving bare soil. Hay is what I can get much of for mulch, and it almost always is full of weed seeds, often including the most annoying kinds--clovers and grasses. So I put a couple layers of newspaper under the hay, which at least delays the weeds. I also do use the humanure but only in the orchard and flowerbed.

I think it'd generally true about old items being so much better made that they often outlast newer ones. I griped about can openers a few years ago, how I remember using the same simple metal can opener for many years as a child and now I kept buying new ones because they'd stop working well (I mean the hand tool of course, not that absurd thing, the electric can opener). My daughter showed me the Amnerican-made one she'd been using for a few years; I admired it so she bought me one, and I've now been using it three or four years and it still works just fine. It also has bright red plastic coated handles which makes it easy to find in the drawer. The brand is EZ-DUZ IT.

They do vary by cariety. I grew a deep purple one for years--deep gorgeous purple throughout, including after baking, and they were very vigorous and prolific and early with sprouting. But they were no good for frying (I like to put minced sweet potato in with my home fries) and I got fed up with the way the tubers would sneak and slither and slide under aisles and then dive, deep into heavy clay soil--while the pinkish orange ones splay outward from the crown, not venturing too far away or too deep. The purple ones also tended to be long and skinny. Little difference in flavor baked bu the purple ones seemed a little denser.

Just want to mention that I spent the summer of 2003 in Ecuador, adjacent to Peru where the potato was born. They have lovely little farmer's markets in every town and every city neighborhood, at least once a week but daily in the cities. These were a libertarian's dream--no regulations, people could set up a food cart on the sidewalk and clean their tables with a filthy rag, I remember a stall selling blender parts and electrical cords. I'd see cheese, fish, out on a table with a few flies (surprisingly few, actually) and in the city markets I'd see a whole roasted pig in the morning. The vendor would sell  chunks all day and by evening it would be, literally, skin and bones. But apropos to potatoes--sellers had potatoes in baskets or half-barrels, and there would be at least a dozen different kinds. Once I went with the man of our host family in Cuenca and wished desperately that it wasn't considered rude to photograph people,,,anyway, I needed potatoes. He translated and negotiated for me. "How many?" I thought a little--we were going to be leaving in a week. "Five potatoes," I said, and they thought this was hilarious, like buying five grains of rice.

We are rural homesteaders. It happens that our local recycling facility has a contract to supply plastic--any kind, doesn't have to be sorted--so I can recycle plastic unless it's mixed with another material. We throw out probably one garbage bag a month--meaning the bags WalMart gives you, with two milk cartons stuffed with garbage, typically. But occasionally we put a whole full-size garbage bag in the pickup bin. One item is used feed bags that I have used to collect leaves or bring home goat manure, once they fall apart--by then they're too dirty to recycle even if pure plastic. Another is pieces of the "rubber" mats made locally (actually engineered foam, whatever that is), which I use around the perimeters of my gardens to keep down weeds, also use for aisles in the gardens with permanent beds. My young dog likes to tear these up. He also tears up the stuffed toys we give him--I may eventually throw what's left into the pit where I throw diseased vegetation--I throw those mats down there too sometimes. Currently our recycling center takes glass. Good point about how much energy that takes. Yes, reuse is great but eventually you have all the glass containers you can use. I no longer make wine and my husband stopped making beer, so that's most of what gets thrown into recycling, along with broken glass vessels.

Just want to say that Mathew's point about utilities wanting to use punitive net metering rate to discourage grid ties is extra reason to consider going off grid, maybe not for the OP who plans a separate system but for those just investigating possibilities. I think he's right that utilities will agitate in their state legislatures or with PUCs to be allowed to charge hookup fees as high as possible, on the excuse that those doing net metering are "not paying their share" of the cost of maintaining the grid and supposedly ripping off the other customers who can't afford to go solar. What well-heeled lobbyists want they usually get, even if pressure to do something about climate change, or for "energy freedom" means they don't get it immediately. I also suspect that with general decline, the time is coming when the grid gets more and more intermittent, especially in rural and poor areas.
Also want to throw in a reminder that in estimating needs, a $25 Kill-o-Watt can allow you to quickly determine how much power each appliance draws.
Having the ability to adjust the angle of southfacing panels a few times a year makes a big difference in efficiency and is one of the arguments for yard-mounted rather than roof-mounted panels. You can get the means to turn the panels from southeast to southwest daily, which also improves efficiency--but mainly in the summer when you need it least, and it's a complicated system subject to breakdown, probably not worth it. Of course, actually determining the solar exposure of spots you're considering for your panels is a necessity, including making the calculation of how that changes seasonally, which you can do with a chart based on your latitude. For example, where I live at about 38.8 degrees N, the sun rises just about due northeast and sets due southeast at the summer solstice, and just about due southeast and southwest on the winter solstice. I think on the equinoxes it's due east and west for everyone. And I say, if you have to cut down a tree or two--well, reducing your grid use very likely means sparing trees elsewhere. But reducing your total energy use any way you can is extremely worthwhile as well--even solar power is not free of climate and other environmental costs.

First, I'll note that Carol Deppe in Oregon grows C maxima and not moschata, because in that climate (dry in summer, less heat in summer) the borers aren't a problem and the moschatas don't complete growth well. Here in West Virginia, I'm always trying new varieties and I find the maximas never produce much--whether it's because of borers or something else I don't know but I've given up on maximas. I don't seem to have any problems with pepos, but I grow only summer squash, not any "pumpkins." I note that the last three years I tried starting a late crop of summer squash to replace the old, declining plants, in July or early August, and all three years they didn't thrive if they germinated at all. Maybe they need row cover for grasshopper protection--no problems with planting  summer squash in May. I've grown the cushaws a couple times--they did fine, the only problem is what to do with that much squash at once. Mostly my standby is butternuts, though some other moschatas have done acceptably well. Last year my butternuts were hit pretty hard by mildew, so I found a strain that's supposed to be resistant to try this year. I'm also going to grow the Tahitian melon squash, for the second time--it's like a butternut that has been stretched extra long, with a curve. I grew it once and it was fine, maybe even sweeter than butternuts and long keeping, but again what do you do with that much squash? I'm also going to try delicata because my daughter asked for it. I grew Seminole twice. The first year I grew it near corn, and it didn't start flowering until September, and then flowered so relentlessly that I had to pluck baby squash daily in hopes that the first ones might make it to maturity. I blamed the shade from the corn. The next year I grew it again, this time in full sun, and--same thing. Didn't get a single usable squash either year, so I have no interest in trying that one again, ever.
Now on the squash bugs--the first year here, I got them, pretty bad by the end of the season but my butternuts were ripe so I didn't care. I didn't do a garden cleanup. The next spring I could not grow any cucurbit, even melons, because a healthy crop of squash bugs had overwintered in the mulch and relentlessly attacked any baby cucurbit. I learned my lesson, and now when I pull any squash plant I throw it where my chickens can work it over, and remove all the mulch before winter and throw it on a woods compost pile. I also police my squash plants every two to three days, removing the eggs and nymphs and adults--kindofa pain because you have to check every leaf...it was handy, the year my summer squash were next to my water spigot--while my watering can was filling I could check a few leaves.

When I read your initial post, my reaction was (aside from enjoying the bit about chocolate)--what that woman needs is a partner. It makes SOOOO much difference in quality of life, to have someone who shares your little ups and downs, who  cares how you feel today. I wished you a mate. Then when I saw the second post, in which you acknowledged that your solitude is not by choice, that you're as lonely as I would be in your place, it only doubled my reaction but I have to note--from my own experience, the difficulty of finding a mate when you like the country life and hate cities. The way I put it--in the year and a half after I divorced my first husband and before I got tied up with my current husband, I was so hungry I found that any time I met a man I would instantly apply what I called the demographic screen: Is he male? Is he roughly my age? Is he single? Is he heterosexual? If the answer was yes to all four, he was possible...but what percentage of the people who merely pass that screen are actually compatible enough to be your mate? One in a hundred, to be generous? And then, how many people, new people who pass the demographic screen do you meet in a year? Two or three? So on average, you're likely to find the right person in, oh, maybe 50 years.  So, you can go to a city where you can meet several possibles in a day. Trouble is, they usually want to live in a city! So I tried Match.com which let me do all kinds of searches. That led to several interesting conversations, but never an actual meeting. Then my friend hooked me up with a mutual friend, and--we've been together almost 18 years now. I got lucky. So did my neighbor, whose wife died in March 2020, horrible timing as he is a very social person and the lockdown happened just when he lost his wife. But he found someone, moved for three months to another community, then it fell apart and he moved back...only to tie up with a widowed woman in a community not that far away, which looks like it will work. So he was lucky too but I think being an extrovert is an advantage, as is being male at his age (he 80 now).
So--I hope you manage to overcome this quandary and find a mate, and next time you face something like this it will be worlds easier. And don't forget--this will not only make your life so much better but his too. Or hers--if you're gay or even if not, a companion is almost as a good as a lover.

Another community to consult is Earthhaven in North Carolina. I believe they ran into trouble with doing that composting toilet thing, with the local government hassling them about health codes or something. And also had issues using consensus to make decisions. Clustering houses closely together is ecologically sensible if you're assuming that people's food is brought in from elsewhere--not very permie, though. Or if the gardening is done communally, which might be more communal than the OP has in mind.  And for enhancing neighborliness and community, I think at least one central meeting place should be included where music and dancing and storytelling and trading meets and...lots of other stuff go on. How about a hot tub or sauna? Also, not everyone has telecommuting type skills, and such depend on the civilization in its present form, which might not last much longer. Ideally you have some local businesses producing for each other as well as the nearby towns--bakers, blacksmith, herbalist/masseur/masseuse, bike repair, crafters, winemaker...

Hello. I live on a land trust on a ridge in kinda central western WV. My reaction is that your plan is too many households too close together and very little garden land. I would like more community than we have here--this place is 76 acres with four leaseholds. As it's a land trust, we can't own the land but accepted members get a lifetime lease. If they leave they can sell their improvements to new owners who must be approved by the board. I think our arrangement gives us the independence you mention; we do share a few things (we use another member's washing machine and freezer, he borrows our truck, we went in together on a log splitter) but each household makes its own decisions--we have one meeting a year. I think provision for a time when we can';t depend on the global economy or money would be wise (fewer households, more cleared land, and if it's in southern WV, even more than here you need flattish land--the ridge is better than the bottom because of flooding, but you might have both on a big piece like that. Also, you can really save on building a house if you don't have to mess with building codes and all--likely you wouldn't have to there (we didn't) but with that many houses clustered you likely would.

Now I gotta respond to Carrie's post to say: we got our initial system from Backwoods Solar, which is also good at helping people figure out a system, and offers set-ups all ready to go. But there's a key question here, which is whether you want to go off-grid, do a grid-tied system, or have a parallel off-grid system. Backwoods I believe specializes in off=grid systems, which is what we have, and has the advantages that your power doesn't go out when the grid goes down, and you aren't at the mercy of the %%$## at your utility. But grid tied systems basically consist of the panels, with micro-inverters built into each one--the grid is your battery and charge controller. Here in WV, you have to pay for a fancy meter that runs both ways, and they don't ever pay you for electricity, but you get full credit for surplus to use in a time of deficit and only pay $5/month for the privilege of using the grid.
Carrie talked about people getting together to get panels cheaper--there is an outfit here that does that. I think it's Solar United Neighbors, which focuses on one region at a time, collecting customers, then the installer goes around and assesses them all, and at some point is ready to order all the panels and install each system. There is also lobbying going on now for community solar, in which a larger system is set up in a good location, and you can buy into it and thus get cheaper electricity without setting up panels on your own place. Last year we did finally get third-party financing deals legalized, in which an outfit puts the panels on your roof (or yard?) and owns the system, you pay for the power and eventually I guess own the system. So you might want to check into what's possible where you live. But if you're thinking grid tied, I point out that you need not calculate your average use and put up that many panels--you could start with a small system that supplies a part of your power. Then, if the grid goes down for good you will be very glad to have what turns out to be all the power you actually need.

Okay, here's my experience. I live in West Virginia, which is far from the best insolation in the US, but not quite the worst. Winter clouds are sure yes indeed a thing here, perhaps makes more difference even than the shorter days and less ideal angle. We don't have a generator, but we have a line to our neighbor's--they have a larger, grid-tied system, and we take a kilowatt-hour or two a few times a winter, totaling maybe ten or 20 kwh a winter--half or close to as much as the typical US home uses in a day. But we use between 2 and 3 kwh a day. I have a huge advantage in that my husband knows his way around electricity and electronics; he planned and installed our system, and assisted others in the area, some with grid-tied or hybrid systems. He also figured out ways to save energy, power supplies for specific appliances so the inverter doesn't need to run. We got our system in 2009, and paid $9070 for four panels @ 220 watts each, eight T 106 batteries, and inverter and charge controller, and wiring and such.  Seven years later when these "training batteries" were shot we got a different kind of lead-acid battery, new here but long popular in Europe, tubular batteries--these are very heavy and taller, are in glass or plastic cases so you can see in, and the specs claim that they will be down to 80% original capacity in 25 years--so they'll last us the rest of our lives. They were $4000. We had a problem only once, six months after installation when a close lightning strike fried part of the inverter--luckily it was still under warranty and they quickly replaced the part. We now turn off most AC in times of storms, and even the refrigerator if lightning is striking violently around. My husband decided we needed a couple more panels a few years ago, and here's the interesting thing--the new ones are almost exactly the same dimension as the old ones, but they are 315 watts, and also more efficient in low light, so a good 50% better capacity--and the old ones in 2009 cost $600 apiece, these cost $200 apiece. A year or two ago my husband discovered that the cables which connected the new batteries were unequal and substandard--he replaced them and the difference was amazing--we can go three cloudy days, then in a half sunny day get recharged.
So. Absolutely, DO get solar because the day is coming, I predict, when grid power is either much more expensive or becomes intermittent. But DO figure out ways to cut your use FIRST--if you have to pay someone to help you with this, it will be worth it, but for $25 you can get a Kill-a-watt, which plugs into an outlet, then you plug an appliance into it and it tells you how much power the appliance is using; for things like a fridge it counts the hours so you can assess how much power an appliance that goes on and off uses in a day. (It also tells some other stuff I don't understand, about the quality of the electricity or something.) Also--mounting panels on a roof is not necessarily the best choice. It's best if you live in a city and have to worry about vandalism and theft, or if the roof is the sunniest part of your property and you have a good south face. But ground-mounted panels can be easily adjusted seasonally (the angle of the sun changes quite a bit). And a roof mount means making holes in your roof, quite a project and must be done right not to leak. Also panels are more efficient at lower temperatures, and roofs are warmer than other places. And--we go out sometimes more than once a day in winter to brush snow off the panels with a push-broom--such days are when we need the input the most, but how much fun would it be to hang out a window, or walk over an icy roof, to do it when it's 12 degrees out? My husband posted plans for the ground mount that we and several others in our area, and now others elsewhere have used, on his website which is spectrumz.com, under going solar. The mounts are made of pressure-treated wood.
Okay, aside from panels I'll put in a plug for my other favorite solar device--an attached greenhouse.  I have one on the 12-foot south face of our house, seven feet deep. I use it to start seedlings in spring, to dry towels all year and things like beans and peanuts in fall, to house orphaned chicks or injured hens in safety and once in an exceptionally frigid week, all my chickens; I also dry seeds inside paper bags there, and certain bulbs...and of course, it helps heat the house on borderline days so we don't need a fire.

FWIW--not very much--my neighbor tried grafting some scions from my goumis onto autumn olive and it didn't take. But one try doesn't prove anything. Might be you need the right time of year, technique, et c.

I live in West Virginia. Autumn olives are a nightmare of invasiveness here, worse than multiflora because if you dig out the crown of a multiflora, you've killed it but with autumn/Russian olives you have to dig out every bit of root. To the person who said he sees a single autumn olive that hasn't notably spread, I say GET RID OF IT WHILE YOU CAN! To those questioning whether goumi is a better option, I believed a book that said they were and got two--a Sweet Scarlet and Red Gem. This was 4 or 5 years ago. I've seen no sign of their spreading. They require zero care--I do prune them in February, to make picking in late June easier, not a lot of trouble and as some say, you can use the prunings. This year I'm going to use many of them as starter for cuttings to try to make lots more, to give away and I think I'll add a couple more in my orchard. They fix nitrogen, They have pretty silvery leaves and pleasant smelling flowers (so do the evil autumn olives). Every year I get lots of fruit--picking the berries in the main chore, it takes several hours over a couple of days. The negative is that the berries have sizable pits, and the only way I've found to deal with them is to steam the fruit  for 20 minutes or so and filter out the solids, then use the liquid for a syrup. They are loaded with antioxidant and other good things.
I think invasives generally do tend to settle into an ecosystem eventually, but it's also a matter of regional difference. I have Japanese honysuckle, and beat it back on the edge of the woods as it was doing too much damage to the woods, including the redbuds that ring my clearing and resumed their former spring glory when I beat back the honeysuckle. But I didn't get rid of the honeysuckle as I LOVE its scent. One year I realized it had crossed the clearing and was all over the copse on the other side, and tried to make a dent by ripping up the lacework of fine vines, hoping to at least have started the necessary eradication. To my surprise, that was it, it was gone the next year there. People talk about stiltgrass, and I don't get it--it's so easy to pull up, my definition of a "good weed," and you can just wad it up and use it as mulch. But I can see where it would be a problem if you farmed on a large scale. Wineberries--I deliberately planted a patch of those--the main negative is that I failed to eradicate autumn olive there first and have to keep snipping it out now. Wineberries are so pretty, and tasty. But they only bear once, while my red everbearing raspberries start in August and keep going until it frosts. The wineberries crossed the road in and established themselves in the copse aforementioned, and I wondered whether to get rid of them. But now that area is part of my chicken run--the predators got so bad I gave up on free range and we fenced a run which includes the orchard, this bit of copse, and a bit of open area above the garden. I had thoughts or running cord through the tops of the fruit trees and down to the fence to confuse hawks--but then thought, why don't I try making a sort of food forest instead, planting forbs and bushes that won't shade the fruit trees but will hide the chickens from above? I think, a couple more goumis, maybe some full dwarf fruit trees (that I can cover, as my next attempted solution to the squirrel problem), some wild sunflowers, chicory perhaps, more fennel, and as for the wineberries, all I have to do is not hinder their spread.

But then maybe your greenhouse won't be big enough! Ours is 7 X 12 feet. We used tempered glass which we got used at $10 apiece, 6 feet by about 20". It has some stains which nothing has been able to remove, but although that impedes the view through it some, it doesn't block sunlight. I should mention that the upper, metal roof slants slightly down to the south, while the under roof slants more sharply, so there is a big gap on the south side for the winter sun to shine in.

Well, first, for Carla--I just want to ask whether you could build a small attached greenhouse outside that south-facing window.  I have one and it is SOOOO handy. I only got salad from the bed on ground level the first year; the next couple of winters, some little bugs (aphids?) destroyed the crops and I haven't tried since--decided to do hoops of some sort in the garden instead. But those bugs never bother what's on the shelves, so I start plants for my own garden and a couple of others there. Later the greenhouse is a good place to dry things like beans and peanuts, and I also alternate between two towels, putting a damp used one where the sun will dry and freshen it before the next use. We've also used the greenhouse for sick or injured chickens, for orphaned chicks, and once for a winter week so cold the coop didn't suffice. I don't heat this greenhouse, but it sometimes helps heat the house. On cool days in fall, winter and spring, I open the sliding door to the house and the warm air may be enough that we don't need a fire. There is a window and a roof vent. And a trick of my husband's I want to pass on: we have big hickories over the house on the west (so we don't need AC). Therefore we have to have a tin roof on the greenhouse (falling hickory nuts would crack a glass roof). But he built another roof under that, and on the south side a couple of glass panels fit in, passing much extra sun into the greenhouse when the sun is low in the sky in winter, but in early summer the sunshine barely enters the greenhouse.
So, my plans for this year--My situation is pretty settled and my crops mostly successful, but I like to try at least some new varieties every year. Last year it was brussels sprouts, which was a bust; covering them with tulle worked great to keep the egg-laying butterflies off them, until the plants grew too tall for the covering. After that the worms moved in, and I think also some animal chewed a couple. I might try again this year if I can figure out a support system for the tulle that allows a taller cage. I'm trying onions from seed for the second time. Usually they're so damn slow growing that you can't get usable onions by what seems to be harvest time here, the beginning of July. So I use sets instead. But what if someday I can't get sets? Maybe I'll try harvesting my sweet potatoes a little earlier, as black rot (?) moved in at the end of the season last year.
I'm also just beginning to toy with the idea of creating some kind of food forest in my orchard. We've always mowed between the trees there, but last year the predators got so bad I finally gave up on free range chickens and we fenced a run, which includes the orchard. Reading a permaculture book it occurred to me that instead of stringing cord between the tops of the fruit trees and the fence to keep hawks out, maybe I could plant bushes and other plants between the trees, so the chickens aren't exposed anywhere? If the bushes and plants could also provide forage for the chickens, that would be even better. I might add more goumis even though the chickens didn't show much interest--because they fix nitrogen and are close to zero care. Blueberries won't work as they demand special, super-acid soil. Mulberries are too big. There is already a wineberry patch in there, which they do pick a few from. I'm thinking maybe chicory, Maximilian sunflowers--I'd need to cage smaller plants until established, or the chickens would likely scratch them up.  Ideas welcome.

Well, I certainly prefer to remove the seeds and the cap and ideally the skin, at least any tough parts. But the seeds of the wild ones are too big and plentiful to go through my tomato strainer. If I use a borrowed straner part with bigger holes, and ideally a shorter spiral, I can get nice smooth seedless pulp...IF I first tediously separate he seeds from the pulp with my hands, with two bowls in front of me. In one go the seeds, caps, sometimes the whitish core--in the other goes the pulp, then I attempt to open the door without getting orange goo all over the knob, to go fling the seeds into a patch of woods with a somewhat empty spot where persimmon trees could go if they germinate. And THEN run this imperfectly separated stuff through the squeezo, There is some waste, as the last of what goes in doesn't come out filtered...but you can still use it.

Okay. First of all, there are two varieties of big Asian persimmons, and usually when I search for persimmon recipes, even from US sites, that's what they're talking about. But I'm using the small native American persimmons--the wild D virginiana, and some grafted ones which are somewhat bigger and mostly seedless. perhaps because they're crossed with a variety from Texas that supposedly has a different number of chromosomes. My point is, these are related but different fruit so a factual statement about one may not be accurate with another. The wild ones ripen at different times, so saying it wasn't late enough isn't accurate--I've has some fall quite ripe in August while another tree drops ripe ones into November. They're ripe when they're very soft, orange, sometimes almost translucent--and when a taste confirms the astringency is gone.
On cooking with them: I once--when I lived in the holler,where persimmons are rare here but pawpaws plentiful--had too many pawpaws so I tried making jam. The result was nasty brown, inedible--and persimmons have a similar texture, so I've never even tried making jam with them. I have three recipes that involve baking--a bar cookie with lemon icing, muffins, and a cake. They come out excellent pretty much every time. I'll share them if anyone asks. I found all three on the internet.

I really like Carol Deppe's book, but for me another book has been more helpful: Cindy Conner's Grow a Sustainable Diet. Two reasons: one is geography. Deppe lives in the Willamette Valley (and I note many posters live in the PNW), which has a very different climate; I live in West Virginia and Conner lives in central VA, very similar climate to mine. Example--Deppe can't grow moschata squashes because her area doesn't get enough summer heat; but I never do well with the maximas she depends on, probably because of borers. It rains all year here. No problem getting plenty of tomatoes and peppers in our long growing season with plenty of summer heat--but put that together with the moisture and our big issue is blight and diseases. The other reason is that Deppe's personal issues happen to be different than mine. She has celiac disease and a bad back. I did find her long discussion about figuring out her dietary issues and solutions helpful, as suggestion for how one might go about figuring out one's own.
I agree with everyone who said potatoes are #1. They're easy to grow, easy to store, and there are so many good ways to cook them. Sweet potatoes are another important staple, also easy to store, and easy to grow except a bit tricky to produce slips, which are usually not available around here and expensive in catalogs. Deppe also mention eggs, and that's an important one for us too. Fruit is good, and while I haven't solved the problem of squirrels stealing all my tree fruits before they're ripe, berries are quite reliable. I only wish I could grow nuts; I don't think walnuts or pecans or almonds would produce here; there are black walnuts and hickories but I haven't found any that come out of the cracked shells with reasonable effort. We tried grafting pecans onto native hickories (related) but at the rate they're growing, our great-grandchildren may get to watch the squirrels stealing them all. We tried the hazelnut-filbert cross, and most didn't even survive--I have one that did and it has grown to a good size but has never produced a nut. So that leaves peanuts, which have produced well for me except the last couple years, when I wasn't vigilant enough about gaps ion the rabbit-proof fence, and rabbits wiped them out. Incidentally this is a virtue of black-eyed peas and asparagus beans, which are two variants of the same species--rabbits do not touch them, nor do bugs.

A couple of things. First, if the reason you see this as a distant project is that you can't afford to buy land, I point out that West Virginia still has cheap land and no building codes in rural areas; also, have you considered joining a community? Some, like mine, already own the land and charge a small fee or nothing for a leasehold. Sometimes, as with my community, a member leaves and there is a house already there, available for whatever the member leaving, or their heirs, want to charge for it.
Next, I lived in a school bus with two or three other people for a few months forty-some years ago. This could be workable  but not with several people long term, and it really isn't too expandable. One leaseholder here did build from a shipping container, it seems to have worked reasonably well. Obviously adobe and cob and strawbale are not movable; a yurt is. I lived i n one for the few months I was a tree planter one Oregon winter, pretty comfortable in that mild climate; then I worked in one one northern Minnesota winter, and it was okay with a gas heater going most of the time (there was a strawbale building on the same site that stayed warm much better).
And my final comment is that what building style makes sense depends on various things including your location, but whatever you do, be sensible about energy; use plenty of insulation, face the longest side toward the south (if you're in the northern hemisphere), and choose a site with tall trees to the west so your house will be in the shade in summer all afternoon. Consider wind direction too, facing into a prevailing summer wind, protected from a winter wind.

Some of what I do are soup--similar to one someone posted, with coconut milk (my recipe uses red curry paste too)--and the parmigiana. For that you peel and slice the butternut into 1/4" slices, then toss them with 2 T oil and 1 1/2 t salt. You put 1/2 C of tomato sauce in the bottom of the pan, then layer the butternut slices with a mix of 3/4 C finely grated parmesan 1/4 C yogurt and 8 ounces shredded mozzarella, top with more tomato sauce and some kinda cheese and bake. Top with bread crumbs and bake ten minutes more.
I also have a recipe for butternut muffins and one for biscotti--those are only good for dipping in coffee, in my opinion, and it only uses 1/2 cup of mashed squash. Incidentally, my recipes are mostly for butternuts because moschatas like butternut grow well here in the warm wet east, while maximas get borers and produce little. I understand from  Carol Deppe's books that in the Northwest, moschatas don't get enough hot days while maximas do fine since borers need wet ground and it isn't wet there in summer. As for pepos, well moschatas keep longer.
Why don't you do squash AND potato staple crops? Potatoes have so much going for them! Nutritious, easy to grow, easy to store, and I think nothing is good so many different ways as potatoes.

Looks bigger than 200 square feet. I once built a cabin that was I think 268--but that was for just me, a hexagon with a small rectangular loft. Now I live in a 1400 square foot octagon I built with my husband--I think it's bigger than we really need but he wanted it this big. We also have an outhouse, a nice composting on with a pair of more distant "poo bins" to dump the buckets in. I've noticed that potential visitors are often scared off when I mention the outhouse. But I consider running water and sink pretty necessary--I once lived with a yuck bucket, don't want to do that again. Hot water I don't consider a necessity--we also usually have water heated atop the woodstove in winter but here winter in only 3 months or so. The main thing I wanted to comment on is the electricity. I lived without electricity for five years--and I find it interesting that when I read my journals from that time, they were full of whining but none of it was about living without electricity. My current house has an off-grid solar electric system--we use 2 to 3 kilowatt-hours a day, which is ten percent of the US average--and we have all the luxuries. But. For Katrina, a fridge may not be necessary or worth it, but I remember kerosene lamps and kerosene lamps SUCK. They stink, the wicks are always needing adjustment and they're a fire hazard. They also rely on fossil fuel, with its environmental problems and the likelihood that it won't be available some time maybe soon. Our lights are LED and only draw between about 3 and 24 watts. We also have fans for the hottest times in summer--most people here have AC, and we don't need it because we built our house on a ridge, against tall trees to the west so it's in shade all afternoon in summer, and cool air traverses the woods, with transpiration cooling, before rising into our windows and through our open house before it moves on out the cupola. On the days that are still too hot,we found we don't need box fans--my husband made some fans out of pairs of fans taken out of computers (he does electronic repair). They only draw I think it's 3 or 4 watts, and are tiny but adequate. So I'm suggesting that if your tiny house has solar access, consider a very small, DC-only system. One panel would probably do you.

i use my dad's old recipe, nothing measured. Chop potatoes, and if they're homegrown or at least organic and not ancient wrinkly potatoes, there's no need to peel them. Boil, and meanwhile hardboil a few eggs. Put in gobs of mayonnaise--real mayonnaise and a little mustard. Add a small amount of finely minced onion, and large amounts of whatever pickles you got--sweet, sour, hot, non-cucumber, any kind of pickles are good. Add a smidgen of salt and it's done, good hot right away or cold later.

I grow sunflowers, for seed for my chickens mainly. We eat sunflower seeds, but I buy those because I could not find a way to hull them other than taking a minute or so to hull each damn seed. Surely there IS an efficient way to hull a lot of sunflower seeds...anyone know what it is? I don't have trouble with varmints usually because I grow sunflowesr within fenced gardens; I compost all the parts within one pile that goes for a full year, that seems to get around the allelopathic issues.

I go to no special effort to cure my sweet potatoes, and I wash them before storage, because I store them on my pantry shelf and I don't want dirt there. THAT works brilliantly too--even the cut ones heal over and keep for months. My biggest problem with sweet potatoes is getting enough slips started in the spring--and not starting them too soon. They also take over quite an area, for which reason I put them (and winter squash) in the far corners of my garden so I don't have to step through/over the vines 40,000 times.

I think maybe with allelopathic plants, much of the effect is the subsequent year, when you try to plant where sunflower seed hulls have been, or perhaps where you grew such a crop. If you grow rye as a winter cover crop, you're supposed to wait three weeks after eliminating it in spring to plant small seeds, though apparently transplanting into it is fine and apparently some like this effect for weed suppression around tomatoes.

I live in West Virginia, and most years I have no problem with Colorado potato beetle, which I attribute to all the wild plants in the area. But when you do get an infestation, they can multiply out of control if you grow a lot, as I do because of all the virtues mentioned above plus that they're easy to grow (you'll get a lower yield in poor or heavy soil but they will produce), easy to store (root cellar or reasonable facsimile thereof), full of nutrients and I'd say THE most versatile food crop. The solution to the beetle is Spinosad, a naturally occurring organism. Spray the whole crop thoroughly, usually twice, and the beetles are gone.
I've been gardening and growing potatoes for several decades, but I learned something new this year. While "they" say you should plant certified seed potatoes, a couple times I've planted my own saved potatoes--and they actually did very well. I plant usually in early April, and harvest starting in August. Although it's still much warmer than ideal in my root cellar at that time of year, I put potatoes in buckets in there and they keep just fine. This year I harvested the ones I planted first, which were an early variety (Red Norlands). In early July I had some empty beds where onions and garlic had come out, and a local feed store was giving away their old leftover seed potatoes--I planted one bed in Kennebecs, then thought, this is pretty late for a long season variety like that--so I used some of my fresh Norlands from the root cellar to plant another bed. The Kennebecs were soon up (they don't produce as well in the late season but are still worth planting). But the Norlands just didn't come up--for over a month--THEN they straggled up. Apparently potatoes need a dormant period before they're ready to sprout. I dug them yesterday, and got a halfway decent crop--like the Kennebecs, inferior to the main season crops but I'm still glad to have them. Oh, and I've read that small potatoes are just the ones that developed latest--you'll get just as good a clutch under a plant that grew from the smallest potato in a previous year's clutch as a chunk cut from a big one (but the teeny potatoes I think don't grow. You want something at least the size of a golf ball). So I think I'll save my small Norlands to plant next year, for the early crop.