Mac Johnson

Carla Burke wrote:You can also make yogurt cheese....

Definitely giving this a try! Muffins too!

Thanks, everyone! Going to give some of these a try. I made a half gallon, but it's just me and 2 kids at the house this week. Going to freeze some. I love cheesecake and naan!

I tried making yogurt in the instant pot yesterday. I was excessively successful. Just because the instant pot can hold that much milk doesn't mean it should. Anybody got some good baking, dressing, or other uses for all this yogurt.

Rich Rayburn wrote:


1. THE COMPLETE BOOK OF WOODWORKING, by Charles h Hayward.
2. EARLY AMERICAN FURNITURE YOU CAN BUILD,
By  Fawcett books.

Just a small correction, Rich. The book by Hayward is The Complete Book of Woodwork.

I wouldn't have said anything but I wanted to add it to my library after you mentioned it. Adding the "-ING" got me another book published much more recently. Even when including Hayward in the search terms. The Lost Art Press has a collection of Hayward's writing compiled and published in a series of books.

I've done paddock rotations starting last year with my goat/goose pen and my chicken/duck pen.  My plan this year is to overseed pasture forbs and grasses once the melting is done and to overseed lightly again when I close off a paddock.  The overseed mix I got is species specific for goats and one for chickens.  Come fall this year, I should know how well this plan worked.

To add to this thread, my local area is known for high winds and tornadoes.  I live inside one of the largest wind farms inland US.  The first hills after the Great Plains give us some wild weather at times.  120 mph (180-190 kph) derecho several years ago destroyed most of my kid's play equipment.  Whole cedar playground turned to matchsticks.  I then built them a trampoline staked into the ground with 6 heavy fencing t-posts.  That ripped out and wrapped itself around an Ash tree in the next "normal" wind storm.  My house is a large stick frame 2 story house broadside to the prevailing westerlies that was originally built around 1900 but expanded upon since 2005.  The cedar shingles have held well, with just a couple needing replaced during these storms.  The house is not ideal and I wish I had the money time to start over.  I built the 7 acres in the permaculture style and am not ready to give up my years of work on the land.  The house is big and wasteful especially trying to keep it heated in routine 25 mph winds all winter and gusts that regularly break 60 mph.  

The real savior for us is the blue spruce, silver maple, and poplar wind breaks on all sides.  Adding to this, I've used hügelkultur berms, Juneberry, and winterberry to control snow drifting as well as add natural habitat.  These things make it easier to function throughout the winter.  Still, a couple of inches of snow can drift and completely cover our compact john Deere 3 series.  It's not easy, but I wouldn't have it any other way.  The way extreme weather is prevailing I'd recommend more people plant property protection (try saying that 5 times fast).  

Living here reminds me often of the time King Leonidas kidnapped the cook from Xerxes and had him prepare a meal for the Greeks.  The food that was cooked was so much better than anything the King of the Spartans had ever had.  He said their "soft" way of life must have made them weak as the food made for the Spartans was dry, tough, and tasteless by comparison.  I tell my kids we live here to keep us tough in a world of soft (processed) foods.

Jill Dyer wrote:Mac - another ancient grain to add to your list of possibles - Spelt - high protein & fibre, and lower gluten content than modern grains.
Also, perhaps buckwheat, a pseudograin;  all I know about it is its use in pancakes  - Russian blini - although some recipes suggest regular flour, I think the originals used buckwheat, or a mix of the latter and wheat flour.

Love it! I keep kasha (toasted buckwheat) but need more recipes to use it in. I'm a fan, but still experimenting. I came across it in my research on the staples of eastern Europe. It's delicious, but so far removed from my traditional diet, it's been tough incorporating it. Amaranth and quinoa also fit into this category. I make a lot of African foods where this works, but honestly beyond buckwheat pancakes I've struggled making meals my kids (5 & would also eat. Spelt, too. It works for me, but I'm notoriously not picky. If it keeps me standing and is good for me, I'll eat it.

William Bronson wrote: A sawdust stove is a purpose built gasifying stove that burns for hours on a single load.

Here's a link to the playlist I made while researching them:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUQMDg9HfMjh4aofzELdfkm-1__xwAivD&si=I8qggVgc-KVCRPvK

You also might want to try making the sawdust into charcoal in your wood stove.

 

This is genius! Never seen that before and the venting in my shop is perfect for this. And I hadn't considered turning it to charcoal.

You stumbled upon one of the other things I'd adopted as part of this process. This is the flour I use for most baking. Einkhorn is an ancient strain of wheat and appears to be much kinder to my gut. I also use some of the Emmer strain for wheat berries.

If she reads, I've got a great collection to get started with. I like hand tools and taught myself through books. Plus, hand tools are much cheaper. I've got a well stocked shop now, but didn't start that way.