Kathleen Sanderson

I've been gardening all my life, literally - Mom had us kids out in the garden before we could walk. But if I was giving a book to someone who had never gardened before, it would probably be Square Foot Gardening. With one of David the Good's books in second place, followed by Huw Richards, but both of them are rather climate-specific for a beginner (once you have a little experience, it's pretty easy to translate their general principles to most other climates, but I think Square Food Gardening is better for a rank beginner).

My oldest daughter has a number of books in print, and, though she's not old enough to retire yet (she'll be fifty later this year), she has a number of retired friends who are writing. Some of them are very good, some are absolutely excellent. Young writers can be very good, too, and a few are excellent, but when someone has had a lifetime of experience, especially in various locations, types of work, and so on, that gives them a lot of depth to draw on for their writing. There are a few authors in the retired category who, when I see a new book of theirs out, I just automatically get it (usually on KU, because I read too much to be buying a new book literally every day), because I *know* it will be a really good read.

If anyone is interested in sci-fi, fantasy, or, now, adventure books for boys, check out Raconteur Press, based in Texas. My daughter works with them (she makes most of their book covers, and interior illustrations for some books). They have a lot of good reading available, and it's all on KU if you use that. And quite a few of their authors are retired! (Not all - I think their youngest published author was eight at the time, maybe eleven now.)

Also, the Mad Genius Club blog is excellent for writers - how to write, how to publish your own books, scams to watch out for, book contracts from publishers that you shouldn't touch with a ten-foot-pole, and so on. TONS of excellent information for writers there.

That's a great little stove! I'll show it to my brother (he built my current heating stove....).

Here is another tiny house cook stove solution - it was designed for a VERY small living space on a boat, and they say it does heat the space adequately, too. I'll post a link to the video (it's number 6 in a series), but all they did was take one of those round camping rocket stoves, put a heat-proof surface under it, and built a shallow metal box that fits over the top of the rocket stove (I think there's a collar on the bottom of the box). On the top of the shallow box there's a collar for the flue. So they are able to cook on top of the little rocket stove without getting smoke in the house. No oven, but one of the folding camping ovens should work on top of the cook surface.  

The little wood stove can be seen up close starting at about five and a half minutes into the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BST4OvpkW2M&t=1s

Wanted to add a thought: on the aboriginal peoples and livestock. Even now, with firearms, good fencing material, and LGD's, it can be difficult to keep livestock in Alaska. Between predators and the climate, it would have been even more difficult for people who didn't have guns, who didn't have heavy wire fences or electric fencing, and didn't have metal tools. Can't say how useful their dogs would have been. They would have needed to cut hay - with stone tools? Can be done. Has been done. But it's a lot harder than with a steel scythe. They would have needed to build (and constantly repair) log fences, and barns, where even their own homes were always pretty small. It has never surprised me much that the people who met the European settlers when they arrived didn't have domestic animals other than their dogs. In South America, most of the domestic animals (llamas and alpacas, guinea pigs, and muscovies) were native animals that were domesticated. The chickens probably came with Polynesians who had been driven across the ocean in their big canoes. They usually carried chickens, and sometimes pigs, when they traveled.

Just in case someone finds this thread who lives in Alaska and needs the information:

John Daley said, "Its an interesting topic, and I wonder if there was a good reason the first Nation people in the area did not farm animals." I think that there was a very good reason why none of the aboriginal Americans had much in the way of domestic animals (North American tribes pretty much all had dogs; in South America you can add guinea pigs, llamas and alpacas, and, I believe, some chickens and muscovies). They came to North America from eastern Russia by small boat, probably loaded down with people and supplies with no room for larger animals. Even if they crossed at the point where the two locations are closest together, it's still fifty miles or so of rough, cold water with frequent high winds and severe storms. The very earliest people groups may have been able to walk, possibly on ice or on a land bridge, but that's still a rough crossing from a very rough climate into another very rough climate. If they brought animals with them - and the animals survived the crossing (traversing the Aleutian islands region, even dry-shod, is a minimum 1,100 mile trip - just the islands, from the farthest west to the beginning of the Alaska Peninsula, which is extremely rugged and still a long distance from the mainland. Also extremely volcanic. That's not counting the distance between the west end of the islands to the Russian mainland), it's extremely likely that they ate the animals along the way just to keep themselves alive.

Scott Weinberg commented: "1) Absolutely nothing against hard work, but unless your time is worth almost nothing (read-can't produce income in any other way) then you have to consider just what it will take in time, to clear this land for hay production? Again, has it been done before by neighbors?"

I grew up on a homestead near Delta Junction, well north of where the OP lives (or lived, at the time he started this thread). We were about 100 miles south of Fairbanks, an area which gets much colder, and also gets a lot less precipitation, than South-central Alaska - the Anchorage/Palmer/Wasilla region. Land in our area was cleared by bulldozer, pushing the (small) trees up into windrows between the fields. This was done with as little disturbance of the soil as possible, rather like mowing tall grass, though they had to get the tree roots out, too (but they weren't scraping off the topsoil, such as it is). Then, when the weather allowed - deep snow, usually - the windrows would be burned. Dad had a bulldozer, and was a heavy-equipment operator and mechanic, but for a few acres, you could hire someone to do it. In South-central, the trees are a little bigger, and burning large amounts of downed trees would probably be frowned on, but slow and steady work with a chainsaw would get the job done eventually (Dad and Grandpa had 320 acres to clear between them, and economic necessity made it important to get land cleared quickly). Logs big enough to use for lumber or house logs should be set aside; smaller cut up for firewood, and then the branches burned when there is deep snow on the ground. Alaska is far too prone to wildfires to burn when there is no snow on the ground.

My father said you can grow almost anything in Alaska - if you put down some fertilizer. The soil doesn't have the good micro-organisms that you find in warmer climates, so it can be rather sterile. Getting the trees off will allow the ground to warm up more in the summer, which is a good thing in that climate. But in winter, the ground won't have the protection of the trees, either.

Fencing will be an issue. The perimeter fence needs to be solid and stout to keep sheep and LGD's in, and wolves out. VERY solid and stout, and tall, to keep moose out. Hot wire will help in the summer, but it may not be very hot in the winter - frozen ground doesn't ground out the fence properly. I would strongly suggest bringing the sheep into a closed barn at night, year-round, and keep them in all winter as long as the snow is too deep for them to paw through it. (Sheep used to be raised on some of the Aleutian islands, and are still raised on islands around Great Britain, living outdoors year-round. But those islands don't have any large predators, just foxes and hawks and eagles.) The barn will need to be ventilated, but should not have any place for bears or wolves to get inside. You'll need probably 3/4 ton of hay per sheep, assuming they'll be on pasture several months of the year. And you'll need some straw for bedding (wood shavings are not good bedding for wool sheep).

A really good resource for any kind of agriculture in Alaska is the Extension office. They have done all kinds of research for decades, figuring out what will and won't work in every part of Alaska.

That's good to know about the bucket nest boxes. If I ever have chickens again, I will remember that. (While I hope that my daughter will outlive me, in reality, that's unlikely, due to her many health problems. If she predeceases me, I probably will get a few chickens, just a handful. Eggs are good food. And I like chickens.)

I've had chickens for most of the last fifty years, and have had quite a few different coops - and several kinds of chicken tractors. My recommendation is a chicken tractor. A small one if you only plan to have a few birds, and possibly one of the bigger ones made like an A-frame or a hoop-coop if you plan to have a larger flock.

There is a caveat: if your land is very uneven or steep, tractors probably won't work. Birds can escape under the sides of the tractor with even a small unevenness that creates a dip (and predators can get in the same way, although leaving a 'skirt' of wire laying on the ground around the perimeter of the tractor will help with both escapes and predators).

Tractors have both pros and cons. One of the biggest cons is that they need to be moved regularly, with daily moves being ideal. They need to be built to be easy to move, or soon they won't be getting moved. If you will be moving yours by hand, it needs to be light enough for the smallest person moving them to handle easily - my first attempts functioned well, but were hard for me to move without help. My best small tractor for moving by hand turned out to be built out of 'rabbit wire,' the welded wire used for constructing rabbit cages. My tractors had no bottom, but the wire is stiff enough to hold it's shape without the bottom and even without any other frame, as long as you don't make the cages too large. I put the doors on the top; if you build one of these, make sure you can reach clear to each end from your door, so you can reach all of the chickens in residence. And I added tow ropes to each tractor - much easier on my back than trying to move them while bent over. If you do want a frame, use metal electrical conduit - it will last much longer, and be lighter, than wood. Plastic pipe, if it's UV resistant, will also work, but the wire will outlast it.

I had three of these tractors, 3' wide and 6' long, and kept three or four hens in each (or up to twelve juveniles), which was plenty for us. To protect the hens from heat and rain, there were scraps of loose plywood laid on top of each tractor; removing this made them very light to move. It may sound inconvenient to have to remove the 'roof' each time you move the tractor, but I found out the hard way that an attached roof turned such a light-weight tractor into a sailboat in high winds - several tractors flipped over taught that lesson. And the plywood scraps were quick and easy to remove and replace.

I had intended to add a bucket nest box to the end of each of my tractors; we moved here before that got done, and since we learned how sensitive my daughter is to eggs, we no longer have chickens. But a light-weight nest box, accessible from outside the tractor, would make it easier to collect the eggs, and would keep the eggs cleaner (and less likely to get trampled and broken, which leads to egg-eating).

My tractors never had roosts in them; they were only 18"-24" high. The chickens didn't seem to suffer for that. Ideally, your waterer should be attached to the outside of the tractor, like the waterers on a rabbit cage. There are similar waterers that have cups for chickens to drink from. And for feeding, while I had feeders inside of each cage - which had to be removed and replaced each time I moved the tractors - now, I think I would just move them, dump their day's feed on the ground, and replace the plywood top to protect the feed from rain. The chickens are scratching around in the ground anyway, so there's no harm to the birds, and they aren't likely to lose much of their feed, either. If, when you go to move the tractor the next day, there's still visible feed left, either you've given them too much, or they are eating well from foraging inside the tractor (though it's too small a space for them to get much of their diet from it), or it could be an indication of a health problem, in which case you are ahead in recognizing it early.

I have had a stray dog tear into a chicken tractor made of chicken wire, but never one of these made from rabbit wire - it's much sturdier stuff. The only predator loss of birds inside one of these tractors I ever had was when I had positioned them too close to a hedge, and something, probably racoons, managed to reach through and kill several young birds. You do want to keep them away from any brush that gives good cover to predators. My three rabbit wire tractors lasted for close to fifteen years before we moved here, and should have been good for quite a few years more. The only real damage they took was one winter when a loose goat decided to stand on them (they were unoccupied at the time). And even that was fairly easily bent back into shape.

Probably the biggest pro was that my birds had clean ground every day, and I had no chicken coop to clean out, at least during the warmer months - where we were living at the time, we got quite a bit of snow in the winter, so the hens did spend the snowy months in a coop. Here, in southern KY, I would just keep them in the tractor year-round. It only took maybe five minutes per tractor to move them each day and get everything set back up (you do have to watch out for the birds as you move the tractor - they can get their feet caught if you go too fast, and may escape if you lift it too much).

One useful thing you can do with my light-weight rabbit wire tractors is use them to keep the paths in your garden clean. You can go down to as narrow as 30" wide tractors, if you are going to do this, so the tractors will fit between your garden beds.

If you decide to go with tractors for a larger flock, and have a tractor or an ATV to use to move them, that would work just as well. There are plans online for the larger ones.

Ra Kenworth wrote:Roasting meat no waste hack:

Hacking on my cold while looking for "hack" in my email to locate this thread easily, I actually do have a hack I hadn't thought was a hack because I have done it for decades

I'll bet we all have more than we think at first pass

Yesterday, not up for elaborate cooking, I stuck a big turkey in the oven, partially defrosted
I know, is t must sit in there too long and get a bit tough

Well the first thing is use a really good covered roasting pot if you can -- it will pay for itself eventually

This monster beast was about 14 lbs

6 hours later...

Well to prepare it so it wouldn't stick and burn,
I halved a bunch of onions and stuck them under the turkey in the bottom of the roasting pan
Lid wouln't close at first but give it an hour or two and it will close up
I found out a few years ago that if you keep the skins on the onions, you can salvage all the onions
(Onions are cheaper than turkey and this way none of the turkey over cooks)
Anyway, after it is cooked I bag up caramelized baked onions in a ziplock and freeze them;

partially defrosted roasted onions are easy to slice
They can them be added to vegetables, spaghetti sauce, stew and soup, so no waste

Lazy hacking cook will settle for turkey sandwiches, remove the best meat, bag and keep cool, add water halfway up the roasting pan and return to oven with bones and tough meat, let it sit for a few hours
The best day, fish out bones etc, cool again, skim off fat, add root vegetables and anything else you need to use up or like in stews and you've got MRE's

My lazy cooking hack is to use my electric cooker (Instantpot style gadget, but Ninja brand) for cooking almost everything. I don't know if it saves electricity, though it may on some things (probably less expensive to heat up a small electric cooker than a large oven, for example). But it save me a lot of time; I don't have to stand in the kitchen watching things cook. Some things do need to be turned once, is all. It also doesn't overheat the house in the summer, which is a huge benefit.

Douglas Alpenstock wrote:

Louis Laframboise wrote:What do you use as bait?

I have had success squeezing a raisin into the bait holder and this has worked beautifully. Upon simple observation, it looks like it is quite hard for the mice to remove the raisin without tripping the trap.

Good idea!

I use peanut butter for bait. Dear Wife is a PB lover and I take the last traces out of the empty jars. Since I reuse each trap many times it's important to refresh the bait. (Since deer mice can carry disease, I use a dedicated set of needlenose pliers and a flat screwdriver to empty and reset the trap without touching anything.)

I use hardened cooking fat from meat (usually from cooking hamburgers, which we eat almost daily - carnivore diet). It's free, we have plenty of it, and mice seem to love it!