Nicole Alderman

This is frankly one of my favorite topics--and there's some awesome threads on it, too.

Staple Crops

How Many Of Each Plant To Grow As A Percentage Of Total Calories

The Annual Staple Crop Calculator

Practical 1-Acre Staple Foods

Human Energy Spent Versus Kilocalories Harvested.....

Ideas about Growing All Your Own Food

Most productive perennial vegetables?

Staples

Perennial Sources of Starch and Protein

I thought it might be fun to have an apple poll...which also ends up being a spiffy way to list all of the different staple crops mentioned by people over various threads, so that those crops can be seen in one spot. I tried to organize them a little, but our apple poll program makes it really difficult to rearrange things. If you have more crops you'd like added, post below! There's no closing date on this poll, so hopefully we'll be able to adding to it for years to come

[applepoll]

I'd love to see pictures if you have them. This is facinating!

Laura Trovillion wrote:I have a few questions about your project! How much paint did your listed quantities end up making? I will be attempting to make a significant quantity later this spring, and I am trying to figure out quantities.

I'm honestly not sure how many gallons of milk we used. To refresh my memory, I looked at my first post. It looks like 1 gallon of milk filled on cloth diaper that we hung from our tree. I went outside just now and counted the twine (which is still on the tree 1.5 years later). There are 12 ties of twine out there. I think we probably tied some curds on the same string? I'm going to say that we probably used about 15 gallons of skim milk? If I remember correctly, one gallon of milk makes about a 1/2 gallon of curds. With those calculations, it looks like we made about 7 gallons of paint for our den...but that might be a big understatement.

The paint worked about the same as normal paint. I'm pretty sure it took two coats of paint on the drywall, and three coats on the weird blue latex-painted wall.

I am only adding Kaolin clay as a filler and as a "white" pigment for ceilings. The price of pigments is forcing me to be judicious in my color choices!  

The kaolin clay really thickens up the paint. It also isn't as strong of a white as calcium carbonate. I would probably mix both together to get a nice white that isn't too thick. You can buy calcium carbonate for quite cheap. This is the stuff we bought: https://www.amazon.com/Grade-Calcium-Carbonate-Ground-Limestone/dp/B00959XKGI/?tag=pfa12-20

I do think the kaolin clay helped the paint. People make clay paints, and this seemed to have the advantage of that plus the advantage of lime and casein. I almost wonder if our floor paint didn't work as well because we didn't use any kaolin in it.

Did you roll it, brush it or both? I was wondering about how it might work in a paint sprayer, any thoughts?

We both rolled and brushed the paint. If the milk paint was a bit too thick, it made a very opaque paint that didn't drip much. But, it was also hard to paint on the ceiling when it was that thick. A thinner paint was easier to apply, but was a bit drippier.  

I was wondering about how it might work in a paint sprayer, any thoughts?

I'll have to ask my husband. I've never worked a paint sprayer, but he has.

You mentioned both vinegar and citric acid to make curds, was one significantly better than the other?

I'd stick with the vinegar. It's more well documented, and the one time we resorted to using citric acid (because we ran out of vinegar), the paint did not work on the floor. Granted, it was the floor, and the floor had all sorts of issues because it was concrete. I would just stick to vinegar to be on the safe side.

Any suggestions on what you would do differently next time?

Buy a bit more pigment than I think we'll need. We ran out of calcium carbonate and it took a long time for more to arrive and that was really frustrating. We also don't have enough left over yellow ochre to be able to easily mix up more milk paint if we need to patch the wall. The place we bought our yellow ochre also stopped that specific shade, so any new batches would likely be a little off. Since you're making just a white paint, this shouldn't be too much of an issue.

I would also buy a paint mixer drill attachment. The coat hanger worked, but it probably wasn't as efficient as something made for the purpose.

Make sure to stir the paint as you use it so that you don't get pigment settling to the bottom. This isn't as important when you're using just one pigment. But, it makes a big impact if you mix two different pigments.

I'm thinking it should work, especially if you go for a warm tone color or don't mind it being a little yellowish from the linseed oil.

Years ago, my kids made trays in their woodworking class. Since this was the covid years, we were doing this all at home, and chose our own finishing materials. So, we stained them with linseed oil and ground up dyes. (See thread )

My

My daughter's pink tray stained with cochineal, and my son's gold tray stained with ossage orange and madder

I was totally winging it when we stained those. We just ground up the plant material, added oil, and then rubbed it into the wood. But, it was sort of like making a lake pigment and adding it to linseed oil to make an oil paint.

Granted, those were both technically dyes, and not pigments, so they soaked into the wood more than a pigment likely would?

BUT, when we made my son's chessboard and stained it with copper + hydrogen peroxide mixed with vinegar, it stated out as a stain and needed LOTS of coats to turn dark enough to become a pigment.

Here's a video showing how many coats it took of the copper stain to get a paint:



I also wonder if adding vinegar to the linseed oil would help it penetrate deeper? A cheap DIY wood sealant that we made years ago was just vinegar and canola oil, shaken up and applied with a brush. The vinegar was there to help it penetrate the wood better. Of course, oil and water aren't supposed to mix, so maybe this was a silly internet idea that wasn't terribly good. Might be worth a test, though...

I don't intentionally feed the wild birds, but they get quite a lot of food from what my chickens and ducks accidently spill out of their buckets.

Does a gut bucket count as a stringed instrument? My husband made one with a piece of paracord, as stick, and 5 gallon bucket.

Here's some instructions on how to make your own: https://www.cbgitty.com/news/5gallon-bucket-bass-a-simple-onestring-bass-builders-diary/

Gut bucket with just string, a bucket, and some sticks

My husband's is even more simple than that. I'll see if I can find it....

Jill Dyer wrote:I've been fascinated by Ancient Egypt since I was a kid, so this is a great project.   This write-up featured this week:-
https://archaeology.org/news/2026/03/12/correction-fluid-analyzed-in-ancient-egyptian-book-of-the-dead/
It might also be of interest to you and the students,  

I love that the article shows how, even in ancient times, people were trying to correct boo-boos and errors in their art. It's a good reminder for the kids who stress out about mistakes. Even ancient people made mistakes. You just paint over them!

Egyptian people painting over part of the dog to make it look the way they wanted

My students are currently studying Greek mythology/culture. It was my aggravation at finding insane amounts of Artificially Generated Greek god/goddess coloring pages (and no good free coloring pages) that lead me to post these. It's so hard trying to find good coloring pages as a parent and a teacher. This is one little thing I can do to make the world a better place for other people ♥

It's hard to find coloring pages that are instructional and historical. I used the images from The British Museum and removed the color. I also found some online. I then added their name in hieroglyphs and a brief description of the god or goddess (from the British Museum).

I hate how hard it is to good coloring pages for free. So, I'm posting these for others to use for free. I hope they help someone!

(Some gods/goddesses have multiple names. I made a worksheet for both.)

Man, this is hard.

Given $200 Fencing & fence posts to re-do my duck and chicken yards. With the left-over money, I'd by clay or stone bricks to rebuild my keyhole garden and other gardens.

Given $1,000 Fencing & fence posts. Stone bricks for the garden beds. A back-up well pump. I don't like that we run out of water after a day or two of a power outage (we tried running the well pump with the generator. It didn't work.) In the 14 years we've been here, we've have two power outages that lasted 3 days or more. We've run out of water once (either because the toilet leaks or the kids used too much water washing their hands). I don't like running out of water!

That's good to know! I always wondered if it was bad to just use the clutch. My husband usually puts it in neutral, but I always worry about not being in a gear if something comes up and I need to suddenly use the gas or have more traction.