Build a Rocket Stove Mass Heater with Homemade Mortar & Cob

 

Off Grid and Lovin’ It

Barbara H. Peterson

Farm Wars

Most of us have wondered what it would be like to pack bag and baggage, move to a remote area of the country, be able to cut all ties to the outside world if necessary and live off-grid. Quite a daunting task, and a bit scary. But it can be done, as evidenced by Bud and Judy who did just that around 9 years ago, and are thriving today because of it.

I asked Bud what their motivation was, and he said: “We just wanted to do things on our own.” Well, they are doing just that. Isolated from the artificial existence of city life, cocooned in the warm glow of self-sufficiency and ready to cut the ties to civilization at any moment, Bud and Judy are living a life that most of us only dream about, and I was about to get a peak at their hideaway…  READ MORE

 

Homemade Lavender Laundry Detergent

My Kitchen Pot

Homemade Lavender Laundry Detergent

Ingredients:

4 – 4oz bars of grated Castile soap
1- 78oz. box of Borax
8 lbs of baking soda
3 tablespoons lavender, lemon or grapefruit essential oil (I use lavender and I put a little extra in)

Grate the soap, I tried a grater that sucks. Save yourself time and man power and use your food processor! Combine all ingredients except essential oil. Stir several times with your hands or a wooden spoon to mix all ingredients together. Add essential oil, mix, add essential oil, mix. Do that several times until it smells nice. One batch will cover 288 loads if you are using 2 T per load.

http://mykitchenpot.com/homemade-lavender-laundry-detergent/

 

Make Your Own Pure Organic Onion Powder on the Cheap!

Barbara H. Peterson

SMCC

Seasonings can be spendy, and full of things that we don’t really want to put into our bodies. So, how can you make sure that you get 100% organic, healthy seasonings? One way is to grow and prepare them yourself. Here is a simple way to make onion powder using Egyptian Walking Onions. They are extremely easy to keep, as they come back every year by themselves, and the harvest is bountiful.

Here is where it starts, at the onion bed. These onions will develop a cluster of small bulbs that can be harvested and eaten – delicious!

Step 1

Harvest the tops of your Walking Onions by simply grabbing the top cluster of bulbs and popping them off. Rinse, and let dry.

 

The Lost American Dream: Living Off The Land

This is our story…

 

In order to offset their financial struggles, Barb and Tink have found a way to survive and minimize all of their expenses by growing their own food, bartering with neighbors and extreme budgeting with their small income.

 

The Day ‘Our America with Lisa Ling’ Came to Farm Wars…

Barbara H. Peterson

Farm Wars

For years we at Farm Wars have dug in and fought to take our message of family farming independence and survival to as many people as would listen. I am happy to announce that an opportunity to extend this message to a wider audience came when Darcy Dennett contacted me about filming an episode of Our America with Lisa Ling. This was to be a short documentary about surviving the middle class crash. Well, that’s right up our alley here at the ranch! So, hello mainstream media – ready or not, here we come!

Initial Contact

There I was, minding my own business, tending to the critters – both on the ranch and on Farm Wars the website, when it came. Quite frankly, I was taken by surprise. I was totally unprepared for what was about to transpire. But I digress…

It came in the form of an email. Yes, a simple email. This email looked no different than the rest, with nothing to distinguish itself other than an outrageous claim that it was from one of the producers of Our America with Lisa Ling, airing on the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN). Yeah, right. But I got curious and checked it out the next day. When I say checked it out, I mean CHECKED IT OUT. Let’s just say I don’t like scams, and have a tendency to route them out. Well, it turns out this wasn’t a scam. This was the real deal, so I responded. The producer, Darcy, and I started talking back and forth, and before long, arranged a time for the crew to come by the ranch and shoot an episode titled Lost American Dream.

Yes folks, the Our America crew was coming to Farm Wars to film us in our natural habitat. Then the fun began…

 

Inexpensive Non-Stinky Kitty Litter Tip

Barbara H. Peterson

SMCC

Have indoor cats and spending a fortune on fancy cat litters that don’t really work to keep your house smelling fresh and not like a cat urine dump? Well, look no further. I have found an inexpensive method of keeping your cat litter box fresh and clean smelling. Yes, you heard me correctly. This is a foolproof method that eliminates the smell. Here is how it is done:

1. I keep a metal bucket next to the wood stove that I fill with ash when the stove gets cleaned out.

2. The bucket sits with the lid on until it is completely cool, and the ash is safe to handle.

3. Take your ash and fill the kitty litter box with approximately 2 inches of the cooled ash.

3. Put another couple of inches of pure clay kitty litter – the inexpensive kind without the added chemicals and fragrances – on top of that.

4. Now mix about 1/4 cup of baking soda into the clay litter.

You won’t even know you have a cat litter box. I have been using this method for several months now, and it works beautifully. When people come to the house the only way they know I have an indoor cat is when she comes out to say hello.

Barbara H. Peterson

 

Make Natural Orange Cleaner on the Cheap!

Barbara H. Peterson

SMCC

Cleaning is a chore normally accomplished with rubber gloves, barriers to keep animals away, locked cupboards to keep children from getting poisoned, and warning labels to indicate that contact with such poisonous substances is dangerous.

Quite frankly, I’m sick of it. I am tired of hoping that I cleaned off the poison used to clean my counters well enough that the piece of fruit that I just placed on that counter is safe from contamination. So, I tried the following recipe, and it works. In fact it works so well that I had to share it. The critters, kids and adults are safe, and it costs pennies to make.

Recipe

1. Take a large glass jar and pack full with orange peels.

2. Pour real apple cider vinegar into jar to the top, wait for it to settle, then top off.

3. Place lid on jar and let sit for 10 days.

4. After 10 days, strain liquid from jar and pour it into a spray bottle.

5. Clean without worries!

 

Introducing the Seed Lady Network Open Source Seed Sharing Project!

Welcome to the Seed Lady Network!

Seedladynetwork.com

The Seed Lady Network is dedicated to open source seed sharing, free from transgenic contamination and patent piracy. To this end, every effort is being made to provide an environment to share private seed stock and keep sources for traditional non-GMO seeds available to the people for generations to come. Our intention is to provide safe alternatives for individuals and families who wish to avoid consumption of genetically altered foods.

If you have been saving seeds from that special veggie and would like to share some with others, list your seeds on the Network. Whether you are offering them for free to replenish another’s lost stock, or would like to trade for something else to add to your collection, just list your terms in the ad along with your contact information, and swap away!

Seed Lady is designed to be a horizontally integrated platform for individual seed sharers to reach out across the globe with their precious seed resources, in order to combat growing corporate control over our food supply, starting with the seed.

The Seed Lady Team encourages everyone, both individual seed swappers and established seed companies, to take the following non-biotech seed source pledge:

GET STARTED NOW!

The Seed Lady Team

 

The Backyard Chicken Movement

Michael McCarty
Activist Post

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? It is a heady and perplexing question, to be sure.

Like the classical philosophers of old, I do not have an acceptable answer, either. I’m not even going to try.

However, for more and more people across this land, a more appropriate and timely question has evolved.

They now ask themselves if perhaps they should acquire some chickens, which could provide some tasty eggs for their morning breakfast. People are now looking at their backyards with fresh eyes, searching for a handy and level spot to erect that new chicken coop.

Unfortunately, the next question becomes all to prominent and leaps to center stage: Is it legal?  Now there’s a question! Again, it is also not so easy to answer in simple terms. This can of worms is large, and it holds more slithering things than your well-tended compost pile.

For lack of a better term, the backyard chicken movement is exploding across the country, much to the chagrin of local jurisdictions and the faceless bureaucratic machine. It is a suburban, and increasingly urban phenomena. Well-informed citizens are demanding high-quality, locally grown food. Imagine that! The local food movement continues to gain momentum, with more followers and practitioners every day. It’s a national issue now, and it is not going away anytime soon. But it starts on the local level, and chickens are a big part of it.