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Gaia’s Garden, by Toby Hemenway
This book is a sort of gateway book into the world of permaculture. With a brief description of the core principles of permaculture, you can get an idea of how to begin thinking the way a permaculturist would in the design of your garden/food forest. Hemenway lays out the basic ideas of permaculture without going into great detail… enough information to be useful, but not so much that you become bogged down in minutiae. Once he lays out the general ideas of the underlying theory, he proceeds to give real-life examples of how the […]
Making your own metal fuel lines: Part 2
I wrote a previous blog article about making my own fuel lines for the Clark Airborne Tractor restoration project. This is the second part of the article which deals with making the flared endings for the tubes. I am using 37 degree flare tube fittings to seal my fuel lines. The components you are trying to mate together are; the beveled screw, the beveled cap and the flared tube. Each of the mated surfaces is beveled at a 37 degree angle (45 degree for higher pressure lines) so that when the cap […]
Interior
One goal for the homestead will be to establish a greenhouse on the property. By establishing a greenhouse, we’ll be able to take advantage of the space we have available and get a head start on gardening each winter. I have tried starting plants from seed inside during the wintertime and have had mixed results. Since we didn’t have a grow light for the plants, they tended to be very ‘leggy’ due to the lack of proper sunlight. Many of the plants did fine once we transplanted them into the garden, but it wasn’t really ideal. Since […]
Gingersnaps and coffee…
I’ll admit it… I’m trying to use things up and clean out cupboards. I discovered that I have 2 1/2 bottles of molasses lurking in the kitchen cabinet. The perfect way to use molasses (other than for Cracker Jacks — I’ll share that recipe another time) is for Gingersnaps. The boys are going on a boy scout campout, so these sturdy cookies will be a great take-along snack.
Gingersnaps
3/4 c. butter, softened 2 c. sugar Cream well. 2 eggs 1/2 c. molasses 2 tsp. white vinegar Add to creamed mixture and mix well. Add: 1 […]
If you don’t have your own greenhouse, wintertime can be a time when you don’t have much of your own home-grown fresh food. Sprouting can be a tasty and nutritious addition to the winter diet. When I first learned about sprouting, I also discovered there is an entire community of people who are really enthusiastic about it. I discovered the site, SproutPeople.org. By reading information and watching videos at their site, I was encouraged to try it out.
Seed Sprouter
I purchased one of their Easy Sprout Sprouters and have found it to be very excellent. My favorite […]
Have you ever had an exterior door lock mechanism fail? In our last home (a builder’s spec home, as we discovered after buying), we had not only one, but two different exterior door locks fail. After disassembling the locks, we discovered that pieces of the lock mechanism had simply broken and were not repairable. Now I’d never heard of a lock breaking from normal use in only 6 years’ time before this. Our guess was that the locks were very inexpensive locks — perhaps the cheapest the builder could find. They looked nice — had that stylish antique bronze […]
More Clark Airborne Dozer Stuff:
Making Your Own Metal Fuel Lines Part 1
Metal Fuel Lines
During the rebuild of the Clark Airborne Dozer it was apparent that the rubber fuel lines were not original to the vehicle. The TM (Technical Manual) for the dozer specified metal fuel lines. I am trying as much as possible to restore the vehicle back to how it would have looked when the Airborne Engineers used it in 1944-45. The TM has a few sketchy/grainy diagrams of the routing of the fuel […]
I love the taste of freshly-baked whole wheat bread. By making it myself, I can decide what ingredients I use, grind my own wheat berries, and make it much less expensively than I could ever buy it.
Hard White Wheat
By purchasing and storing the wheat in berry form, you can safely keep it for years without spoilage. Whole wheat flour, in contrast, goes rancid very quickly. I usually only grind up enough for a couple of batches of bread at a time, using half immediately and freezing the other half.
My grain mill is a Wondermill Junior […]
The Self Sufficient Home, by Christopher Nyerges
The Self-Sufficient Home: Going Green and Saving Money, by Christopher Nyerges is a very interesting book in our homesteading library. I bought this book after hearing Nyerges interviewed by Jack Spirko on The Survival Podcast awhile back.
His book is a collection of information about tackling the various systems of support we all depend upon and becoming self-sufficient. He talks about heating and cooling, covering such topics as insulation, the color of your roof, attic fans powered by refurbished solar panels…
There is a very interesting story about a family’s experiences […]
Bullets, Powder, Primers
Several years ago I was heavily into research on precision rifles. I was interested in having a suitable long-range rifle built because I sincerely enjoy marksmanship. I enjoy the challenge of accurate shooting at ranges beyond 500 meters. I read a book called, The Ultimate Sniper by John Plaster. It is an excellent source for learning about long-range ballistic, principles of shooting, the effects of atmospheric variables on accuracy and a host of other shooting related principles. In my opinion the book provides one of the best overviews of long-range marksmanship even though it is […]
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