Homesteadology

I’m on kind of a cheap food kick lately, and while this guy doesn’t really make much of his own food, he has the right idea on how to stretch a food dollar.

Don’t wait, go read it nowwwwww!

http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/03/29/killing-your-1000-grocery-bill

This comes from more of a food/dining source than a hardcore homesteading source, so might be new to some of you out there.  This post is really cool.  If you complain about time as a barrier to homesteading/homecooking, this could save some time and still let you rely on your larder rather than the grocery store.

I never knew you could create and seal mylar bags with an iron.  This lady must be Mormon or something!

http://cheftessbakeresse.blogspot.com/2012/08/how-to-make-homemade-mylar-packed-52.html

I was looking for more detailed info on chicken breeding.  How does it work?  What do you do?  How do you select for traits?

I’m still learning, but this site is a wealth of info.  I am going to get all their books if I can.  Amazing.  I’m not even going to write much about it, because you should just go there and look around!

http://www.chickencolours.com/

I’ve been looking for books on raising fish in ponds, but most are about HUUUGE commercial operations or southeast catifish farming or doing trout (which need COLD water all the time).  I want to just successfully raise some fish the first time around, so without going full bore into Aquaponics, I want to see how other people have/have had fish ponds.

I found this book at the library, and as it turns out it is available free from the public domain.  If they can do it in 1960s inland Africa, you can probably do it too.  Definitely worth the read!

We have mostly been focusing on ag as of late, but in addition to growing food, you have to store it and cook it and then store the leftovers.  I used to struggle so much with leftovers!  We never had enough tupperware or flimsy other kinds of plastic food storage stuff.  Even when I could find something that fit, finding the lid was at best a 5 minute proposition and at worst impossible.

But that all changed when I read this post!

http://citypeasant.blogspot.com/2011/11/challenge-day-6-storage.html

City peasant doesn’t post anymore, which is a huge loss.  She has to take care of her mother and several other people with limited funds.  Over time it seems they have drifted on and off SNAP/food stamp like benefits, and even when they have some money, she lives pretty frugally.  I recommend reading her whole website (going full monty) as it’s full of some really great stuff.

She has another neglected blog at http://rampingup.blogspot.com/.  I wish she would start posting there as well.

Anyway, the brilliant idea that changed my life is this:  PLASTIC… DELI…  CONTAINERS.  That’s it.  Plastic deli containers.  But here’s why they’re so amazing:

• Cheap!  Depending on the size, you can get 25 or 50 for about $4.99.  Suck on that, Tupperware!

• Easy to use!  I get quart, pint, and half pint sizes.  Just about anything fits in one of those sizes.  If it doesn’t fit, you can use two!

• Flexibility!  You can use them for leftovers, dry bean storage, seed saving, keeping sewing supplies organized, holding screws, holding guitar picks, and freezing chicken stock.  That’s just some actual things I’m using them for right this minute.  I have hundreds in service and that’s just the uses I could think of as fast as I could type.

• LIDS!  THE…SAME…LIDS…FIT…ON…ALL…OF…THEM.  Reflect on that for a moment.  A sleeve of 50 lids is like $4.99 also.  You’ll never not be able to find a lid, and you can always get more.

They wear out after a few washings and/or freezing, but they can be “recycled” into other uses (i.e., use the new ones for holding liquids and use the old nasty ones to keep oily bolts in the garage).  Eventually they’ll run out, but you can just buy more.

I get mine at a restaurant supply store in town, but here is a random deli container link from amazon.  If you don’t know what they are, just think about what the chinese food places give you soup in when you order takeout.

If you don’t know what that is, go get some Chinese takeout soup.  I recommend sizzling rice.

And City Peasant, if you’re reading this, PLEASE START POSTING AGAIN!  YOU ARE THE BOMB!

If you have anyone in your life that complains about a lack of opportunity in America today, they should read this post right here.  Selling 2800 containers of worms at $2.50 a pop at the farmers market in your free time is hustling, baby!  A great idea, providing a great service.

http://digitalcameraearns.blogspot.com/2010/08/back-to-basics-worm-money.html

I try not to post about Polyface too much, just because there is so much info out there.  But Joel Salatin is such a force that it’s hard to completely ignore him.

One of the problems I have with his books is that he seems to change and evolve his methods, but doesn’t seem to revise his books to reflect the new knowledge. Pastured Poultry Profitsand Salad Bar Beefare great examples of this; they were written in 1995 and 1996 I think and a lot of stuff is different these days at Polyface.

(Another problem with his books when you read them in succession is that he repeats the SAME DAMN STORIES over and over.  If I hear one more time about Daniel Salatin’s Maple Donuts or how much he spent for his first car I will scream!)

I’ve also watched The Polyface Farm DVDand it’s the same.  I know for a fact that some stuff has changed but it is locked in about the year 2000.  There is some great footage of the winter cattle housing and some rabbit stuff I hadn’t seen before though…

So to keep up with them, I watch youtube videos.  I thought I had seen most of them, but then I came across a linkfest (randomly found) on a Ron Paul site.  Whoever put this together spent some serious time finding, linking, and organizing content they found on youtube.  It’s a little bit old now, but even after what I thought was pretty exhaustive Salatin-stalking, I still hadn’t seen about 2/3 of these videos.

So I hope you have some free time if you are as obsessive as I am, because I watched pretty much all these in order.  Bon appetit!

http://www.dailypaul.com/145783/joel-salatins-polyface-farm-video-library

I have been reading a lot of pond stuff from Joel Salatin and Gene Logsdon (particularly The Pond Lovers), and I am sold.  I’m looking on our homestead at places to place ponds, and I think we have a couple of places in mind, but it’s tough to choose with limited resources and time.

At the most basic level, you want a place with low elevation to catch as much runoff as possible.  But you also want a place with as high an elevation as possible so that you can gravity feed water to the rest of your place.

Everything in life is a tradeoff, but the compromise is probably to have lots of littler ponds instead of one giant pond.  Or, build the giant pond and all the littler ones!  I’ve seen recommendations of as much as 10-15% of acreage to go to ponds, so you’d probably have a hard time building too many.

This is a publication by USDA on pond building.  I am still working through it.  I wouldn’t take everything as gospel, because just like industrial farming there is industrial water runoff methods that don’t necessarily make sense, but it’s a good place to start.

http://www.in.nrcs.usda.gov/pdf%20files/PONDS.PDF

I am growing Mangels for the first time this year.  They seem like the ultimate fodder crop for livestock, providing live food for chickens in the winter.  They supposedly yield 15-30 tons per acre!

I’ve read that they can serve as “backup” food for families in long winters as well, but I had never heard of making beer from them.  Check this out!

http://stoneheadcroft.com/2007/12/30/brewing-mangel-ale/