Weekend Homesteader: August
Welcome
to the resources page for the August edition of Weekend
Homesteader! Feel free to leave comments on this page to let me
know what you loved or hated about the ebook, or to share your
experiences with others. I hope you'll also take a minute to
write a review on Amazon so that more readers will consider giving our
ebook a try.
Fall planting
How to make a pea
trellis. The
same low cost trellis you made in May for your beans can be moved to a
new location to hold up your fall peas.
Egyptian onions. These easy perennials
are a great addition to any vegetable garden. While supplies
last, we're selling our top bulbs at a steep discount to ebook readers.
Fall
planting charts.
If you want to print out the fall planting charts included in the
ebook, click here
for the unmarked chart
and here for
the example chart.
Frost free
date. Look up
your first frost date by zip code.
Eliot
Coleman's Winter Harvest Handbook. This book is worth
reading for those of you interested in going beyond the basics with
your fall garden. You might be especially interested in how to tweak
your fall planting dates to work with quick hoops, a project that will be
covered in a later volume of Weekend Homesteader.
How to prevent pet damage in the garden. If your cats and dogs
scratch up and mash down your fall plantings, these tips might help.
Buying food when it's cheap
Epicurious. Don't know what to do
with that unusual vegetable? Search this website for delicious
recipes.
Find
local food.
Many websites will allow you to search for farmer's markets, CSAs, and
more. The most inclusive sites for farmer's markets (at least in
my area) seem to be LocalHarvest (which also allows you to
search for other types of local food) and the USDA's
Agricultural Marketing Service. Eatwellguide had a more comprehensive
listing of CSAs in my area (along with many other sources of local
food.)
Drying food
How to Dry
Foods. This
book offers a wealth of information for those who want to go beyond the
basics.
DIY
solar dehydrator.
If you live in a hot, dry climate, this design will help you make a
dehydrator that dries food using the power of the sun.
Best electric
dehydrator. If
you want to spend the cash for a food dryer that really works, this
model is the way to go.
Hanging
your clothes out to dry
Ditch the
disposables.
Explore some more options for environmentally and fiscally friendly
householding.
Wringer
washer tips.
Once you start hanging your clothes on the line, you begin to wonder if
you can do more of your chores in the pleasant outdoors. A
wringer wash can sit out in all weather and can be repaired easily by
the beginning DIYer, so it makes a good homesteading tool.
Follow the link to learn more about the lost art of doing your laundry
in a wringer washer.
Or explore more posts by date or by subject.
About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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hello! i am pretty sure i was reading your article on freeze drying food and you mentioned how quick it is to pull out some frozen broccoli
out, nuke it, and serve it.
i got rid of my microwave a few years back. i had read an article about a science fair project a child did for her school. she chose 2 plants same size same health, every day she would boil 2 cups of water for the plants. 1 on the stove, and 1 in the microwave. she would let the water cool then pour it on the plants. within 1 week the plant that got the nuked water was dead. this led me to more research.
the way i understand it, is that a microwave agitates &/or changes the structure of water at the molecular level, which is really what heats the food. thus destroying pretty much every bit of nutrients and enzymes in the food.
i ALSO read somewhere that the former soviet union BANNED the use of microwaves in 1976!! actually they just banned them completely.
there have been MANY studies which you WON'T hear about & will have to do some serious digging to find that show that microwaved foods are nearly nill in nutritional value.
i think if just boiling water in a nuker can kill a plant in a weeks time, what is it doing to our bodies long term?
think of all the latchkey kids that come home nuke a meal or a snack to eat cause mom and/or dad are still at work. nutritionally speaking they'd be better served eating cardboard. and people are all up in arms about the obesity epidemic in our country?
we are the most overfed undernourished country in the world...and i am pretty sure that it's being done on purpose!
ever seen the warnings on nukers for people with pacemakers to stand clear? how can that be good? that tells me that no matter how well they are "shielded" there is still some leakage!
i have bought all your kindle ebooks to date that I've found. it's kinda scary but from what i have read? your the lil voice in my head!! L or you've briefly lived inside my mind for a bit.
your able to put the research together and bottom line it in an idiot proof kinda way. for that i am thankful.
i also wanted to mention something i don't think you've covered. ever hear of "square foot gardening"? OH MAN!! i love the guy who came up with this. really, you should read the books this guy wrote. @ amazon just type in "Square foot gardening" & the books will pop up. i live in a rented house so i can't booger the yard for a garden, however i have a good sized patio i am gonna work on the SFG method. i know kinda late in the season but we had hard frosts till may!! so, as soon as i can find some fill dirt & horse or rabbit poop off of Freecycle or something, I'll get going on my garden. i have 3 containers, each is 3 square foot.
wish me luck!
at some point i hope to start my own homestead. till then? i am gonna read everything about it i can get my hands on!
Cheers!
PS: sorry this was so long!
Eve --- Thanks for reading!
You can see my series of posts on Square Foot Gardening here. I'm a bit dubious about the sustainability of certain aspects of the system, but many urban gardeners do find it very helpful.
i'd not explored your site well enough to find the SFG! gonna go take a gander at it now. TY! Cheers!