Kayla's crafts
"You know, my parents' house used to be a trailer," Kayla mentioned after I posted about looking for a few more trailersteaders to profile in the upcoming print edition of Trailersteading.
It turns out that her family home is an elegant example of turning a
mobile home into a beautiful and functional living space...but you'll
have to wait to read about that in the book.
Still, I can't resist
sharing some highlights from my tour. From a purely aesthetic
standpoint, I was taken by the canned goods that Kayla and her mother
have stocked away in their pantry (including lots of pickles from our
cucurbit overflow). And aren't ripening tomatoes always beautiful?
More functionally, some
of you might want to follow the family's lead and turn a yard-sale bed
into a beautiful bench like the one shown above. Just use the
headboard for the back and cut the footboard in two to create the
sides. Kayla's mom decided to make her own bench after seeing a
similar one selling for $150; in contrast, her version cost only about
$10 to produce.
On a similarly crafty note, I was so taken by the harmonious sound of Kayla's silverware wind chimes that I traded a chicken waterer
for a set to take home. When I first saw photos of these wind
chimes, I expected them to be a bit tinny like the cheap chimes you can
get from big box stores, but I was very wrong! Want a set of your
own? Kayla has four more already made and up for sale in her Etsy store.
Thanks so much for letting me invade your home and take photos, Kayla and Alice!
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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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Love the pics, and am looking forward to seeing more in the update.
A tip: Bands should never be left on canning jars after waterbath or pressure canning; once the lid has 'pinged,' and the jar has cooled, the band should be removed for storage. If the lid's seal fails while in storage, the band could disguise the failure, with food poisoning as a result. Same goes for stacking jars one atop another.
Just remove the band, rinse and store the jars in the pantry, and rinse and store the bands (extra benefit - you can use the bands on a later batch, and don't need one band for each jar you put up, just a new lid).