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Building Planter Boxes for Strawberries
Add to Favorites By Sue Robishaw – It wasn’t that the old chicken wire covers we’d constructed five years ago didn’t work, they did. I had an idea for building …
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How to Vermicompost At Home
Even homesteaders on a tiny urban plot make a lot of waste. Our multi-faceted approach to recycling sends most yard waste through our chickens to start the composting process along with both an outdoor, hot composting system and an indoor worm bin.
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Garden Hoops: Low Tunnels for Frost and Insect Protection
Add to Favorites When you’re itching to get your hands dirty, garden hoops can extend the season enough to avoid disaster. Midway between full-sized greenhouses and the gamble of throwing …
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Eliminating Weevils in Flour and Rice
Their little legs wriggled on my spoon. How harmful could they be? Casting my eyes to each side, I watched for approaching family members as I dropped the little bugs in the sink and stirred the flour.
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Know Your Firewood Moisture Content
Knowing firewood moisture content can make the difference between creating steam or heat. Most folks agree that water doesn’t burn, not unless you break H2O down into H and O, both of which are highly flammable, and that doesn’t happen in your stove or furnace.
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Cold Weather Tips for Raising Hogs for Meat
Cold weather requires some planning for any homesteader raising hogs for meat. In the area of proper nutrition, thought and extra effort must be given to available supplies of fresh ice-free water at all times for all classes of hogs—the piglet, the weanling, growing/finishing, gestating and the lactating sow.
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Firewood Management 101
Wood-splitting tools have enabled homesteaders to survive and thrive for centuries. Just like many of today’s tools we use on the homestead, there have been some marked improvements since the days of yore.
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Making Shampoo Bars
Making shampoo bars is a very different process from making body soap in a lot of ways. Unlike body soap, it is important to limit the number of unsaponifiable substances in a bar made for hair.
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Building a Cheap, Seasonal Greenhouse
A greenhouse can be crucial for extending the growing season. It keeps plants warm while letting in a full day’s worth of sunlight.
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Combining the Best Essential Oils for Soap Making
f you make soap, you probably do it for one of two reasons. First, it allows artistic creativity while making something useful. And second, it allows control over all the ingredients.
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Barking is the Language of Dogs
Barking is a language for all dogs, and livestock guardian dog (LGD) breeds are no exception. In fact, barking is an integral part of what LGDs do. It’s always done for a reason and a purpose.
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How to Clean Creosote From a Wood Stove
Add to Favorites In our home, knowing how to clean creosote from the stove pipe chimney is a job best handled by my wonderful husband. Although I do try to …
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Valais Blacknose Coming to the U.S.
Add to Favorites By Alan Harman Originating from Switzerland, Valais Blacknose are a world heritage breed with an estimated global population of just 13,000 or 14,000, verging on an endangered …
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Upping the Ante with Tractor Bucket Attachments
Add to Favorites Scoop, scrape and push are really the only things a tractor bucket was meant to do, but with the right tractor bucket attachments, there’s so much more we can do …
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The Joy of Growing Horseradish (It’s Great With Almost Anything!)
Add to Favorites By Sue Robishaw – Cold-climate gardeners can boast few crops that prefer their freezing winter abode, but the sturdy horseradish not only prefers it that way, it requires …
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