Living With Living Things - Part I

Planning Your Homestead Landscape

I’d like to take a bit of a break from the hard (and not hard) physical work of basic carpentry, plumbing, maintenance and repair around the homestead. We’ll get back to these subjects often enough over time, as there is always work to do. Let’s talk about living things, because one of the very best parts of choosing where you live is choosing the living things you’ll get to live with.

There are other aspects of how one chooses to live that are important if you’re planning to have a happy life without trading a majority of your time for money you have to pay to other people to keep your own life going. Ideally a committed modern ‘homesteader’ has been smart enough to seek his or her ’stead well away from the gated communities of Yuppie retirement dreams, farther out in the ‘real’ countryside where land is still reasonably cheap and little old ladies on some zoning board aren’t spending their lives making yours miserable.

Even a single acre of land is easily 4 times the space of your typical suburban development lot, offering a considerable amount of room for growing herbs, vegetables, fruit and nut trees, a few grape vines, even some useful wildings to encourage birds and which can produce useful products for the family. The very last thing you want is an acre of boring lawn to mow once a week when you could be doing something fun - or just relaxing in your hammock in the shade of the grape arbor, drinking lemonade.

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It’s A Home Run… Right Through Your Window!

Among the most common repair jobs to be done around the homestead will be replacing broken window panes. Broken windows can diminish both the looks and value of your home, so it’s best to repair these things as soon as possible after the damage has been done.

Cutting and Setting Glass
Eventually someone or something is going to send a rock or baseball or falling limb through your window. If you know a few tricks of reglazing you’ll be able to easily replace shattered panes. In fact, using these same basic techniques you might even decide to refit your old single-pane windows with insulted, double-paned or reflective glass to make your home more energy efficient.

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Basic Homestead Repair & Maintenance

Homestead upkeep and the ability to build-it-yourself for all sorts of projects; energy conservation and independence; food production, preservation and storage; wise husbandry for livestock; ways to turn your homesteading abilities into cash income for your family… There are so many subjects to cover for anyone who wants to connect more firmly with the earth, to spend their life in time more thoroughly engaged, and to take more responsibility for their own environment and sustenance.

But we must begin at the beginning so that all else will follow along its natural path. Now that we’ve got our Homestead Tool Kit [Part I and Part II] collected and put together, it’s time to start on some of the most common repair and maintenance jobs a homeowner will face. The more you can do for yourself, the less you’ll have to pay others to do it for you!

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The Homestead Tool Kit - Part II

25 necessary items for basic repair and maintenance - Part II

In the last post we established the wisdom of keeping a well-stocked general tool kit which is adequate for most any routine homestead repair and maintenance jobs, to be kept in a convenient location. I listed the hammers, screwdrivers, pliers, chisels and leveling square, about half of the necessary tools, numbered 1-12.

This post lists the rest of the tools that should be in your toolbox or bucket as well as those larger tools that will be kept in the shed or garage for bigger projects.

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