As we quickly approach November and the portion of the year when things are mostly bare and brown instead of lush and green, I thought it might be a good idea to talk about things we homesteaders can do with all those fallen leaves that will help our general productivity over time.

We were gifted with one of those noisy, gasoline powered leaf blowers a few months ago when a friend moved from the countryside back into town and had no further use for it. Made me chuckle considering the fact that we live in the middle of the southern Appalachian forest – “thick” by anyone’s standards – and have enough fallen leaves to drive most towns crazy. Worse, living where we do we also get fairly regular fires that love nothing better than a good thickness of dead leaves to burn. I’ve learned through the years that the low-level “brush fires” that don’t burn much other than the leaf fall and a few scraggly saplings are actually good for the forest. So long as they don’t manage to get hot enough to engulf trees. Heck, most of the mature trees can (and have) survive the ground fires just fine, a bit blacker around the trunks than they used to be. And kudzu, of course, loves fire. Always comes roaring back twice as thick as before, and does way more than its share of eating forest trees, engulfing dead cars and stray cattle herds overnight.

Anyway, we feel a need to keep the approximately two acres immediately surrounding the cabin (including fruit orchard and grape vines) as clear of leaves as possible to help prevent any brush fires from getting close enough to do major damage. That means we have a hefty collection of leaf and garden rakes that go to work in November and continue on the job for as long as it takes in decent weather to accomplish that task before the winter snows come along to blanket everything until spring. There are several things to do with those leaves.

When raking them down from the ridge or across the disc golf fairways I always drag along a weathered plastic tarp that has seen better days. That way when the pile of leaves gets big enough to become difficult, I can simple spread out the tarp and rake the leaves onto it, then pick up its edges and drag it on down to the garden. In order to keep the actual leaf-clearing going, I simply dump out the tarp against the fence on the bottom tier of the garden near the compost bins and go back for more. When that tier has at least a foot of leaves on it, I start on the tier above. And of course add leaves to the compost bins themselves.

As the winter progresses the leaves are compacted and self-composted on the beds, are easily turned into the soil in the spring as organic matter to enrich the beds. When the compost bin leaves are turned in with the rest of the garden leavings and kitchen scraps (and mixed every 2nd or 3rd year with some composted chicken droppings or donkey barn leavings), it makes fine mulch to apply once the seedlings are a foot tall or so, to keep weeds down while fertilizing.

A thick mulch of leaves around the fruit trees out to the drip line is always good too, and around the grape vines. This will need to be scattered with crushed limestone in the spring so it gets well watered-in, but it’s good mulch/fertilizer by the time it’s good and black. If there’s a lot of leaf fall, I usually stack it in big piles next to the fence by the compost bins and cover with those leaky tarps to hold it in place. The garden is well away from the edge of the forest, and if there’s a fire in the spring that threatens the perimeter, my piles are close enough to be able to spray with water.

I have found that covering the beds with a foot or two of leaves has led to a filthy soil that works easily and doesn’t need tilling but once every few years. I do that the years when I’m adding animal leavings for nitrogen, and/or limestone to balance the acidity. The beds get so soft that I have to lay down planks to walk on while planting, or I’ll sink right on in. Makes planting easy too, at least for the crops that I start from seed indoors in February and plant out as seedlings in March. Just dig a little hole with a hand-spade and stick ‘em in.

My Aunt used to grow the most spectacular flower beds in her neighborhood. Her secret was to put the leaf fall into black plastic garbage bags and line those up against the back fence. She left them open until after a good rain, then twisted the tops and secured them. By spring the leaves inside the bags had turned to black mulch, and she’d empty that into her wheelbarrow and use it to thickly mulch her flower beds. She told me she never added any amendments, which I would have thought necessary because hardwood leaves tend to be somewhat acidic, but she said the flowers love it, so there was never a reason for MiracleGro™ or animal manure.

Some places out in the country still allow leaf burning, but that seems a waste to me. Sure, ashes are also good amendments to garden soil, but since we heat with wood we’ve always got plenty of those. Besides, burning causes air pollution, and sometimes ends up with the VFD showing up unexpectedly.

Some people shred their leaves before composting. And I admit a chipper-shredder would have been a more useful present than that leaf blower we’ll never use for anything but special storm effects in home movies. Shredding can speed up the process of decomposition greatly, but a big enough pile wetted down and covered with dark tarp (or put into black plastic bags) will decompose by spring into black mulch just fine without shredding. The leaves in the compost bins proper will be well-composted even quicker by greenwaste and kitchen scraps and earthworms – of which my bins are chock full. I’m only slightly concerned about a lack of direct sunlight on the bins since a peach tree decided to grow out of the bin and looks way too healthy to cut (we LIKE peaches!), but I’ll work around that.

So. The trees will be nearly bare in a couple of weeks, so don’t bother raking now when more leaves are still scheduled to fall. Once they’re done, get busy fire-proofing your acreage and transporting those leaves to where they’ll do the most good. Your garden soil will thank you for it, I promise!

As the hardwoods peak and shower our homestead with a bright blanket of multi-colored leaves, the resulting re-emergence of the surrounding mountains reminds me that cold weather’s coming fast and things here on the ‘stead have to be squared away for that inevitability. First on the list of things to do, of course, is woodstove maintenance.

Our woodstove is a custom job, came with the cabin when we bought the place. It needs to be blackened, as the surface does tend to become a bit pitted and rusty over a period of years. We could use a coat of gun blue, but we usually just get a can of good ol’ stove blacking from the hardware store and apply that. Once it’s on, it needs to be fired up to set, however. And that of course requires cleaning the stovepipe and making sure all the joints are sound (or get replaced, also something that has to happen every few years). And while we’re at that, cleaning out all the packed ashes leftover from springs last cold nights has to be removed, the lining bricks re-set, and all the grates through which the stovepipe passes have to be meticulously cleaned of accumulated cobwebs and possible flammables. A well-maintained woodstove provides reliable and welcome heat for decades whether it’s free-standing or a fireplace insert variety. Without said maintenance it’s a fire hazard for which you may find your insurance lacking.

So now that at least the start on the winter’s wood supply has been cut, split and stacked in a convenient location, here’s the basic overview of “How-To” do whatever else needs doing…

1. Checking the Pipe. The first place to look for needed replacement is at the connection of the pipe to the stove. This joint gets the hottest, and stovepipe is a thin sheet metal rather than a thick cast iron. It will degrade faster than anywhere else. You should of course also check the rest of the pipe joints for rust and thinning, and if anything looks weak go ahead and replace the entire thing. Along with the cap to discourage rain from getting in, and re-tar the flashing where it goes through the roof. Last time we replaced the pipe we got an extra galvanized sheet and wrapped it around the joint section, then fastened it securely with wire. This has allowed the pipe to last longer than it used to, which is cost-effective.

Our stove is in the basement, the pipe goes straight up through the center of the cabin’s living area and right up through the loft and out the roof. This arrangement is very energy efficient, as we get more “living” heat off the pipe than the stove. Being three stories tall, it also minimizes the carbon particulates in wood smoke that makes it all the way out, which is good even though I like the homey smell of wood smoke when coming home from an outing. The downside of the tall pipe is that soot and resin/creosote buildup tends to coat the inside of the pipe quite thickly. This presents a chimney fire hazard, so years that we don’t replace the pipe we have to ‘sweep’ it good.

First thing to do is get a stout stick or paddle and ‘rap’ the pipe starting at its highest point and working your way down to the stove itself. Don’t hit it hard enough to dent it, but do strike all the way around to loosen built-up carbon. You’ll hear it ‘raining’ down as you go, and yes you will have to get it out of the stove once you’re done. But once you’ve ‘banged the pipe’ down its entire length, go on up to the roof and do the interior job. You can purchase a ‘sweep’ (a circular stiff brush), or you can do it the old fashioned way. This involves tying a brick or good-sized stone into an old terrycloth towel and then attaching a rope so this can be lowered into the pipe as far as it will go. If it meets resistance pull it up and drop it down a few times to loosen the blockage. The old towel should be entirely trashed by the time this job is done, so toss it. Then check the sections and joints yet again to ensure that the metal is still entirely sound.

If your woodstove set-up has much shorter sections of pipe with elbows in it, you’ll have to dismantle those elbows and either clean thoroughly with wire brush or replace. These 90º turns pick up a whole lot of carbon and creosote, need extra attention.

If you’ve got one of those pretty fireplace insert stoves, you’ll need to not just clean the pipe but also the chimney. It can be worth it to go ahead and hire a chimney sweep for this purpose, who will also inspect your rock and/or brickwork to ensure the mortar is solid and your rain cap is functional without blocking air flow. A friend’s house very nearly burned down a couple of years ago when his brick chimney caught fire and sent flames and sparks out onto the roof shingles. Don’t let that happen to you, pay attention to your exhaust system!

2. Applying the Blacking. We get ours in a can from the hardware store, which is cheaper and more made-to-order than gun blue. It’s a sort of paint that you apply – just like paint – to the outside wrought iron surface of your stove. You can also apply to the interior, but we’ve never found that necessary.

Once it’s dry you want to open up every window and door throughout the house (so do this on a warm day), maybe crank up those window fans, and build a fire. The blacking doesn’t become ‘one with’ the wrought iron until it’s gotten good and hot. But the process does cause some obnoxious fumes during that setting fire, which is why the house must be open. We have birds, cats and dogs, all of them should be taken to somewhere outside for as long as the setting fire burns, and not brought in again until the fumes have been thoroughly purged by fresh air.

A good blacking job can last for 3 or 4 seasons before needing to be done again, so don’t bother with this unless the metal of your stove is looking rough.

3. Setting the Bricks. This is kind of a dirty job, but well worth the effort if you rely on your woodstove to keep things above freezing on long winter nights or for many hours while you’re away from home. The basic idea is that lining the stove with bricks adds a great deal to its thermal mass, helps it to retain heat even when its vents are shut very nearly all the way off.

We use regular old building bricks. The stove itself is rectangular, so these work very well and tend to stay in place. We set them one-thick to completely cover the bottom of the stove, then 2-high around the back and sides. This means the fire is set right on top of them. On cold nights we load it up with larger pieces of wood, let it catch well, then close down the vents all the way, then a quarter-turn back. Barely enough air to keep it smoldering, not enough for flames. The stove stays warm enough to save pipes, but the house is cold enough to need comforters and quilts on the beds. Who would want to sleep in a hot house in the middle of the winter anyway?

In the morning the vents are opened up a bit and some fresh wood is added, by the time coffee’s ready the stove is cooking away and it’s warm enough for showers and such. Don’t have to actually build any fire at all, as there are enough leftover red-hot coals from the night to fire it up automatically.

If you’re heating already with wood, you probably already know about putting metal or ceramics underneath and on any walls around your unit. These things can get red-hot, and can not only ruin any drywall, wood paneling or wallcoverings in their vicinity, they can also cause them to catch fire. We covered the wall nearest our woodstove with a sheet of that aluminum looks-like-stone skirting for mobile homes, because we happened to have a sheet from a salvage job we did years ago. But just like the brick trick, if you were instead to use stoneware floor tiling or even actual mortared brick, you’d be adding to the thermal mass of your overall heating system. More efficiency the better, and when it’s really, really cold every little bit of radiant heat is welcome.

And whether or not you have small children in the house, do put a ‘fence’ around any woodstove that is taking up room in the main living area. We don’t because ours is in the basement, but where the pipe comes up through the library we have a chickenwire ring-fence around it to keep people and animals away from it. That pipe gets plenty hot enough to burn if touched. We also have a nifty little magnetic temperature gage on the pipe that allows us to tell quickly when the fire’s too hot. Managing the temperature is easy enough to do just by closing the vents a bit, but it can get ahead of you if the stove isn’t right there to be seen and felt.

At any rate, I trust we’ll all have a safe and warm winter on our homesteads. More helpful hints for winterizing the place will be upcoming as the seasons change, so do stay tuned!

Now that the autumn foliage is turing all kinds of impossible colors, many people are “hitting the trails” to enjoy some brisk outdoor exercise while viewing the autumnal crazy-quilt as it brightens day by day. Both city dwellers and rural denizens have embraced the union of the Rails to Trails projects locally, across their states, all over the nation and crossing international boundaries with the recently popular pastime known as Geocaching.

What, readers may ask, is this “geocaching” thing? According to its official website, geocaching is “a real-world outdoor treasure hunting game. Players try to locate hidden containers, called geocaches, using GPS-enabled devices and then share their experiences online.” Because of the unique location of my homestead within ‘spitting distance’ of the Mount Mitchell trail from Graphite, abutting the Pisgah National Forest and comprising the interior of the primary omega loop of the Round Knob loops of the Norfolk-Southern grade over the eastern continental divide, we have known about this geocaching phenomenon for years. There are at least three caches within 5 miles of us, and there are summer camps just up the road near the trail-head that ‘specialize’ in organizing geocaching expeditions for teenage campers. Thus for geocachers to join with the Rails to Trails projects is a match mae it… natural world heaven!

According to the geocaching website there are 1,540,286 active geocaches at various obscure spots worldwide, and more than 5 million active geocachers who spend time seeking them out. Some are bikers, some are hikers, all enjoy the outdoors and being able to pinpoint their position on the globe via satellite device. How these interests work with the Rails to Trails projects is to enlist dedicated geocachers to help the Conservancy produce GPS-accurate maps of various landmarks along their converted trails. Once mapped the trails then become popular destinations for geocachers, who just might set up some caches here and there for others to find. Win-win situation all around.

The Rails to Trails Conservancy offers a site called TrailLink that uses your current GPS position to return a map overlay leading to its trails in your immediate area. Or it can be searched for any area you may be planning to travel to for an autumn break and some dedicated leaf-looking. In my neighborhood a mountain biking group recently purchased a lodge nearby educated to the many mountain bikers who use our trails and bikeways and such during the ‘nice’ 9 months of the year, including the annual “Assault on Mount Mitchell” and the later descent from, which makes those days not a very good time to try hiking. They have a nice geocaching station with its own GPS and really nice heads-up displays, and regularly updates its trail and road maps with GPS data collected by bikers who stay there.

Almost every state has a Rails to Trails organization working to buy up the right-of-ways to old, no longer used railroad lines that are converted into trails. This gorgeous October weather beckons, and the trees are busy putting on their most colorful gypsy costuming for your delight. So grab a pack and some hiking boots – or your handy-dandy bicycle – and your cell phone GPS, and head out into the countryside to enjoy the season’s fine offerings. Some of you may enjoy it so much you start thinking seriously about joining us homesteaders out in the boonies where we get to enjoy all the seasons and all the ‘best-of’ our regions have to offer.

Happy trails!

Links:

Rails to Trails Conservancy
Geocaching.com
TrailLink
Good Roads, Rails & Trails

Andrew Burger at CleanTechnica blog reported Monday [September 26, 2011] that Westinghouse Solar has introduced new plug-and-play solar panel kits for do-it-yourselfers, which can be purchased off the shelf at Lowe’s. These kits come with built-in AC inverters, brackets, roof flashings and panel splices, connecting easily to each other. Each panel is rated at 235 watts, making the basic 4-panel kit (~$1500) come in at just under a kilowatt.

Homesteaders are nothing if not do-it-yourselfers, and most of us would dearly love to be supplying our own power. Maybe even selling clean green energy back to the electric company by generating more than we normally need! And since we tend to live out in the boonies… er, countryside, we are often last in line to get our outages taken care of after storms or other problems cut electricity. It would be great to have alternative on-site sources for at least some electrical demands when the commercial power’s out, preferably not a gasoline generator that uses petroleum, contributes to global climate change, and is loud enough to be a public nuisance.

The price of solar panels has been coming down steadily over the past few years, as more companies get into producing the materials for them, and with China investing heavily to develop their domestic industry. There are still state and federal rebates and incentives available in the U.S. to help cover the cost of going solar, so now would be a good time to buy. Those rebates and incentives won’t last long once the price comes down to honestly competitive.

About the most expensive part of these DIY kits is the licensed electrician recommended to do the actual wiring into the home electrical box, or the grid feed-in. Our electricity company is Duke Energy, and while they will facilitate a tie-in, it has to be done by one of their own electricians, and those make $30-$50 an hour. Pay-back depends entirely on how much your utility supplier charges per kilowatt hour. That cost isn’t coming down with fossil fuels or nuclear, so a homesteader could see pay-back in 6-10 years. If you’ve enough money (or credit) to install DIY panels on your barn and outbuildings as well as your house, you could be a net energy producer through the feed-in and almost break even right from the start.

Your own needs will of course come first. Check out your most recent electric bill. It will tell you how much you’re paying per kWh for juice and give you a feel for how much electricity you use per month (round high). Our conservation efforts here will make a big difference in how much roof you’ll have to donate to the generation project. It can take up to 64 panels to cover the “average” homeowner’s electrical needs, and given the size of these panels, you’d have to have several roofs or donate some land to the effort. But of course, homesteaders aren’t “average,” always aware of our consumption habits and trying to lessen our carbon footprint.

Thus to go completely off-grid you’d still have to be independently wealthy. And solar panels only generate when the sun shines, so while you could make a good dent in your own draw on the grid during the day, you wouldn’t be selling back to the grid while you sleep at night. Better bets for a grid tie-in would be wind and/or micro-hydro, both of which would generate ‘trines 24-7. The 4-panel solar kit from Lowe’s could be used to power a dedicated circuit in the house for a specific appliance – like, say, an energy efficient refrigerator or chest freezer – and a 12V battery charger. That way when the electricity goes out you could still maintain refrigeration and household lights, maybe your computer.

At any rate, this is great news. Solar is finally coming into range for the average property owner, even just as an assist to offset continual price hikes in fuels the utilities use for generating electricity. The more people who take advantage of on-site generation, the fewer new big plants – coal or nuclear – the utilities have to build. Check out some of the links below and start dreaming!

Links:

Westinghouse Solar
Westinghouse Solar Introduces Low-Cost DIY Home Solar Kits
Everything Solar: How Much Energy Do You Need For Your Home?
Energy Matters: Wesinghouse’s DIY Home Solar Kits

I read an interesting article on the “earthlodges” of Native Americans in the Dakotas the other day. I’d learned early in my life when the family moved from New York to “Indian Territory” – Oklahoma – that not all Native Americans lived in those portable teepee tents so prevalent on the plains. I knew the ‘civilized’ tribes of the southeastern United States were able constructors of log cabins for their permanent villages, and of course knew about those spectacular adobe pueblos in the southwest. And while I learned in junior high Oklahoma history about the sod-roofed shanties built by white settlers (and for which Oklahoma was famous), I’d never heard of earthlodges.

Earthlodges are large round structures from 20 to 50 feet in diameter which are built to be much more permanent than the yurts that basically amount to a Mongolian version of teepee for migratory people. Lots of people these days have deck-mounted yurts that are popular as camp cabins or gazebos, but they’re not really something stable or well-insulated enough to live in full time.

In contrast, the earthlodge is dug into the ground and framed with logs, covered with woven willow mats and then covered completely (except for a smoke hole in the middle of the roof) with mud and sod. Your basic hobbit house, but as its own hill rather than dug into a pre-existing hill. Of course, there are some modern earthlodge designs that combine aspects of natural landscaping and lodge building, which are actually quite nice if you don’t care much about windows. It would be quite easy to engineer one of these with skylights, so interior darkness can be alleviated.

Dakota State Historical Society

The original earthlodges were built communally, often housing between 15 and 25 people. They provided solid, very well-insulated shelter for harsh Dakota winters, and stayed naturally cool in hot Dakota summers. They lasted only as long as the palisade poles and main support logs lasted in the ground, about 7 to 10 years before they’d rotted enough to need replacing. Since it took only about a week for a group to construct an earthlodge from scratch, the old one would simply be torn down and a new one erected in its place. The old logs recycled into firewood made this village system quite efficient given that the Dakotas do not enjoy the thick, lush forests of the American southeast.

For a new homesteader looking for cheap, eco-friendly housing on a tract of raw land, it’s not difficult to see how the problem of ground-rot could be simply eliminated by seating the anchor and palisade logs in concrete. The thermal mass of palisade logs plus dirt/sod can be nearly warm in winter and cool in summer as 3-foot thick adobe walls. More modern – and fully waterproof – coverings take the place of those woven willow mats, and fewer palisade poles would allow for regular insulated walls or an opportunity to place windows and/or exits to porticos, or to build storage rooms or closets off the main structure. For a truly permanent structure, some research on new under-sod waterproof roofing material would probably be a good idea.

The niftiest thing about this kind of permanent shelter is that if your land is raw enough to need some clearing, the logs and poles can be taken as part of your clearing plans. These will have to be de-barked and dried above the ground, there are many good Do It Yourself books and plans out there for site-built log homes that have clear instructions on how to do this. If you’re planning to grow crops, the sod shouldn’t be hard to come by. Rather than a big central fire pit and large hole in the roof, a central wood stove with just a pipe running up through the roof will protect from the elements much better than the wicker baskets the Mandan people used to cover their smoke holes when it rained.

It also strikes me that the side walls could be constructed of straw bales and covered with mesh and stucco or adobe instead of mud and sod and still be as easy to heat and cool. Some may consider rock as well, if the land has an overabundance of those that need removing before crops can be grown. Any of these alternatives for some or all of the side walls would make for a very handsome home. The sod roof does have great appeal, I’ve always envisioned a hobbit house with wildflowers instead of just more grass to have to mow.

The interior, once you’ve got the central roof supports and planned your walls, can of course be framed and subdivided as you please for cooking sleeping and living areas, bathrooms and utility as you wish. The Dream Green link above also offers a plan for a ‘multi-lodge’ made up of several octagonal earthlodges connected to a front portico area. This idea offers the possibility for future expansion as the family grows.

So chalk this up as yet another eco-friendly green construction to think about if you’re new to homesteading or are planning to build more structures on your homestead than you’ve already got. A far less modern (more true to origin) version of earthlodge would make a very serviceable combo barn, root/wine cellar and tool/vehicle storage shed. For as long as you can keep the livestock from eating the walls and roof, that is.

Links:

Indians 101: The Earthlodge
Dream Green Homes Earth Lodge
Blue Ridge Yurts

Yet as is true of all the ‘best’ tools to amass for homesteading purposes, the question of what type of weaponry one may need is tied to what type of situations any weapon will be expected to deal with. Sometimes that may mean firearms. The homesteader will have to take into consideration what types of wild animals are most likely to be encountered in their location, whether or not someone in the family hunts for food, the likelihood of having to put down injured livestock, and any property or personal protection needs the family may encounter. In many cases the best tool for the job – and the person wielding the tool – could be a BB or pellet gun. Which is surprisingly effective at discouraging bears from the trash or compost without actually hurting them so as to leave an injured bear on the property (a real, live danger). These can be well less than deadly, but also come with CO2 cartridges that can turn them into effective small game/bird hunting weapons.

Your basic pump-action pellet gun will also discourage a fox from the henhouse without killing it, but you’ll probably have to spend enough time guarding the henhouse with it that the fox learns to associate chickens with the ouch. If you are a good enough shot with a long, compound or crossbow, these weapons are every bit as deadly as a rifle for most encountered critters that must be killed. There are entire weeks set aside in my area for bow hunting game, and there is never a shortage of hunters making use of the no-gun time span. Just remember that arrows are as deadly as bullets – small children don’t need access to pointy sticks of any variety. Older kids often take to archery like ducks to water, which is why it’s a regular feature in many youth organizations’ listed activities.

For actual firearms individuals will need to be aware of various regulations and responsibilities associated. Traditionally, homestead firearms have fallen into the long gun classification – rifles and/or shotguns. The caliber of long gun you may need should be dictated by what you’re most likely to be shooting, and how good an aim you are. You have to be a pretty good shot to kill a chicken-stealing fox with a .22, while also being educated enough about guns to know a .22 won’t stop an angry bear (but just make him angrier). And despite what you may remember from fictional television westerns, no kind of gun is the best weapon against a snake. Having had to deal with a rabid raccoon at our homestead this summer – big threat to pets and kids as well as all other wildlife in the area – the mess you can expect with a shotgun can be justified by being able to kill quickly and surely with just one pull of the trigger.

For home protection, the homesteader is in the same boat as anyone else with the expectation that the likeliest target in a showdown will be human. Some deep and honest soul-searching is required before rushing off to the gun shop, more than just the question of what type or caliber of gun you should get. If you honestly can’t think of any situation where you could shoot at another human being, don’t get any kind of gun for home protection. Bluffing with an unloaded gun can get you killed in a tense situation much quicker than simply giving a burglar what he came for.

If you have small children in the home or who visit regularly, keeping a handgun where it would be handy to YOU in an emergency situation could well prove way more dangerous to your family than not having a gun at all. My husband and I chose early on in our homesteading life not to own any kind of handgun due to a steady supply of children around the place at various times. Even though there have been a couple occasions over the past twenty years when grandpa’s shotgun did have to be pointed in the general direction of invading humans (home/property defense), in neither case would a handgun of any variety have served better.

Trust Mother Earth News to have excellent information on this very subject. This link is to an available 6-page article, and there are links to Mother’s over coverage in a sidebar. I think most homesteaders can get a very good feel for the questions and issues there.

Pioneer Living has some good member discussions some may find informative, and Homesteader Life blog has treated the subject as well. The FreeLibrary offers a good article on the .22 as an entirely adequate weapon from Countryside Publications, .22 caliber: the homesteader’s weapon. It also takes a look at various types auto-loaders and the handgun vs. rifle pros and cons. Much good information is out there for anyone planning to enter a homesteading lifestyle, or is just now getting around to meeting the challenges of said lifestyle that would call for designed-to-be-deadly tools.

Meanwhile, for those of us who started our homesteading life with Better Homes and Gardens in our monthly magazine roundup along with Mother Earth and Organic Gardening, I have just recently discovered what is to me a ‘new’ high-end country-living (or just consuming) rag: Garden & Gun. A friend’s newly-opened establishment in WNC was featured in the June/July issue of Garden & Gun “Summer in the South” review issue, thus I encountered this publication. I’ve gone ahead and paid for a subscription, as I can see this will be a new favorite of mine in the rotating magazine rack.

Useful Links:

Choosing a Homestead Firearm
.22 caliber: the homesteader’s weapon
Homestead Guns and Some Thoughts…

After heading down to the springhouse around noon today to patch together the badly jerry-rigged connection from the cistern so as to get the water going again (no, the new ram jet system isn’t there yet, but we did get the new cistern to bury on the ridge…), I was glad for the gorgeous, crisp and clear weather. For a change, the summer having been absolutely miserable hot and humid inch-a-day rainy yuck until the second week of August. It’s quite a hike, so I was resting in my chair being grateful for peace and quiet and gazing at the impossible Carolina Blue sky out my window.

Then I felt the shaking. I thought it was Starfish the German Shepherd scratching right under my chair and turned to look. She was laying across the room looking at me like it was MY fault. Then the china started rattling and knick-knacks on the shelves, and I knew it was an earthquake. It didn’t make that deep bass rumbling sound I remember from my childhood in the Philippines and California. Guess the piedmont here east of the continental divide is just too much mud and clay to generate those good deep basalt earth-groans.

Only lasted about 15 seconds or slightly less. Nothing broke, nothing fell, and all the trees are still standing. But the USGS now rates it a 6.0, centered under Mineral, Virginia. Little aftershocks continuing.

6.0 is a pretty darned big earthquake. Our very first experience with serious rural living was when my hubby got out of the Navy in 1975 and got a job at the North Anna nuclear plant just outside of Mineral. We rented a house on a 700 acre farm between there and Orange, some of the most beautiful rolling hill country anywhere. They hadn’t actually built the power plants yet, planned for four of them in a row on a big man-made lake they had to build for cooling. Deal is, they’d managed to site all four of their planned units smack dab astride a 15-foot wide earthquake fault they didn’t know about until they started digging. We got there just when the pit for the #1 reactor had reached its spec depth.

Now, you and I might reasonably suppose that if you found out your reactors were going to be suspended astride a fault, you might want to move them over about 30 feet in either direction so they’d be safely on one side or the other if the fault ever gave way. But alas, we are not the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. So on a tour one day I got a bird’s eye view from a specially built platform over the pit to see them busy like little ants attempting to wire the earth together with rebar. Really, I kid you not. Struck me at the time quite hilarious, and I’ve laughed about it ever since.

Hubby’s job consisted of going with another ex-Navy nuke across the lake every day in a nice utility company speedboat to change the paper at various seismic stations to monitor for earthquake activity. They found a floating slalom ski one day and took turns using it to get to the sites during that summer. It was all quite idyllic, but life intervened and we didn’t stay long enough for them to actually finish building that first plant. Only two ever got finished before the NRC wised up and nixed the other two.

Today that plant lost offsight power and operators had to manually scram, emergency diesels are operating to keep them cool. Power should be on before too long, but there’s quite a lot of damage in the area. Something to think about in the wake of Fukushima, as North Anna was identified years ago when I got that bird’s eye view as the nuclear facility most likely to suffer earthquake damage east of the Mississippi. There are of course more dangerous ones in California, right on the coast where tsunamis could wreak havoc as well.

Yet another reminder of how important it is for us to get serious about producing alternative power. For our homesteads and to feed the grid, all over the country. You never hear about horrible wind spills or solar meltdowns. When a wind turbine falls down it doesn’t make entire swaths of the countryside uninhabitable for hundreds of years. When solar panels fall off the roof it might kill whoever happens to be standing where it lands, but it doesn’t doom whole generations of children to gnarly disease and ugly death.

We homesteaders must be the backbone behind the vanguard. Today’s little shake-up is a timely reminder of that.

Now that my terminally wrinkled fingers have finally recovered from the tomato harvest – two bushels dried and half-dried, a third bushel variously canned and frozen – I can get back to enjoying the break (finally!) in this summer’s all-time record heat wave that had us here in the mountains suffering 95º+ temperatures daily for two and a half long, long months. Back to more normal now with low to mid 80′s during the day, mid 60s at night. I love all the seasons for what they have to offer, but readily admit spring and fall are my favorites. Because by February I’m darned sick of ice and snow no matter how pretty it is, and by August I’m more than ready for fall’s crisp clarity and cool nights.

Homesteaders tend to make real sacrifices for as much self-sufficiency as possible even while our most major projects proceed over a period of years in a perpetual “work in progress.” We like to tread lightly on the earth, though as the temperatures steadily rise a lack of air conditioning certainly can make summer a miserable season. So thoughts of course turn toward more necessary projects for energy self-sufficiency that are bigger than just completely redoing the water system for a ram jet and gravity feed. Solar panels are still too expensive for my family at this time, but I have discovered some nifty wind projects we could build on-site without the multi-thousands of dollars it takes to even think about solar.

That of course being a big project for sometime down the road (still working on the water), but please do check out the Homemade Wind Turbine Plans site to get yourselves dreaming in the right direction. In the meantime, there’s good news for Florida utility customers this week, which may even end up helping out utility customers in Georgia and South Carolina as well.

If you’ve driven cross-country in the past year you may have noticed that the vast American Midwest is sprouting windmills at a fast pace. Given this year’s nuclear horror at Fukushima – and associated nuclear unease across the entire planet – you may be happy to know that it became official over the past year that renewable energy sources now produce more electrical generation capacity in the U.S. than nuclear. The statistics are that wind, small-scale hydro, solar and biomass energy production came to 381 gigawatts of capacity, compared to nuclear’s 375 gigawatts.

The nuclear industry – which is multinational and ever greedy for more multi-billion dollar annual handouts from first world governments – had other plans for a “Nuclear Renaissance” before 3 reactors and 4 spent fuel pools melted down at Fukushima Daiichi in northern Japan this past March. That ongoing nuclear disaster has pretty much halted the planned renaissance in its feeble tracks as the public all over the world gets a rare opportunity to critically examine our collective plans for the future in the midst of global economic depression and punishing ‘austerity’ measures imposed by the mega-rich. Seems that one of the belt-tightening measures regular people have begun to take for themselves as money supplies dry up is to get serious about conserving energy usage. Thereby cutting their utility bills. A great many are also canceling their cable television and finding that the information and entertainment they can get from online sources gives them a satisfying amount of control, freeing them from the 24-7 influence of paid propaganda.

On the utility front, Progress Energy’s clever plan to charge its Florida customers an average of $50 extra dollars a month to pre-pay for a nuclear plant it planned to build in Levy County north of its Crystal River nuke is getting some scrutiny from the courts. Originally justified by an always spurious target date of 2016 for coming on-line, it turns out that Progress has conceded that the plant has no chance of even getting built before 2027. Construction delays, dramatic cost overruns and the changing regulatory and public opinion realities since Fukushima are taking a toll. It is becoming completely clear given diminishing demand for the power during this global depression and public efforts at conservation that the Levy plant, as well as new plants in Georgia and South Carolina are most likely to never be completed.

Thus the Florida state Office of Public Counsel, which represents consumers in utility matters, is arguing in an administrative court challenge that charging consumers extra money for decades before a new plant comes on-line is unfair. Depending on how this suit before the Public Service Commission turns out, similar extra charges in Georgia and South Carolina may also be stricken.

Relief for utility consumers is always welcome, but the extra charges have helped to spur speedier deployment of renewable sources of energy by cash-strapped homeowners. Rooftop solar panels are proliferating all over the place in “The Sunshine State” as well as across the south. Recent entrepreneurial start-ups that allow homeowners to ‘lease’ solar panels atop their roofs and still pay less on energy bills are taking off even in this lousy economy. Costs to the homeowner are minimal, and the panels produce electricity at a cheaper rate than big utilities charge per kilowatt hour.

One such company is SolarCity, which offers a range of capacities for businesses as well as homes and has been getting quite a lot of press coverage. Business is booming. An arrangement like this could greatly benefit homesteaders who live in sunny climes but do not have the money up front to buy and install their own solar systems. Energy from the grid isn’t getting any cheaper with or without new nukes, though the costs of alternatives is falling. If you’ve a good credit score, this leasing situation may be your best bet for the immediate future. Some plans allow for the homeowner to purchase the panels over time, assume ownership at the end of the lease for a minimal pay-out, etc. But the value of having installation, repair and replacement services as part of the lease is high enough to seriously consider.

At any rate, here’s to more and more renewable generation capacity large or small, everywhere across the country and the world. It’s a change we’ve needed to make since the 1970s, when Jimmy Carter had solar panels installed on the White House roof as an inspiration to the nation. The solar panels Ronald Reagan had removed as soon as he took office and dedicated the national treasury (and all our military might) to the project of stealing all the petroleum in the world first. After a full decade of dedicated resource wars in the Middle East ad Central Asia, it’s time we the people got back to where we should have been all along. As those Hippies used to say back in the day…

Power To The People!

One of the biggest long-range planning issues involved in making a successful transition from a seriously inefficient and wasteful fossil fuels economy toward a more healthy renewables-based way of life is the problem of our petro-based system of agriculture. Those huge tractors and combines that dominate the endless landscapes of Big Agri-biz operations can translate into an entirely unsustainable 10:1 ratio of fossil fuel use to food on the table. Obviously as the cost of petroleum fuels keeps on rising, our society at large must come up with more efficient alternatives. Fortunately, there are a couple of alternatives that bode well for the future.

Huge swaths of the American breadbasket where staple monocrops are produced by the square mile would probably be better off going with Rudolph Diesel’s engine which he invented in 1893 to run on peanut oil. The Big machines could be run on SVO biodiesel that could be produced in a centrally located co-op type operation from oil crops cooperatively grown just for the purpose. These could then power the growing of those massive amounts of staple crops like oilseed, sugar beets, corn and other grains needed for both humans and livestock that are most efficiently produced by agribusiness concerns. Less petroleum consumption for this purpose, combined with programs aimed at lessening big ag’s dependence on petro-based chemical fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides would help a lot.

But is biodiesel the best alternative to the small producer? Smaller, more diverse farms, organic operations and homesteads that participate in Community Supported Agriculture programs and/or agritourism offerings don’t need those huge multi-purpose machines to grow just a few acres’ worth of truck crops, culinary herbs, grains, etc. Luckily for us small-timers, there’s electric tractors.

Electric tractors come in a variety of sizes and conversions from standard small farm size tractors produced by the usual manufacturers to your basic lawn-tractor sized unit that is mostly a glorified riding mower or 4-wheeler/golf cart. Such small units can easily handle the standard machine jobs involved in 1-5 acre fields, often able to plow, till or seed those 5 acres on a single charge. These machines can generally accept any of the standard tractor attachments that any similar sized gasoline or diesel tractor can accept, and while not exactly cheap, are generally not much more expensive than standard models.

Electric tractors actually get more oomph for the buck than traditional tractors or regular transportation EVs that need to be lightweight and go fast. This is because tractors are more efficient at their jobs when they are heavy and going slow. The trick for homesteaders is the power supply for charging the batteries, and of course that must factor into whatever power sources – solar, wind, micro-hydro, etc. – you are using to lessen your dependence on the grid. There are even conversions out there for your basic Small farm size Allis or Deere or Ford tractor that sport nifty overhead canopies (shade!) of solar panels that charge on-the-fly.

On more graded land such as we have here in the Appalachians, any kind of riding tractor or mower type machine is more dangerous than a walk-behind with low profile. And while power for that could be provided by a mule, it’s kind of exciting to find that someone on the electric implement front has already thought of that. Even better, these electrical implements make no noise in operation beyond the noise of the tines working the earth.

Below are listed some great links with lots of good information about electric tractors, tillers, mowers, cart-pullers and such that interested homesteaders will find useful. Several homesteaders I know who have livestock are already using rechargeable battery powered electric 4-wheelers to pull trailers loaded with hay and feed and such to their stock, haul logs cut at distance to where they are split for firewood, and to get that firewood to the furnace/wood stove. More useful actual farm implements attachable to riding mower type vehicles, or conversions of that old Ford might be a great project a homesteader who is already involved in CSA and/or agritourism projects could even find grant money to support.

Useful Links:

EEEVEE: Electric Tractors
The Natural Farmer: Electric Tractors
Permaculture: Electric Tractors
Modern Electric Tractors Incorporated
GE Elec-Trak E15
FreePower: Solar Gardening & Lawn Equipment
SunPony Charging Tiller

Sure, we all remember the children’s story about three pigs and a big, bad wolf, who could huff and puff and blow the house down (unless it was made of bricks). The stick house held up a little bit better, but the straw house didn’t provide much in the way of protection at all. But these days, houses made of straw and stucco are getting quite sophisticated. Even looking sturdy enough to stand up to a good, stiff breeze, whether it comes from a wolf or a hurricane.

Bales of straw (usually wheat straw) as building material isn’t exactly new, though perhaps not as old as the Three Little Pigs tale. late 19th century homesteaders out on the Nebraska plains are credited with building the first straw bale and mud-wattle houses, much as Oklahoma homesteaders pioneered stone and earth-sheltered homes with sod roofs. These early examples of hardy home-building with whatever’s handy largely escaped modern notice until the early 1970s, when the hippie “back to the land” movement took off. Most straw bale houses built over the following couple of decades were non-code off-the-grid shelters, but the benefits of bale construction have gained new fans.

Featured in this New York Times article is a rather spectacular example in the Catskills hand-crafted with loving care over a period of years by Clark Sanders. For the new revival in homesteading pioneers for the 21st century, there are a number of outfits and websites offering education in straw bale building techniques, helpful hints, and contacts for associated material like stuccos and plasters, wall lattice, etc. Some of the most interesting and useful are listed below. There are even some very nice straw bale house plans that can be built as offered or altered to your own site’s needs and combined with other green technologies such as earth sheltering, etc.

A relatively small straw bale shelter could be built fairly quickly and cheaply by new homesteaders on their land as a place to live while developing the various water and energy systems that will support something more permanent at a later date. If sited well and built sturdily, such a shelter built into a berm or hillside could later serve as a well-insulated root cellar for food storage, or a cool shelter barn for ruminant livestock. Just be sure your plastering job keeps up with the normal wear and tear of time, or the livestock just might eat their own barn!

Check out some of the listed sites and their offerings, see if straw bale construction might serve you well in some application. All told, the recurring benefit theme of this construction method is low cost. Which is always something modern homesteaders need to consider.

Links:

Straw Bale Construction
StrawBale dot Com
Bale Watch: 50 House Plans
A House of Straw
NYT: Bale by Bale, Stone by Stone