Home Life

I know, it’s the middle of summer and the last thing we want to be thinking about is heat.  But I found this nifty “top 10″ list you might be interested in.  If you have a wood stove, maybe this will re-inspire you to use it to heat your home this winter season!  In my opinion, there is nothing better than a home heated with a wood stove.  Growing up in a home that had one, I really miss it.  The smell, sight and sound are something to be treasured.

[Adapted from Woodstove Buyer’s Guide by John Gulland, Mother Earth News December/January 2002]

The golden glow and cozy warmth of a wood fire have drawn family and friends to the hearth. A woodstove truly does help transform a house into a home. But here in the super-high-tech 21st century, does a return to our heritage heating fuel make sense for your household?

TOP 10 REASONS TO HEAT WITH WOOD

1. It’s a renewable energy resource.

    

    

   Wood is energy from the sun, stored by the tree as it grows. When you burn wood you are releasing this stored energy. In the dark of winter, it’s like having a bit of summer sun on your hearth.

2. It’s an Earth-friendly choice.

    

    

   When fuels burn they release carbon dioxide, one of the greenhouse gases responsible for global warming. Trees absorb carbon dioxide as they grow, so when you heat with wood, the carbon dioxide is released, then absorbed again by young trees. Because trees recycle carbon dioxide, wood burning just warms you, not the globe.

3. You’re in charge.

    

    

   Stop writing checks every month to the energy utilities. Do you really want to leave something as important as staying warm in the hands of a faceless corporation?

4. No more freezing in the dark.

    

    

   When a storm interrupts the electrical supply, all the conventional heating systems are useless, but the woodstove keeps you warm and cozy and safe. Now a power failure isn’t so much of a drag: You get to use the candles.

5. Wood warms you like no other.

    

    

   The radiant heat from a stove or fireplace is like the rays of the sun. It warms you through and through.

6. The romance of the flame.

    

    

   The soft glow of firelight is the favorite setting for an intimate conversation. It’s the place where friends and family gather to talk and laugh in comfort.

7. Raise your energy I.Q.

    

    

   Each log you place on the fire is a visual reminder of the environmental impact of keeping your family warm. It’s the wood heat way of knowing.

8. Heat a space, save some energy.

    

    

   That stove or fireplace in the living room keeps you warm and cozy in the place you spend your time. The basement and bedrooms stay cool. Regardless of what you pay for energy, space heating with wood clips 25 percent right off the top.

9. Invest in your community.

    

    

   Spend a buck on oil, natural gas or electricity and you feed a corporate giant. Spend a buck on firewood and you feed a neighbor.

10. It’s cheaper!

     

     

    Wood is the cheapest heating fuel you can use if you don’t live in a large city. Some people actually think the only reason we heat with wood is to save money. Poor souls, they miss so much of what is good in life.

     

     

Whether you decide to make wood your primary heating fuel or just want to spend winter evenings around a warm, flickering fire, you’ll need to choose from a bewildering array of options: elegant enameled woodstoves, high-efficiency fireplaces, furnaces or even cookstoves. Here’s what you need to help you make the right choice, including a comprehensive list of stove models, sizes, prices and other details.

The benefits of home heating with wood are numerous: comfort, beauty, independence, security and environmental responsibility. Surely the most discussed advantage is the promise of cost savings compared with the mainstream alternatives. Although there are many variables involved, you can almost certainly save money by heating with wood if there are forests in your region and you don’t live in a city. If the recent volatility of oil, gas and electricity prices provides a hint of the future, the savings could increase in the years ahead. As long as you enjoy managing the firewood supply and the fire, you will be a successful full-time wood burner.

Visit John Gulland’s woodheat Web site: www.woodheat.org

This year was the first year I had my very own in ground garden.  I’m proud of how well it turned out, but there are some things I will certainly be doing different next year.

I can’t believe I’m already thinking about next years gardening when I have yet to enjoy all of the goodness from my own garden. LOL. 

It must be the fact that I’m drying the last of my parsley thanks to a wonderful lawn crew that WEEDWHIPPED MY GARDEN next to my porch, destroying 95% of a lucious parsley plant I had.  Can these people really not tell the difference between weeds and an herb garden?  I mean… It’s nicely kept, mulched and has obvious different plants in it… I tried to save what I could for drying, and am counting my blessings that my herb garden lasted this long… I am worrying about the fate of my veggie garden considering they weedwhipped most of my green beans and tomatoes at the beginning of the season (had to buy those already started to replace the ones I had started myself). 

Anyway, on to lessons learned (not including fencing my garden somehow to keep the lawn crew away from my garden!!)

First, my sunflowers are either going at the North end of my garden (so they won’t steal sunlight from smaller plants at any time of the day), or they will go elsewhere on their own (but not next to my porch, because my dogs have trashed the sunflowers i had growing nice and strong with their teather).

I’ve heard sweet peas will grow up sunflowers, so this might be a unique idea to try next year.  However, I’m not sure how big the sunflowers would need to be for this to work and how I’d work planting the peas (I liked planting them early for an earlier than usual harvest).

Second is the issue of squash.  Holy cow do these get big.  Ideally, they’ll have a spot of their very own AWAY from my main garden.  I’ve had to transplant my green peppers and bush pickles because the squash were invading their space.  I only have three but they’re overtaking my garden!

Tomatoes will be spaced further away if i have more space, and they’ll be at the north end of my garden also. 

I need to plant more veggies.  I planted what I thought was a ton of green beans, but we’re eating a ton of them. I’m not sure I’ll have extra to preserve for the winter months.   I’ll also want to plant more beets, peas, carrots, things like that.  I actually planted new carrot and pea seeds today - I’m not sure if they’ll actually be harvestable or if this is a waste but I figured I’ll try it what the heck.

Ideally, I want enough home grown stuff to feed us through the summer fresh, then eat our home canned/frozen during the winter.

Next year I’ll also be investing in quality seed (I just bought my seeds from the local Home Depot and Meijers) and learn how to harvest/preserve my own seed to use for the next years planting.

I will commit myself to thinning my plants out better next year.  The day after I planted seeds in my garden we had a TON of rain.  I think the seeds shifted because my beets, carrots, green beans and garlic are all in this messed up line.  I needed to thin my beets out, so I did that, my left the carrots and green beans (every time I tried to move a carrot, the stem would break, so I gave up.  I need to perfect my thinning skills for next year!). They’re growing and seem to be doing alright, but I know they’d be doing much better if they had some breathing room.

People look at me like I’m crazy, but I never was able to grow my own peppermint, spearmint or lavendar.  My mom has it growing wildly in her back yard and everyone I talk to tells me spearmint and peppermint are the easiest to grow.  You could have fooled me!  I never got them to sprout!!  I don’t know what I did wrong, but I had to buy mint plants already started, and will probably be taking some of my moms lavendar just so I can say I had some (and of course to use).

Next year I also want to try planting in several sessions to get fresh veggies throughout the summer months instead of all during one time.  I’ll be starting my seedlings much earlier indoors (I started them in the spring indoors, early enough I guess, but I could have gone earlier from what I’ve read).

I’ll want to add some veggies to the garden, again, if we have enough room.  Celery, lettuce, onions to name a few.  I’d love to have a rose bush - my grandma always made the sweetest smelling perfume from roses. I have to ask her how she did it.

Herbs, I’d like to add more variety.  I’d like to learn how to make crafts, essential oils, salves and rubs using home grown herbs.  I will spend the winter months making a list of things I’d like to learn how to do/things I’d like to make and find a place to order nontraditional herbs.

I don’t want to get too far in over my head… We’ll have three young’uns (oldest will be 4-4.5, then 2.5, and youngest will be about 4-6 mos) come next gardening season.  As it is now, weeding and watering the garden is incredibly easy if I set up the toddler pool near the garden :-) My oldest helped a lot with starting seeds and transplating and she gets such a kick out of watching the garden grow and eating from it.  I know she’ll be a big help next year too!  But I feel having a garden is something I need to do for my family, to provide heathy food and tremendous savings (and great lessons learned for the kids!).

What lessons have you learned so far this year?  I’m making a list!

While horses make for great friends and ‘team mates’ they can also serve a useful function on the homestead.  Most commonly they make enjoyable work of checking fence lines, chasing cattle, and helping with harvesting, even in some types of construction (pulling heavy items around).  For others, some homesteads make horses a prime source of income through boarding, breeding, instruction, training and/or other services (however, horses can cost a lot to keep, and combined with loans, insurance, and other expenses you will have when owning your own facility, it may not be realistic to rely on horses as a source of actual income) For most types work, horses (and especially their handlers) have to actually be trained to perform and help out around the farm - trying to get a horse to pull a wagon when he’s never done it is asking for a disaster.

Horses are my favorite animal.  I spent 13 years of my life with them, and during all 13 years I had one main horse who was my buddy through thick and thin.  When I became pregnant with my second child about two years ago I had to leave the horse scene, as I was leasing a barn and doing all of the care of the animals and barn myself.  When complications came on during the pregnancy, I could not afford to have someone take care of everything for me, so I had to make the hard decision to duck out for a while.  I found it odd, considering when I was pregnant with my first, I worked through the entire pregnancy mananging a barn of 25 horses (yep, mucking stalls, stacking/throwing hay, turnout of 25 horses and bringing them back in again, riding, lots of hard work!), training, and instructing riders.  During the last month or two of pregnancy, I started leasing another facility, and went back to work full time in my business with baby in tow two weeks postpartum (riding instruction, training, and barn work).  Considering I kept up the pace after birth of my first I never thought I’d have problems while pregnant with my second, but I did. 

Anyway - enough about me.  During those years I learned a lot about the work animals horses truley can be.  For many, horses are a pleasure animal.  Something to ride, show, love and care for.  For others, they are a work animal.  Either on the farm, on the homestead, or out in other area’s of life that horses can be in.

They are expensive to keep, but being the frugal person I am, I learned a lot of ways to cut down on their cost.  Though every barn I was at didn’t have tons of pasture, if you do, you can dramatically reduce the amount of grain/hay your horse gets (and this can turn into huge savings).  With enough quality pasture, your horse can live trough the warm months on that alone.  Just be sure to keep up on your deworming schedule!  You’ll also want to rotate pasture to avoid one from being eaten down too much or being destroyed in wet weather Cows and horses can go together (and horses and goats, or just about any animal).  Horses don’t tend to eat the grass close to their manure, but cows will, so by combining the two you can avoid missed pasture :-) 

Horses generally love to be outdoors as much as possible, even overnight.  If you have the facility to do so, and the horse is comfortable with it, leave your horse outdoors year round!  He will grow a thick coat, store fat, and adapt for the cold weather if allowed to do so naturally.  For a horse that isn’t going to be worked much over the winter, a blanket is not necessary.

If you have to give your horse grain, look to your local grain mill to mix the feed for you.  I found that by buying grain in bulk, you save a lot of money.  Hay can be very expensive also… Many homesteaders will grow their own hay and sell off any extra.  If ths is not an option, again consider buying in bulk, or find a local supplier that you might be able to barter with.  Learn to vaccinate your horses on your own if you feel comfortable, and deworm your horses yourself.  Try to coordinate your farrier visits with other local farms that might use the same farrier and ask if the farrier would be willing to cut a discount on the barn call (or see about trailering/riding your horse over to another farm to meet the farrier there).  For a horse that is not ridden regularly or who is ridden on good soil, generally a trim is all he’ll need.

The best tip I can tell you about frugal horse care, no matter if your horse is a pleasure animal or work animal: take good care of them, feed quality hay/grain, and keep up on their regular care and maintenance.  If you try to cut corners in these areas (like feeding a poor quality hay or grain to save a few bucks) you will certainly have more expensive problems crop up later.  Most problems in horses can be avoided by quality care and good nutrition.  Trying to increase the amount of time betweetn farrier visits, deworming, vaccines, floatings, etc. can lead to more problems down the road.  Try to establish a good relationship with your vet and farrier, and make a list of questions for them each time they’re out so you can increase your knowledge, learn new things, and be able to take better care of your horses!

That isn’t all the frugal ideas I have, but it’s all I have for today.  I scratched my eye yesterday while out at the air show, and I am legally blind without my contacts which I can’t wear right now…  I’m getting a really bad neck cramp scrunching over to see the computer monitor, so I’ll leave off here.

If you use your horse on the homestead, what is his or her use?  What frugal ideas can you share on horse keeping?

I find this quite odd, considering storebought bread has preservatives in it to keep it from going bad, but my homemade bread lasts much longer (both in softness and not molding) than when we buy the occasional loaf from the store. Is anyone experiencing the same thing?

Ditch the microwavable stuff in favor for something healthier and much tastier.  hey - if my husband can fall in love with home made butterless popcorn (when he used to be an ‘extreme butter’ microwavable popcorn kinda guy) there is hope for everyone!

The recipe is simple: 3 ounces of oil (we use peanut oil and use a shot glass for easy measuring… we don’t drink but it seems there is always a shot glass sitting around!), 1/2 cup popcorn and salt to taste.  I use a metal mixing bowl and cover it with foil (poke some holes so steam can escape), then use tongs to shake the bowl over the burner on high head.  Shake vigorously as you hear the kernals pop, then once it seems like the ‘grand finale’ has finished, slide it over to a cool burner and continue to shake for a second or two.

You can of course add butter or other seasoning to your popcorn.

Save money, stay healthy… how can you go wrong??  No popcorn machine needed here!