Could you burn coal in your wood stove as an alternate fuel? The answer is a qualified yes. As an experiment, I bought a bag of coal and gave it a try. Here is what I learned. First, a little…
Coal in a wood stove?
Author: Mic Roland
Maple Syrup Season Begins
It’s maple syrup time again. The days are getting longer. For sap to flow, the days need to be above freezing (and ideally, sunny) and the nights below freezing. This has been a mild winter, overall, so President’s Day weekend…
Fruit Thieves!
Even if you’re good at growing your own food, bad weather or thieves could steal your harvest: everything you planned for winter provisions. Fruit thieves struck the homestead this summer. This year, our most productive apple tree had set a…
If the grid goes down: 5 lessons from 1810
It’s oft repeated in prepper circles that a big EMP would send America back to the 1800s. It if did, what would life be like? Some historical sources from 1810 provides some useful lessons for what being back in the…
Tale of a Broody Hen
Baby chicks the natural way! Incubators work fine but chicks hatched by a mamma hen is ideal for off-grid sustainability. This post is a compilation of four separate posts chronicling the adventure of the homestead’s first Boody Hen. Some chicken…
Survival Kits: Designed to do what?
Preppers build their survival kits based on what they anticipate needing if SHTF. So, when a friend gave me a set of USAF Survival Modules, I was intrigued to see what the Air Force thought their air crew would need,…
Chicks at 1 Week
I promise I won’t write about chickens every week. But, it is fascinating how much chicks develop in just their first week of life. They progress from helpless fluffy lumps to miniature chickens with much of their adult behavior. By…
The Chicks Hatched. Now what?
Excitement here at the homestead: the eggs hatched in the incubator. A renewable food source is a valuable prep. Raising new chicks each year is part of the renewability. Okay, the eggs have hatched into wet, little chicks. Now what?…
Incubating Chicken Eggs
If you’ve ever thought about some incubating chicken eggs and starting a flock of your own, here’s a quick primer on incubating chicken eggs. As of this writing, this year’s batch just passed the two-week mark. How are they so…
DIY Sweetness: Maple Syrup
Producing your own food is an important goal. Gardens grow veggies and grains. Hunting (or husbandry) provide meat. Sweetener is another matter. Making your own maple syrup is useful and rewarding. Winter: everything is frozen and buried under snow. It’s…