Many commercial cleaners pose a variety of health and environmental hazards, from eye or skin irritations to chronic illnesses. With the onset of winter and the tendency to stay indoors during these colder months, fumes from chemical cleaners can be especially harmful.
Why not make yourself an early New Year’s resolution and start going green with your cleaning.
Check out this article for more information, along with nontoxic recipes for making your own cleaners and a list of store bought green cleaners.
Hint & Tip
Make your own garden trellis
Before you chop up grape cane or berry vine pruning’s for the compost, consider saving them to make your own garden trellises.
Simply pull off any leaves and scrap off the thorns and you have the perfect material for making trellises that can be used for vining peas, beans or even small cucumbers.
Before the canes dry completely, take several sturdy straight pieces for the uprights, then twine the remainder around the uprights in the diameter you want. Leave room at the bottom so the trellis can be pushed into the soil.
Once finished, tie the intersections to hold the trellis together. Vine trellises will last a few seasons and can then be chopped up and composted. You’ll save money on buying premade- trellises and your garden will have a fine country feel with natural made trellises.
(if you don’t have grapes or berries on your suburban homestead you can also use small diameter saplings)
Tip & Hint
Extend the Life of Kitchen Sponges
There’s nothing worse than spending good money on kitchen sponges only to throw them in the trash when they get sour and moldy smelling. But, with this quick tip your kitchen sponges will last much longer.
Simply place the sponges in the dishwasher each time you run it and they will stay fresh and useable for a longtime – saving you money.
I saw this clip on Good Morning America this morning and wanted to pass it on. Another good reason to raise what you eat and eat what you raise.
Pomegranate shrubs are one of the easiest fruits to grow, since they are usually not affected by many pests or diseases. The fruits are full of antioxidants and thought to have many health benefits.
If you live in the right climate area for growing pomegranates plan to add one (or two) to your suburban homestead garden plan. The delicious fruits can be used for juice, syrups, salad toppings and jams, or eat the seeds fresh, right out of the fruit.
This is one fruit that you’ll love growing. To learn more about the growing needs of pomegranates click here.
photo credit: norwichnuts
Cover crops just might be the hardest-working plants you’ll ever grow. Cover crops (also called green manure) suppress weeds, build productive soil, and help control pests and diseases. Plus, cover crops are easy to plant and require only basic care to thrive. And they grow well in nearly every part of the country.
To get started! Check out this article
When I started moving toward a simpler, more self-reliant homesteading life one of the first projects I tried was making homemade butter. Now, it’s the first recommendation I make to anyone moving in the same direction. It’s so easy and the results are immediate – and delicious.
You don’t need any fancy equipment to get started, a quart-size mason jar or mayonnaise jar will do fine. To learn how truly easy making butter is check out this article here.
Fresh homemade butter is nothing like you’ve tasted before. So, buy some cream folks and start churning.
photo credit: redwinegums
To some, laying in firewood is one of those seasonal jobs that takes hold of you as soon as the leaves start to change and doesn’t let go until enough has been stored to get you through the winter. Other’s say there is spirituality to the task, knowing that there is something more to a tree than wood and bark and leaves.
There is also an art and science to building a firewood pile. To learn more about how to best stack and store firewood for optimum use all winter, check it out at Mother Earth News here.
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photo credit: Leonard John Matthews
I heard on the news this week that a pumpkin weighing over 1,600 pounds won the Morro Bay Pumpkin Festival, and had to check it out for myself.
I was really intrigued because earlier this year a very kind pumpkin grower from Pennsylvania gave our 4-H club seeds from HIS award winning pumpkin, along with instructions on how to grow those whopp’ng big ones.
Although our gourds didn’t get any where near that big, a few did weigh-in over 150 pounds. Boy – if I had only known about the prize money!
To read more about the Iowa man who won first prize and took home $10,000 for his efforts click here .
To learn more about the festival, or to attend if you’re in the area, check out their website.
As you walk your path to a simpler more self-reliant life, homesteading can easily intrude into every corner of one’s life, even if it’s not exactly welcome or invited. It becomes the stray that adopts you, the guest that won’t leave, or the rain that won’t subside.
During the most unusual times, where the homestead has no business being, it finds its way in and distracts you. It comes on softly, sometimes without warning. In the middle of a meeting you realize you haven’t cleaned your shoes and the smell of chickens wafts through the office. Or people stop you to ask if you have suffered an injury because your jacket is covered with hay or straw. Or while sitting at your desk, going about your daily job, the phone rings suddenly, announcing your order of baby chicks has arrived at the post office and must be picked up right away. Or a co-worker, out of the blue, invites you on a field trip to a much admired quilting show.
There was a time, in the not-so-distant past that you might have gotten out of these situations if you wanted to.
You thought you could quit this homesteading life anytime you wanted. But, that train has left the station. You’re hooked. You’re in this life and it’s in you. The lines between your former life and your homesteading life have blurred, even grown dim. You know this to be true because even in your world of business or bio-tech, commerce or computer science new friends beckon you deeper into the world of self-sufficiency.
Come on now folks! How can you turn it down? The invitation to bake bread, make jam or set in a load of firewood with new found friends. Spending a weekend with people that think and live the way you are now trying to live is both welcoming and satisfying. It’s comforting to be with people that are willing to share their knowledge, their experiences. To make you part of a group that are the lucky recipients of closely held recipe secrets. You get to watch and learn; take notes and pictures; all the while laughing in the process.
This isn’t light stuff friends. To be amongst those who understand what you’re trying to accomplish. The way you’re trying to live. They offer an ear, answer questions, and lend a hand.
It’s a fine way to live – amongst friends.
photo credit: Travis Seitler
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