Posts Tagged ‘Lifestyle’

2009 is starting off as a great year for the garden. As you can see here, the plant babies are growing strong. We started the plants in the green house, rather than using plant lights, and you can see by comparing these photos, just how well they are doing.

My two youngest, inspired by [...]

My son made the most fabulous loaf of sourdough bread.  So fabulous, that I didn’t get a chance to photograph it. I had to hunt Flickr for this photo.
Sourdough bread is made without yeast, or at least not commercial yeast. Instead, it’s made from a wild yeast starter.
To make the starter, my son used [...]

This weekend, I racked (transferred) the cherry mead from the fermenting bucket into a glass carboy, to get it off the fruit and start clarifying.  I started with a bucket because it has more room top for bubbles while fermenting and it is easier to get all 12 pounds of cherries in and out.
Materials:

carboy
airlock and [...]

The Cherry Mead stopped bubbling this week, so it took about 4 weeks to ferment completely. Any time now it can be transferred (racked) into a glass carboy and allowed to clarify. It smelled great while bubbling, so I have high hopes for it.
The chickens started laying the week before Christmas. I brought the chicks home [...]

There is something quite satisfying about using a hand pump, knowing it’s your own power lifting it out of the ground and into your kitchen.

This pump was purchased through Lehmans. When it arived, I discovered that it was made in Maine by Bison Pumps, whom I contacted for assistance. They listened to what [...]

Some inspiring and amazing videos…
The End of Cheap Oil and Rise of the Scythe:

A Good Scythe at Work

I used to have a hard time using the scythe for any length of time.  These videos made it look so easy, so I did a bit of research, and tested my theories this weekend.  Here is what [...]

This weekend, we harvested 12 1/2 pounds of tart cherries.  It was our largest harvest ever, which is a surprise because the top half of the tree is dying.  Maybe trees and plants set more fruit when under stress. Whatever the reason, cherry mead has always been the best and I’m looking forward to using [...]

Most modern faucets have the breakable parts (valves and washers) in a replaceable “cartridge”.  The best place to get replacements is directly from the manufacturer.  Some manufacturers, like Price Pfister, warrant their faucets for life to the original purchaser, and consider you the original purchaser as long as you have the owners manual.  Save those [...]

Icepacks.  As the summer season approaches, it is the perfect time of the year for this.  Rather than buy commercial icepacks, dishsoap bottles can be filled with water and frozen.  Because of their small size they can fit into the smaller chests, or you can use many to fill up a larger chest.  You could [...]

Our water heater was doing something weird. A valve on the side, with a tube running down from it was leaking very hot water onto the floor. We turned off the water to the water heater to prevent a major catastrophe.
According to the owners manual, the valve is a safety valve that opens [...]