On Moving

In my adult life I’ve moved seven times; two of those as a family with a child. Averaged out, that’s once every three years! Ugh. No wonder I despise the process so much. Each time I move, I dislike it more and more. (I say as I’m breaking from unpacking.) It seems as though we’ve [...]

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One day a week

Originally posted on Sconeday in 2010 Last year, I lost weight by eating. You heard that right. I lost weight by eating. I never set out to lose weight, and didn’t care that much, as I wasn’t terribly overweight for someone of my age (BMI 29, now down to 26). But in March of last [...]

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Real clean round up: end of the month

Last week we spent several days cleaning my (Xan) mother-in-law’s apartment. Before you get all sad on me, this was not because she passed, but because she invited friends from the Old Country, whom she has not seen in nearly 60 years, to stay with her. Mom’s apartment is the subject of rueful, affectionate…,well, I [...]

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Buying through a Food Co-Op

I buy most of my dry goods…flours, grains, sugars, beans etc. through a food co-op.  What soaps I don’t make I purchase through them, as well as a small amount of frozen and canned goods. This is not your typical way of purchasing food but I have done it for years and it works wonderfully [...]

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Homesteading 101 Your pantry

Nothing is as essential to being self-sufficient as food production and storage of food.  Today I’m going to touch on some ideas for stocking the basic must have pantry.  My goal in my pantry stocking is to have enough of the staples put up so that in the case of emergency I am set at [...]

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My Bread Challenge

I have been baking bread in some for or another since my teens.  As a child my food allergies made it necessary for my parents to make our bread to avoid the cottonseed oil that inhabited all purchased bread back in the 60′s and 70′s.  I fondly remember my parents’ Sunday afternoon ritual of making [...]

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Keeping It Real

In case anyone thinks I “do it all” and do it perfectly this is what my kitchen table looked like yesterday afternoon – at one of the neater points in the day: It’s covered in dirty cloth napkins, bits of gaskets for the wood stove door, gasket glue, books, newspaper, cups, water bottles, mail and [...]

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Staying Cool Without A/C

Those of us in the northern hemisphere are likely facing warm even hot days and trying to keep comfortable, if not cool.  Here in Northwest Montana, we’re only faced with 2 months at the very most of very warm in the upper 90 degree range days.  Even when we climb into close to 100 degrees, [...]

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Dump the Gadgets, Get a Knife

Recently, I suffered a small bout of insomnia and tried watching some late night TV in the hopes it would put me to sleep.  It did eventually, but I was astounded by the amount of kitchen gadgets advertised to make life easier.  Most of those gadgets are replacements of some sort for a good kitchen [...]

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The Resourceful Re-Purposed Sock

(Note from Robbyn/thebackforty: Today’s wonderful guest post comes from the writers at the homesteading blog Grow The Changes. Welcome!) For a change, when you sort through the second hand clothing bins, or the bottom of your own drawers and closet for unwanted clothing, look upon this under-utilized resource, not as clothing gone out of style, [...]

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