Self Sufficiency

Natural Pest Control for Small Farms

Erin Baker 2019-05-05 Homestead Stories, Self Sufficiency

Small farmers have a lot of different things to worry about. A sudden freeze when newly planted seeds and sprouts can be devastating to their crops. The same is true for too much rain or too little of it. They must also worry about a rapid increase in insects. However, most farms, and homesteads, prefer to avoid using chemicals or pesticides on crops, fearing that it will cause more damage than good. Instead of pest control chemicals, many have begun to discover the effectiveness of natural pest control for small farms.

Damage Bugs Cause

There is no denying it. Bugs are all around us. For a gardener, not all of them are bad, but many of them are. There are some bugs that may linger around the garden, simply to eat the bugs that are bad for plants. They are a farmer’s best friend. Chemicals and pesticides would get rid of each type, and most farmers don’t want that. The worst bugs for a garden include aphids, corn earworms, tomato hornworms, vine borers, cucumber beetles, and many others. They use your plant as food, often killing it or eating the fruit that it may produce. Then, you must also think about the moisture content of your garden, and the unsavory creatures that are going to be drawn to it. This includes mosquitoes and no-see-ums. Even if they do not directly affect the crops, you may still want them gone in order to avoid being uncomfortable while you pull weeds or collect the fruit of your labor.

Naturally Keep Bad Pests Away

Naturally Deter Insects

If aphids are attacking your garden, you can use a dish soap and water solution. Simply spray it on your plants and aphids will move out immediately. If you have a garden that is filled with ants, you can sprinkle cayenne pepper on the ground. Watering will wash it away so you may want to invest in a fair amount, but it will be worth it. It also keeps cats out of the garden where they may go in search of a litter box. A good all-round natural pesticide is diatomaceous earth. Epsom salt sprinkled around plants will run off insects and help the plant’s roots to become healthier.

If you are searching for plants that can help you, you can choose marigolds, chrysanthemums, lavender, mint, basil, and more. Citronella grass is also useful for keeping mosquitoes out and will naturally reduce noseeums. This means it will benefit you as well as your garden.

Watch Your Garden Grow Healthy

Citronella

Part of the enjoyment of growing a garden is being able to watch it flourish and provide you with fruit and vegetables. Your enjoyment should not be diminished because of a bug infestation, whether it is insects that bother you or kill your plants. By knowing tricks that you can use to naturally eliminate them, you can avoid the issue of, “to spray or not to spray” and simply enjoy knowing you are providing a healthy place for your garden to grow. Naturally.

Off-Grid Power Generator Solutions

Erin Baker 2019-04-06 Self Sufficiency

In today’s world, there are many people choosing to live “off the grid”. They build homes in the middle of nowhere. They travel from place to place in tiny homes. They are unconnected to traditional power lines and happier than ever with their choices to be free. Since they live off the grid, you may think that they have to give up the things we love the most about our modern lives. This is not true. There are many off-grid power generator solutions that can power heat and air units, refrigerators, and more.

An Off-Grid Lifestyle

When living off the grid, you ditch the traditional way of life. You may grow your own food. You may embrace hunting and fishing. You may harvest rain water for flushing your toilet or watering your garden. There are many options available. It simply depends on how far off the grid you want to be. Most people live off the grid without sacrificing television, smart phones, laptops, or other technology. This is made possible by the power generators that they set up wherever they go.

Powering and Off-Grid Life

The people who embrace living off the traditional power grid have discovered ways to have it all. They ditch expensive power bills by choosing other power solutions. The main three options include:

Wind Power:

This type of power uses a wind to provide power. As the wind blows it spins a propeller blade. These blades capture kinetic energy and send it to a generator inside the rotating housing behind the blades. From this, it generates electricity.

Generator Power:

Generators are used both on the grid and off. Even your power company will use a generator. There are portable generators available to people who want to live off the grid. A quiet generator can power homes in all locations using natural gas, solar power, gasoline, and diesel. Some are designed to work off more than one type of fuel, depending on availability in your area.

Solar Power:

Solar power is the use of our sun to provide power using photovoltaic solar panels. They are often installed on the roof of an off the grid home. On sunny days, your solar panels will harness the sun’s power in a battery, where it will be stored until it is necessary.

Pros and Cons

If you want the most efficient type of natural power, then many say that solar is your best option. There are fewer moving parts in solar panels than there are in wind power generators. However, if you look at the numbers, at most 20% of the sun’s energy can be converted and about 60% of the wind can be converted into power. Therefore, it has been proven that wind power is available 24/7 and one wind turbine can provide as much as a thousand solar panels. Wind does provide the most power output, but wind turbines require a lot of space. They are also not easily moved from one place to another. A generator can provide ample power for most homes, even larger ones. You only need the fuel to power them.

The cost of solar or wind power is dropping, but so far solar is cheaper to run if you want to use a renewable energy source. It still requires quite an investment to get solar power setup. You could pay up to $29,000 depending on the size of your home. Most generators can be purchased for a few hundred dollars.

When trying to decide which is best for your off the grid lifestyle, you will have to make sure you do your research. What can you afford, how much power do you need, and how permanent do you want it to be? These are all important questions for you to consider before you decide.

How Does Medical Marijuana Treat Irritable Bowel Syndrome?

Erin Baker 2017-05-11 Self Sufficiency

If you’re one of the millions of Americans who suffers from Irritable Bowel Syndrome, then you know that finding relief is a crucial aspect of your life. Depending on the severity and frequency of your symptoms, you may be prescribed all kinds of medicine and treatments to help keep your digestive system under control. However, one method that is proving to be effective is medical cannabis. Although treatment of IBS with this drug is still relatively new, the benefits are quite promising and worth looking into.

What Causes IBS?

One of the reasons that medical marijuana seems to be having such a profound effect has to do with the underlying reason that you get the condition in the first place. A theory posted in 2008 by Dr. Ethan Russo suggested that the syndrome was related to a deficiency in the body’s endocannabinoids. These are naturally occurring in the body and help regulate all kinds of systems, from digestion to sleep to your overall mood.

Although more research needs to be conducted to find conclusive evidence of this theory, it would make perfect sense why cannabis seems to be such an effective treatment of IBS, since it can help increase the amount of endocannabinoids in the system.

Peripheral Side Effects

While indigestion, cramps, and constipation are common physiological effects of IBS, the fact is that it can create other symptoms that are more psychosomatic, such as depression. It’s quite common for IBS sufferers to have panic attacks or anxiety related to the condition as they become nervous about their next encounter.

As such, treatments like medical marijuana and Whoopi and Maya bath salts have been shown to alleviate these symptoms as well as the physical side effects of IBS, making the treatment even more alluring.

Weed Delivery Near Me

If you are interested in seeing what cannabis can do for your condition, then you can search online for companies that will deliver your prescription to you. Not only is it more convenient, but it also allows you to shop around and find the strain that works best.

Don’t continue to suffer from IBS. Talk to your doctor and see if medical marijuana is right for you so you can start feeling better.

Self Sufficiency Test

Erin Baker 2017-03-29 Self Sufficiency Self Sufficiency Test

We live in a yurt, have chickens and were homesteading but were still a far cry away from being fully self sufficient. We don’t live off grid (although solar is in our dreams),we still buy raw milk from a pastured herd share and we not only haven’t gardened yet, but we haven’t really jumped into full scale preservation methods for stockpiling, like fermenting cabbage, canning and drying.

What I’m trying to say is this homesteading thing is such a series of baby steps. Were so much farther along than we were two and half years ago, and thats something to be celebrated. Even more so since we were tested on our resourcefulness this past week by being snowbound for five days.

5 Great Uses For Lemons

Erin Baker 2017-03-20 Self Sufficiency Great Uses of Lemons, Self Sufficiency Test

Life gives you lemons, so what can you do with them?

When life gives you lemons, you can definitely make more than just a lemonade for the children.

This wonderful fruit and its citric juices has lots of other great uses, whether it is giving your refrigerator a refreshing feel and smell or used to remove those tough coffee stains, lemons are great and below are five great uses for the:

Neutralize odours

It’s nice to know that you don’t necessarily need to spray aerosols and perfumes to try to neutralize foul-smelling dog-litter box odours or in an attempt to freshen up your bathroom. Simply slice up some lemons into halves.

Place them into a dish in the room of your choice, with the cut side facing up. Then, the magic happens. Your room’s air will soon smell lemony fresh!

Freshen up the Fridge

Lemons are also great for easily removing odours in your fridge. Simply dab some of the lemon’s juice onto some cotton wool or a sponge, leaving it there for several hours to do it’s work.

Obviously, do a full check of your refrigerator to find the root cause of the smell and throw out anything that may be past its use-by date or anything that looks or smells bad.

Keeping your guacamole green

By sprinkling a generous amount of lemon juice from a fresh lemon over your guacamole, you will actually keep the dip green and fresh for longer.

How does this work? Well, the juice of the lemon has a complementary flavour that works well when added to guacamole(avocados). You can also use this trick by making some fruit salads well in advance of eating them.

By squeezing fresh juice onto your slices of apple for example, you will help them stay lovely and white, ready for your guests!

Remove those sweat patches!

You can avoid those expensive laundry bills. Lemon juice is great for removing those sweat patch stains left underneath the arms of shirts, blouses and t-shirts.

With an equal mix of lemon juice (or indeed white vinegar) and water, simply scrubbing them will have your garments back to a stainless fresh feel in no time.

Prevent rice from sticking

Believe it of not, you can prevent your rice from lumping together into a white solid, by simply adding lemon juice to the rice.

Add in a half table spoon full of lemon juice water when it boils. Then, when your rice is cooked, just let it cool off as you usually would. Finally, just fluff the rice about with a fork, ready to be served.

Some other uses for lemons

Some people throw some cut up lemons into their waste disposal just to keep it fresh and clean. Also, if you are feeling a little unwell or suffer from a bad breath, then gargling lemon juice is one way to help get rid of your cold and keep your breath smelling nice and fresh!

Can Chickens Recognize Each Other?

Erin Baker 2017-02-13 Homestead Stories, Self Sufficiency Chickens, Chickens recognize each other, Homesteading Skills

Did you ever consider if chickens recognize each other?

Or better still would you say chickens could recognize you? Besides the good old treats, are they actually happy to see your face in the evening after work?

Well, it just so happens to be the case that not only do chickens recognize you, their owner but chickens also recognize up to one hundred members of their flock! Crazy! I know.

Chickens eyes

Surprisingly, chickens actually do have eyesight similar to that of us humans (technically, they have better eyesight) and could recognize up to one hundred members of their flock, just by sight! It’s believed that they recognize the shape of both the head and comb of their fellow flock mates.

Chickens also accept other chickens although they may be of a different breed. (Though it’s not clear to me which features or characteristics chickens use to spot their familiar human friends, as people features may change from time to time, such as new hairstyles, different clothes or facial hair etc.

Other animals

From personal experience, I know that they also recognize different types of animals as being either on their side or a rival – even down to a specific dog or cat, as their friend or enemy! For example, if your dog comes racing around the corner and on past the chicken run, then your chickens probably won’t even flinch.

But on the odd occasion that one of your neighbor’s or friend’s dog visits your yard, then the chickens suddenly freeze and raise the alarm bells.

Which brings me to my next point, chickens are shockingly able to make around thirty different noises, all with their own unique meaning, which the other flock members will recognize.

Newly hatched little chicks

The newly hatched little chicks do actually recognize their mother hen, by sound and sight.

Research has been done to suggest that when a hen sitting on her eggs was taken away under a dark environment from her own little chicks to be replaced by another broody hen, the little chicks were still able to find their mother, although they couldn’t even see her.

Also, when their mother hen was put in disguise by various ways, the chicks recognized their mother hen and came to her immediately.

Watch them interact with each other

Knowing that chicks and mother hens do all recognize one another from sight, and also that they can differentiate between the different members of their flock, it is fascinating watching their interactions.

Do you have chickens? Watch your own chickens. You might notice that they don’t necessarily choose to hang around with those flock members who appear to be the same breed as them or of the same color.

However, the chickens do tend to pick a buddy during the free range time, which they generally stick with for life. So the next time you are out on your far or in any chicken farm, have a look at how the chickens react and see do you notice and obvious patterns!

Self Sufficiency

Natural Pest Control for Small Farms