Selfsufficientish.com

This looks a lot like what we had: http://www.amazon.com/BRAND-NOT-SPECIFI ... d_sbs_hg_3

When I was a kid we had one that used dry paper. You fed the sheets one at a time while turning the crank, and it basically just rolled them up really tight, then you tied it with a piece of twine and it was ready to burn, just like that. Can't remember how the burning times compared to regular wood...

Do they teach any form of budgeting at school these days? Zoe When I was in school, budgets and personal finance were taught in Home Economics classes, along with cooking and how to care for common household items. But, the semester after I took mine, the school announced that they were cutting all...

Here's the person's post. I haven't had any blight, so I haven't tried it, but if you're not afraid of bleach it might be worth a shot: "I took a regular pump sprayer (bought one just for this), filled it with exactly one gallon of water. Then added exactly 1 cup (8oz) of clorox bleach. (not sp...

Came across a treatment for blight that someone on another forum said saved their plants, I'll try and dig that up.

Everybody's body works slightly differently. Some people do best on a vegan diet, some do best on a veggie + dairy diet, and some do best eating meat. Experiment with the advice given above, but keep in mind that what works for some people may not work for you, and vice-versa. Personally, I couldn't...

Umm, one very important warning might be prudent here: parsnip foliage contains chemicals which, when in contact with skin, react in sunlight to cause a fun little condition called "phyto-photo-dermatitis". The reaction is such that it can be mistaken for either a severe case of poison oak...

We had no winter,...just skipped it entirely. Kind of fitting, since last year we didn't really have a summer. I've noticed the seasons tend to pair up like that. A mild winter follows a mild summer, a severe winter follows a severe summer. Which means we're most likely in for a brutal winter this ...

Cattail roots: scrape clean, roast until tender, chew carefully, swallow the starch and spit out the fibers. Not a lot of wild starchy foods ripen in mid-summer, they're more a fall/winter thing. Turtles will be sunning themselves, though. Check fishing regs first of course, but, the easiest way to ...

Thoreau, while describing how satisfying he found a simple meal of purslane, commented "Yet men have come to such a pass that they frequently starve, not for want of necessaries, but for want of luxuries"

Some teens learn a lot from "forced volunteering", having them help out at a retirement home, or a food pantry. When I was 15 I worked at a charity clinic in Guatemala for 2 weeks. It changed my perspective on a lot of things.

You could make pie filling and jar it. Or, pack peach slices in sugar overnight, then remove from the sugar and sprinkle with cinnamon and ground clove, then dehydrate as sort of a peach candy. (I do that with all sorts of fruits for Christmas gifts every year.) There's peach muffins, peach cobbler,...

If you have chickens or other poultry, one trick is to get one of those yellow pheremone traps, but rig it so that instead of just flying into the bag, they fall through the bag and into a dish of water where the birds can reach them. The water slows them down enough to make it easier for the birds ...

Thank you, Mustardseed. That's been the experience of every single person I know who works with the "disadvantaged" as part of their job. I'd love to believe my observations were somehow the exception, but I have yet to see any evidence contradicting it. As a cashier, there was only one cu...

Well, in my case it was because my mum left for work at 4:30am, and I was lousy at getting up in the morning. I would always prioritise an extra 15 minutes in bed over breakfast. Still do actually... Same, but my folks solved that by making sure there was something that I could grab as I was going ...