The Library for Preppers and Homesteaders

What books should you have in your library?

You have a library right?

I have a couple thousand on just about every topic, but I really don't need all of them.

I am putting this list together of 5 books (plus a bonus) I think are important, that you can get from Amazon, and yes they will be from affiliate links, but well worth your time and investment.

1.  The Self-Sufficient Life and How to Live it. By John Seymour

I have the previous edition of this book and it is pure gold for those trying to make their way on their own small piece of land.

2. The Encyclopedia of Country Living by Carla Emery

This is the 50th Anniversary edition, but any of the editions are great!

This is the book that launched me into seriously pursuing the move to a homestead.

My wife and I even corresponded with Carla about one of the later editions before she passed away!

3.The Disaster Preparedness Handbook: A Guide for Families by Dr. Arthur T. Bradley

Very detailed book going into most aspects of surviving a disaster.

This book has some good and handy forms that you will find useful in the back.

4. Back to Basics  edited by Abigail Gehring

Another more or less complete guide to doing it yourself on the homestead.

Excellent and popular book!

5. The Backyard Homesteader by Carleen Madigan

Even if you live on a large spread this book give you lots of insight into doing this in a small efficient way for big results!

Bonus: You can Farm by Joel Salatin

While I don't own this one, I must have checked it out of our library 100 times!

Joel takes you through many, many ideas on making an income on a homestead.

If I could pick one book on learning to make a living from the land this would be it.

So there are 6 of the best books out there to put in your library.

It was difficult finding ones that were still in print and immensely useful.

Check them out and if you can't afford them try your local library's inter-library loan, they can probably get them for you.

Still clinging to my God and my guns

Randy

Short product review Poulan Pro Brush cutter

I picked up a Poulan Pro brush cutter/ trimmer on closeout at wally world last week. It was a 2 stroke model with interchangeable heads. I also picked up the cultivator/mini-tiller head to go with it.

I need a brush cutter in my woods. Since the ash borer killed all the ash trees the light has reached the forest floor and the brush is close to impenetrable. I need to clear away the brambles and other brush for cutting firewood.

Since the Poulan Pro was on sale I figured I would check it out and see how well it did.

I got it home and found the instructions were as easy to follow as any others I have used to assemble equipment. The cutter went together quickly and the premix is the same as I use in my chainsaw so I fired it up to see how it worked.

It fired right up when I followed the instructions for starting, but I noticed I had to feather the throttle quite a bit to get it up to speed. I also noticed it seem to not be running quite right, I figured it may take a bit to warm up and get broken in.

So I walked over to a patch of weeds to see how the cutter blade would work...the mixed weeds and grass were difficult for the blade to get through, not because of lack of power but they were easily pushed out of the way and it didn't cut them well.

So then I walked down to the woods to see how it would work for the reason I bought it. I should at this point mention the kill switch wouldn't work. I had to pull the plug wire to kill it for my trek to the woods.

I got down there and started in on a mixture of brambles and 1/2" saplings. I easily  cut a swath about 15' wide and 30' deep into the woods. At this point I had been running it for 15 minutes total and it still wouldn't smooth out or let me give it full throttle without feathering it open a bit at a time.

So I decided I was going to return it since it was a new machine and while it cut pretty good for what I wanted to use it for it, something was messed up with it.

I got back to the house and dumped the remaining gas back into the can and decided to start it to run the carb empty. When I pulled the starter rope it stayed out and I couldn't get it to go back in...so apart it came and back into the box and back to wally world it went. There were no hassles with the return.

The Poulan Pro brush cutter in my opinion worked well on actually cutting the brush I needed cut, even though it wasn't running right and I had to return it. I would give it 1 1/2 stars out of 5

I will be picking up a Stihl in the next week or so and I will give a review of that brush cutter.

Still clinging to my God and my guns,
Randy

Knee High by the Fourth of July...

So goes the old saying to tell if you will get a decent yield of corn.

I was surprised with our wet spring the local farmers seemed to have gotten to that benchmark.
I even read that with all the advancements in technology they expect to get a good average year.

For me ... not so well,
My hybrid sweetcorn is about knee high but my saved Indian corn is lagging behind.
Everything was just too wet to plant on time, and then we were out of state for a funeral the first week it was dry enough to plant. I'll let you know this fall how the corn ends up.

Thinking of getting some buckwheat to put in the rest of my tinkering area.'

Still clinging to my God and my guns,
Randy

How to create your own heirloom vegetables

How to create your own heirloom vegetables

Growing your own food is a big part of your family’s security. Producing your own food can keep the proverbial wolf away from the door.

One thing you should consider is the security of the seeds you buy. I’m sure you have heard by now about “terminator genes” that some companies are trying to put into the food supply. These genes make it so any plants grown from them are sterile and won’t produce viable seeds. The only way to be sure of what you are getting is to produce it yourself.

Heirlooms are very important because they are adapted to a specific area and type of management system. If you develop your own you will have a plant that grows well in your area and grows well how you plan on growing it. A cool thing about them is they can be adapted for how you manage your garden also.(low input, raised bed, container, heavy mulch, etc.)

My corn has been selected for low input organic growth. I have also had to add resistance to cucumber beetles that eat the silk while the plant is putting on ears. When I started out I got very little corn because of the “harsh” way I grow it. I have tried a few times to grow “Bloody Butcher” corn, but it has always failed because the cucumber beetles keep it from pollinating almost completely by eating the silk. I usually end up 10 or so kernels on an ear. The corn I started with was Mandan Bride. The first year it put out two foot plants with small 6 inch ears. This last year (10 years later) I had 6-12 foot plants with 10-12 inch ears. I still get nubbins because of my limited addition of fertilizer (chicken manure, wood ashes, compost and homemade liquid fertilizer).

So how do we go about making our own heirlooms?

-Save your seed

First you need to learn about saving your seeds. This year when you grow your garden, save some seed for the next year. Even if you plant hybrids you can save that seed and plant some of it next year (don’t use it for your whole planting because you might not get anything edible the first couple years). You will get plants that revert back to what they were before they were hybridized, but you will then have plants you can select and improve upon. Of course the best way is to start with an heirloom of some sort to begin with.

-Look for differences in your plants

During the growing season watch your plants closely. Did some of them grow faster than others? Do some put out bigger or tastier fruit? Did the bugs leave one plant unharmed? Is there a color difference? Does one put out fruit much later than the others? One or all of these things can be selected for. Or you can combine traits you want.

Last summer we grew a Burgundy Okra.(it was very good) I put in six or seven plants in a row. Out of that row I had two green okras from the same seed with the rest burgundy like they were supposed to be. Of the two green ones one the bugs just destroyed, I mean they were all over it, but the others were not touched. So I save two kinds of seed for the okra, “burgundy okra” and “green okra”. I tossed the buggy one into the compost pile when harvest was done. You might ask why I didn’t pull it earlier; I used it for a bug trap. The bugs all went there and left my other stuff alone.

-Plant for improvement and selection

The example I am going to use is my corn but it can be used for any improvement in your garden. If this is your first year select your best ears (fruits) according to the traits you want to pass on. I use three criteria for my corn.

-full ear- This means that the bugs didn’t get any silk when the kernels were forming so they didn’t like it and avoided it for some reason, pass that trait on always.

-size- Bigger is better in this game unless you are trying to create a specialty crop of baby sized veggies. On corn you need to look at length of the ear as well as how dense the kernels pack together.

-color- Since my corn is Indian corn I select for color also, but it is my third criteria and I will plant ears that are mostly yellow if they are large and dense. You should sort your veggies in the same way. Be sure and keep the seeds separate. How I plant my corn is to take one ear of corn and start planting hills in a strait row. Only kernels from that ear go into any hill in that row. After I get that row planted I pick up my next ear and repeat the process of one ear per row until you have your plot or field planted. As the plot grows pay attention to the things I mentioned before. Watch to see which rows get a head start in germination, which rows grow fastest are easiest to weed or whatever you decide is important. Then repeat the process over from the beginning next year.

The first picture is looking West at my row of hills. The next picture is looking South, and this picture is looking diagonally SouthEast. If you look close you can see the high wheel cultivator at the end of the row. These types of plantings can be cultivated in three directions just as the pictures were taken.

Other fruits and veggies will not cross pollinate as well as corn but keeping them in the rows will make keeping track of what you are trying to accomplish so much easier. So a couple years down the road you have a tomato that no one else has or you have bell peppers the size of footballs or just corn that grows without much fertilizer and it is a brand new heirloom that you have created.

Still clinging to my God and my guns,

Randy

Modern farming and me

Had a long day at work on Thursday.
When I got home I was tired and grumpy.
Tanya met me as I got out of the car and told me the guy who farms our 17 1/2 tillable acres needed a couple trees cut down since they were combining soybeans and couldn't fit the combine in the other field.

We have a 2 1/2 acre field that is separated from the rest by an old fence row.
Usually it is farmed by the farmer on that side of our property who is the father of the guy who farms the other 15. But this year the father couldn't find any government program to help him on a 2 1/2 acre plot so the son added it to the other 15.
(Rolls eyes)
I guess you can't farm unless you are part of a government program of some sort. (rolls eyes even more)
Don't get me wrong, these guys are great people. I just don't hold with the agribusiness mindset.

Anyway I had to grab the Stihl and go make a 40' hole. Yes you read that right a 40' hole. They got the planter through the existing hole in the fence row but the super duper John Deere mega combine wouldn't fit.

Now I hate dropping trees, I much prefer to cut up stuff already down. Since if you are stupid or unlucky a tree can kill you.(see my last post to see I am stupid sometimes) I really hate cutting in an old fence row since the chance of hitting wire with the saw is almost certain.

Something real handy to have is a small set of bolt cutters. Mine cost $16 and they are much better at fence cutting than the old fence pliers I have in the workshop.

I was able to get the wire off the trees I needed to cut without any problems. I was really surprised that it wasn't grown in at all. Only problem turned out to be missing a couple pieces laying in the grass that I hit when I was cutting the stump lower.

The tractor flooded when I tried to start it(more roll eyes) so I had to use the truck to drag the two trees up to the house. This was all going on as it was getting dark and the combine was running and getting closer all the time. I finally got it cleaned up and he was able to get through just at dark. So the beans are off. Lots of stress after a long day.

Newer equipment needs lots of space. I like closed in places that offer cover for small game. Some day we will be able to afford to do our own farming with smaller equipment. Right now the rent we get pays the taxes and insurance on the farm. So we will keep it up for the time being since I have almost no equipment. Although I did see this morning an older small AC combine on craigslist for $800. Anyone want to buy it for me?

Still clinging to my God and my guns,
Randy

The last two weeks have been a challenge

On an up note we will hit 2500 page views today!!!!
WOOOO HOOOOO!!!!

It started two weeks ago when I fell will trying to catch the cat as it ran up the stairs.
I hit the elbow that has been giving me trouble. I don't know what the problem is with it but it aches and is warm.
The fall has healed. (the trouble with the elbow preceded the fall)
After that dad came over and we cut wood. We pulled up 13 logs with the tractor, problem is I have burnt most of them. LOL
Here they are after I cut most of them into lengths.


Picture of the Ford 9N dad restored for me. It's what I use for most of my farm work.




The next week was Thanksgiving so I didn't get any wood cut.

Friday I had the kids help me pick the last of the corn. They didn't want to help but I kept telling them that this is what families do, they work together. They did as much as 7,5 and 3 yo kids could do.




Saturday we had "Thanksmas" most of my cousins and there kids came over to my Grandma's house and we had a second Thanksgiving. I went out in the woods early and cut a load of wood that morning (good thing)

Monday rolled around and I tweeked my back while I was loading the furnace. Now I have a messed up elbow and a sore back. Going to be interesting cutting wood this weekend.

Here is the furnace with the wind break we built behind it.


I'm done with my little pity party now....

Still clinging to my God and my guns
Randy

Liquid organic fertilizer

I made this super compost tea producer this summer.
It came after years of thinking about it and is an improvement of an earlier design I used when I gardened in Gunnison Colorado.

I should explain what my garden was like out west.
Gunnison is zone 2 in good years. The last year I gardened there I believe was 1998.
On July 2 we had 24 degrees in the morning. It didn't outright kill everything because I had everything either in tires or planted on ridges and the cold went down in the trenches between them.

The soil was so bad the water would bead up on the surface and run off. I had been adding coffee grounds and compost for three or four years to improve it. The main garden I raked into ridges and valleys and to water it I would flood the valleys with the hose and let the water soak in.
My first super compost tea maker was a stack of tires I placed so that they straddled one of the valleys.

It had a hardware cloth bottom and was four or five tires high. I started putting all of my scraps into it, along with all the coffee grounds I could snag at work. When I watered I would run the hose into the top tire and let the water run over everything inside and then into the garden. Water and weak fertilizer in one shot. It worked well that last year there. The people who bought our house required in the contract that I remove the gardens along with the tires and the big compost bin I had built from pallets. I almost cried as I had to haul everything I had worked so hard on to the dump.

So with that in mind I have been meaning to build something here in Ohio to make my own fertilizer and here is the result.



Don't be confused by the propane tank. The tank is just a convenient place to put it. I had on old trash can sitting around that I tried to store ears of corn in a couple winters ago. If you look close right above the handle in the front you can see one of the holes the rats chewed in it to get to the corn. There is also a nice big hole in the bottom which suits my purposes now.

I built a stand out of 2x4's that was high enough that I could slide a five gallon bucket underneath to catch all the goodies. I put some aluminum sign material in the bottom of the trash can to keep everything from falling right through. I work next to a sign shop and I snag all of their throw away signs. It is either plastic or plastic sandwiched between aluminum. I have used it for many many things here on the homestead. I added a couple of large rocks so it wouldn't blow over.

After I built it I put three loads of grass clippings in it from our bagger mower. Then we started adding our table scraps. The chair is there so the kids can reach to dump in scraps. I also discovered tomato worms can't crawl out of the can so they all went in. (we picked over 25 from a single brandywine plant this year) Whenever there gets to be a lot of scraps I put in another bag of grass clipping to keep the flies down.

Here is what comes out of the bottom.



I haven't used it near as much as I should of this year, and our garden is poorer because of it.
Tanya has been dealing with severe allergies and hasn't been able to do as much in the garden as she would like. I did dilute some and sprayed it on the Indian corn while it was setting ears just to give it a little boost. I have only used it when the rain has filled the bucket. Otherwise I could pour water through and make tea anytime.

My thoughts on the future of producing your own fertilizer lead me to think someone could take a tank and built a septic type system with a garbage disposal to run everything through on input. You could add any organic material and let it cook in the tank and get a low level fertilizer out the other end. Just some thoughts.

Randy