Ok, with all the stuff going on in the world, we are concentrating even more so this year on homesteading skills-besides, its lots of fun! Husband and I are picking specific skills to learn. He is learning the fine art of Homebrewing, I am learning new knitting skills.

Skills we are Practicing this month-he is practicing carpentry-he is installing ridge vent on the roof, I am practicing my baking skills-no bread machine here! My goal is a consistant loaf of bread and perhaps, by months end, homemade coissants!

He is teaching our children basic woodshop skills, I am teaching cooking fundamentals.

Last week, he successfully felled two dead trees, which was tricky, because they were leaning in towards the power lines, last week I successfully fed lots of people lots of food with out blasting a hole in my budget or losing my mind.

On the ECO-side we installed "Euro-lights" in the house for night lights- they supposivly use less than two cents of electricity a year and you never replace them!?! Also, we have started replacing our incadisent bulbs with florescents as they burn out. We have been able to coax our anceint old rusty washer into further service while we save for a low water usage one. We have gotten a printer cartridge refill kit, intead of replacing the cartridge, its a bit messy, but easy to do.

Of course these are our success stories-we had a couple of failures that I'd rather not mention........

-- Kelly (Homearts2002@yahoo.com), January 01, 2002

Answers

Very good Kelly, but the failures sound interesting too!!!!

We recently purchased a water filter system. We have chlorinated water, and after filtering some the kids said they couldn't believe how good it tasted. It was our Christmas gift to ourselves. I also am experimenting with different kinds of bread, I do have a bread machine, but want to make it the old-fashioned way. We are also switching over our bulbs, as much as possible.

One big project in the works is to build raised beds this spring. I have been looking at various sites and I want to check out some books the next time I make it to the library. I also want to get a few new chickens. We had one that laid green eggs, but she was old and she died. So I would like to get a few more like her. I just thought the green eggs were neat.

We need to finish up our barn, and we bought a solar panel that we have to set up for lights for the barn and outhouse.

There are many things yet to learn!!!

-- Melissa (me@home.net), January 02, 2002.

I suppose its only fair to give you the failures as well, so here goes-One thing I wanted to do was try to grow some things indoors over the winter-I had in mind some cherry tomatos, and miniture cucumbers, also I wanted a lettuce garden outside on the south facing wall. I still think the lettuce "tub" is a good idea-i just din't get to it. I did try to grow the tomatos and cucumbers, but they never took off and my husband began complaining about the "Weeds" in the dining room. Finally, before Christmas I conceded defeat and took them out. I do still have celery growing indoors-it started looking pretty bad, til I moved it-its really doing good in its new location, and I have an herb garden in the bay window in frount of my kitchen window, thats doing nicely-I have basil, chives, parsley, rosmary and aloe vera.

The other failure was that I wanted to get all the beds in my garden prepped before winter-I want to do the deep mulch garden. I only got about a third of that done, though.

The homemade yogurt is not doing as well as I want either. I will keep working at that. Its very thin and kind of jello-like-stringy.

-- Kelly (homearts2002@yahoo.com), January 02, 2002.

I'm interested in your shop solar panel-Our first solar project is to put panels on the well house-first to run a heat lamp and eventually to be able to run the pump itself so we will have a water source in case of power outage-we have one source of water, but its a pain to get to.

-- Kelly (homearts2002@yahoo.com), January 02, 2002.

Good for you Kelly! Most kids never see, much less learn those skills. I have a niece who at 9 yr old didn't know what flour was.

Melissa: I would be very interested in hearing about the solar panels for the barn. Also the installation of them, and actual use of them when you eventually install them.

-- Ann Markson (tngreenacres@hotmail.com), January 02, 2002.

Great job Kelly! I am also trying new things. I'll let you know soon! MELLISA-I would also like to hear about the solar panels. I am scoping out new information and would like to hear everything!

-- Micheale from SE Kansas (mbfrye@totelcsi.net), January 02, 2002.

On the solar panels, my husband bought it used form someone, it is very big, about 3 feet by 5 feet. It has some kind of box on it that lets you know it is charging. We are going to hook it up to some batteries and use that to run the lights. cle is going to mount it on the front of the barn. He had a battery that was completely dead (truck battery) and it charged up in about 3 hours, so I imagine it is putting off some juice! We paid $100 for it and the box (I think it is a regualtor of some kind) I don't know much more than that about it!

-- Melissa (me@home.net), January 02, 2002.

DH is teaching himself blacksmithing and I'm STILL trying to get a really good loaf of bread (sigh).

Wishing you enough.

-- Trevilians (aka Dianne in Mass) (Trevilians@mediaone.net), January 02, 2002.

The homesteading skill I am trying like heck to cultivate in myself right now is p...........a............t...........i............ence. Darn it, did it again.

-- j.r. guerra (jrguerra@boultinghousesimpson.com), January 03, 2002.

Kelly: How are you making your yogurt? I think I can help.

-- Ann Markson (tngreenacres@hotmail.com), January 03, 2002.