Reduce

This works great for homesteaders as well as anyone wanting to go a little more 'green'.  It was a simple thought, but one that was completely foreign to me at first.  How to reduce the wasteful non-edible items that enter our home.  Think about what you spend for plastic trash bags?  You purposefully throw them away.  The same with paper towels.  How about toilet paper?  Put it into a bowl of water and flush it away.  Why not wipe with dollar bills?  Sometimes it almost feels as though that's what I'm throwing into the commode.  What about laundry & dish washing soaps?  Same thing, spend money on an item that will be excreted from the house with minimal internal impact.  There had to be a better, more economical way to accomplish basic and general hygiene without such a horrendous sense of waste.

Simple solutions: inexpensive bar towels instead of paper ones, cloth napkins, cloth wipes for the bathroom (why not?!  We use cloth diapers, the toilet cloth just goes in with those.  Add a simple sprayer/bidet and you can quickly reduce or even eliminate the need for paper to toss into your commode.  Too gross?  Then use them only for girls sans defecation.  For trash bags I've learned to toss anything organic out the door to the birds, or onto the compost pile.  That means that what little is left is dry.  No need for plastic bags.  Paper bags from the grocers work quite well.  Though honestly, no bag at is really needed.

As for cleaning, white vinegar is a great basic household cleaner and fairly inexpensive.  For laundry soap I make up a special batch of home-made soap (no frou-frou or superfatting), grate it after it's cured and add some borax and washing soda.  You could add fragrance to it as well.  This type of basic soap is also very good for using on dishes.  I usually just leave a bar flat by the kitchen sink and using the scrub brush, quickly brush up a bit of the soap and scrub each dish.  It works well on most foods.  I do keep some Dawn on the sink as well, but only for very greasy foods, as it still works better on that.

I saw this on a forum to which I belong

I don't have "hobbies'

I'm developing

a robust

Port-Apocalyptic

skill set

Basic Soap Making

Safety:
The very first chapter in every soap making book I have read, and I've read many, always talk about safety.  I will be no different.  The very first thing any person needs to understand about soap making is that it is a chemical reaction taking place that generates a great amount of heat.  The name of the process is called saponification, wherein an acid (oils) and a base (NaOH... the lye) chemically combine to form a salt (soap).  No person intending to undertake the making of soap should ever do so without the proper equipment and tools.  The main ones that cannot go without are rubber gloves and chemical safety glasses.  Lye (NaOH in water) is highly caustic, it WILL burn if you get it on your skin or in your eyes.  Most also recommend closed toe shoes, long sleeve shirt and pants.

Remember two things when planning to make soap; the lye water is caustic... and so is the raw soap.  In fact, the soap has the ability to burn until it has been fully cured, though is less likely to do so as time wears along.  It's a good idea to use only steel, glass, or plastic tools when making soap as wood will eventually deteriorate and aluminum can react.

Tools:
The basic tools needed for soap making, aside from safety gear of goggles and gloves, include the following:

• steel or glass bowls for weighing and mixing
• plastic or steel spoons for stirring
• two glass thermometers for measuring temps if you are going to be precise, candy thermometers work very well for these
• an electric hand mixer, or be prepared to stir for a really long time!
• rubber scaper
• steel measuring spoons
• large (4C) glass measuring cups
• soap molds (can be as simple as an old ice bin or as complex as you wish)
• freezer paper if your soap molds are wooden (to line it), Vaseline for plastic molds (it helps the raw soap to release from the mold
• steel blade knife or wire to cut the soap bars (I use a wire cake leveler and a miter box)
• an accurate scale, I prefer a digital one
• a soap calculator to aid in determining the best weight of the ingredients so as to avoid putting in too much lye.  You can find these online or purchase one
• oils (tallow or lard, vegetable oil, specialty oils, or any combination.  It's best to choose single oils to add, no combo oils like Crisco, avoid corn oil as it tends to go rancid quickly (known as DOS), also avoid peanut oil as it tends to not fully solidify and comes out with a fairly nasty result)
• Sodium Hydroxide (NaOH)

I also like to use the following, but these are all optional:

• Additives (coffee grounds, seeds, or salt for a scrub bar
• clays
• butters
• herbal or mineral colorants
• even silk (makes a very smooth bar, this is dissolved into the lye water

Homesteading Skills

I mentioned in my previous post that knowledge is the one thing that would separate people that could survive an apocalypse and those that wouldn't/couldn't.  But which skills, either modern or antiquated would provide the best opportunity for survival?  What interesting information is there for the modern individual to learn that could provide both a path to greener living, apocalyptic survival, or just plain fascinating hobby?  I have discovered that I personally have a fascination for many crafts.  I would include the following basic knowledge or skills:

Woodcutting
Animal husbandry
Beekeeping
Farming/gardening, soil, water knowledge
Spinning, weaving, knit, crochet
Basic blacksmithing (optional)
Candle and soap making
Herbology
Rug and basket weaving
Hunting, skinning, butchery techniques & tanning methods
Food storage and preservation including dehydrating, canning, & preserving
Basic carpentry
And several others

For me, I am very much taken with useful crafts such as candlemaking, soapmaking, spinning, crochet & knit, and more recently, rug braiding.

Think About It

Lately I've been watching a lot of post-apocalyptic television shows.  Yes I know I'm a little behind the ball, I've always been that way.  Who has time to sit around staring at a tube these days?!  Well recently, I have found a little time to check some of these out.  Now, barring an event that would completely obliterate the possibility of resuming a semi-normal lifestyle such as disease or warring zombies, I decided there were several items that would be a must-have to survive long-term.  I mean, let's face reality; food, fuel, and basic necessities can only be obtained from outside sources, and these would become extremely limited and scarce as time wore along.  As such, here are some of the items I would consider necessary in the long run:

- Spinning wheel, carders, and fiber (or keep a small flock of sheep), knitting needles and crochet hooks
- Canning equipment and jars with re-usable lids
- Root cellar, or something similar
- Hot box or greenhouse for growing fresh herbs/veggies indoors in winter (need that vitamin C!)
- Windmill or two
- Rain collection/water system (there's a creek nearby... through a neighbor's lot) or well
- Wood-burning stove or passive heat system (check these out, they are awesome!)
- Small livestock (rabbits, chicken or other fowl, goats, bees, and/or sheep... possibly a pig)
- Soap & candle-making equipment
- Basic farm tools/equipment that did not require fossil fuel (cultivator/harness for turning soil plus hand tools)
- Guns (hunting and defense)
- Land (probably the most vital) and quality seeds

With these, a family could be moderately self sustainable and likely trade for anything else needed.  See, what bothered me the most about some of these shows I saw was that they tended to consume items that they did not have the immediate ability to self-create.  Even whole towns could not do what they were depicted as having done.  The greatest aspect of survival is knowledge.  Knowing how to survive and how to keep surviving over the long haul will be the ultimate separation between those that do actually live beyond a few months, and those who do not.

Just as a quick explanation for my choices above: the spinning & knit/crochet is because eventually clothing will be needed.  Excess could be traded to others who lack this ability.  Canning equipment should be pretty self-explanatory, families have to put supplies away in order to survive winter.  Root cellar and hot box are for similar reasons.  The windmill is to supply basic power needs, water system/well for water needs.  Heat system for winters.  The livestock choices I made were small to fit my miniscule land's ability to support.  Rabbits for quick meat, fowl for eggs, bees for wax & honey, sheep for fiber & meat, pig for meat (nearly all of a pig is useful!  Lard for soap, meat, hair, bones...everything!!).  The soap is for cleaning needs, the candles should also be self-explanatory.  Basic farm tools for gardening and farming needs, I would choose goat harnessing since you would need to keep a buck to breed does for milk and meat production, he may as well earn his keep the rest of the year too!  Let him pull the plow or a cart.  Guns or weapons should also be a no-brainer, when there is not sufficient livestock, it may be able to be hunted, but also for defense against raiders who would likely steal rather than starve.  Finally land, the most essential of the entire list.  I would probably enlist the help of my 3 immediate neighbors.  I know I can trust them, and helping to feed them would probably go a long ways to acquiring their assistance.  One lot for growing hay, the other either farmed or portioned for livestock pens. 

Lighting Options

As we head into the shorter-day months of fall and winter, there are some various options to consider when it comes to lighting.  It really all depends on personal preference.  For those trying to go "off grid" as much as possible, your options are limited.  Now let me be as transparently clear as I can; I am not talking so much about how you light your home, but how you manage to go about your chores after the sun has gone down.  Yes, there will be times that you simply cannot possibly complete everything needed to be done in the handful of hours allotted to you by Nature.  In the old days, a person worked from sunup until sundown and no more.  Today, with many households requiring multiple incomes, it's not always practical to assume you can complete all your necessary chores by 5 or 6 in the evening, the earliest time the sun will begin to drop by midwinter.  Not to mention that in this modern age it would be complete folly to utterly disregard all possible methods of artificially lighting your surroundings.  Even cave-dwellers had the ability to beat the darkness back.

With that in mind, there are a few different options.  The easiest, most convenient, and most expensive would be electrical lighting.  You run (preferably) underground electrical wiring to the area you wish to have lit, a barn, a corral, a work area, and then add switches, outlets, and fixtures.  Again, this can be very expensive not only in the materials cost, but also installation.  It's always a good idea to have a qualified electrician install the system, reducing the risk of potential fire later.  This method would top out not only on expense, but also on convenience.  What luck!  Just walk over, flip a switch, and voila!  Instant light to wherever you needed it most.  However, while this type of lighting can be as strong or as light as you need, there is the unfortunate drawback of only being able to light the specific areas planned.  So you'll want to decide carefully before installing.

Another option is portable/handheld lighting using flashlights or electrical lamps.  These offer the greatest potential for flexibility.  The light goes wherever you need it to go.  There are some rather significant drawbacks though, the cost of batteries being one of the highest.  The crank-type lamps often lose their vitality after just a short while and can be expensive.  These types of lighting often need to be directed by the hand (flashlight) to be truly effective.  A battery powered lamp or floodlight would be a good alternative option for portable light.  The best benefit of this type of lighting is the initial start-up cost and availability.  You can obtain a flashlight or lamp almost anywhere!  Batteries can be obtained in almost any place you can name that sells small items.  Initially, this will always be the best option in the early days of homesteading.  It's a good idea to keep a few lamps or lights on hand regardless of your chosen lighting method.  You never know when you might need a spare light!

The final option, and my ultimately preferred method, is the use of an oil lantern.  I'm sure you can picture the kind I mean.  They were very popular about a hundred years ago.  The general unit is metal with a hurricane glass wrapped in wire over a wick that dips into the well of the base.  It generally also has a thick wire handle that swings a bit.  Yes, you can still purchase these for about $5 brand new.  No need to raid your local antique shops (unless you wish to do so).  The base can be filled with either lamp oil or kerosene, which tends to burn rather slowly, resulting in this method being the most cost effective.  Remember that when lighting a new lamp, you should fill the base with the oil and allow it to sit unburned overnight (or several hours) so that the wick absorbs the oil before you light it the first time.  I use plain matches to light my lanterns, no fancy lighters necessary.  It's best to keep your lantern below eye level, as it will have a tendency to affect vision acuity if held directly within the line of sight, I've found.  Also, when setting your lantern down, be sure there is no possible risk of it falling or being knocked over.  It won't explode like they show in the movies, but it might go out.  Keep the lantern glass clean for optimal lighting, but never when the glass is hot.  I prefer this method because it's quick, it's constant, it's portable, and it lights a considerable distance.  This is one method, however, I would not entrust to very small children.  My older kids though, have no trouble using the lanterns.  In fact, they get a kick out of using them!

Critter Bedding

One question that I see a lot for confined animals is: "what is the best type of bedding to use?" So I will address this for as many of the common livestock species as I can.  First, most of the large livestock: horses, cattle, sheep, goats, pigs; will require no bedding if they are pasture kept.  In barns or birth jugs, it's best to bed down with either pine shavings or sawdust as that is the easiest to keep clean. 

If you have an enclosure for your poultry that involves them being confined indoors on a concrete or wooden floor, I recommend using sand, as that is the easiest to keep clean for birds.  For cage-reared rabbits indoors, first I recommend keeping them on a metal wire floor, for sanitary reasons, and second I recommend using either wood pellets or wood shavings.  If outdoors, there's honestly no reason to use any bedding at all!  If you clean the pan out weekly, it will be sufficiently ventilated that you should never notice any odor.  Newspaper is absorbent, but it will do nothing beneficial for your garden, nor will it aid in odor reduction in any way.

Some alternatives, pros/cons:

Cat litter: (clay), absorbent, little odor control, VERY heavy!, hard to dispose.  (clumping), still heavy, hard to access, expensive!

Wood or newspaper pellets: can be heavy (depending on type), excellent absorption, can be put in compost pile or directly on garden, little to no odor control

Equine fresh: very good odor control, expensive!!

Cedar shavings: NEVER use!  No good as a bedding type due to phenol content

Pine shavings: (regular) shouldn't be used other than as a barn additive for larger livestock (kiln dried) preferred bedding for smaller animals

Carefresh: this one is put here as a joke!  Homesteaders, save your money and steer away from this entirely!  There are much more cost effective beddings out there!

Cut up cardboard: I cannot recall the brand, but this is an excellent bedding material for small animals.  Somewhat hard to clean out, would be fine on the compost pile, cost effective and 'different', it works best laid over top a single layer of wood pellets.

Shredded/layered newspaper: Layers seem to work better in pans and carriers, nicely absorbent, no odor control at all, needs to be changed frequently.