Top Ten Homestead articles

Here are the top 10  most popular articles, based on reader’s views (updated March 2016)

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1.  Debt Free Living:  50 Strategies to Save Money and Pay off Your Debt

Getting out of debt takes a commitment to a few basic principles:

1.  Stop spending money you don’t have.

2.  Pay off the highest interest loan first.

3.  Use the money saved by paying off the highest interest loan, to start paying off the next loan.

4.  Live frugally so that debt doesn’t build.  Make a commitment with your spouse to work together to live frugally.

5.  If your mortgage debt is overwhelming your budget, sell out and invest in land and build a smaller house mortgage-free.

If this is overwhelming to you, sit down with a trusted counsellor and make a plan to get where you want to go.  A family friend, an accountant, a pastor or rabbi can give you an objective perspective and accountability to help you reach your goals.  Pick someone who’s already living debt-free that has practical experience and can advise you in a positive way.

But each of these steps requires a fistful of money to achieve.  Where is that fistful going to come from?  Baby steps in frugal living can help you achieve your goals.

Start taking some baby steps today.

Here’s 50 strategies to save $2 or more this month.  Add a few of them together and you will have more than $100 to take to the bank at the end of the month.  In a year that will be $1200 or more to help you pay off your debt or save for a rainy day… (see more…)

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2.  25 Cheap Gardening Tricks for Self-Reliance on your Homestead

Gardening can be expensive.  When you are growing a Homestead garden you want to make sure that the cost of the garden doesn’t exceed the value of the crop that you will reap from it.  Here’s some tricks to help you get the most from your garden without breaking the budget.

1.  Recycle for pots and containers

Even if you have a lot of gardening space, you may want to have some containers to use for starting seedlings or for having some tender plants close to the house for easy pickings.  Seedlings can be started in pots made out of newspaper.  These are sturdy enough to get things going but get fragile after a few weeks.  Great if you plan to pop them into the ground but not so great if you want to hold them over for several weeks, while the soil outside warms up.  You can make pots out of plastic containers, vitamin pill bottles, juice bottles, Milk bottles.  (See More of this article).

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3. Cure Tooth decay

How to cure tooth decay

According to Cure Tooth Decay, you can cure tooth decay. Healing your cavities involves not just tooth brushing and oral hygiene but also a change in lifestyle and diet. You can’t just change from commercial toothpaste and keep eating crap and expect to rebuild your tooth enamel and heal your cavities. Your body deserves better.

DiY Tooth Powder Recipe that:

• Whitens teeth
• Freshens breath
• Remineralizes tooth enamel
• Repairs cavities
• Antibacterial
• Pain relieving
• Prevents cavities by strengthening tooth enamel, removing bacteria, and changing pH

Get the recipe and read more.

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4. Grow a Meyer Lemon Tree from Seed

Meyer lemons aren’t actually lemons.  They are a cross between a bitter orange and a lemon, that originated in China.  But they’ve been in North America for almost 100 years.  They grow with a bush habit and are adaptable to containers.  What I’m telling you here about meyer lemons applies to growing other citrus fruit from seed, as well.

If you are in Canada, choose organic citrus fruit from the grocery store. Nonorganic fruit may have been irradiated. Radiation damages the seed.

If you live in warmer climes where citrus grows, use seed from fruit from a tree growing in your neighborhood. This will be acclimatized to your growing conditions and give you the very best start.  Read more…

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5. 16 Bread Baking Tips Your Grandma Forgot To Tell You

The women that went before us baked the most amazing bread at home in primitive ovens.  They didn’t have temperature controlled ovens.  They didn’t have standardized yeast.  Yet their bread was a staple part of the daily diet.  While its true that some of these ladies never got the hang of light loaves with crispy crusts, others became locally famous for their baking.   If you had the priviledge of helping your grandma or a neighbor in the kitchen on baking day, you probably caught some of these bread baking tips.  For the rest of us, I offer my own bread baking tips, won by both observing the grandmothers and by not-a-few failed loaves.  Here’s 16 bread baking tips that will surely improve your chances at attaining that perfect crust and crumb.  Read the tips here.

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6.  How to make Thieves Vinegar from scratch

The recipe for thieves’ vinegar is older than the internet.  It’s older than television or radio.  It’s even older than the printing press.  The recipe came out of a very dark time in history, when trader ships replaced the Silk Road, men killed each other for cloth and spices, and honest men were forced to steal.

In the Middle Ages, during the black plague, times were tough.  50% of the population of many European cities died.  The wealthy merchant cities and seaports were the hardest hit.  Eventually the plague travelled throughout the continent.  The Farmer’s Markets closed.  With the dwindling peasant population, farm labourers became scarce and so did food.  The price of food in the cities increased because of the shortage.  Merchants, who before the plague were growing in wealth, now had a shortage of customers, and a shortage of staff.  Some of these merchants changed their professions, temporarily.  They became grave robbers – stealing the jewels, gold, and cash from the dead bodies of plague victims.  Those who were successful, found magical protection from the deadly disease. They bathed themselves in a spice-infused vinegar to ward off the plague.  With this protection they could remove the gold rings, and gold fillings from the wealthy cadavers, without getting ill themselves. At a time when most people didn’t bath at all, this kept the infected fleas feasting on the unwashed people.  Thieves’ vinegar grew in renown.

The vinegar was disinfectant.  It killed bacteria on contact.  It also repelled insects.  And the spices like cloves, cinnamon, and lavender strengthened the immune systems of the thieves and fought inflammation.  These spices are antioxidant, too, and fight free radical damage in the human body.  Read more…

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7. 42 Zero Waste Habits of Going Green

So many zero waste, living green intentions are bound to fail unless they become habits. Very often I go to the grocery store and come home with my groceries in plastic bags, while I have a dozen cloth bags hanging on a hook right inside the back door, on the way to the car port. You see, I forgot to take them to the store with me. Have you done that, too? Don’t beat yourself up about it. It takes time to develop sustainable habits.  Read more.

8.  How to grow strawberries and asparagus

Strawberries and asparagus are natural companions. Both are early spring crops that will begin to produce after your last frost date. They root on different levels to maximize the nutrient return in your garden. Both should be mulched to keep down weeds and to maximize yields.

A well-managed perennial bed will continue to produce for 20 or even 30 years. The sooner you plant them, the sooner you’ll realize a harvest. Here’s what you need to know to get the most from these easy to grow perennials. (Read more…)

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9. 10 Cookie Baking Secrets that Grandma Knew

When I was a young lass of 15 years old, I lived briefly with a family that was not my own. The grandmother in the family, who lived just two houses away, was a professional baker before marriage, and continued to use her profound knowledge of cookie baking skills almost daily. That family had an ever full cookie jar and fancy squares in several plastic containers in the fridge. When guests popped in unexpectedly, the tea kettle went on the stove and at least 5 different kinds of homemade cookies and squares were skillfully arranged on the Royal Albert Old Country Roses serving plate. Matching teacups and saucers were placed on the round maple kitchen table, along with the Old Country Roses sugar bowl, filled with sugar cubes, never loose sugar. The Old Country Roses cream pitcher, filled with half and half creamer, sat next to the sugar bowl on the Old Country Roses oval dish. The house was always immaculately clean, and the Royal Doulton figurines were dusted once a week whether they needed it or not. I loved those Royal Doulton “Bedtime” and Royal Doulton “Choir Boy” figures. The grand piano in the living room, although not actually played very often, gave an air of sophistication and upper echelon grace. I was clearly out of my element, and absorbed as much wisdom as I could in my 6 month stay there.

Grandma Cook baked cookies one at a time. She checked each cookie for loft, chewiness, and crunch, adjusting the recipe with a tsp more of flour or an extra egg yolk, until she had the perfect cookie. Then she completed her baking with a dozen cookies at a time. Her daughter in law, whom I was living with, used to mock her MIL’s fastidiousness in cookie baking and the time wasted on these delectable hospitality foods. Mrs. Cook senior had mastery in cookie baking, something she obviously loved to do. Mrs. Cook junior clearly couldn’t compete. (Read more…)

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10. The 5 Top Self-Reliant Trends for 2016 (that Grandma found first)

Were you wondering what self-reliant skill you should try next? Do you want to know what you should take classes in or read books about to improve your survival odds? Want to know how to stay on top of what’s big in self-reliance? Well, I’m here to help. Here’s the top 5 self-reliant trends for 2016.

Even Pinterest recognizes these self-reliant trends in their Top 100 Trends for 2016. While it’s true grandma already knew about some of these self-reliant trends, we’ve gotten far ahead of grandma now. With the wealth of shared knowledge and social media sparkle these trends evolved into a movement.  And it’s a self-reliant, back-to-basics movement we can get excited about.  I asked a few leaders in the Homestead niche to tell me what’s trending for them this year.  This is the result. (Read more…)

Updated March 2016.