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Love My Reel Lawn Mower
I just got in from cutting the grass with my reel lawn mower. In case you aren’t familiar with these marvelous machines, a reel lawn mower is people-powered and has a different type of cutting blade than the typical helicopter-style blade of a more common gas or electric powered mower. While I still get a good workout pushing it around, my reel mower, or push mower, is relatively easy to use and low maintenance. Pros Long Lasting – This machine is durable. It has no engine and few moving parts to break down and cause trouble. There are push mowers 50 years old and older still going strong.
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Home Grown Meat – An Update from Sarah’s Kitchen Gardens
“My baby chicks are not babies anymore! They are getting very close to harvest time. The rooster is the biggest of the bunch, as you might be able to tell from the photo. These four are what I have left from the six I started with. For some reason I ended up with two that didn’t make it. There was no sign of foul play (example: neighbor’s cat), so I can only assume they died of something natural, like a heart attack or something. That’s a hazard with this breed – they are bred for quick weight gain,…” Read more at Sarah’s Kitchen Gardens.
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The Wily Mom’s Secret Reason for Gardening
There are two significant men in my life who don’t eat their vegetables. These are not my children. These are independent adults who, presumably, could choose to eat nothing but ice cream if they wanted. They both make their own dietary choices every day. Unfortunately for them, most of these choices do not include vegetables. They eat lots of meat. I have nothing against meat. They eat lots of carbs. Pasta, potatoes, bread. All these are fine in moderation for most people. But, left to their own devices, very few vegetables pass the lips of these two men. It’s not that they don’t know that we all need to get…
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Growing Garlic in your Garden
Sarah’s Kitchen Gardens has a new post about growing garlic in your garden. Tasty and good for you, garlic is also surprisingly easy to grow. The only twist is that you need to plant seed garlic in the fall. That means if you are thinking about planting, now might be the time to be looking for or ordering your seed garlic. For more information, visit Sarah’s blog at http://sarahskitchengardens.com.
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Self-Employment: Living a Self-Sufficient Lifestyle
When it comes to living a self-sufficient lifestyle, there are two complementary approaches. One is to increase the amount of income that is self-produced. The second is to reduce expenses so that less income is needed to achieve the required standard of living. How you will make money is up to you. Please, just let it be legal! Hopefully it will also be something that will contribute positively to the life we all share on this planet. Increase Your Income There are a number of ways to earn money online these days. Some are better than others. All require a certain amount of time and effort. There are no get-rich…
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In Praise of the Tomato
The watery, anemic, store-bought tomatoes of the off season cannot even come close to the rich, hearty flavour of a ripe, juicy tomato fresh off the vine. Whether you prefer a full, red, beefsteak tomato to slice for a sandwich, or the instant gratification of a bite-sized cherry tomato, nothing beats homegrown for satisfying the tastebuds. Sarah’s Kitchen Gardens offers a fresh tomato salad recipe that you are sure to enjoy! Follow the link to read more.
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Considering Homeschooling – Managing Time for Cooking
If you are a stay-at-home parent considering homeschooling, you might be wondering how on earth you will find time to get everything done when you have to spend so much of your day teaching. Providing nutritious meals needs to remain a priority, but that can take time. Don’t let this discourage you. There are alternatives to ordering pizza five nights a week! Managing time for cooking healthy meals is possible, even within the busy schedule of a homeschooling family. It takes planning and organizing and one huge day of effort, but many hard-working moms and dads solve the problem of making dinner with Once-a-Month Cooking. When I was in the middle…
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Sarah’s First Honey Harvest
At her blog, The Healthy Honeybee, Sarah has been documenting her adventures as a beginning beekeeper. It runs in the family! Her maternal great-grandfather kept bees and produced a great deal of the other food for his family as well. In this post, she describes harvesting the first honey from her bees.
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The New Self-Sufficient Gardener
The New Self-Sufficient Gardener by John Seymour is a backyard gardener’s dream come true! There is more information here than you will ever need to know about how to produce your own food. All types of fruits and vegetables, how to deal with pests, preserving your harvest, and more are covered in depth. Not just a comprehensive guidebook, The New Self-Sufficient Gardener is a visual treat as well. The illustrations deserve to be framed; they are so beautiful! You can even see a preview of the book from my Amazon store. Click on the book cover, here and at Amazon, to get a peek inside this gardener’s gem.
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Backyard Meat: Raising Rabbits
Tastes like chicken When I was a young bride, my hunter father-in-law used to occasionally give me rabbits that he had shot and cleaned. I would cut these up and fry them like chicken to make a tasty meal. While we had to be careful of any remaining shotgun pellets (“Don’t break your teeth on the birdshot!”), the meat was a welcome supplement to our meager grocery budget. Later in life, we had neighbours that raised rabbits for food in the backyard of their summer cottage. Because they were absent a lot during the week, my girls often got the job of caring for the bunnies. They always enjoyed this…
