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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…
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Living on Less and Liking It More
Living on Less and Liking It More by Maxine Hancock was originally published in 1976. The version on my shelf is the updated edition from 1994. In it, Maxine tells her own story of financial struggles and how she came to the realization that living simply can not only make life easier, it can make it sweeter as well. Maxine’s brush with financial woe taught her that contentment can be learned. Modest living can be liberating. Freedom from the need to always have the best and the newest can channel one’s attention to the more important things in life. Living on Less and Liking It More is filled with practical…
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Pursuing the Dream
Home Free Media had its inspiration in the heady seventies when environmental concerns, as they are now, were very much in the forefront of everyone’s minds. While there was no talk then of global warming, we North Americans were increasingly alarmed about the harmful effects of pollution, the rising costs and looming shortage of fossil fuels, and the questions being raised about the sustainability of our consumer lifestyle. It is refreshing to see these valid concerns making headlines once again. The issues never really went away. We just allowed ourselves to get distracted by everyday life. But these are the concerns of everyday life. Sustainability needs to be addressed for…
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Home Office
The Home Office category of Home Free Media looks at the possibilities available for earning income without relying on someone else for a paycheck. While the internet has opened up a realm of new opportunities, there remain many traditional ways to make a good living without punching someone else’s clock.
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Consumer or Creator?
One of the tremendous benefits of home education is the opportunity that it affords to develop a child’s creativity. Typically, the core subjects of even the most formal homeschooling curriculum can be completed in a fraction of the time that the same activities would take in the classroom, leaving ample time for exploring, drawing, digging, and building. Nurturing the creative process is essential for many reasons. Any time a child can make something with his or her own hands, something wonderful happens. There is a thrill of accomplishment in producing a thing of value, whether it is a painting to decorate the refrigerator or the colourful magnet that holds it…
