Our Self Sufficient Home

Santa brought us a frozen yogurt /ice cream machine and boy have I had a ball experimenting with it. After a few gelato (YUM!) recipes, which I will be sharing soon, I decided it was time to find a less sugary alternative. The answer? Homemade Frozen Yogurt! The idea of a frozen dessert machine was enormously appealing because who really wants to spend 5 bucks for a measly amount of overpriced mass produced ice cream? Not me. And I don’t like the alternative which is cheap, poor quality, mass produced ice cream or frozen yogurt.

The ingredients are simple as can be:
2 Cups Natural Plain Yogurt….no sweeteners, no added flavors, no junk- just milk, cream, pectin and cultures.
1/2 Cup Whole Milk Read the rest of this entry »

The 2 potted blueberries didn’t fare so well through our first significant snow fall of the winter. Nearly 3 feet dropped over the course of about a week and these blueberries were completely buried. Once ma nature showed us some mercy and the snow washed away with rain we were left with some damaged blueberry bushes.

Read the rest of this entry »

Well, it’s been roughly 2 weeks since I first started treating my daisies infected with powdery mildew with Serenade, a biofungicide. Here’s the original post: Powdery Mildew.
Here are the results :
After 1 treatment there was a significant difference. The mildew disappeared for a few days leaving behind the brown spots of injury.  But as you can see, the mildew reappeared.

I treated a second time 7 days after the initial treatment. This time I was meticulous in covering every nook and cranny. Now, the plant has been mildew free for about 5 days. There are still damaged spots on the  leaves and some dried up Serenade spray, but NO MILDEW!

I  brought these daisies home from work thinking they would be comfy in our planter window. Soon after they settled in powdery mildew struck. Slowly, one by one, the mildew took over a large percentage of the leaves and sucked the life right out of them. I cut off the infected leaves thinking part of the problem was due to poor circulation since the foliage was so dense. That seemed to act as a speed bump for the powdery mildew and soon enough it resurfaced.  I was sure to give the plant plenty of moving air, kept temps within the ideal range, and was sure not to over water. Luckily, I was able to keep this powdery mildew from spreading to nearby plants.

Since I couldnt just cut out the problem, I tried a baking soda wash I read about online. A simple mixture of baking soda, water, and liquid soap. No luck. The infected leaves once again were cut. At this point most of the leaves were gone and I was desperate. If the remaining leaves had to be removed the plant would surely suffer. I’m not completely discounting the baking soda treatment, though. If I had started treatment immediately and had more time to wait for it to kick in, it may have worked just fine. But I was running out of leaves to cut.

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These clay bread bakers were received as a gift for our wedding and have been sitting in the cabinet patiently waiting for some attention. Today,  I had a few hours to spare and was looking for something to pair with my homemade baked potato soup. Homemade bread fit the bill. Rather than use a traditional bread pan as I usually do I was feeling the need to experiment a bit.

Easy enough. While the yeast was doing it’s thing in the bread dough I started prepping the bread baker. This particular one is a Romertopf bread baker. First step is simply soak it in water for 15 minutes. Clay bread bakers mimic the conditions in a brick oven which is the ideal way to bake bread. This dish is made of terra cotta which naturally absorbs moisture and gives bread a crisp crust and moist interior. Read the rest of this entry »

We began our food storage on a whim while living in our small 600 square foot apartment. The key for us at that particular moment was the absolute need for easy, space saving storage. We have since expanded quite a bit, our needs have changed and we now have much more storage space in our current home. Soon after moving our supply to our new home we sat down to make a plan and get organized.

Buy only things that are eaten on a regular basis. This ensures constant rotation. This is especially important with short term storage items that only last a year or 2. You want to make rotation a habit. This is the easiest way to do so with cans: cansolidator.  Buy things that dont require refrigeration!

Water. Water. Water. Having an ample supply of water is obviously the key to survival and comfortable living. Think total water usage, not just consumption. Water is necessary for hygiene and cooking as well as drinking. Find a way to ensure access to clean water in the event that public water systems become contaminated or power outages prevent normal well function. The solution for us is one that we use regularly when we have our prolonged winter power outages. We run our well on a gas generator.

Know what you have, what you consume, and how long your supplies will last. The easiest way is to start an inventory list the day you begin your storage and add/ subtract as things are added and eaten. If you’re like me and didnt stay on top of things, set aside an afternoon and update your inventory. I found a spreadsheet is the easiest way to do this. Include sizes, number of portions, and expiration dates. This way you can tell at a glance what you use most of and what’s about to expire. It’s also a good idea to do a quick once over of your spreadsheet when making your grocery list. Whether you decide to buy a little extra each shopping trip, once a month, or 3 times a year, you can easily see what you’ve consumed and how much you need to purchase to replenish your supply. Read the rest of this entry »

In order to prepare for Christmas festivities this year, I started preparing batches of cookie dough to freeze. When I had a quiet evening I would whip up a batch or 2 and freeze it. When Christmas eve rolled around, my task was simply to toss them in the oven. I was so pleased with the ease of this method that I plan to continue to freeze dough to minimize food waste. With only a few mouths to feed it’s impossible to eat an entire batch of baked cookies  before they go stale. Ok, not  impossible but unhealthy to say the least. Honestly, this is a great way to help eat those sweets in moderation. I froze a total of 4 varieties but have lost some pictures.
Here are some chocolate filled Russian Tea Cakes. The key to successfully keeping individual cookies is to freeze them completely before allowing them to touch.

Read the rest of this entry »

This Christmas we filled our tree with handmade crocheted ornaments. These guys work up quickly,  from 20- 45 minutes. I used some bright, fun colors to add some spice to the tree.

The patterns came from a book called Big Book of Thread Ornaments to Crochet by Leisure Arts. Read the rest of this entry »

Looks like another large storm front is moving down from Alaska to Northern California to bring

3-6 feet of new snow in the mountains and 4″+ of rain in the foothills and Sacramento Valley.

It looks like it should start Friday/Evening depending on location and go into next week!

Time to start preparing now for lots of snow, water or both!

Here’s what I’ve completed so far this morning.

1- Brought in more firewood

2- Loaded up the wheel barrow with more firewood and prepared for transport under covered area.

3- Topped off the diesel in the tracktor, 100% full now. (15 gallons)

4- 2 x 5gallon diesel cans moved to truck to get refilled on Saturday.

5- Prepared new 2 gallon gas can with fresh gas for the generator. The smaller can really makes

filling the ~1 gallon tank on my Honda EU2000 generator. Also the smaller gas can makes it much

easier for my wife to fill the generator. Lucky for us the Honda EU2000 generator lasts a VERY

LONG time on 1 gallon of fuel.

6- Rotate new gas cans with existing full fuel cans in storage location.

7- Made sure snow shovels, and brooms were ready for snow duty.

8- Top off the ATV with gasoline, and aim them for easy drive-out access in deep snow.

9- Prepare vehicles for leaving the property w/out the need to backup to make snow access much

easier.

10- Fill chainsaw with oil and gas, and check chain for sharpness.

11- Make new 1 gallon of gas / oil mix for chainsaw. (Just ran out!)

12- Make sure all rechargable lights are charged, and anything else rechargable is charged.

This wonderful piece of machinery was passed on to me a few weeks ago. What is it exactly? It’s a 1971!! Penncrest sewing machine that works like a charm and has not a dent or ding on it. Complete with sewing table and all the accessories I could ever need. I have started sorting through the treasure trove and working on a few pieces. Sewing is new to me (feels like it anyway after so many years) and makes for slow going.

Read the rest of this entry »

As if we needed another reminder that winter is well on its way we’ve started the season of frequent power outages. One was due to a storm which means we were prepared for it. Heavy rains and strong winds of 40+mph are almost a guaranteed outage in our area. Another two outages were unexpected. We rely on our Honda generator from a previous post to keep our refrigerator cold and will fire it up if we’re without power for more than a couple hours. We also have a supply of battery powered lanterns which make navigation so much easier. We keep at least one in every room, including the bathroom, in designated areas so we know just where they are. This is a shot of the 3 that we use the most.

The green lantern is a Rayovac SE3DLN Sportsman Extreme 300-Lumen with 2 brightness settings, runs off of 3 D batteries, 72 to 150 hours of run time depending on the setting. Cost is about $25 on Amazon.

The smaller grey lantern is a  Brunton Polaris LED Lantern, 95 lumens, with 2 brightness settings, runs off of 3 C batteries, up to 45 hours of run time. Cost is about $32 on Amazon. Read the rest of this entry »

As most are aware we replaced t1-11 on our garage.. I guess I should say add more T1-11 to the garage

The T1-11 we used was primed, however since this side gets sun all day in summer and most of the day in winter I decided I wanted to make sure it was extra coated!

Today we added 2 coats of Killz2 primer to the t1 11 siding.

It’s hard to tell in the picture since it got shady toward the end but the white is blinding!

From the bottom up about 1 foot we also put on a 3rd coat to make sure we had an even lower chance of moisture penetration.

This week is supposed to be sunny so I will leave the tarp off the door, and finish up the trim, and then paint the entire side with our Valspar exterior paint.

Last weekend California experienced heavy rains, and high speed winds and those of us in the mountains got even more!

We received over 4″ of rain, and winds approaching 30mph where we are located. Power went out for about 8 hours, and we were able to put the Honda EU2000i to use. The generator was actually able to power the office, plasma TV, Direct TV box, and our refrigerator even at startup. The refrig at startup definitely lugged the generator for a second but then everything was working as it should! We are using the Honda EU2000i on extension cord currently other than being messy and a pain in the house it’s working great! (Generator is not in the house.)

During the storm I decided to drive around the property and take some pictures of the huge amounts of water that was coming down all over!

This is between the hills in the backyard. Old road straight ahead now blocked, existing used road to the left, and road behind where I took this picture.

This is what it looked like behind me as I took this picture.

Years of erosion has caused the one side to be a perfect place for water to flow.

This is behind the garage, and is dirt that was brought in to level it out. We were expecting runoff, and plan to put in drainage which will actually go past picture #1 which is well over 200 feet away. The flood water above was actually running from in front of the garage, and up the hill over 200 feet from where I took that picture. The water all was flowing into picture #1. Lucky for us, a little way out of picture #1 is where the pond is planned

The area next to the garage always has had a narrow flat walk way, and a small gradual hill to the flat area about 4′ higher. This area is pretty useless for storing anything bigger than a couple trash cans, or a work bench. Even the ATVs were too big to park alongside this area, and to get them around back had to drive up the hill, and then back down. Luckily the Kubota M59 tractor was about to change this!

This is the original picture. It’s somewhat misleading as it gives the idea that you could pull next to the garage if you were careful. The area is not nearly wide enough, and the slope picks up more than it looks since the ground is actually sloped more than the leaves would make it seem!

Getting the tractor in there to start doing work was going to be tough, and would require starting out with the backhoe to move dirt.

I actually started from the backside of the garage since I have plans to make a storage shed off the back of the garage, and getting the tractor to it even from the back access road was going to be interesting too!

This is a picture from the front of the garage looking back, just like the above original shots. The dirt pile that is barely visible in the back left is from leveling out behind the garage. All the dirt from this area was moved elsewhere. Surprisingly it was a LOT of dirt.

As it is seen now my kubota M59 tractor can park next to the garage, and I’ve even gotten my Ford F250 4 Door short bed next there too!

The biggest issue now is the entrance, and the pine tree (that is not going anywhere).

Stay tuned for updates

The garage probably has the original paint, and original T1 11 siding on it from 1985 and was maybe fixed up once or twice since. Needless to say it needed repair!

What started out with plans to sand, and re-paint the garage quickly turned into removing the old siding and replacing it with new siding.

This plan quickly faded when more than 75% of the nails were cracking off, or the heads were completely bending making it impossible to efficiently remove them, and the siding.  To add more problems to the mix the siding was actually tucked up behind the gutter 4″! This would require the gutter to be removed which was is impossible without destorying the first line of shingles due to the extra nails, hangers, and how it was installed.

New plan, use plenty of caulking, clean up the old paint, and lay the new siding on-top the old siding.

This of course was not without new problems such as correct overlap on the front and back of the garage, and making sure the new siding was sucked up flat against the old siding, and that all the edges were caulked as extra security from preventing moisture from finding its way between the panels. We also decided to use the pre-primed t1 11 siding since it was supposed to rain the next day, this helped us out too since the backside was also primed now too.

6 or so panels later, minor framing inside/around the windows, numerous nails, and wood screws coming out of the senco screw gun we were done!

The front and rear trim adjustment for overlap was not bad, and looks great! Looking at it now no one would ever  know it was doubled up.

The only thing left is to trim the door, prime (again), and paint.

The tarp was added to prevent any moisture from getting around the door, even though it was caulked a lot w/out the trim we are not taking any chances.