Waste Not, Want Not

Outgrown clothing is still useful. Rugs and blankets can be made from strips or squares of material and scarecrows can be outfitted with old, outgrown clothing.
Consider using cloth baby diapers instead of disposables. (More on this later.)
Getting back to basics means using every part of whatever it is you have. Waste not, want not is the motto of those who live off the land, and ultimately off the grid.

Household Energy Savers

Laundry is one chore that can run the electric bill sky-high. But with a few tweaks, you can be doing your laundry for much less. If you aren't of a mind to hand-wash your clothing, you are not alone. But when it comes to drying your clothes, don't forget about Mother Nature. Rinse the clothes with one or two cups of vinegar before hanging them in the sun upside down to keep them from losing their shape. Vinegar keeps the clothes from becoming too stiff. To remove most of the wrinkles, simply shake out each article of clothing with a snap before hanging.

An umbrella clothesline only takes up a small amount of space and can be folded and removed after clothes are dry. Retractable clotheslines work well, also, as long as you have two buildings or posts close enough so that the clothesline can stretch to both. After drying the clothes, simply retract the line and it's as if the line was never there.

The Bartering System

Bartering has been used since the beginning of time. It's a great way to network and keep the channels between neighbors open and to keep your community prosperous. Each item you grow or produce on your property helps provide you with a bartering system. If you have too many eggs and your neighbor has too many fish, bartering is a great way to purchase what you need. You can also sell a one-hour fishing spot to neighbors in exchange for something they have that you need. The point to remember is that bartering items back and forth is a wonderful way to exchange needed goods without cash, leaving both parties happy.

Perhaps you have a sewing talent or a talent with wood. You can barter something you sewed for a chicken or a rabbit. Use your talent to make rabbit hutches, aprons or baked goods. Or, if you have the extra time, barter brute strength and time during harvest season. When you have a project that requires additional hands, you'll already have a crew in place.

Living off the Land

Rural living provides the perfect location for gardening. Take whatever space you have to spare and turn it into vegetable gardens and areas for livestock. Vegetables can also be planted in pots and hung to make use of every available space. Foods that cannot be eaten quickly can be saved for winter use. Foods that will be canned should be picked, washed and canned within several hours to preserve as much of the vitamins and nutrients as possible. Fruits and vegetables can also be dried and stored for some months in a root cellar.

When raising animals for food, choose animals that will not require additional store-bought feed and which can be housed easily.

Cattle:

One steer will provide you with enough meat for an entire year. If using cow chips, you'll be able to harvest plenty over the course of one summer.

Chickens:

Let the chickens run loose on your property, but make sure you have a chicken coop for them to return to each evening that is safe from predators. A few healthy chickens will provide more than enough eggs for a family.

Rabbits:

Rabbits can be kept in a hutch, which doesn't take up much space. Pick clover and grasses for them and offer an orange slice and salt block once in a while and your rabbits will be happy and healthy. Make sure they have plenty of hay in the winter months to pad their homes. In the summer fill old two-liter soda bottles with water and freeze to provide additional comfort. They'll love stretching out alongside a frozen bottle and cooling down as the heat index rises.

Fish:

Adding a fish pond to your property is another great way to provide protein. If you already have a pond on the property, chances are it is spring-fed and will be relatively maintenance-free. On occasion a pond will require dredging to remove a buildup of sledge and silt.

Take Advantage of Existing Waterways

If you already have a pond or a stream, take advantage of the Omega 3 possibilities. Dredging an area and diverting a small stream so that you have a body of water that remains year round or that can be drained every couple of years is ideal.
Purchase fish from a commercial fish hatchery. Take care deciding which kinds of fish you will stock together in your pond. Rainbow trout is a good fish for ponds but should not be mixed with brown trout, as they require different water temperatures.
Make sure you have enough room in the pond for minnow, crayfish and water plants, all of which are important to sustaining and growing trout.
Sunfish and bluegills also are not the perfect fish for a pond, as they reproduce quickly and require plenty of food in order to grow. Too many fish means only small fish to harvest and the possibility of fish dying due to lack of food.
Stock about 50 fish to every one acre of pond space, then allow fish two to three years for reproducing before you begin harvesting.

Getting Off the Grid

The energy grid, which the majority of the world lives within and depends upon, provides freedom at the same time as it robs recipients of freedom. If you live on the grid, you enjoy the freedom of available energy-for a charge-and without discrimination. However, in accepting to live on the grid, you also forfeit the freedom to be self-sustaining.
Surviving off the grid means more manual labor and a more concentrated effort on the part of those who attempt it, but along with the extra workload you get the satisfaction of no more electrical and gas bills, and a monumental feeling of accomplishment.
When getting off the grid, the first thing a homeowner will need to address is a viable source of heat. In this instance, you could learn from America's early settlers, who were in the same boat when winter arrived to their sod homes, so many years ago. They needed shelters that could endure the weather, and they needed some form of readily accessible heat. Wood was scarce, so they used what they could find, including cow chips. The thin, round disks of dried cow manure scattered about in pastures are free and burn hotter and quicker than wood. Since cow chips also produce plenty of ash, your stove will have to be cleaned out more often. And, yes, cow chips are a waste product. But before you turn your nose up at this idea, remember, it works, and when looking for self-sustaining methods, everything must be examined.

Heating Your Home Without Electricity or Gas:

Convert to a wood- or a corn-burning stove. Due to heat escaping up the chimney, fireplaces are not the perfect source for heating an entire home, but a fireplace will heat a room nicely. Corn burns hot and clean and is one of the newest sources of heating available. Remember, however, that the price of corn will rise along with the need. If you can grow your own corn, you may have the perfect setup. But, remember also that corn is a crop that must be rotated often as it depletes the ground, and corn must also be harvested and stored. Any time you store a food source you also have to be concerned with pests such as rats, raccoons and squirrels.
Add extra insulation to the house, especially the attic, where heat escapes, and around doors and windows or anyplace a draft is detected. Installsolar panels and tap into the sun's energy.

Creating Your Own Energy

Powering small appliances, such as a TV, cell phone, laptop or radio, can be done through the use of a bicycle, a small generator and a battery. Order plans to create a bicycle generator stand or order the bicycle stand already completed for you, then simply drop the back wheel of your own bicycle into the slot, hook up the battery and start pedaling. As the wheel turns, it spins the generator and the generator collects the energy you create. One hour of pedaling will produce approximately 200 watts of power.

Home Canning: Jam Labels

These are really cute canning jar labels designed by Ira Pavlovich. Use on your cans, jars and other containers you are using for your homemade jams (fruit preservatives): Cherry, Blueberry, Strawberry, Mix-berries, Apricot, Raspberry, Grape, Peach and Marmalade. Ira also draw the different fruits for the labels.. great work -:) For your personal use only.

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Home Canning: Canning Tips

These tips have been collected from the 1940s and 1950s, most are quite practical but one is truly a piece of old-timer wisdom that I couldn’t resist including (you’ll know which one when you see it!). I’ve also included a section “Canning Arithmetic” from that time period, it provides a guideline for what quantities to expect from several different types of fruits.

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• When making catsup, pour off the watery liquid on top of tomatoes after running through sieve. Your catsup will have a bright red appearance and cooking time will be cut in half.
• If your water bath canner does not have a rack, stretch an old rubber ring round the middle of each jar. This prevents the jars from bumping together and breaking while they are being processed.
• If you don’t have a rack, set extra jar rings on the bottom of the pot to keep your jars off the bottom.
• For foods which have been blanched for freezing, add ice cubes to the water in which they are to be chilled to hasten the chilling and retain the full flavor.
• Select only the perfect and fresh products. Imperfect and irregular shaped fruits and vegetables may be used in jams and preserves.
• Flaps cut from old unsealed envelopes can be used to label jars of fruit or preserves.
• To label jars of food, write on the jar while it is still hot with a bright colored crayon.
• One tablespoon vinegar to each quart beets will help retain their color.
• Use soft water for blanching and precooking peas; it helps to prevent cloudiness.
• Make sauerkraut when the moon is new until the first quarter, and the juice will stay on until it is used.
• That teaspoon off your metal measuring spoons makes a handy gadget for coring fresh pears, salads or desserts. Cut pears in half and then run metal teaspoon around the core. Presto, out it comes in a jiffy!
• When working with corn, place cob in angel food tube and cut off the corn. The corn will fall into pan.
• To keep pickles from shriveling, add one heaping tablespoon of alum to first salt water.
• Use only sack salt for pickles and kraut because other salt has been treated, thus will soften, discolor, and give unpleasant taste.
• When processing tomatoes, put onions and peppers in with them, this is grand with rice or macaroni and it is all ready to use.
• Add a few drops of food coloring to a jar or two of pears. The colored pears will provide that extra touch in holiday desserts or salads.
• To clean lids, put them in a pan. Cover with sweet milk, let stand till clabbered, then take out and wash. They are like new.
• Soak jars overnight in a solution of 1 cup vinegar to 1 gallon of water, this will remove scale and hard water film.
• A little lime kept on shelves where jellies or preserves are stored, will usually prevent formation of mold.
• A little borax sprinkled in empty jars will keep them sweet and fresh until needed again.
• Red fruit fades if cooked too rapidly at the start. It should be heated slowly until hot clear through, then finished quickly.
• Cook red fruits in aluminum or enamel to avoid their getting a bluish color. Do not use a chipped enamel kettle.
• After plums are washed, pierce each one to prevent the skin from bursting.
• When using glass jars, remove only one at a time from the boiling water bath.
• If you’re processing more than one lot a day, mark the lot number on each label for quality control.
• Protect packed glass jars from the light to help protect the food from fading in color.

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Arithmetic

If the jars and fruit don’t come out even when you are canning, better sit down and do some figuring before you start to can. Here are some tips to help you…

Apples: 1 bushel (50 pounds) cans 17 to 20 quarts
Apricots: 4 baskets or crates (1 bushel) cans 20 to 25 quarts
Berries: 24 quart crate cans 15 to 24 quarts
Grapes: 1 bushel (48 pounds) cans 16 to 20 quarts
Pears: 1 bushel (58 pounds) cans 20 to 24 quarts
Peaches: 1 bushel (50 pounds) cans 18 to 20 quarts
Pineapples: 15 pineapples yields 30 pints
Plums: 1 bushel (56 pounds) cans 24 to 30 quarts
Tomatoes: 1 bushel (56 pounds) cans 15 to 20 quarts