Quick Hit: Ice Breaking Methods

Something the lady of the house and I have accumulated a lot of experience with in the past few weeks is breaking up ice. Figured given our new found and rather unfortunate learning, we would share some of our tips.

1: Don't let it become a problem. Clear the snow promptly and you won't have to deal with this issue. This means having proper tools to do so. Don't do what we did, and have so many pieces of advice and information we didn't know what choice to make. That is known as the wrong choice.

2: Much like facing a line of guys with a gun, a frontal assault isn't a good option. In this case, that means going after 12" deep ice with a shovel or breaker bar. It works, eventually, but your hands and arms will have problems with you.

3: Salt works wonders, but you have to follow up quickly. If you don't the precious open air between the ice and the ground fills back in quickly. Also, if you live in the North East of the USA at the very least, your town has sand and salt you can get for free. Don't buy it! Find out where your town roads department is.

4: Breaking a series of small holes that reach down all the way to the ground works! The  holes don't have to be huge, just big enough for sun to definitely reach the darker colored ground under the ice. Keep them clear, and they will quickly (relatively) expand, and reduce your work for clearing the ice off.

5: If you can get under the ice, levering it off in sheets and throwing it off the side of the driveway is the work efficient way to go about it. The less straight on impact you're doing the longer you will last, and the more you can clear in one go.

6: Take breaks! Hacking your way through deep ice is exhausting, and hard on your hands and arms. I've found I am most efficient when I take a break for water and a few minutes rest every hour or so.

Cars and Homes

While not directly related to the topic of homesteading, it is most certainly related to our lives right now so today I'm going to talk about cars and how they fit into your life. Well, vehicles more to the point. Where we live, and probably where most homesteaders live you can't take a bus to get to and from everything. There are certainly exceptions to this rule, and the lady of the house and I know at least one. We on the other hand are on the opposite side of the spectrum. While we certainly don't have midwest level drives to get to anything, we have a 24.6 mile drive to work. Not quite a marathon, but you sure as hell can't walk it, and there isn't a bus within 14 miles of where we live other than the school buses that love playing hobb with our commute. So why is this part of our lives right now other than the obvious commute time? Simply, our one car between the two of us had a rather sudden and dramatic death.

No Post: Car Failure

There is no post today because I'm trying to find a new car since our car has died. Regular posts resume Tuesday.

The Costs of a Rose

Michelle in again, with a post just in time for Valentine's day.  While not about food, I thought it would be interesting to discuss another type of plant that often enters our lives on various social occasions--cut flowers.

Really, flowers in February. Anyone else thinks that's crazy?

Beyond their price tag, what is the cost of a rose?  If it's grown in your garden, far less than most roses of course, but of the approximately 4 billion flowers given in the US today, only a tiny fraction are from the US at all, never mind local.  It makes sense though, I mean, it's February.  What kind of rose grows in February?

Quick Hit: Are We Over Planning?

A question I have been asking myself a lot lately is if we are over planning. We've gone through a bunch of revisions on what and how we are going to be doing things. With rabbits we've settled on what we are doing and how, now we just have to have the driveway clear enough to get a bundle of 2x4s up so I can build the hutches. For chickens though we are in a revision phase since we have new information about a new style of raising chickens. Obviously with chickens and gardening, we can't do anything right now so that's ok. And the place I came to for are we over planning or not was, no. It's winter, this is the time for planning and preparation. If when spring hits we don't get any plants in the ground because we're thinking about where we want them too much, that's over planning. What we are doing now is working on what we can given the season. As city kids, the season has mattered to us mostly in how to dress and had very little effect on what we did other than whether it was school or not. With homesteading, it seems that what season it is will be dictating what we do in a lot of cases. Short post today because the result of a lot of thinking was a very small amount of writing. Hopefully next week we will some more substantive posts, depending on what planning and research I get done!

Food Politics and Homesteading

This would be a post probably best written by the lady of the house, but she is unfortunately sicker than I am so here we go.

One of the things that has been coming up somewhat regularly in this blog is food politics in one form and another, and I wanted to talk about why food politics matters on a homesteading blog. The big obvious answer is, homesteading is about food. There is more to it than that of course, but at the base it is true. Homesteading is about food, and because of that food politics is relevant to homesteading and this blog. In fact, in the USA at least, and I suspect in any nominally democratic country, by homesteading you are involved in food politics.

Discussion: Why Homesteading?

The lady of the house and I were talking about homesteading and how it was a great conversation starter. There seem to be quite a significant number of people who want to homestead, dream of doing it, or are at least conscious of it and interested. I was wondering why homesteading was such a broad ranging idea. I've been thinking about a few reasons I'm guessing it is and would love to hear what you all have to say.

* The American Pastoral Myth: The myth of the pastoral America seems like a big one to me. The myth of the pastoral America is something I should leave to the lady of the house to properly go in to, but it's prevalent.

* Increasing awareness of our failing resources: As this century continues, it is becoming more and more clear that without active conservation we will just not have the resources to live, much less prosper and I think awareness of that pushes people towards the self reliance Homesteading seems to offer.

* The cycle of simplicity: Children from rural towns move to the city to pursue their dreams where things are faster, brighter, and less simple. Children who have grown up in the complex city life with the overwhelming sounds and sights find their solace and homes where things have different complications and beauty. This wouldn't be a factor for everyone, but I'd be willing to bet it is for a good few.

* Ethics: For the lady of the house and I this is a big one. As we learn about the abuses associated with our food and luxuries we have wanted to move away from these excesses and live a life we are ethically comfortable with.

We've talked on this blog about why we do it, but why do you do it or want to?