Homesteading

The urban homesteading movement got a huge symbolic boost this spring when the first family installed a 1,100-square-foot vegetable garden at the White House. Poultry is the natural next step in the sustainable back yard; chickens produce eggs, devour kitchen scraps and add manure to the compost pile.

"Chickens are America’s cool new pet," said Dave Belanger, publisher of the magazine Backyard Poultry. When he launched it three years ago, "we were thinking 15 to 20 thousand" subscriptions, he said. The print run for the bimonthly is now 100,000.

Belanger’s magazine is published in Wisconsin, where five years ago chicken activists in Madison succeeded in getting the city council to reverse a ban on chicken coops. Madison’s ordinance is typical of other cities’. You can raise chickens for eggs, not meat; they must be enclosed in a coop or run; and it’s strictly a hen party: Roosters who crow day and night are prohibited.

In Baltimore, you can keep up to four hens (no roosters, ducks, geese or, darn, ostriches), in a coop no closer than 25 feet from a neighbor’s residence. A one-time fee of $60 is required for the permit.

Source/Full Story:   washingtonpost.com

Each and every family should strive to become a fully functional economic unit in itself. What this family is doing is returning to the practice of becoming producers, and not simply consumers. In good times or bad, this is the best way to go…and you don’t need 40 acres to do it.

When the economy started to squeeze the Wojtowicz family, they gave up vacation cruises, restaurant meals, new clothes and high-tech toys to become 21st-century homesteaders.

Now Patrick Wojtowicz, 36, his wife Melissa, 37, and daughter Gabrielle, 15, raise pigs and chickens for food on 40 acres near Alma, Mich. They’re planning a garden and installing a wood furnace. They disconnected the satellite TV and radio, ditched their dishwasher and a big truck and started buying clothes at resale shops.

“As long as we can keep decreasing our bills, we can keep making less money,” Patrick says. “We’re not saying this is right for everybody, but it’s right for us.”

Hard times are creating economic survivalists such as the Wojtowicz family who are paring expenses by becoming more self-sufficient.

Source/Full Story: USATODAY.com

Last fall we built a cold frame – nothing fancy, just some plastic and stakes – and put it over parts of our then empty garden beds, sowed a few test crops, and sat back and waited.  Now that March is almost over, we were able to harvest a good amount of spinach that lay dormant through ice and snow and started growing as soon as the sun warmed everything up.  It’s not like our last frost date is anywhere in sight yet, in fact, we have had some snow very recently, but cold weather crops are not bothered by this, it would seem.

We will continue the experiment with other cold weather crops like salad, radishes, brassica and the like, and will see what comes of it.

With the recession in full swing, many Americans are returning to their roots — literally — cultivating vegetables in their backyards to squeeze every penny out of their food budget.

Industry surveys show double-digit growth in the number of home gardeners this year and mail-order companies report such a tremendous demand that some have run out of seeds for basic vegetables such as onions, tomatoes and peppers.

"People’s home grocery budget got absolutely shredded and now we’ve seen just this dramatic increase in the demand for our vegetable seeds. We’re selling out," said George Ball, CEO of Burpee Seeds, the largest mail-order seed company in the U.S. "I’ve never seen anything like it."

Gardening advocates, who have long struggled to get America grubby, have dubbed the newly planted tracts "recession gardens" and hope to shape the interest into a movement similar to the victory gardens of World War II.

Those gardens, modeled after a White House patch planted by Eleanor Roosevelt in 1943, were intended to inspire self-sufficiency, and at their peak supplied 40 percent of the nation’s fresh produce, said Roger Doiron, founding director of Kitchen Gardeners International.

Source: news.yahoo.com

Think Non-Electric tools and appliances, and communications the old fashioned way, with paper and pencil and perhaps visiting friends and family…and be armed.

Source: FOXNews.com

A new study from the National Academy of Sciences outlines grim possibilities on Earth for a worst-case scenario solar storm.

Damage to power grids and other communications systems could be catastrophic, the scientists conclude, with effects leading to a potential loss of governmental control of the situation.

The prediction is based in part on a major solar storm in 1859 that caused telegraph wires to short out in the United States and Europe, igniting widespread fires.

It was perhaps the worst in the past 200 years, according to the new study, and with the advent of modern power grids and satellites, much more is at risk.

“A contemporary repetition of the [1859] event would cause significantly more extensive (and possibly catastrophic) social and economic disruptions,” the researchers conclude.

Full Story

Technorati Tags: Appliances, Communications Systems, Economic Disruptions, Electric Tools, Fires, Governmental Control, Power Grids, Repetition, Satellites, Solar Storm, Storm Damage, Telegraph Wires

…but is it too little too late? Click the link to read the full story, and don’t be satisfied by the reading alone. Do something positive and practical, especially if you have a wife and children to care for.

‘The Archers’ brings the idea of a self-sufficient community to the fore – Telegraph

World shortages of petroleum and the belief that supplies will become too scarce are driving some to seek an oil-free lifestyle. As ‘The Archers’ brings to the fore the idea of a self-sufficient community, Rowena Mason asks whether this new movement is the product of panic or a common-sense solution.

The petrol pumps are dry, the supermarket shelves are bare and family cars sit uselessly in driveways. Faced with a national shortage of oil, the comfortable lifestyles of middle-class people are threatened by an austerity not seen since the post-war rationing of the early 1950s.

Richard and Karen Hathway with Sugar, one of three lambs they reared
Richard and Karen Hathway with Sugar, one of three lambs they reared as part of their sustainable lifestyle

This is Britain in 2012, according to 54?year-old Richard Hathway and his wife Karen, who live in a family home in a sleepy Worcestershire village. They are convinced the country is heading for the worst oil crisis it has ever known, so this year they have decided to change their lifestyle for good.

The couple are now well on the way to making their lives “oil-proof” from the energy shortages they believe are inevitable. The biggest change is disconnecting their house from the mains (known as going “off-grid”), but they have also bought five acres of land for growing vegetables, chickens for eggs and meat, goats for dairy products and a generator for emergency energy.

“In four or five years’ time life is going to get so much harder,” says Mr Hathway, whose plans for the miniature farm include wind power and a rainwater butt. “So it’s going to be very important to grow your own vegetables when the supermarkets stop being able to import. People will start stealing fuel – it could even lead to looting.”

The Hathways are part of an increasingly vocal movement of “new survivalism” taking hold among ordinary, rational people, who have started to panic about the future of a Britain unable to source enough energy. Many are worried about the theory of “peak-oil”, believing that the world’s oil extraction has peaked and the precious commodity will soon be too expensive for everyday use. What would happen, they ask, in a world where oil becomes scarce? Would your family be able to survive an energy famine?

“Survivalism” refers to a trend, seen during the Cold War of the 1970s, to bulk-buy in preparation for chronic shortages of essential goods or impending nuclear doom. The original frenzy was sparked in Britain by the Middle East oil crisis of 1973, which led to a serious bout of panic-buying of petrol that emptied garages of fuel.

Interesting story, from Reuters

With energy prices going through the roof, an alternative lifestyle powered by solar panels and wind turbines has suddenly become more appealing to some. For architect Todd Bogatay, it has been reality for years.

When he bought this breezy patch of scrub-covered mountaintop with views to Mexico more than two decades ago, he was one of only a few Americans with an interest in wind- and solar-powered homes.

Now, Bogatay is surrounded by 15 neighbors who, like him, live off the electricity grid, with power from solar panels and wind turbines that he either built or helped to install.

“People used to be attracted to living off-grid for largely environmental reasons, although that is now changing as energy prices rise,” he said, standing in blazing sunshine with a wind turbine thrashing the air like a weed whacker overhead.

Spry and energetic, Bogatay makes few sacrifices for his chosen lifestyle. He has a small, energy saving refrigerator, but otherwise his house is like any other, with satellite television and a computer with Internet service.

“Electric and gas are going to skyrocket very soon. There are going to be more reasons for doing it, economic reasons,” he said.

Bogatay and his neighbors at the 120-acre development are among a very small but fast-growing group of Americans opting to meet their own energy needs as power prices surge and home repossessions grow.

Once the domain of a few hardy pioneers, the dispersed movement is now attracting not just a few individuals and families, but institutions and developers building subdivisions that meet their own energy needs.