Innholdsfortegnelse for January - February 2019 i Grit

For reasons I’ve never quite understood (having lived the first 45 years of my life in Seattle), I’ve always felt more at home in small towns. I was always drawn to traditional skills and crafts, always loved the idea of learning a trade or skill by means of an apprenticeship to a master and passing that on to someone else. And I’ve always leaned toward “old-fashioned” values and a simple life of hard work, outdoor chores, and hands-on learning, building, repairing, and restoring. So I suppose it’s no big surprise that in a world of kitchen machines and gadgets, I’m so enamored of the process of making bread with a few simple ingredients, mixing and kneading dough by hand, fermenting it in a cool corner of my kitchen, and then…

Moving livestock from one pasture to another should be a quick, efficient operation with no chance of animals escaping, no risk of injury, and no liability worries. That’s easy enough, except when you’re crossing a road. Wouldn’t it be nice to create a safe corridor for a livestock crossing? Our acreage is completely fenced, with gates connecting one pasture to the next, except for a small pasture that feeds into the horse stalls. This small pasture is separated from the rest of the fields by our gated driveway, and we needed to find a way to connect them. We already had a gate on one side of the driveway, but it was too long to fully swing open and create a passageway, because it would be blocked by the smaller…

During the winter months, my wife always makes sure that our bathroom closet is filled to capacity with packages of toilet paper. What’s the reason behind this humongous stash of Charmin? She simply wants to avoid another TP emergency. We endured such a crisis a few winters ago, and she doesn’t want a repeat performance. Those of us who live in the Snowbelt know that a whiteout winter could come at any time. A whiteout winter doesn’t involve just one particularly nasty blizzard that, like a door-to-door salesman, inflicts itself upon you for a short while before moving on. A whiteout winter is a winter that brings an endless string of snowstorms — months and months that become one long, white blur of frigid misery. I have a photo of…

MOTHER EARTH NEWS FAIR Best-Seller! 6-TRAY DIGITAL DEHYDRATOR Dry the season’s hunt or harvest for long-term preservation and snacking. Ideal for jerky, banana chips, fruit rollups, dried herbs, and more. Includes one netting sheet for drying herbs, seeds, and other small food items. Also features six 10-inch-by-12 ¾-inch trays, a 48-hour timer with auto shut off, an adjustable thermostat (100 to 160 degrees Fahrenheit), a digital display, and more. PLEASE ALLOW TWO WEEKS FOR DELIVERY. AVAILABLE FOR SHIPMENT TO US ADDRESSES ONLY. JERKY: THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO MAKING IT Make your own preservative-free jerky with the help of this guide! Get all the basics of making beef, venison, poultry, fish, and even soy protein jerky. Learn how to make a simple teriyaki marinade as well as easy gourmet recipes including…

In 1871, a national census of agricultural fences recorded more than 250,000 miles of stone walls in the northeastern United States alone — enough to wrap around the Earth 10 times. Two generations of farm laborers built most of these walls between 1775 and 1825 to keep in livestock and protect property lines, and also as a resourceful way to use a seemingly endless supply of stone that worked its way to the surface year after year. Many of these walls have long since collapsed due to time and neglect. Perhaps you have some on your own property. With a little knowledge and a decent amount of work, you can return them to their former glory. The following instructions are based on an intensive multi-day workshop I took at The…

Since moving to our property, our main source of all drinking, washing, animal, garden, and orchard water has been rainfall. We have no well, not because we wouldn’t like one, but rather because rainwater makes good economic sense in our dry region. Once the infrastructure of roofline, piping, and tanks are bought and paid for, it’s as simple as waiting — and often praying — for rain. Catching, Calculating, and Filtering Rainwater Water infrastructure is critically important. For that reason, we decided to hire out the work of putting up a roofline, a catchwater tank, and gutters before we even moved to our land. We drove south from Michigan to Texas during one of the driest summers in history, but just a few days before we arrived, 5 inches rained…

Anyone old enough to remember the classic Looney Tunes cartoons is familiar with Pepé Le Pew, the amorous French skunk in relentless pursuit of romance. In real life, skunks, which are about the size of a house cat, command deference from animals much larger in stature. Even bears give this mammal, which belongs to the Mephitidae family, a wide berth to avoid an encounter with a bad ending. Ironically, it’s the skunk’s confidence in its potent defensive weapon that gives this furry creature the swagger and charm portrayed in so many children’s stories. There are several species of skunks in the United States: hog-nosed, hooded, spotted, and striped. Hog-nosed and hooded skunks are found in the Southwest. The spotted skunk is found mostly in the eastern U.S. This includes the…

CREATIVE UPCYCLING My wife and I really enjoy your magazine, and we loved the DIY article “Potting Bench Plans” in the July/August 2018 issue. Connecting a faucet to a garden hose and using a 5-gallon bucket as a drain to reuse the water was such a genius idea, and we decided it was something we had to try. The article said that finding a granite countertop would be rare, and even if you did, it’d likely be too heavy to use. However, after a recent remodeling of our laundry room, we found ourselves with a perfect slab of granite to use for our project, as well as some cabinets to upcycle. With a lot of effort, we were able to get the granite outside in one piece. I then reframed…

We all have a taste for good food, but quality groceries can come at a high price. Whet your appetite with this money-saving advice: Purchasing bulk food is a highly effective way to cut expenses and eat locally. You may already shop the bulk department of your co-op or grocery store, but cutting out the storefront altogether can offer even more financial, environmental, and gastronomical benefits. Besides making your food shopping easier and less frequent, bulk groceries are often of higher quality than packaged supermarket products. And the money savings will wow you. Buying food in bulk may seem intimidating if you don’t know beans about it. We’ll walk you through the key steps of buying in bulk on your own from local farmers and, for even greater savings on…

You’re all set to start producing vegetables, turkeys, apples, or milk for sale. But exactly what you ultimately decide to grow — when it’s in season, how difficult it is to harvest or process, how perishable it is, and how challenging it is to transport — will greatly impact your ability to find a suitable outlet, and get you paid for your hard work. What you grow, when you grow it, how much of it you grow, and how long it will stay fresh are the four major factors that will forever impact your ability to sell your products. The more you can broaden or limit these variables — for example, extending your offerings year-round, or finding ways to reduce the transportation of your most perishable products — the greater…

Each year, millions of acres in the United States and Canada are scorched by wildfires. In recent years, the wildfire problem has gotten significantly worse as the fires have become larger, more intense, and more destructive. Fires have occurred in places previously believed safe. Lives have been lost, and the costs in damage and in fighting the fires have skyrocketed. By definition, a wildfire or wildland fire is an uncontrolled blaze that starts in vegetation and, at least initially, doesn’t involve structures. Wildfires become a great threat when they cross the so-called “wildland-urban interface,” thus endangering inhabited areas. In the summer of 2018, the Carr Fire in Northern California roared into parts of Redding, killing eight people and destroying more than 1,000 homes. In 2016, Fort McMurray in Alberta, Canada,…

Stubborn, obstinate, headstrong — all words that have been used to describe mules. And calling someone “mulish” or “muleheaded” has never been intended as a compliment. Mules have a reputation for being difficult to work with. Stories abound about mules simply refusing to work for their owners. It’s easy to regard such stories as evidence of mules’ unwillingness and laziness, but the truth is much more complicated. What exactly is a mule? A mule is a cross between a donkey and a horse — more specifically, a male donkey and a female horse. (A hinny is a cross between a male horse and a female donkey.) Horses have 64 chromosomes and donkeys have 62. The mule and the hinny both have 63, an odd number that renders them sterile —…