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Having farm animals provides many benefits. However, along with the fleece, the milk and the eggs, we also have a LOT of flies. Just sitting on the porch can become a trial. This spring, I am going to try using essential oils as a deterrent. From wikihow.com... Tired of fly sprays and the unwanted chemicals they contain? Are you constantly being bothered or bitten by unwanted pests in your own back yard? There are some very easy solutions to keeping flies away from the outdoor dining area, and you can do them all yourself. Read on for some helpful tips and hints! Clean out a small tin with a lid. This will be the "home," so to speak, for your repellent. Take a clean piece of cloth or a small piece of dish sponge able to fit into the container. Saturate it with one of the following oils (after it has been diluted appropriately, see Tips): Lavender oil - lavender is considered to be particularly effective against flies Citronella oil (dilute with water first) Eucalyptus oil (dilute with water first) Pennyroyal oil (dilute with water first) Peppermint oil (dilute with water first; likely more effective against mosquitoes but also considered to work against horse-flies. Lemongrass oil (dilute with water first) Place the cloth in the tin and shut the lid. Allow to sit for 24 hours. Use as needed. Whenever you need to use the tin, remove the lid and place on the entertaining table. Make as many as you wish to put around the entertaining area to deter flies. Replenish the oil after each use; once open to the air, the strength weakens and needs to be topped up. Read other tips about using herbs and essential oils for insect repellants at WikiHow - How to make natural repellents with essential oils. Raw milk; very few things these days ignite such a firestorm of debate in circles of those who are concerned about getting the very best foods for their families.
Why? Some feel that drinking milk without pasteurization endangers the health of people needlessly, others feel that all the good things about milk are destroyed during pasteurization. My opinion is that people should be able to eat and drink whatever they want. Is it not up to the individual to determine if there is a risk, or not, in drinking raw milk? Or a risk to their health when consuming anything else, for that matter? We have many agencies and inspectors, and yet people still get sick and/or die from eating spinach, or tomatoes, or beef, or eggs, heck even cantalope, that have been tainted with one thing or another. What we eat and drink for sustenance is the most basic human endeavor. Not everyone can own dairy animals, so rely on their neighbors who can. Many states, and even the federal government, are now involved with raids and arrests of those who sell milk to people who want it. That fact is unfathomable to me. Where do you stand on this issue? From Misty Morning Farm in the beautiful Virginia countryside, here is Adam and Faith Schlabach's story about how their family decided that raw milk was best for them. People ask me why we drink raw milk. I will tell you our story. Adam and I grew up drinking raw milk, he grew up Amish and they almost all drink milk right off of the farm, (yikes, and they’re still alive! and we were poor with 5 children and more land than money. I drank raw milk until we moved at the age of 13. We had a wonderful smaller type Jersey. When we got married we did not know the value of grass-fed dairy, let alone raw, so we did not make any attempt to obtain it. In fact, Adam being very much into healthy eating, believed that we should not drink milk at all. There was a belief within health circles for a long time that milk was not good for you and that it would cause all kinds of problems such as lactose intolerance, congestion, mucous, emotional volatility, etc. Amazingly, no one caught on that all those symptoms seem to arise from pasteurized, homogenized milk, not raw grass-fed milk. In our personal family we had three who couldn’t drink milk, or so we thought, for over 15 years. One would get very phlegmy and congested, one would get very volatile, (He was an easy going guy until he drank milk and the next day he was a bear! We had a joke in our house that if he drank milk today, he went to work with his Dad tomorrow, and our daughter was lactose intolerant. In fact, it took her three months or so before she would even try one sip of raw milk. In my case, I could not drink milk with bovine growth hormones but seemed to “tolerate” store milk without the hormones. About eight years ago, we learned thru the Weston A Price foundation (please please peruse their site and bookstore, (it will change your health!) that it was probably not the milk itself but what we were doing to it. So we visited a neighboring state and a friend gave us three gallons of raw milk. Surprise surprise! We could drink it. I cannot tell you the amazement of discovering that. I am still not over the wonder of it. I made raw milk ice cream the other day! I wish you all could have come over for a bowl – it WAS amazing and I didn’t feel one bit guilty. Since then, my daughter’s cavities which she could not get under control although taking extremely good care of her teeth and eating VERY little sugar, are under control. In fact, she has not had a new one since drinking raw milk. We feel healthier, stronger, and need less sleep. My joints got dramatically better as well. And best of all, we can now have ice cream. Did I say amazing!? I honestly cannot find words to express the goodness we receive out of having all the raw milk products we can use. Can you imagine making your own ice cream, yogurt, kefir, sour cream, cream cheese, cultured butter, 100′s of cheeses, AND raw whey to make lacto-fermented foods for all the probiotic benefits? Read the rest of their story, and see their beautiful cows and homestead, at Misty Morning Farm. One of things that I really, really need here to grow the amount of food that I would like is a greenhouse. I have looked at so many, and they are usually incredibly expensive. My building skills are rudimentary at best, but this one I think I can not only build, but also afford.
From http://bepasgarden.blogspot.com/2011/03/building-greenhouse.html, take a look at this nice 6' x 8' greenhouse. If the price is accurate, I could build one to grow greens for the animals too. This little tool is one of the coolest survival tools I have ever come across. In my opinion, every glove box should have one of these, especially on road trips.
Adventure Medical Kits SOL Origin Survival Tool 10 Weeds That Heal (from http://www.thereadystore.com) was a fairly popular post, so here is a companion, 10 Herbs That Heal. Go eat some plants!!
When choosing a property to buy for a new homestead, water is one of the most important things to consider. If you plan on keeping livestock, growing a garden, or being self sufficient in any way, you must have a good source of water, preferably more than one.
We have a well that has a hand pump on it, but we also have two ponds that have trouble holding water during droughts. We also have a windmill that isn't hooked to a water source, so we want to drill a well for our windmill to keep our ponds full. This man has an interesting lesson on how to drill your own well. I haven't tried it yet, but we hope to do so in the spring. Have any of you ever used this method, and if so, what did you learn from it? HOW TO DRILL YOUR OWN WELL In our first year here, we purchased a flock of seventeen baby guineas, called keets. Cute as little feathered buttons, they are so tiny. As they grew, the guineas began to be more vocal. They grew some more, and were more vocal. By the time they were roaming around as adolescents, they were the most obnoxiously loud beasts I have ever been around.
All but one of that flock were eaten by owls and coyotes. So, last fall I bought ten more keets to roam the land this spring, eliminating ticks. After guineas are one year old, they make less noise. It is between three months and one year that they nearly drive me batty. Don't believe me? Here is proof! My young guineas, throwing a fit... |