Eight Acres

 One of my favourite websites for soapmaking ideas is Jan Berry's The Nerdy Farm Wife .  I also found her Natural Soap Making eBook really useful ( see my review back here ).  And she recently published a couple of real books: 101 Easy Homemade Products for Your Skin, Health & Home: A Nerdy Farm Wife's All-Natural DIY Projects Using Commonly Found Herbs, Flowers & Other Plants  (affiliate link) And Simple & Natural Soapmaking: Create 100% Pure and Beautiful Soaps with The Nerdy Farm Wife’s Easy Recipes and Techniques  (affiliate link) Both are packed with useful recipes based on natural ingredients, especially herbs and botanicals.     There are two things I like to get from soapmaking books.  One is actual recipes that I can use and the other is ideas for ingredients that I might incorporate into new recipes.  I don't expect to make all the recipes in a book, but I do like to be inspired with some new ideas.  I like...

  Chicken tractors are an alternative to keeping chickens in a fixed pen.  Find out more about the pros and cons of chicken tractors.   My eBook A Beginner's Guide to Backyard Chickens and Chicken Tractors has more detail about chickens and chicken tractors.  At first we had a fixed pen When we first started with chickens, we had an old stable with a tack room, and converted that into a chicken coop, with long star-pickets and chicken mesh used to make a run.  As we got more chickens, we kept having to make the run bigger so they would have somewhere the scratch. It is amazing how quickly a few chickens can demolish a run full of grass.  We used to let them out to free-range before we went to work, but then a few things happened.  First the dog started helping herself to chickens (we’d come home to find a very “sorry” dog and a chicken is varying stages of being eaten).  Then the chickens started crossing the road and scuffing up the ne...

 A while ago I wrote that I'm not a prepper, but we do like to make sure we're prepared.  I mean I don't spend all day considering doomsday scenarios and on the lookout for zombies, but I do know that we are at risk from floods and storms some years and bushfires other years, so its good to have a bit of a plan in case disaster occurs.  This post is about how we plan to provide our own energy, food and water needs if SHTF, whether is for a few days (one year we had no power for three days following a summer storm) or indefinitely. The prepping tendency is possibly also because I grew up in New Zealand, where its normal to stockpile bottles of water and have a "bug out bag"!  I remember seeing instructions like the image below in the phonebook when I was a kid.  The NZ recent earthquakes are a good reminder to review your preparations. Energy supply in an emergency We primarily need energy for keeping food cool, cooking and heating the house in winter.  ...

 Every property is different and every person has different hopes and dreams for their property and different abilities to achieve them, too, but I think there are some general ideas from permaculture that could help you get started with any new property.       First, do nothing (or do very little anyway). That’s right, do nothing for months. Well don’t do nothing, but don’t jump in and start any major projects until you’ve spent some time observing your property. In permaculture, this is the “Observe and Interact” principle. You need to understand as much as possible about your property before you make any major decision. This is also a good time to use the principle “Use small and slow solutions” because they are much easier to change if you realise you missed something later on, compared to big and expensive projects which you will be effectively stuck with. Things to observe during this time Water flow, rainfall (when and how much), frost/snow times and ...