Long ago, when these mirror-like office lighting grids were born in a Chinese factory, they sighed and said, Well, we’re off for a boring existence. We’ll hang for thirty years with fluorescent lights above us and underpaid employees below, reflecting lights cheerfully, swinging down every year or so to have our bulbs replaced, gathering dust, …

We finally have high-speed internet, and we didn’t have to use a satellite to do it. So far we’re still in the testing stage, but this is a good thing. I have heard from very few rural dwellers who are desperately in love with satellite internet (two reasons: speed, latency and weather interference. Oh, wait, …

Well, practice makes perfect. And this, my friends, is as perfect as I’m likely to get making bread. Not to brag or anything, but I FAR prefer our bread to the sliced mystery you get at the grocery store. I like this stuff so much I’ve asked Jess to pack two slices (with homemade butter, …

Here’s one thing we do to live more frugally: Make do with good rejects. Here Jess snips out a zipper from a rejected garment that we don’t really need. It’s useless as apparel, but by saving the zipper, Jess can use the zipper in another garment elsewhere and save herself $6 and a trip to …

Wait a minute …Doesn’t canning happen with harvest? Like fall time? Yup. But it also happens whenever a surplus of empty jars coincides with a big sale on frozen chicken breasts. Jess had me pick up some meat on Monday, and when I got home on Wednesday there were 25 quarts of canned chicken (and …

When I was designing our house I referred frequently to the Not So Big House books by architect Susan Susanka. She notes the efficient use of living space on a boat, where space is so limited that not one square foot is wasted. At the design stage, our finances forced us to shrink our house …

Well, it’s the 2nd week of March and I’ve burned less than four cords of wood since the season began last October. The cost to me? Oh, a lot of entertainment last summer with chain saw and maul. The thrill of assembling the most Dr. Seussian wood shed in the county. The delight of a …

Jess and I are super-hyper-overachievers, and with the first half-dozen of our children we thought we could handle it all while our children sat around reading The Lightning Thief (where does he keep the lightning once he’s stolen it, by the bye?) or Harry Potter for the 17th time.
But with seven children, we can’t do …

Out at our place I find that we have to jury-rig things a lot. That is, figure out a way to make stuff work. (Or is it jerry-rig? Or rerry-jig? Depends who you ask, I guess.) Making do makes for a lot of ugly stuff, but maybe that’s the reason homesteaders build their hodge-podge empires …

I promised you Homemade Week last week, and I made good on that promise by staying home on Friday. So no post. Actually I wasn’t home much that day, having accepted an invitation to spend my day off first at the local high school career day, talking up my career (such as it is), and …