Thread: BASIC LIST / SUGGESTED ITEMS FOR LONG TERM SURVIVAL

"The Farm" Old World Garden Farms

A blog about creating a little slice of heaven in the middle of Ohio

"The Farm" Old World Garden Farms

Composting Leaves – 4 Simple Tips To Making Great Compost With Leaves

Oct2
by oldworldgarden

The leaves are turning – and that means it’s time to start making great compost!

The leaves have begun to turn to brilliant shades of red and orange. Each day – a few more start their gentle decent from high atop branches down to the ground. For gardeners –it signals that its time to get those compost piles and bins filled up with huge amounts of leaves – and turn them into valuable, plant loving compost!

For us – the falling leaves and resulting compost we make with them are a great way to obtain huge amounts of ”black gold” – the affectionate name many gardeners give to compost for it’s value to a successful garden.

Compost makes all the difference in helping to grow healthy plants – we mix in generous amounts to the soil when we plant our vegetables, as well as anytime we plant trees, shrubs or perennials in the landscape.

Here are 4 simple steps to help you make great leaf compost:

Maple leaves are some of the best to use when making compost

1. The Gathering Process – How To Get The Right Kind Of Leaves – And A Lot Of Them!

Although leaves are plentiful this time of year – some are better than others.

Maple, Birch, Ash, Beech and fruit tree leaves are fantastic to compost.

Oak leaves on the other hand should be composted in moderation. The leaves of Oak trees tend to be more acidic – too many in the compost pile can result in compost that is less than ideal for most vegetable gardens. A good rule of thumb - if Oak leaves make up less than 10 to 20% of your total pile – you should be good to go.

If you are not blessed with trees on your property – take a drive around and find neighborhoods that are – it usually doesn’t take too long to find them.

You don’t have to look far to find leaves piled high at the curbside.

Many times, the hard work is done for you – with the homeowners already raking leaves to their curb or even bagging them up curbside for pickup. A simple asking of the homeowner can usually net you more than you can handle.

For us – a simple evening drive through our heavily wooded neighborhood can fill the old farm truck up with 50 or so bags of ready to go leaves. What takes a few minutes to collect will result in healthy plants.

Even better – when you see those landscape companies out collecting – ask what they are doing with their haul – many times they are just taking them somewhere to dump – and will gladly drop them off at your house. It’s a win-win all the way around!

2. Shred – Shred – Shred!
A push mower or garden tractor makes a great leaf shredder

Like anything you put into a compost pile – leaves benefit greatly from being shredded first. Whole leaves won’t compost quickly if left alone on the ground – and especially in piles where they can bind together and become a soggy matted mess.

If you don’t own a shredder – no worries. A regular old push mower or riding mower will do a great job of shredding your leaves into a fine chopped mix.

We gather so many that we just pile them up and take care of business with a riding mower. In about 15 minutes, we can reduce 25 garbage bags of leaves into a couple wheelbarrow loads of shredded bits. However you do it – shred those leaves – the finer the better!

Fresh cut green lawn clippings make an excellent source of nitrogen to add your leaf composd pile and get it cooking

3. Add a Nitrogen Source to Your Leaf Compost Pile

A pile of leaves left on their own – even if shredded – can still take over a year to break down. So to speed up the decomposition process – you need to add a source of Nitrogen to get your pile cooking.

One easy remedy – freshly cut green grass. Fresh cut green grass is a great source of nitrogen and mixes easily with shredded leaves. Chicken, rabbit or horse manure also are great sources to get that pile of leaves heated up and cooking. If you have no access to grass or manure – you can always purchase a ready-made off the shelf compost activator – but good old natural green grass or manure works perfect for us.

As for how much of each to add – just use another good rule of thumb – the 5 to 1 ratio. For every 5 wheelbarrows, buckets or bags of shredded leaves you add to the pile – mix in 1 wheelbarrow, bucket or bag of cut grass clippings or manure.

Just like your regular compost pile – turning your leaf compost pile once or twice a week will help your pile heat up and break down quickly.

4. Keep It Together, Keep it Turned, And Keep It Moist
If you don’t have compost bins or a large enough composting area – make a temporary one in the middle of your garden. It’s important to keep your pile together to allow it to heat up and decompose. An inexpensive 3 foot wire fence section, made into a circle. can become a perfect temporary composting bin for the winter time. The best part is that your making your compost right where you are going to need it – in your garden! And while that pile is “cooking” – don’t be afraid to add some of your normal compost pile trimmings to it. Coffee grounds, fruit peels and scraps and grass clipping can be added while your turning to make your finished compost even better.
Healthy Soil = Healthy Plants…and there is no quicker way to healthy soil than using lots of great compost.

If you want that pile to get heated up and compost even quicker – go out a few times a week and take a shovel or pitchfork and turn your pile. It doesn’t take great effort – especially with the light make-up of a leaf compost pile. However – turning that pile and mixing in oxygen gets it to heat up and break down quickly.

Last, make sure to keep the pile moist. You want it to be like the consistency of a damp sponge – if you get too many consecutive dry days – add a little water to your pile to keep it cooking strong.

So there you have it – some simple hints to composting all of those falling leaves. Now it’s time to get out there and start collecting!

Jim and Mary

Make sure to hit the “Like” button on our Facebook bar along the right to receive our DIY and Recipe updates each Tuesday and Friday.

Shared On: The Barn Hop, Transformation Thursday, Gnowfglins Simple Lives Thursday A Rural Journal , Little House In The Suburbs

Composting Leaves – 4 Simple Tips To Making Great Compost With Leaves « "The Farm" Old World Garden Farms

Body By Design

A lifestyle blog to get you into the health & shape you desire

Body By Design | The Truth About Diets, Food, Weight Loss, Fitness & Your Health

Blackstrap Molasses Health Benefits

Posted by admin
Filed under Diet, Health Benefits | 40 Comments



Blackstrap molasses is a sweetener that is actually good for you. Unlike refined white sugar and corn syrup (stripped of virtually all nutrients except simple carbohydrates) or artificial sweeteners like saccharine or aspartame (provide no useful nutrients and have been shown to cause health problems in sensitive individuals), blackstrap molasses is a healthful sweetener that contains significant amounts of a variety of minerals that promote your health (unlike agave: Is Agave Nectar a Health Scam?).

Where Does Molasses Come From?

Many people wonder what molasses is made of. Well, no secret ingredients here, molasses is a by-product from the process that turns sugar beet or cane into sugar.
Iron For Energy

In addition to providing quickly assimilated carbohydrates, blackstrap molasses can increase your energy by helping to replenish your iron stores. Blackstrap molasses is a very good source of iron.
Particularly for menstruating women, who are more at risk for iron deficiency, boosting iron stores with blackstrap molasses is a good idea–especially because, in comparison to red meat, a well known source of iron, blackstrap molasses provides more iron for less calories and is totally fat-free.

Iron is an integral component of hemoglobin, which transports oxygen from the lungs to all body cells, and is also part of key enzyme systems for energy production and metabolism. And, if you’re pregnant or lactating, your needs for iron increase. Growing children and adolescents also have increased needs for iron.

Just 2 teaspoons of blackstrap molasses will sweetly provide you with 13.3% of the daily recommended value for iron.

A Spoonful of Molasses Helps Your Calcium Needs Go Down

Blackstrap molasses is a very good source of calcium. Calcium, one of the most important minerals in the body, is involved in a variety of physiological activities essential to life, including:

• The ability of the heart and other muscles to contract.
• Blood clotting.
• The conduction of nerve impulses to and from the brain.
• Regulation of enzyme activity.
• Cell membrane function.
• Calcium is needed to form and maintain strong bones and teeth during youth and adolescence.
• Help prevent the loss of bone that can occur during menopause and as a result of rheumatoid arthritis.
• Calcium binds to and removes toxins from the colon, thus reducing the risk of colon cancer.
• Because it is involved in nerve conduction, may help prevent migraine attacks.

Two teaspoons of blackstrap molasses will meet 11.8% of your daily needs for calcium.
An Energizing Mineral-Dense Sweetener

Molasses is also an excellent source of:

• Copper
• Manganese
• Potassium
• Magnesium

Copper, an essential component of many enzymes, plays a role in a wide range of physiological processes including:

• Iron utilization
• Elimination of free radicals
• Development of bone and connective tissue
• The production of the skin and hair pigment called melanin.

Numerous health problems can develop when copper intake is inadequate:

• Iron deficiency anemia
• Ruptured blood vessels
• Osteoporosis
• Joint problems such as rheumatoid arthritis
• Brain disturbances
• Elevated LDL (bad) cholesterol and reduced HDL (good) cholesterol levels
• Irregular heartbeat
• Increased susceptibility to infections.

Using two teaspoons of blackstrap molasses to sweeten your morning cereal and the coffee or tea you drink during the day will supply you with 14.0% of the daily recommended value for copper.
That same amount of blackstrap molasses will also provide you with 18.0% of the day’s needs for manganese. This trace mineral helps:

• Produce energy from protein and carbohydrates
• The synthesis of fatty acids that are important for a healthy nervous system and in the production of cholesterol that is used by the body to produce sex hormones.
• Manganese is also a critical component of an important antioxidant enzyme called superoxide dismutase. Superoxide dismutase (SOD) is found exclusively inside the body’s mitochondria (the oxygen-based energy factories inside most of our cells) where it provides protection against damage from the free radicals produced during energy production.

Like calcium, potassium plays an important role in muscle contraction and nerve transmission. When potassium is deficient in the diet, activity of both muscles and nerves can become compromised. Potassium is an especially important mineral for athletes since it is involved in carbohydrate storage for use by muscles as fuel and is also important in maintaining the body’s proper electrolyte and acid-base (pH) balance.

When potassium levels drop too low, muscles get weak, and athletes tire more easily during exercise, as potassium deficiency causes a decrease in glycogen (the fuel used by exercising muscles) storage.

Simply by adding two teaspoons of blackstrap molasses to your morning smoothie, you can supply 9.7% of your potassium needs for the day along with a healthy dose of carbohydrates to burn.
Calcium’s balancing major mineral, magnesium is also necessary for healthy bones and energy production. About two-thirds of the magnesium in the human body is found in our bones. Some helps give bones their physical structure, while the rest is found on the surface of the bone where it is stored for the body to draw upon as needed.

Magnesium, by balancing calcium, helps regulate nerve and muscle tone. In many nerve cells, magnesium serves as Nature’s own calcium channel blocker, preventing calcium from rushing into the nerve cell and activating the nerve. By blocking calcium’s entry, magnesium keeps our nerves (and the blood vessels and muscles they enervate) relaxed.

If our diet provides us with too little magnesium, however, calcium can gain free entry, and the nerve cell can become over-activated, sending too many messages and causing excessive contraction. Insufficient magnesium can thus contribute to:

• High blood pressure
• Muscle spasms (including spasms of the heart muscle or the spasms of the airways symptomatic of asthma)
• Migraine headaches
• Muscle cramps
• Tension
• Soreness
• Fatigue

In two teaspoons of blackstrap molasses, you will receive 7.3% of the daily value for magnesium.
Switching from nutrient-poor sweeteners like white sugar or corn syrup, or from potentially harmful fake sweeteners like aspartame or saccharin to nutrient-dense blackstrap molasses is one simple way that eating healthy can sweeten your life.

Blackstrap Molasses Health Benefits

Know Your Stuff: The 110 Best DIY Tips Ever

For Popular Mechanics' 110th anniversary, we decided to do something special: We dived into our archives to find the 110 best, handiest, and most helpful tips ever printed in PM. It's more than a century of DIY wisdom. (You can read the introduction to the project here.)

Print - Know Your Stuff: The 110 Best DIY Tips Ever - Popular Mechanics

18 December 2008

Kentucky Bourbon Balls


Today I finished the Bourbon Balls I promised many months ago. They were a long time coming. I put off making them and then never found the recipe I was looking for, the one I tried some years ago that made a creamy centered Bourbon Ball like the ones from Rebecca Ruth Candies.

I did find a recipe for chocolate dipped Bourbon Balls filled with crunchy pecan bits. It came from "The Bourbon Book," a book I bought in Bardstown, Kentucky many years ago. I made them and, though they are quite delicious, they failed to satisfy as they were not quite what I was looking for. Finally I gave up looking through my files and cookbooks for that one particular recipe I remembered and began to search for something similar on-line.

Finally I turned up a recipe that sounded right. At Chowhound I found a recipe for Kentucky Style (Rebecca Ruth) Bourbon Balls. Knowing the writer was satisfied with this recipe for that same luscious Kentucky confection that I craved, I gave it a try. The result was just the thing I was looking for: butter soft, sweet and creamy with a distinct bourbon bite. Enrobed in dark chocolate and topped with a fresh pecan half these Bourbon Ball were a perfect taste of home.


Kentucky Style Bourbon Balls
from Chowhound.chow.com

1/2 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
3 1/2 cups powdered sugar
5 Tablespoons bourbon (Chowhound recommends Knob Creek brand)

Combine softened butter and powdered sugar until smooth.

Add bourbon and mix until incorporated.

Refrigerate the mixture for 1 hour.

Form the buttercream into 1 inch balls and place on waxed paper. Refrigerate until firm.

Transfer buttercream centers to a Ziploc freezer bag and freeze for several hours or overnight.

Dip in chocolate coating. (See Below)


Old Kentucky Bourbon Balls
adapted from "The Book of Bourbon", p325

1/2 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 lb confectioners' sugar
3 Tablespoons bourbon
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup finely ground pecans

Combined softened butter and confectioners' sugar until smooth.

Add the bourbon and vanilla and mix until incorporated.

Add the nuts and mix thoroughly.

Roll the candy into 1-inch balls. Set in refrigerator until firm, then transfer to a Ziploc freezer bag and place in the freezer for a few hours or overnight.


Chocolate Coating
(for either center prepared above)

4 to 6 ounces semisweet chocolate
30 -50 whole pecan halves, for garnish

Place a toothpick in each bourbon ball, sticking the toothpick into the center.

Melt chocolate in a small bowl in the microwave or a double boiler. Mix and heat until smooth.

Working quickly, dip the bourbon ball centers into the chocolate one at a time. Tap the toothpick against the side of the bowl to shake off excess chocolate. Set the coated bourbon ball on waxed paper covering a baking sheet or pizza pan. With another toothpick push the bourbon ball gently from the toothpick and cover the spot where it was with a pecan half.

When all bourbon balls have been dipped allow them to rest until set. (To speed the process the pan of bourbon balls can be placed in the refrigerator.) When set, transfer the candies to a holiday tin or other storage container.

Posted by Lisa at Thursday, December 18, 2008

My Own Sweet Thyme: Kentucky Bourbon Balls

My Own Sweet Thyme

Home Fire-Safe Checklist/Defensible Space, by Matthew Stein, P.E.

Fire Statistics

The following statistics from the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) are for fires in the USA in 2009:

• There were 3,010 civilian deaths from fire, 2,565 of which occurred in the home.
• There were 260 civilian deaths from motor vehicle fires.
• Only 105 civilian fire deaths occurred in non-residential structures.
• US fire departments responded to an estimated 1,348,500 fires resulting in an estimated $12,531,000,000 in property losses and 17,050 civilian injuries.

In general, fires cause more loss of life and property in America than all natural disasters combined. Every year, fires are responsible for more loss of life, limb, and property in the USA than either hurricane Katrina or the destruction of the World Trade Center on 9/11! Statistically speaking, the easiest and most cost effective way to reduce the chances that you, your home, or your family might suffer great loss in a future event, is to improve the fire safety of your home, and the fire awareness of your loved ones.
With the record breaking heat, drought, and fire storms of the summer of 2012, most of us want to do what we can to improve the chances that our home will survive a local wildfire. Creating a “defensible space” is one of the first set of tasks that a rural homeowner or renter should do.
Creating a Defensible Space My buddy Jim Bolton, an experienced Reno fireman, tells me that when they enter a neighborhood, they take mental notes about which homes have maintained a defensible space and which have not. They don’t waste their time focusing on homes without a defensible space, but spend their time defending homes where they stand a decent chance of success, while keeping a watchful eye on nearby flames. These are brave guys, risking their necks where most of us would not go, but they have wives and kids so when a vicious fire storm gets dangerously close, they simply have to leave the neighborhood and let nature take its course.
• Clear dead brush from property and trim tall weeds short.
• Clean rain gutters and roof valleys of all dead leaves and pine needles.
• Place smoke detectors in all bedrooms, hallways, kitchens and at least one on every floor of your home.
• Put fire extinguishers in kitchen, garage, and workshop areas.
• Inspect and chimney sweep chimneys and woodstove pipes annually to prevent creosote buildup. Creosote is a black greasy gooey layer that is combustible, and is a common byproduct of incomplete wood combustion. Chimney fires destroy many homes each year.
• Store flammables (gasoline, kerosene, oily rags, paint thinner, etc.) in approved flame-resistant containers and away from living areas. Garage areas should have one-hour fire-wall code-approved construction (typically ?-inch sheetrock wall covering, or better).
• Clear ground of pine needles, dead leaves, etc. Rake them once in the spring and let them fall in the fall. Remove dead vegetation and debris.
• Thin out thick stands of shrubs and trees to create a separation.
• Remove “ladder fuels” like lower tree branches and shrubs underneath trees to keep wildfire from climbing and spreading. Prune all dead limbs from trees.
• Plant “green zones” of moist, fire-resistant plants that will act as a barrier, and not fuel for fires.
• Swimming pools, ornamental ponds, etc., provide extra water reserves for fighting fires, and may be tapped by either fire trucks’ onboard pumping systems or lighter-duty homeowner firefighting pump systems.
• Consider installing fireproof window shutters that will help prevent the heat of an approaching a firestorm from shattering your windows or transmitting enough radiant heat to ignite items inside the home.
• Your house number should be clearly visible from the street for identification by emergency vehicles.
Additionally, in rural areas it may be a smart idea to purchase a high-volume gasoline-powered home fire-fighting pump. Gel systems have the capability to get the most out of limited water supplies, and the sticky gel is a fire resistant gooey coating that provides much longer lasting protection than a simple water spray, when applied to walls, decking, and roofing.

About the author: Matthew Stein is SurvivalBlog's Back Country Editor. He is a design engineer, green builder, and author of two bestselling books: When Disaster Strikes: A Comprehensive Guide to Emergency Planning and Crisis Survival (Chelsea Green 2011), and When Technology Fails: A Manual for Self-Reliance, Sustainability, and Surviving the Long Emergency (Chelsea Green 200. Stein is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where he majored in Mechanical Engineering. Stein has appeared on numerous radio and television programs and is a repeat guest on Fox News, Coast-to-Coast AM, Alex Jones’ Infowars, Vince Finelli’s USA Prepares, and The Power Hour. He is an active mountain climber, serves as a guide and instructor for blind skiers, has written several articles on the subject of sustainable living, and is a guest columnist for the Huffington Post. His web sites are www.whentechfails.com and www.matstein.com

Home Fire-Safe Checklist/Defensible Space, by Matthew Stein, P.E. - SurvivalBlog.com

Sunday, October 14, 2012

Stay Warm in a Fire Bed Picture Step By Step Tutorial

http://www.popularmechanics.com/home/how-to-plans/woodworking/step-by-step-guides-offbeat-diy-projects-8

http://www.non-hybrid-seeds.com/