Volcanic rocks? There's loads of folks around here who would love to just give them to you if you'd just come pick them up! A lot of folks around here don't have soil, they have lava rock to plant in. Things grow and there's tons of drainage, but "tilling the soil" is best done by a...
We would just roll newspaper around the bottom of a wine bottle and fold the edges over. When planting either rip the edges off or unfold them to let the roots out.
This year I just filled a plastic shoe box with potting soil and planted the seeds in it. For some reason, I didn't take...
We end up with a variety of mayonnaise depending on what they are for. If they will be part of a fruit salad, the oil used will be orange oil and sometimes lime juice instead of lemon. Sometimes wasabi instead of mustard, too, depending on what the final use of the mayo is. Toasted sesame oil...
Folks doing a "shears to garment" contest will dye their sheep first so if you see a colored critter out there it might be for a contest. They have to shear the critter (usually a sheep), prep and spin the wool and then make a garment out of their yarn. I'm not too sure of the details, but I...
There is also a book of the same name they did. Brilliant book, I've had it for years and read it periodically just because it's so fascinating. Didn't know there was a video series of the book until reading about it here!
Guess I'm kinda late planting the "fall" garden this year. Just got some beets, beans and lettuce in. Will get the sweet potatoes planted soon. Dunno what else to put in yet, just got the raised garden as a Christmas present. To some folks it may just look like bricks and dirt (some assembly...
This might be useful for folks growing gardens in the South: http://www.ctahr.hawaii.edu/site/ It's from the University of Hawaii at Manoa and they are pretty good at tropical agriculture. The site is kinda tricky to navigate, but there's tons of information there.
What size of garden are you planning or working?
When my garden was three quarters of an acre, I had a walk behind seeder, a riding mower which towed a 36" wide powered tiller, a multi-tine cultivator, various shovels and hoes and a backhoe which was just sheer over kill but a ton of fun to...
How did your parents sell the fruit before you took over? Was that method not working? Can you do a "U Pick" on the weekends? Advertise via Craig's List or something?
We have either one depending on how the potted Christmas tree is doing. Right now the "tree-in-training" is only about 14"tall and the other one got too big to bring inside so we have this lovely 4 tall artificial tree we got at a yard sale about a month ago. It's a great tree for $2. Came...
Take a basic white cake recipe and replace the liquid with lemon juice, that can use about a half dozen of 'em. We've got a tree that's loaded right now, too. There's usually at least one or two lemons out there but at the moment it's going crazy. I just fill up a big box or five gallon...
Unless you buy a lot of stuff at one time, the miscellaneous shipping costs are going to eat you alive. Offset against gas costs to get to town, of course, though so maybe the two will even out. We get a lot of stuff from Azure Standard since it can be shipped via ocean freight so it works for us.
Is there anything you can invest in which you will be able to use to make more money? An incubator, perhaps, to incubate eggs and sell chicks? Anything you can make and sell that will bring in more income, then you'd be able to invest that into something else to make money. Also, the more you...
Well, I have angoras and they even have four feet, but they are only rabbits, so do they still count?
If you are going to be doing any serious yarn making, a spinning wheel is just so much faster than a drop spindle there is hardly any comparison between them.
For the angora rabbit wool, all...
Someone gave me four Clun Forest sheep's fleeces last month and I just carded them and spun them "in the grease". After it was yarn, then I washed them in cold water and just a touch of shampoo to leave some of the lanolin in the wool. It was much easier than washing the whole thing. These...
There are a few companies who sell "carding cloth" but so far I haven't found one which will sell the replacement cloth for that much less than the cost of new carders. If anyone knows of a place to get inexpensive carding cloth, I'd be really interested to hear about it.
I've been using dog...