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February 14th and 15 is the NOFA Winter Conference in Randolph Vermont. It looks like it's going to be really informative for any of us SS people. The hard part will be picking and choosing which workshops to attend. I'm not 100% sure I'll be able to go yet, but I really hope I'll be able to...

So I'm pretty darn proud of my progress in the bread baking department, but one problem that I'm running into often is that my dish towels are sticking to the dough when it's rising and if it happens in the second rise, when I peel off the dish towel, it flattens the loaves. :he What am I doing...

Okay, someone in another post joked (half-joked?) about the possibility of using goat berries in their pellet stove which reminded me of an article I read a really long time ago about using dried bricks of livestock manure in the woodstove. I love the idea and would love to try it but I lack...

It seems like from a lot of postings lately, many of us are starting to feel the effects of the poor economy right now. While we all need to be able to commiserate with each other and comfort each other, I thought perhaps a thread dedicated to actual things we did on a given day, in order to...

I don't know what in the world made me think of this, but if you have any friends of family with a great (aka dumb!) sense of humor, you could do what my funny dumb (and I mean that in the kindest way) family did. My dad and his brother are kind of known as the 2 comedians of the family, and I...

This was my first year canning, and I was wondering about jars sealing and the whole pinging or popping thing. Here's my 2 questions: 1) I canned a few jars of peaches earlier this season, and not a single one pinged, but all the jars appear to be well sealed (no flexing lids, tryed pulling...

I'm in the middle of making apple pie filling for canning and I just discovered that I don't have enough lemon juice. I need 3 TBS, and I probably have about 1 1/2. I'm guessing I need this for the acidity. The only substitutions I can think of is lime juice, or apple cider vinegar. What do...

I've read both here and on BYC about canning apple pie filling. This sounds great, but my Ball Blue Book doesn't have a recipe for this. Can someone please post their recipe, and also, can this be water bath canned, or does it need a pressure canner?

I just wanted to mention that I bought a crock-pot 2 weeks ago, after someone (patandchickens I think?) suggested it in one of my postings. What a great suggestion that was! I've only made 2 recipes with it so far, vegetarian chili and vegetarian Irish stew and wow! Both came out so good, and...

DH and I are planning on purchasing a woodstove hopefully within the next year. I recently saw some advertisements for wood cook stoves and it got me wondering if that wouldn't be a good idea. Do any of you use a wood cook stove? Of course we'd keep our electric stove for the warm months, but...

No really, I can't. I'm not speaking as an addict here, I just hit logout about 5 times and I'm still logged in. Anyone else having this problem?

If you haven't already heard about this, I'm sure you will. I don't entirely understand if this applies to food sold in the US or not. I get the impression that no one is really sure yet. Regardless, I thought I should pass this along in case any of you have a bowl of M&M's or Oreo's sitting...

Who on this board is truly (close to 100% anyway) self-sufficient? Meaning, are you so self-sufficient that you do not work outside the home at all? Or even, if your spouse does work outside the home, are you able to save so much money living self-sufficiently that you yourself don't need to...

Can anyone recommend some good self-sufficiency/homesteading (or semi-homesteading) type books? I think there are a lot out there, but I'd love to here some people's suggestions. Thanks!

Hi everyone! This is my first time posting on the sufficient self forum, but I recognize quite a few of your names from BYC. I'm so glad this forum is here since so often, when I wasn't suffering a chicken emergency, I wanted to talk and ask questions relating to self-sufficiency. Which...