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It seems to me that if you want to attract new members, you need to include some of the topics that might interest newcomers, even if those topics are old and familiar (and thus no longer interesting) to you. If you've been raising goats for 20 years, a thread on goat herding/tending (or...

Those pills from the dermatologist are antibiotics and they do work pretty well. But you have to consider whether you're willing to risk a short term gain (clear skin) for a longer term resistance to antibiotics. I think it might be worth it for teenagers in their early teens. They are so...

I've read previously that ricotta is generally made from whey -- a way to recover some additional product from the milky fluid left after making other cheeses. But Ina's recipe just looked so simple that I thought I'd share it for those of you who have cows or goats. (I assume you can also...

I can't see the original picture, so I don't know what it showed. I've seen mason jars lined up on the windowsill at Christmas with strings of Christmas lights inside them. They look really pretty. I don't think I'd save chipped jars (although they'd be great for saving seeds), but I use...

I suppose if you had enough of them (but you'd probably need 50 or so), you could use them like the cardboard bricks that little kids play with. You might need to cut up a couple of boxes to patch the holes in the tissue boxes, but once the boxes were intact, they could be used to build play...

I watched Ina Garten make homemade ricotta cheese recently on the Food Network -- it was so easy! Her recipe uses kosher salt, which is less salty than regular salt. I don't know if that will make a difference in the recipe. I know some of you have milk animals, so I thought I'd share the...

That brings up something I've always wondered about. What do horse owners and horse boarders DO with all the manure that a horse produces? If you have to muck out a stall daily, that's a fair amount of straw and manure that has to be removed from the stable and put somewhere. You can only use...

Virginia and Maryland are both pretty expensive states. Have you considered West Virginia? There are no big cities there, which should bring down the cost of real estate. Here's one website that I found that has rural listings in your price range (although some are just raw land)...

Depending on the kind of fabric you're working with, you could make gift wrap bags or gift wrap cloths. The Japanese use gift wrap fabric as a way to reduce waste. Their technique, called furoshiki, is very eco-conscious: http://furoshiki.com/ If you have really sturdy fabric (and enough of...

Re: Potassium. Some other foods high in potassium besides the ones listed earlier in this thread: White beans, cooked -- 1004 mg in 1 cup Dark leafy greens (like spinach), cooked -- 839 mg in 1 cup Baked potatoes -- 926 mg in 1 average potato with skin Baked acorn squash -- 899 mg in i...

Thanks for the responses everyone! I live in a suburban area with buried power lines, so we've only had one power outage in 15 years that lasted more than half an hour. (Yes, I know we're lucky.) Having both canned and frozen my own home-grown produce, I found it so much easier to freeze...

I am just fascinated by the way you all are living. BarredBuff, how do you can chickens? I assume that you cook the meat first before canning it. Do you flavor it then, too? Is it packed in broth or water or something else? How long can you safely use it after it's been canned? And why not...

I went barefoot a lot as a kid and stepped on my share of bees. My mom used the mud pack method -- made a paste of backyard dirt and water and packed it around the sting. She'd put a sock over it and then I had to wait until the mud dried before getting my foot washed off. The mud pack always...

I don't ever expect to live self-sufficiently because we live in suburbia and have a small, shaded lawn. But I applaud those of you who can do it. Being able to raise your own organic food is such a healthy lifestyle (and the exercise to do it is good for you, too). Your food ends up cheaper...

What is clean eating? Does it mean avoiding processed foods?

I love this gift idea! Perhaps you'd get the jars back if you enclosed a tag that says, "Return these jars for a refill next year. :-)" We've given snack mixes, homemade cheese spreads with crackers, fruit breads and cookies as gifts in previous years.