Mother Earth News is featuring this design and plans for a built in bed. A great space saver, the plans look to be versatile and adaptable to almost any space. Steve Maxwell writes:
Success with a built-in bed involves three main phases: creating a rough framework, establishing a mattress support surface, then adding decorative details and storage features. Take a close look at the illustrations below. They show the universal construction details necessary to make your built-in bed a reality.
NPR’s Megan Verlee reports on All Things Considered about a new kind of urban farmer.
City Folk Flock To Raise Small Livestock At Home : NPR.
If you wonder how to do this and keep the neighbors content, consider this:
But backyard farmers seem to have one ace in the hole for answering any local objections: bribery. Plenty of Brad’s eggs, for example, end up on his neighbors’ breakfast plates.
“I ask them every now and then if it’s bothering them and they say, ‘Oh no, it doesn’t bother us at all and besides, you wouldn’t mess with the one that feeds ya,” Brad says.
The people who work for the rural water association that supplies water to the area around Two Mile Ranch have had a rough beginning to the new year.
December 31, some of their equipment which helps purify water failed. Since then, they’ve placed a boil water advisory, and I imagine they have been working some long days to restore drinking water back to the clarity and condition that passes regulatory inspection. (Note the url links to their main site and may be replaced in the future when the water returns to normal.)
Water treatment plans can be compromised during bad weather or other natural disasters. In 1993, Des Moines municipal water plant was over run by flood waters, resulting in several days without water to the capital city.
For an off-grid farmstead, water comes from a private well, and the resident may collect a sample to be tested once a year or so. On grid water systems have regular testing and monitoring. So a trade off is being warned about a potential risk and worrying — or — not being warned, not knowing, and worrying.
In this part of the state, wells tend to be shallow-dug wells of 20 – 40 feet and are often more likley to be contaminated by ground water.
Wells cased with 36-inch diameter concrete tile are popular in southern Iowa where shallow wells tap groundwater deposits that often yield less than five gallons per minute. But leaky joints between tile casing segments at the top of the well can lead to bacterial contamination. Iowa State Extension
What’s the risk? In our case now, the problem is the water clarity and turbid water, as the report suggests, has a higher potential for contamination. In either case, I keep 3 – 4 gallons of bottled water on hand all the time — in the event of frozen pipes, or other issues.
The other interesting idea is how we came to know about the problem. I am probably like many people, and while I lok at lots of sources in the world wide web, I don’t typically visit the water associate web site. It was by chance I heard a radio news item about the advisory — often I don’t hear radio news. Just the same, I had noticed the water was a bit cloudy on New Years eve…….
What’s the best way to prolong the life of my Christmas cactus?
When the buds of a Christmas cactus look as if they’re about to open, make sure you water the plant regularly and keep it cool.
From The Old Farmer’s Almanac.
I am a fan of the writing of William Paul Winchester and his book A Very Small Farm
In it, he writes:
Coming home to the farm was itself the end of a journey. What is “home” if not that place? And the best evidence of having arrived is that I do not feel compelled to always be leaving.
–Which is just as well. it is impossible for a small farmer to be away for more than a few hours without making the most extensive arrangements with neighbors, and then worrying. It sounds easy enough– the instructions you’ve left for the letting the stock out in the morning, putting them up at night, for gathering the eggs and milking the cow–but there are subtleties no one could have dreamed who has not been a small farmer….
That is why people who come to the country seldom leave home. In a nation where every year one-fifth of the population changes its address and twice a day everyone goes somewhere, this seems inconceivable. But it is not inconceivable if you life on a small farm, and its not to be regretted.
And while I don’t have a cow to milk, nor livestock to be put in or out, I share Winchester’s passion to ‘stay put’.
All the same, I find that while building the cabin, surrounded by the dozens of unfinished tasks which have been left, purposefully, for another time, getting away has its advantages. A day away, watching a movie, makes returning home that much sweeter. The sunset is more vibrant, the cabin warmth more inviting, and the call of home more secure.
According to folklore, the Janaury moon gets its name from the month whe wolves howled outside of villages in hunger during January’s cold lean hunting season.
