This article came from: Some Simple Living Resources at SimpleGreenLiving.com..

This article came from: October Walk at SimpleGreenLiving.com..

But I didn’t do a thing about it. Now, finally, I am losing weight and I am also working on the site. Writing is how I learn things.

This ties in with simple living and green living–and that is part of what motivated me to finally get going on a weight loss project. As I looked ahead, it seemed to me that shedding those excess pounds would be one of the best ways to keep my health at least as good as it is now, more likely better. That sure fits in with frugality and simple living!

If you want to lose weight, or have someone you love who does, do visit the new site. Here are some of the topics so far:

Is High Fructose Corn Syrup Worse Than Sugar? –The answer is yes! It’s got some effects on your metabolism that you don’t really want to endure.

How to Lose Weight Slowly and Keep It Off — Looking ahead, I’ll need this information and maybe you will too. Turns out, not really a surprise, that exercising is an important part of this.

Weight Watchers Reviews — What do people say about this popular program, both online and in local groups? It is highly rated. I don’t live near a local group or I would be interested. As for online, right now I am exploring some other websites about weight loss.

Rebounding for Weight Loss — I recently got a rebounder and it’s definitely good for health overall as well as for weight loss.

Sparkteens — A shoutout to one of the best websites for overweight or obese teens. It’s free too.

There will be a lot more articles up there soon! It’s my main project, and it’s keeping my own motivation high!

This article came from: Gotta Lose Weight! at SimpleGreenLiving.com..

The Small Scale Poultry Flock is divided into seven sections. In Part One, Getting Started, the first chapter is called “Why Bother?” and it proceeds to give a full answer, from the amount of joy they can bring you, to the contribution your own chickens and eggs bring to your ability to eat better, to the horrors of commercial chicken raising and the related food safety issues, including the  massive amounts of antibiotics and arsenic that commercial chicken raisers feed. He adds in Peak Oil and financial meltdown as further good reasons for raising your own chickens.

The next chapters in this part are titled

• The Integrated Small-Scale Flock
• Your Basic Bird
• Planning the Flock
• Starting the Flock

He integrates his chickens into the full range of activities of the Virginia homestead where he and his wife Ellen have lived for many years. As I read about his putting his flock into a greenhouse for the winter and how he used cover crops in doing that, I was thinking, well, that’s fine for real homesteaders but we don’t quite fit in that category. We just have half an acre and a busy life inside on our computers.

Then suddenly a light bulb went on. We live in high desert in Colorado, and I had already been envying the lush greenery everywhere in the numerous color photos in the book. Made me homesick for my growing up (sans chickens) in Maryland. I’d been wondering how our chickens would have a good life in our yard without totally denuding it of everything but the sturdy yucca plants. Hmm… cover crops….. hmmmmm…. a greenhouse… I was only to page 17 and he already had my imagination working! A good sign in a book.

The basic bird chapter explains all sorts of things about anatomy, behavior, molting, and the like. This would make great bedtime reading, as it is interesting but shouldn’t keep you awake the way gripping novels could.

Chapter 4, Planning the Flock, starts out with what Ussery says is one of the most common questions he gets from people thinking of starting a small flock. Is it necessary to have a rooster? His answer: the hens will lay just as many eggs without a rooster, just as women ovulate without men in their lives. (I did enjoy his dry humor throughout the book.) In many places you can’t have roosters because you have too many human neighbors who wouldn’t accept the noise. But if you can have roosters, he outlines some of the benefits.

He talks about flock size, giving a useful rule of thumb that you will get two eggs a day for every three laying hens you have. Spring and summer are the best times of year for eggs, and it slows down a lot in the winter. He touches here on the question of whether you plan to raise chickens for meat and buy batches of meat birds for your freezer or whether you will just be doing the necessary culling now and then from a flock you keep mainly for eggs. (Later he covers three ways to butcher your chickens and provides detailed photos on how to process the birds for meat.)

Next there’s a  useful discussion of the many different kinds of chickens you might want to get. Size (standard or bantam), eggshell color, temperament, whether for eggs or meat or both, and winter production of eggs are some of the topics here. My husband and I know we want some Ameraucanas (sometimes mistakenly called Auraucanas) for their colored eggshells and good temperaments, as we have had them before. But this section made me realize how many other interesting breeds there are out there. He comments that if you buy from an online hatchery, many of them will allow you to put together your order for some of this and some of that, even down to just one chick of a breed! Enticing.

This chapter also has a list of useful traditional breeds for small-scale flocks, divided somewhat arbitrarily he says, into layer breeds, meat breeds, dual purpose breeds, and game and other broody breeds. Another chart lists breeds worth conserving. Following these charts are his  comments on the breeds they have raised. I found this particularly interesting. Reading The Small Scale Poultry Flock  is like having an extended series of conversations with your favorite uncle who happens to know darn near everything about chickens!

Chapter 5 on starting the flock discusses the pros and cons of buying locally or from an online hatchery. Here I learned something that will change how I purchase baby chicks online. (Because they need no food or water for the first day or two or even three, they can be sent through the mail.) You can choose all females, all males, or “straight run,” which is roughly half and half. I had assumed that we would get all females but then — gulp — I read this on page 49:

Since the majority of hatchery orders are for pullet chicks only, it becomes impossible for hatcheries to sell the unwanted cockerel chicks–however many “cockerel specials” they offer. It is simply a fact of life in the business, therefore, that excess cockerels are killed, by the hundreds of thousands, by [3 different methods I won't go into here but at least 2 of them sound cruel--Zana]. The reader may well choose otherwise, but my choice–since learning that my pullets-only orders necessitate the treatment of living creatures like so much disposable garbage–has been to make straight run orders exclusively.

On the same page, he cautions you that if you do order straight run, most of the males will have to be culled, that is butchered, before they mature. You will not find it easy to give them away or to find someone else to butcher them for you. Death is part of life.

Part Two: Basic Care covers housing, managing the chickens’ manure, watering, pasture and the joys of electric fencing, and mobile shelters. One of the most interesting points to me in this section was the information that you need a lot of ventilation in the house, and that insulation and heat are either not needed or very minimally. It’s important to give your chickens access to the outdoors, for their well being.

Chapter 7, Manure Management in the Poultry House: The Joys of Deep Litter, was an eye-opener. I didn’t realize how effectively you can use the manure in combination with leaves or wood shavings, provided your chickens have enough space, ideally 5 square feet per bird in their house but denser can work too.

Part Three: Working Partners describes how chickens can help you improve the soil you have and help in your garden.

Part Four: Feeding the Small-Scale Flock includes Ussery’s reflection on feeding, using purchased feeds, making your own feeds, and feeding a flock from home resources.

Part Five: Other Management Issues describes the behavior of cocks, introducing younger chickens into the flock, mixing species, protecting the flock from predators such as dogs, foxes, and even weasels. There are also chapters on chicken health, managing the flock in winter, and other domestic fowl.  

Part Six: Breeding the Small-Scale Flock is a how-to section with an overview, as you would expect from Ussery. It includes a chapter on working with broody hens.

Part Seven: Poultry for the Table covers butchering poultry, cooking eggs and chicken, and selling your poultry or eggs to small local markets.

The book ends with an epilogue called The Big Picture, and a bunch of useful appendices.

Highly recommended! This is a new book from the  sustainability publisher Chelsea Green, and that link takes you to the page on their site about the book. (Thanks to them for sending me a review copy of the book. As a former librarian, I do love to write about books.) And here is the link to Harvey Ussery’s website.

This article came from: The Small Scale Poultry Flock, by Harvey Ussery at SimpleGreenLiving.com..

And the music! There are familiar local groups, hot regional groups, and national headliners. This year, Tower of Power was here from California for Saturday night. There’s something magical about dancing outside at sunset, with people you know around you, also dancing to the beat of some jazz, salsa, or other lively music. Of course, people come from other towns, too.. and we know some of them.

This year, we had a family member visiting from out of town. She commented at one point about the “vibrant old hippies” in the crowds. I guess I’m used to that, as I noticed more how many young children were running around, how many babies were being held as adults danced with them.

The festival is put on by a dedicated group of hard-working people, and all their efforts pay off in one of the most joyous events on my calendar! I’m already looking forward to next year.

This article came from: A Sense of Community from a Small Town Music Festival at SimpleGreenLiving.com..

Second graders in a primary school in Sierra Leone, rebuilt after the civil war. Image via Wikipedia

When I was in college, I spent a summer on a work camp in Moyamba, Sierra Leone. It was through a program called Crossroads Africa. About a dozen American and Canadian college students joined forces with young Africans to start construction on a high school.

As we worked together, we shared stories of our lives. I remember how joyous the young Africans were. I loved dancing on the weekends, at large get-togethers with everyone from toddlers to grandparents dancing together.

As a result of that experience, I went to graduate school in applied anthropology, hoping to make a difference in development in third world countries. Life took different turns, though, and I never returned to Sierra Leone. I stayed in touch with one of my African friends, Isa Johnston of Freetown, and even got together with her a few years later when we both were in England at the same time. I have since lost contact with her.

The joyousness and kindness of the people I met in Sierra Leone has stayed with me all these years, and when the country was engulfed in civil war for over a decade, I grieved. When the war ended, I rejoiced, but I haven’t really kept up that much with news there.

Yesterday in a nearby public library I picked up a book titled A Man from Another Land: How Finding My Roots Changed My Life (Amazon link) and got totally engrossed in it. It’s by American actor Isaiah Washington, who discovered through a DNA test that he was 99.9% Sierra Leonean on his mother’s side, of the Mende and Temne peoples. I had worked among the Mende. His discovery led him to start a foundation and to do everything he could to help the people there.

His descriptions of the poverty he encountered in Sierra Leone portrayed things as being far worse than when I was there in 1963. I was in tears at several points in the book, and I went to check out a website that his foundation runs, for the Reach One Million Campaign, which has the goal of improving the lives of one million children in Sierra Leone — that link takes you to the site. I read through it, and ended up making a larger donation than I expected to, but really, even $5 is a lot of money there.

I am grateful that my simple living lifestyle means I can afford to help out here and there!

This article came from: Sierra Leone: Happy Memories, Dreams of a Better Future at SimpleGreenLiving.com..

Salvador Dali gives time a well-deserved surreal look. Image via Wikipedia

Too much to do, too little time. Things get away from us. We forget errands, or even more important things. As for doing the things we really care about, well, when? Ever? In five years or maybe ten?

Actually I’m feeling much better about my own time management lately, as I have been starting to use a system called GTD.

It’s based on a book by David Allen called Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity (Amazon link). I bought the book when it came out in 2002 but didn’t really start applying till a few weeks ago.Yup, 9 years later. I’d even read the book back then, but judging from my notes scribbled in the margins, I didn’t really get how revolutionary a system it could be. That’s probably not surprising, since I had taught time management at continuing ed classes and privately, even once for a big corporation. I was used to the methods I taught.

It took changing computers to get me into GTD. Recently I bought my first ever Mac, a MacBookPro. I gradually began moving things over from my ancient and quirky XP desktop, and right away I realized that I would be doing work on both computers for some time to come. I just don’t want to move completely to the Mac. But I needed to keep track of things on both computers. Luckily, I stumbled across a great free program called Evernote which took care of my main to-do lists. It exists in “the cloud” which is to say, it is constantly saving my notes to buy more dogfood or get back into blogging or whatever. It saves them online, where they are reasonably secure since my account with Evernote is password-protected. Dropbox, a free app for saving files to the cloud, also has been very handy.

So as I got to know Evernote, I kept running into blog posts by people who were using it for something they called GTD. Once I realized it referred to a book I still had, I read the book and this time around, I really liked its ideas. It describes a five-step system. First, you make a massive list — HUGE — of everything you need to do or want to do. My list includes a big website project I am working on daily as well as mundane things like putting lemon oil on my wooden desk and bookcase, and getting new dog tags for our dogs since the old ones have our Mexican telephone number from over a year ago.

Allen says that when he consults with busy executives it can take the two of them together a couple of full days to make the massive collection of things to do, so I should be fine with it taking me quite a while as I nibble away at the project. He says that they feel greatly relieved when they have done just that step, and I am feeling that already.

So that is how far I am into the system. The second article below fills you in more on what it’s about. And on my list in Evernote  I have a note to blog again about how things are going with GTD… sometime!

Related articles

• 10 Time Saving Ways to Use Evernote | Time Management Ninja (timemanagementninja.com) — not about GTD per se but good on Evernote uses.
• From the Archives: Getting Things Done – ProfHacker – The Chronicle of Higher Education (chronicle.com) — an intro to GTD, and not just for professors.

This article came from: Getting Started with Getting Things Done at SimpleGreenLiving.com..

He was invited by Mike Parker, an American who lives there and has a site called Children of the Dump.

All over the planet, earthbag building is becoming much more known and used too. See the earthbag building blog to keep up or go to earthbagbuilding.com for the whole picture. My husband and others work on these sites a lot.

Related articles

• Earthbag Building: A Small Earthbag Dome (greenideascoop.wordpress.com)
• How to Build an Earthbag Roundhouse (permaculturepower.wordpress.com)

This article came from: Earthbag Building is Taking Off! at SimpleGreenLiving.com..

The Joy of Self-Reliant Living

By Herman Beck

I have been asked many times about how I came to live a plain and simple life, and I am often asked how one begins living a self-reliant lifestyle. How does one transition from living a “virtual life” to a “real” life rooted in the reality of simplicity. In this article I’ll share with you how my life was changed, and the basic steps one needs to take to begin this challenging journey.

But, before I go into this subject very far I want to make an important point: The “Simple life” is NOT simple. It is actually the “complex and highly involved life”. Everything you do takes more thought, more planning, more action and more knowledge. You do not decide to start living this life and just take the plunge.

You start out one step at a time. There are many steps and they can be taken in any order. If you want to live the “simple life” you can began anywhere. Here is an example of a typical scenario.

Let’s say you are buying bread from the grocery store. A first step could be to buy a book on bread making, purchase some whole wheat flour and make your own bread, using a bread making machine.

After you have done that a few times and found a recipe you like you might decide to begin to knead your bread by hand. Then your next step might be to buy a grain grinder, purchase some whole wheat berries, grind your own flour, knead your bread by hand and bake your bread. If you want to go all the way you can buy some seed and learn how too grow your own wheat. Each step along the way you will become more knowledgeable, more self reliant and less dependent on the “virtual world”.

This is just an example. You can start anywhere. Just remember, the first step for one may be the last step for another.

How it Happened for Linda and Me

As they say about all the successful musicians I was an overnight success at “homesteading and farming”. Yeah, really! Here are the facts:

My 1st thoughts about getting “Back to the Land”: 1974; I left corporate life, read a lot and dreamed a lot more.

I finally began to put some ideas into practice in 1975.

I Lived in a converted sheep shed in metropolitan Columbus Ohio; met Linda, worked as a handyman with Linda’s help.

1976: Planted a small garden (had gardened since age 8)

1980: Moved to country; began canning and freezing

1982: Started heating with wood cut from Grandmother’s farm

1978-1990: Combined growing home based business and homesteading; Linda went back to school getting a degree in psychology; we were both learning more basic skills.

1990: We bought 160 acre Locust Grove Farm in Southern Ohio; began foraging and growing chickens and turkeys for eggs and meat. Cut 6-10 cords of firewood per year and split from our own woods. No back-up heat system. We use a shallow well and cisterns for all water for humans and livestock. We also started eating wild meats.

1992: Sold business to concentrate on farming and living more in tune with nature’s rhythms. Built pond and stocked with fish.

Began commercial farming of free-range poultry and did on-farm slaughter.

1993: Began developing berry picking trails and wildlife habitat improvements. Started making hay. Got family dairy cow and started raising beef cattle. Began preparing area for commercial market garden.

1994: Added 1000 egg layers to our operation, started drying food and making jerky.

1995: Began income sharing community and also started milking goats for our own use. Started doing farm tours and demonstrating my production methods. Wrote Free-Range Poultry book and started teaching courses.

1999: Bought Kitchen Queen wood cook stove and expanded our range of wood cooking; also heated water with wood.

2002: Moved to more remote 175 acres in Missouri and I am learning how to farm all over again in a new eco-system. Planting more perennials and developing foraging trails. Researching and breeding open pollinated vegetable varieties; growing bananas and citrus fruits in our atrium.

Worked a lot on solving family problems involving my aging parents and recovering from the stress involved in that. A wasted year self-reliant wise, but my lifestyle saved me (a story for another time).

2003: Continuing to learn about Missouri farming and how a river adds to my life. Once again ready to consider community members and expanding our on-farm business Back40Books and our on-farm research.

2004: Continuing to expand Back40Books.com and dug a cache pit for our root vegetables (filled it with sawdust and it worked beautifully; had prior year’s firm potatoes into July).

2005: Purchased HD video and DVD production equipment to begin production of “self-sufficiency” and “how-to” videos.

2006: Began research of further uses of Autumn Berry fruits, Jerusalem Artichokes and Wine Berries. I Applied for a commercial horticulture license and seed production license.

2007: Continuing DVD production, major expansion of http://www.Back40Books.com , our site for self-reliant living and country folks; started sales of seed tubers and wine berry plants. Ate fresh foraged greens all winter long as well as goat chicken and turkeys we grew and slaughtered and we ate wild raccoon, armadillo, deer and opossum.

So, this is the simple road to simple living. So far, it has taken me 28 years to learn what I know and I will never be finished learning.

One other thing: Did I mention the, TV? I long ago put the TV to bed, no time and no interest. Today about all I see is the Weather Channel when I am on the road presenting at shows, and an occasional educational DVD.

Do I like this life? I love it! Our living expenses are next to nil and I am sure I am alive today because of my active lifestyle and good diet.

If you have other questions please visit our http://www.Back40Books.com weblog at our website or e-mail Herm.NaturesPace@earthlink.net Copyright 2008, Herman Beck-Chenoweth

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Herman_Beck

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This article came from: The Joy of Self-Reliant Living at SimpleGreenLiving.com..

Simple & Sustainable Holiday Gift Ideas

By Heidi Decoux

Between Thanksgiving and New Year’s, Americans throw away about 25% more trash, on average, compared to any other time of the year. That’s about 25 million tons of trash over the Holidays above and beyond what we already throw away. Unfortunately most traditional gift-wrap is not recyclable due to the high metallic and dye content and most tissue paper is also not recyclable due to the short fibers.

During the holiday season, consider giving gifts, which are both environmentally friendly and creative. For example, consider the gift of an experience. An experience creates a memory, which lasts a lifetime and does not create more clutter in your home or create more trash.

Gifts of Experience

• Tickets to a play, concert or movie

• Gift Certificate for a Massage or other Spa Service

• Professional Lessons for Dance, Music, Singing, or the Arts

• A Professional Service such as a session with a Professional Organizer or a Feng Shui Consultant

• Gift certificate towards Travel

For smaller gifts, consider “disappearing”, or consumable gifts such as coffee, baked goods or flowers. You could pair some fair trade organic coffee with some biscotti and chocolates. To save time and money I recommend choosing one theme, such as coffee, and giving that same gift to several people. One year, I gave cashmere socks made of recycled cashmere sweaters to several family members. I simply tied a red bow around each pair of socks. Some of my family members still remark “Remember the year that Heidi gave us all luxurious cashmere socks?” No one seemed to mind that their gift was not unique to them. Purchasing 10 of the same gift simplifies gift buying and often times, saves you money.

Once you select the perfect gift, consider your wrapping options. Your gifts don’t need to be wrapped in several layers of tissue, boxes, paper, and bows. Consider the following wrapping options:

• Children’s Art Work, Old Maps or Newspaper as Wrapping Paper

• Pinecones, Dried flowers, Buttons or Beads as Embellishments

• Make the Wrapping part of the gift such as Cookies in a Jar

As another wrapping option, consider not wrapping. In her book, Simple Living, author Sister Jose Hobday describes a Native American tradition of giving unwrapped gifts. According to Native American tradition, wrapped gifts are shrouded in secrecy, while unwrapped gifts provide a “flesh-to-flesh” connection and a sense of unity between giver and receiver.

Whatever you choose to give this year, remember the 3 R’s: Reduce, Recycle, Reuse. Putting thought, creativity and love into your gifts is more important than how much you spend or how many layers of wrapping you use. As they say, “good things come in small packages”. Add to that, “and less packaging”.

Give a little bit, give a little bit of your love to me. – Supertramp

We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give. – Churchill

Heidi DeCoux is a Minneapolis based professional organizer specializing in life, office & home organization, she is also the publisher of the Life Made Simple e-Magazine and is the creator of the Fast-Filing Method home filing system. Heidi energizes her readers’ lives by simplifying their homes and schedules. For more info, free tips on how to find more time in your day, and to receive her FREE Special Report: The Fast & Easy Way to Get Organized and Stay Organized Forever, visit http://www.HeidiDeCoux.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Heidi_Decoux

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This article came from: Simple & Sustainable Holiday Gift Ideas at SimpleGreenLiving.com..