Straw bale building was one of the first types of natural homes that we began to look at.  It is one of the more common types of natural construction due to its ease of building and ability to fit to code.  I have not built one myself, so I don’t …

As a huge part of our homestead, we need to build ourselves a house.  It has been my dream for as long as I can remember to build my own house.  Not just any house either.  It has to be functional as well as warm and inviting with as little …

For my birthday this year I decided that I wanted the family to give me gifts of creativity. I asked them all to come with me to a local “paint your own pottery” shop.  These shops are wonderful because you can go in and paint a work of art on …

My solar cooker was easy enough to build, that is, if I did it right.  All there is to my new cooker is two cardboard boxes plus scrap cardboard, tin foil, duct tape, glass or plastic, and newspaper. You take the first (smaller) box and cover it inside and out …

Since permaculture is also organic we don’t use any chemicals on anything.  This means we need another way to control bugs that bother our garden plants.  Birds eat lots of bugs so we should do our best to make friends with some birds.  I put birdhouses all over my yard. …

Efficiency is a big deal in everything we do.  Heating a home with oil or a fireplace is not terribly efficient though.  Definitely not efficient enough for living off the grid on our homestead.  So what should we do instead? Build a rocket mass heater of course! What is a …