Blog
Cooking
1

Cob Rocket Stove DIY: # 2

The cob rocket stoves we built last year were our first try with the cob. They worked pretty well, but we wanted to try and make them even better this year. Here goes: The rocket stove that we built out of fire bricks worked wonderfully.  It cost $60 though.  In …

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Gardening
2

DIY Seed Saving Packages

The summer here was on the rainy side.  This lead to many tomatoes rotting on the vine before I could get to them.  And the bugs got to their share as well.  I hate to waste all these tomatoes, but they are not edible. So I decided that I should …

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Gardening

Harvesting Potatoes with Trucks

Time to harvest the potatoes from their tires.  The plants are dying off and turning brown, and the kids want the tires that the potatoes are in for a project.  We have a standard that we go by for the kids: if you want something, you have to work for …

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Cooking

Down by the Stream…

We have not had good weather for building a house.  It pours and floods the house site (we don’t have the drainage set up yet), or it is 100 degrees.  It is good weather when I have to go to work.  We have had many other things we had to …

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Building
5

Mini Cordwood Build: Squaring the Foundation

It has been quite a while since there has been a house update because we were having such bad building weather.  We decided to just do what we could, without making this house turn into a huge stressor.  We are plugging along, slowly, but still plugging along. Back to the …

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Bugs
1

Free Bug Learning Resources for Kids

We have been having far more rainy days than I expected so far this year.  We have been playing lots of games and building inside, but the kids also love to do worksheets.  I was hoping to find some for summer that they could work on inside, and then be …

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Gardening

Teaching About Plants with Bean Sprouts

We got this great book about the life cycle of plants.  The book included an experiment growing seeds that we decided to try.  Anything that is an experiment, the kids get excited about.  So, off we went to plant some beans. Step1: Poke holes in the bottom 12 eggshells, or …

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Kid Friendly
4

Mini Cordwood Build: Clearing for the Foundation

We don’t have any flat spots anywhere on our land to build a house.  This spot we chose is the closet thing to flat in this general area.  While we want to use the slope of the land to our benefit, the spot for the house does need to be …

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Gardening

DIY Plant Spacing Rulers

Beans are an excellent crop for kids to be able to plant.  Last year, I just gave them each a handful of beans and directed them to a garden bed.  We ended up with clumps of bean plants, which still grew, but we can do better this year. I decided …

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Gardening

Transplanting Seedlings with Kids

After the kids helped me plant all the seeds in the seed pots and watched them grow, they continued to be excited about helping in the garden.  The idea of giving children tender transplants to put in the ground can make people nervous (myself included), but if they actually want …

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