A Very Useful Tool

My grandson Aiden is a Thomas the Tank Engine Aficionado. He tells me on the Island of Sodor, where Thomas lives, the highest form of praise is to be called a "very useful engine".

So what tool or tools on your homestead would you call very useful? I have really enjoyed my Troy-Bilt “Horse” tiller since receiving it new as a gift in 1976. But it is not used nearly as often as some other “low-tech” tools around the place.

I was remembering how a lady wrote years ago in Mother Earth News about the one very useful five-gallon bucket she and her family used at their place. I checked it out in the M.E.N. archives and found the article.

In the article titled The One-Bucket Farmstead, in the September/October 1982 edition, Coreen Taylor Hart wrote:

“[W]e never could have guessed that our most indispensable piece of homesteading equipment would turn out to be a secondhand, five-gallon, white plastic bucket.”

After reading the ways she and her family used the handy container I had to agree. She said they used the recycled vessel for everything from feeding the pigs to “mixing jumbo batches of bread dough”. To her long list of tasks I added carrying stove wood into the house. It worked great but I have found a better way.

A couple months ago I bought 50 pounds of cracked corn for the chickens. It came in a bag made of woven plastic, similar to that used in making many tarps. This feed sack works great for bringing firewood in for the stove. It allows me to carry much more than I could put in a bucket and keeps the bark and wood chips well contained. Come Spring I expect it will work great for hauling compost and other dry materials around our place. A smaller bag of similar material that had contained cat food now holds wood shavings we use as tinder in the stove.



Recycling feed sacks has a long tradition in our family. As a little farm girl in Kansas, my wife wore dresses her Mom made from cotton feed sacks.

By the way, if you are reading this, I expect you will agree that the World Wide Web is a very useful tool too.

Getting the Deer Out

Getting the Deer Out

Gardening can be a very frustrating activity. Perhaps my greatest frustration in this regard has been the deer. In years past I have worked the soil, planted seeds, watered, and weeded only to have the deer decimate the garden in one night.

Deer love vegetables; they are browsers after all. They have eaten the tops of my bean plants, nibbled young tomato plants to the ground, and walked indiscriminately over and through everything else in the garden, nibbling as they went.

Did you know deer like gladiolas? Check that. They LOVE gladiolas! One year, just as the glad buds were ready to open, the deer went down the rows and ate the buds off the stocks. Ate them like candy! I’m not talking just a few flowers here. I had three 40 foot rows of gladiolas growing in hopes of selling them locally. The deer must have had a party!

In desperation I went to the County Extension Office to see what they could tell me that would help keep the deer out of my garden. The nice people there gave me a brochure prepared by the University of Missouri or maybe it was the Missouri Department of Conservation. Anyway, the gist of the publication was “organize a hunt”. That’s right, organize a hunt and kill as many does as legally permitted and thus reduce the number of deer browsing through the garden.

Well, there were two immediate problems with that approach. One, this was not during hunting season. It was summer and the deer were using my garden as their version of an all-you-can-eat restaurant. And two, my neighbor’s wife, dearly loves deer. Temporarily stymied, I resigned myself to give up gardening.

This spring I found I could no longer suppress the urge to cultivate the soil and plant a garden. But I had a plan. I tilled the soil and planted as usual. Potatoes were the first vegetables I planted. Just about the time put the taters in the ground I started placing my super-duper deer deterrents.

The neighbor lady mentioned above has a hair cutting shop in her basement. She cuts my hair and the hair of most of my extended family. She is more than happy to give me bags full of hair. Some of it is unwashed, some washed, some permed, colored, highlighted, whatever, and 100% human-scented. I dropped wads of hair here and there over the garden. Then I tied one of those ubiquitous plastic bags from you know where full of hair to the handle of my push plow. I parked the push plow at the south edge of the garden so the prevailing breeze would carry the scent through the garden.

To augment the scent of the human hair, I also collected my urine for several days and poured small amounts of it around the perimeter of the garden. I then placed a bucket containing a few ounces of urine at the south edge of the garden along with the aforementioned hair. When I planted tomato and pepper plants, I placed thick hay mulch between them in the rows. I have routinely poured a dollop of urine on the hay between every third and fourth plant.


How, you ask, is this working out for me? Very well, thank you. There was one instance where a couple bean plants were lightly nibbled. No significant damage has been done. Perhaps even more encouraging is the fact that the number of deer prints in and through the garden has dropped drastically. They seem to have altered their browse pattern to avoid the area.

If you are plagued with deer, give this a try.

There is a down side to this. I had made tentative plans to have a deer hunt with some friends this fall and now I’m not sure I can deliver the deer. What about the lady next door? Well, I am trying to take her lots of tomatoes this summer. Maybe we can have our hunt when she and her husband are out of town. We’ll see.

Declaration of Independence

The Declaration of Independence

It was the spring of 1976 and from sea to shining sea planning was in full swing for many exciting events to celebrate the bicentennial of the birth of America. Meanwhile, in southwest Missouri, my wife and I were signing our own declaration of independence.

As we signed the Deed of Trust to purchase five acres outside of Springfield, Missouri, we were declaring our independence from landlords and from the corporate providers of food and fuel. No longer would we pay someone else for the privilege of living in our mobile home on their land. On our five acres we would be able to grow a garden and raise chickens, rabbits, pork, and beef. Our plans to build a home included a wood furnace which our woodlot would fuel.

Our acreage had been part of a 40 acre tract that had been “cleared” a few years before. There were still windrows of partly burned trees grown up in brambles that stretched from the front of the property to the back. Some of these we grubbed out by hand. For others we hired a bull dozer. Bull dozing was definitely easier. We had a well drilled, a septic system installed and electricity brought onto the property.

As the first few years went by we made good progress toward the independence we desired. We planted a garden, built a chicken house and a barn. We built a little house with a wood furnace for the two of us. New fences were put up around the perimeter and across the property so that we could pasture a couple of cows and their calves. I built a large (80’ X 80’) hog lot in the woods and started farrowing pigs.

Then a funny thing happened. We got us a baby boy. I have to tell you it was a lot more fun playing in the house with him than doing chores. Besides, I was making pretty good money at my day job. The hogs were the first to go then the cows. The chicken house was emptied and after a while I tore it down. We added on to the house and the mortgage.

In another two years a little baby girl came along. In the next few years it got to be a hassle trying to garden while keeping up with all the soccer games, t-ball and what have you. Besides, it seemed like the deer were eating most of our veggies anyway.

Fast forward to 2008: The kids are grown. Peak oil and peak grain are new to our vocabulary. It’s been years since I made as much money as I thought I was making in the early ‘80’s. The economy is “soft” (LOL). Our once-paid-for homestead is mortgaged again. Somewhere along the line we lost sight of the independence we declared way back in 1976.

I believe the same is true of our nation. I think as a nation we have lost sight of the vision that prompted those men in 1776 to pledge all that they were and all that they had to see a free and independent nation established on this continent. I am not smart enough to list all the ways in which our nation has wondered off the path that seemed to have been set for it back then. But I know that we have big problems and many of them relate to the fact that a very great many of us have given up our independence in the act of getting in line or online to let the government do one more thing for us.

Was it Thomas Jefferson who said that a government big enough to give us everything is strong enough to take everything from us?

Well here at Way Haven we have started to reclaim some of our independence. We are growing a garden and so far getting the deer to leave it alone. (I’ll write more about that in another Blog.) And we are raising chickens. We have 24 Cornish X and 13 Buff Orpingtons in a chicken tractor. I am resolved to establishing a self-sustaining homestead here on this 5 acres as God gives me strength. I will quickly confess my dependence on Him.

Here’s hoping that our nation, WE the people, will wake up, shake ourselves, and reclaim our independence, “One Nation, under God!”

Have a blessed July 4th.

Sharing the work - In theory

In my initial Blog regarding my vision to establish an intergenerational homestead I wrote:

"Each family member would participate in a share of the work
necessary to provide for the needs of the entire family."

The industrial paradigm for this would be the “Division of Labor”. That is to divide up the various tasks to be done around the homestead. One person would be in charge of taking care of the rabbits and hogs, and another in charge of the chickens and cows. One person would be charged with the care of the garden, another cooking, another procurement of firewood etc.

This division of labor might lead to the various persons becoming quite expert at what they do, if they were ideally suited to the tasks in the first place. On the other hand, it might very well lead to one or more of them feeling as if they had been shackled to a dreaded drudgery which they would seek to escape at the earliest opportunity. That would not contribute to the desired sustainability of the homestead.

This arrangement could also lead to the various members becoming autonomous in their thinking even as they would be in their activities. Instead of working as a member of the group, they would be working as separate entities at their separate endeavors. When one would finish his work with the rabbits and hogs, would he not be free then to go pursue his leisure never mind the fact that another is struggling to keep up with work in the garden? It might not be surprising for one to conclude that a single unit of her production is worth three units of another’s. Oh the conflicts that could ensue.

In his book Better Off, Eric Brende tells of working with members of the minnimite community in raising an addition to a barn, thrashing grain, and harvesting crops. At one point one of them tells Eric that, "Many hands make light work". My Grandma wasn't a minnimite (although she would have fit right in I expect) but I can recall her telling me the same thing.

Within the context of a well-functioning multigenerational homestead, the various tasks should all be shared. That is not to say that every member must engage in the same single task at any given moment. Rather it is to say that each task should be shared by two or more family members at any given time, ideally by at least one adult and some child or children. I have fond memories of “working” in the garden with the grown ups when I was only four or five years old. Likewise I recall working happily with my dad in his workshop and in the yard with my mom. I remember picking beans with my children years ago and just this spring planting ‘taters with my two-year-old granddaughter.

Working together provides opportunity for sharing thoughts, feelings, and truths. What an opportunity for a parent or grandparent to instill love of God, love of family, appreciation of created things, and the joy of living into the lives of children. If conversation can be classified as entertainment (and I think it can) then many of the tasks that can be shared on a homestead definitely have an entertainment value. Sharing the work provides all these good things and the extra benefit of accomplishing the task at hand. What could be better?

A Family Vision

Okay, I admit it. I am a little slow.

Our kids are both grown and gone from our home and have homes and families of their own. They are busy taking care of their everydays just as their parents were 25 years ago. Realistically, I am looking at what are to be the final years of my life and now I am stepping up and saying “I have a vision for our family”. What gives?

I won’t attempt to answer the "why?" and "why now?" questions at this point. (Many of my reasons would be obvious to anyone living in this country now with their eyes open.) For right now I will simply say that having lived for 57 years and having my eyes open for a good part of that time, I feel compelled, though not totally qualified, to offer a vision for our family to examine and hopefully to embrace. What I now offer here are the bare bones, the frame work of a vision which will need to be fleshed-out and filled-in.

My vision is to establish an intergenerational family homestead populated by members of our extended family living interdependently in the context of a self-sustaining family economy. In this arrangement we would seek to live largely independent of outside entities for energy, food, fuel, and entertainment. Within this environment, each family member would be encouraged to explore, learn, develop and excel in those areas wherein they have been gifted. Each family member would participate in a share of the work necessary to provide for the needs of the entire family.

This intergenerational home will be a Bible-based Christian home; a home where each member is encouraged to live out his/her personal commitment to Christ as Lord and to grow toward maturity in Christ. This will be a home where we together develop an awareness of God’s presence, provision, and direction.

My paternal grandpa died on his 84th birthday. My dad is 87 and getting along pretty well. At 57 years of age, I will not presume to have 30 more years or even 30 more days. However, in its scope this vision is intended to encompass my final years (however many of them God will grant) and more importantly, it is my hope that the quality of life afforded by the living out of this vision will prove to be so pleasant, productive, and fulfilling that it will be continued in those generations of my family that follow. In other words, my hope is it will lead to a legacy as well as a lifestyle.

I have plenty of ideas and opinions on how to go about the process of fleshing out each component goal of this vision. However, I believe it will be better achieved in collusion with other family members who will likewise embrace and own the vision. In order to help us find our way in this direction, I expect to draw from several resources including people who have studied and written about the intergenerational family and home; people who have contemplated and lived the agrarian life in times past as well as those presently engaged in it.

And I hope to gain insight from those of you who may read this blog and care to share your thoughts and experiences. In return, I will attempt to regularly and honestly record here our progress (or the lack thereof) with the hope that it will encourage others.