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An unconventional meditation
I am not the type to sit quietly and cultivate stillness. I understand all of the reasons why I am supposed to, all the benefits for mind/body health. And yet, any time I have tried to sit peacefully for an extended period of time, what I end up with is a back in spasm and an anxious brain. So what is a quasi-enlightened person to do? Find another way. This is the first half hour of my day: When I emerge from my little cabin in the morning, I get a few supplies ready, pull on my boots and walk across the property to the animals. It is early and…
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Homesteading Goals 2018
Last year around this time, I broke my rule of ‘don’t tell people your goals’ and published a blog post about three things I was hoping to accomplish around our little homestead through the year. I thought that this might be an interesting time to take stock of the situation: review what actually happened in each of these three areas last year and think about what the goals are for the next year. February will mark two years since we embarked on this weird little adventure, so this whole homesteading/self-sufficiency thing is still fairly new to me. I am genuinely curious as to what my family will manage to accomplish…
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Food Obsessed Homesteading
It is impossible to homestead in any way without becoming kind of obsessive about food. Though I have always been a self-proclaimed nutrition-geek and chef, my day now revolves around food as never before. First thing in the morning, before I even put on the coffee (now that’s love!) there are animals to be fed and watered. And in the evening, everyone needs to be fed again. The scraps go into the compost which the chickens are happily picking through and some tasty morsels get saved out for the goats who daintily nibble the best bits before dropping the rest on the ground and peeing on it. The plants need…
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Homesteading in Costa Rica, 2017
2017 Homesteading Goals Normally, I subscribe to the ‘don’t tell people your goals’ school of thought. Due to my introverted nature, I prefer to work quietly behind the scenes and then appear magically with finished projects no-one saw coming. But this whole homesteading/self-sufficiency thing is new to me and I am genuinely curious as to what my family will manage to accomplish this year and what other families are planning on doing in the same vein. So please, include your homesteading goals for this year in the comments below and let’s see how we can grow our Permaculture community (no pun intended)! Here are three areas where I see big…
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How to get your goat pregnant in Costa Rica
It is more difficult, and expensive, to knock up a goat than you would think. There are interesting perks and challenges implicit in attempting to farm in the jungle. I have been learning everything I can about how to take care of our animals online, but the problem with that is that the vast majority of the information available is written in North America. Everything is just so different here: the climate, the food that is available, the building materials, etc. Add to this the fact that, in rural Costa Rica, animals are meant for food – they are not in any way pets, which means that people care for…
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Goat DIY
Above image: when you take the goat for a walk (as one does) and the hens decide to follow you up the road. While we have had chickens for a few months now, there is something different about having a goat (second one is on the way). As my daughter said, ‘We’re really farmers now!’ It’s like, yes, chickens are farm animals too, but they’re birds. They’re small and more easily managed and don’t head-butt you at every opportunity. In preparation for our goats, we built a small barn with a tiny corral in front of our cabins. We used instructions that I found here at gottagoat.com to build dispensers…
