our ochre way | a homesteading blog about gardening, farming, and permaculture in north carolina

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A Missing Link In Sustainability: Metal Recycling

Everyone has seen the bins, cans, and rolling carts out on trash night that hold millions of peoples recyclable plastics, glass, and paper products. But what about that stuff that your recycling center or municipality won’t take? That old vacuum cleaner, desktop PC, or dryer that quit working and was replaced. Most people take these items to the dump, where they sit in landfills slowly leaching out pollution into our streams and groundwater. However, these products are recyclable too.

The metals can be melted down, or reused for other purposes. This is both more economical and more environmentally friendly than constantly mining metal and ore from the earth. The wiring, motors, and other electrical components often contain copper, a valuable metal with hundreds of industrial uses. Copper is also present in your old Christmas lights, so don’t send them to dump, find someone who recycles them.

Other little thought of recyclable products include:

washing machines
furnaces and AC units
scooters, bikes, and cars
extension cords
refrigerators
keyboards, mice, and speakers
rims for tires
old pipes and pumps
scrap metal
anything with metal, a motor, or a cord

All of these can be broken down into their base components, and either recycled or reused. This is a million times better than sitting in a landfill for decades. Many people specialize in recycling metal, commonly called scrapping, and they often take old appliances and large items for free. So next time you have a large item that you no longer want, before you send it to the dump, call someone to recycle it. It’s better for everyone.

Remember, if you are in the Greensboro/Triad, and have something you need recycled send an email to jason at ourochreway.com

Some Herbal Remedies and First Aid in Action

September 1, 2014 / jason / Comments Off

In the past week, due to some minor accidents, I had a few chances to try out some herbal remedies. Herbs can provide gentle and effective healing and because they are often easy to grow, they deserve a place on any homestead.

The first incident was brought about by picking up a cast aluminium dutch oven that had been reheating food in the oven. Ouch. It was heavy, hot, and I didn’t drop right away. After running some water over my hand, I snipped off some aloe vera from the plant by our sink, squeezed out the juice, and rubbed it onto my palm. This instantly relieved the burning pain and helped me thin a little clearer.

Aloe is a great plant, it has many uses from sunburn relief to helping improve digestion, and is easily grown as a house plant in a sunny location.

I then went out and picked a large comfrey leaf. Comfrey is probably the best herb when it comes to bone, skin, and tissue regeneration and healing. The chemicals in comfrey are often added to skin care products, but nothing can replicate the healing power of whole leaves.

Emma chopped up the leaf in a small food processor, and then took the half paste, comfrey pesto and applied it to the burn before wrapping a bandage around my palm. I left this on for a few hours, and by morning my hand had no pain, no marks, and I had completely forgotten the burn because my hand was healed.

A few days later, I woke up with a sore and scratchy throat, probably brought on by dehydration. It was pretty uncomfortable, but I turned to our tried and true home cure for sore throats… vitamin c. I prefer vitamin c in powder form, but it also comes in a variety of capsules, pills, and tablets.

Dissolved in a glass of water, it helps to re-hydrate the body, soothe the throat, and increase immune function and healing. Vitamin c has been used for many different treatments, from helping to prevent soreness after strenuous exercise to fighting withdrawal symptoms in heroin addicts.

These 3 natural remedies, aloe, comfrey, and vitamin c, are just things that we have on hand. The aloe and vitamin c are in our kitchen, easily within reach on a day to day basis. The comfrey is growing in a few places on our property, some in the garden, some in the food forest, and soon we will have some growing everywhere as we propagate more.

While herbs are great as first aid, their best use comes from a more holistic approach. By using them daily in cooking and teas, they are able to help our bodies stay strong, and fight off problems before we, or a doctor, can diagnose them. This is the best use of herbs, and the reason we should all try to include them in our lives as many ways as possible.

a few ways to save: wedding on the homestead

August 29, 2014 / Emma / Comments Off

with our wedding less than a month away now, we’ve realized that there are many ways to save money while planning a homestead wedding like ours. some of these ideas don’t apply to traditional weddings, or indoor weddings, but they work perfectly for what we’re doing:

save on the price and hassle of renting chairs by buying hay bales and 10’x10″x2″ boards for seating. for us,renting chairs would be about $1.50 a chair plus the coordination necessary to truck 100+ seats 45 minutes away into the country and pick them up the next day (talk about delivery fees). by buying hay bales and boards we’re able to add to our collection of homestead resources: we can use the hay for mulch and the boards for building a heavy-duty structure in the future. this at only the cost of $2.50 per seat.
make your wedding favors. make it something personal from your farm, and your guests will appreciate the personal touch and the time you spent making it for them.
need cocktail tables for all of your guests to place their drinks on? try upending large metal barrels and placing a piece of larger wood on them to serve as table tops. slap a table cloth on that baby and you’ve got yourself a sturdy cocktail table.
need extra regular sized tables? well, if you have any extra doors lying around, lay them on stools or lower barrels and use them to serve your food and drinks.

just a few creative, low budget ways to have the homestead wedding that you’ve been dreaming of without the cost!

.:.

wedding prep: pruning and trimming the bushes and trees

August 25, 2014 / Emma / 1 Comment

today after work i continued my epic, month-until-the-wedding, preparation for the big day!

after i finished all of the usual chores, i decided that i felt like pruning the boxwood bushes in the front of our house. we hadn’t pruned them since we moved in, and they were looking a little wild and crazy. it was a success! this sort of thing is so fun…

trimmed bushes!

i also trimmed some lower limb off of trees in the yard and ended up using our new hedge trimmers (thanks grandma!), a pair of nippers, and a leaf rake to shake all of the trimmed branches off of the bush to be sure i hadn’t missed any spots. it was a great time, especially since bridey was decided to hangout with me!

boxwood trimming: my rake, shears, and nippers

my pal bridey, taking a nap.

.:.

getting the land ready for the wedding!

August 22, 2014 / Emma / 3 Comments

first of all, jason, my dad, and i spent last saturday cleaning out and organizing the area around the barn. it was a really long, hard work day, but extremely fun overall and rewarding. here’s what the barn looks like now (check out my post about revealing the barn to see what kind of junk was in it/around it before):

the area around the back of the barn where we’ve stacked useful items that don’t need to be kept out of the elements.

more stuff!

and more…

tomorrow my dad and i are going to do a lot of work in the yard to get the area cleaned up and looking good for the wedding. here’s what we plan on doing (hopefully we’ll get it all done!):

cleaning all of the junk out of this trailer and moving the trailer if we’re strong enough!

relocating this hugelkulture wood pile.

moving these bundles of brush and removing the leaves so they can be used in our wattle fencing.

moving all of this organic matter from around the station wagon in the front yard and finding it a new home in a compost pile.

clearing these heavy, rusty, old appliances out of the way so they’re not in view.

and if we have time: moving all of this trash/junk from a spot on our land where a trailer used to be (years ago).

so, wish us luck!

.:.

too many tomatoes (is there such a thing?)

August 20, 2014 / Emma / Comments Off

do you have too many tomatoes and you need to process them before they go bad?

why, make tomato sauce, of course!!!

.:.

Steripen Water Purification: Field Testing and Review

August 19, 2014 / jason / 2 Comments

Do you ever go camping or hiking? What do you for water when your miles from civilization and the comforts of tap and bottled water? What if you need to drink questionable water after a storm, like a hurricane that damages the water lines or knocks out power to pump your well? How would you ensure that you have access to clean water, one of the most important items for day to day survival and prepardness?

Enter the steripen, a lightweight, portable device that uses UV light to kill bacteria, viruses, and other potential contaminates in your water. It zaps these pesky buggers, and keeps them from proliferating to dangerous levels, and allows you to safely consume water from streams, springs, lakes, and water tanks.

the steripen is a great way to quickly and easily make water safe to drink

I recently tested the steripen on a week long Appalachian trail hike and was more than satisfied with it. Compared to chemical treatments it’s safer, and let’s you taste the freshness of the water.I think it’s easier than a filter, all you have to do is insert the lamp into your water bottle, and then shake until the light goes off. There are 2 settings, .5 l or less and .5 – 1 liters. The whole system is perfect for a bpa free Nalgene bottle and fits easily in your pocket.

Check out the video we shot of the steripen in action, and you’ll see just how easy it is to guarantee yourself safe and delicious water, whether you’re thru-hiking the trail or without water after a natural disaster.

Check out the steripen classic on amazon, or the whole line of steripen products.

Greening the Desert with Geoff Lawton

August 18, 2014 / jason / 2 Comments

In 2003, in the dead sea valley of Jordan, one of the world’s hottest, driest and most inhospitable pieces of land, permaculture practitioner Geoff Lawton and his crew implemented a design to regreen, reforest and bring life back to the desert. Their goal was to create an oasis in the most difficult location on Earth, a showcase to the world that the ethical design science of permaculture can solve some of the big problems.

They installed swales, water catching ditches on contour, to rehydrate the overgrazed land and store the few inches of rain they receive in the soil where it nurtured the dates, figs, pomegranates and other fruit trees that were planted in addition to fast growing, hardy nitrogen fixing trees and shrubs.

Unfortunately, funding ran out for the project, and it was completely abandoned for 6 years. In perhaps the harshest environment on earth, the young trees and plants where left on their own, with no irrigation, fertilization or care at all.

Yet when Geoff returned, instead of withering up dying, the trees thrived and produced an abundance not seen in the “fertile crescent” for hundreds if not thousands of years. The swales stored 100% of the runoff and rain, and supplied enough water to bring the system into maturity and abundance in 122 degree weather. A patch of life in a sea of brown.

It’s truly an amazing sight and story, and proof that the techniques and concepts of permaculture can produce abundance, fertility and life in any environment. Check out the video, which shows both the original design after implementation, and what the site looked like 6 years later.

farm food friday: homemade cherokee purple tomato sauce!

August 15, 2014 / Emma / Comments Off

we’re finally back with another edition of farm food friday, and this recipe, once again, is all about tomatoes. i know we’ve been on a posting kick about tomatoes lately, but once you have one of our cherokee purples you’ll understand why…

the other day we made some homemade tomato sauce, and although i’ve frozen a ton of tomatoes for sauce ingredients, we had enough fresh ones to make use them for our sauce.

ingredients (keep in mind that you should add as much as you desire for each of these):

using our awesome new sauce pan (it’s still shiny!).

directions:

we used our new, huge, awesome sauce pan to be sure we made a lot!
saute sliced garlics in olive oil and then add onions
once these have cooked for a few minutes, add your sliced/diced cherokee purple tomatoes (from the garden); cut the heat to medium
as this cooks begin boiling your water for the pasta
add capers, sriracha sauce, and salt and pepper to taste
let it cook down more, being careful to stir it often so the thickening tomato doesn’t stick to the bottom of the pan and burn
add sliced and diced bell peppers (our’s were from the garden)
add lemon thyme and basil (also from the garden)
continue letting it cook down and add a few pinches of parmesan cheese to thicken the sauce and make it a bit creamier… this also adds bite.

delicious cherokee purple tomato sauce!

as i’ve mentioned before, cherokee purples are sweeter tasting and less acidic, so i find that there is no need to add anything to the sauce to tone down natural acidity. that makes this dish a delicious and easy-to-make meal any day of the week!

and the great thing about cooking in our kitchen: there’s always leftover scraps to feed to our flock of chickens!

this recipe’s scraps… chickens here we come!

next up… making more of this sauce and freezing it in ready-to-go containers.

.:.

Homemade Homestead Pizza!

August 14, 2014 / jason / 3 Comments

In my post about some of the differences between living in the country vs the city (which include thinking that anywhere other than rural Stokes county = the city), I mentioned that it took us a whole year before we found a pizza place that would deliver to our house. While delivery pizza is great for nights you just don’t feel like cooking, nothing beats a homemade pie crisp and fresh from the oven.While we haven’t yet made our own pizza dough, we do use either frozen pizza doughs from the store, or more often, tortillas.

a fresh tortilla, with sliced cherokee purple tomatoes and california wonder peppers is a great base for garden pizza

But the best part about homemade pizza is that you get complete control over your toppings. No having to split, or compromise with friends or significant others about meat lovers vs. veggie supreme. This especially holds true with tortilla, “personal pan” pizzas, where each person gets their own pizza to create and eat.

add some jalepenos…

and some onions and chorizo…

Some of our favorite toppings are the ones we pick fresh from the garden. Tomatoes, basil, bell peppers, mushrooms, onions, and jalepenos all make great pizza toppings. Add some sausage, or chorizo, and some garlic olive oil, and your in for a fun night.

add some olive oil, cheese, and salt and pepper to taste, than bake until golden brown at 375

We use thick slices of homegrown cherokee purple tomatoes instead of tomato sauce, and a light sprinkling of Parmesan cheese. A little salt, and a drizzle of oil really brings it all together, and makes it all but impossible for any leftovers to survive.

yum!

Garden pizza! A delicious way to save some some money and get a full helping of nutrient dense veggies form the garden! No, the chickens won’t be eating any of this pizza!

KW Homestead

Pasture Raised Poultry & Edible Landscaping Plants Since 2013