How To Do it yourself

Fresh bread from your very own earth oven? The author shows us how he built this great little oven from ordinary mud. He writes: "It started with cob. I have always been interested in natural, alternative, inexpensive, and do-it-yourself building techniques. ... Well, a house might be a bit much to start with, maybe try something smaller, just to get a feel for it. What could I build that was small and useful? - An OVEN!"

This great article takes you step by step through the process, with lots of pictures, and a section on how to use your new oven.

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For about twenty dollars worth of ordinary red clay bricks you can build an efficient temporary backyard stove that burns charcoal, small sticks of wood, or tightly rolled pieces of junk mail to cook up a nice big pot of bean soup, or grasshopper stew. In a real emergency you might even borrow some bricks from your garden walkway or from the edging around your flower beds. Since no cement or mortar is used in the construction of the pyramid, once the power is restored you can replace the bricks until the next time they are needed. The stove requires 63 bricks to build.

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How can you cook without a source of heat? It's easier than it sounds. Of coures you will need heat to get the process started, but once your pot full of soup or stew is heated to a boil you can place the whole pot in an insulated box to prevent the heat from escaping, and let the food go right on cooking for hours on its own stored heat. Traditionally made by putting the steaming pot in a wooden box and stuffing hay all around it for insulation, a more modern haybox cooker can be made with an insulated camping cooler and polystyrene foam insulation.

The result is a slow cooker that reduces fuel consumption by as much as 80% and gives your soups and stews that unique slow-cooked flavor blend and tenderness. This web site site shows you how to get off to a succesful start as fireless cook.

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"The Calder Hand Grinder is an invention that is designed to provide the user with a better alternative to grinding beans, corn, wheat, and the like. While other past grinders require a relatively great amount of energy and sometimes mixed rock and wood in the food, the Calder Grinder uses much less energy and allows the food to remain natural."

Four different versions of the basic Calder Grain Grinder are presented in this PDF document from Brigham Young. If you are grinding small quantities of grain for personal use this grinder will do the trick. If you're thinking about grinding larger quantities then you'll probably want something a little more efficient, but for the job it's designed to do, this is a nifty little grain mill.

Thanks to Pat Meadows for bringing this site to our attention.

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Using the blower end of a vacuum cleaner the seed huller separates seeds from hulls, while the seed press, made from a standard hydraulic jack, cold presses the oil from the seeds. You can even use the Calder Grain Grinder to break the hulls instead of the commercial grain mills recommended in the article. This article, reprinted at Journey to Forever shows us how.

"In 2,500 square feet, a family of four can grow each year enough sunflower seed to produce three gallons of homemade vegetable oil suitable for salads or cooking and 20 pounds of nutritious, dehulled seed -- with enough broken seeds left over to feed a winter's worth of birds.

The problem, heretofore, with sunflower seeds was the difficulty of dehulling them at home, and the lack of a device for expressing oil from the seeds. About six months ago, we decided to change all that."

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"Cheese making is theoretically a science, but we also need to appreciate that it is an art. While cheese making instructions often appear simple, there are skills and sensitivities which must be developed for successful cheese making. I strongly suggest that you master the following projects in sequence before you progress to more difficult cheeses. As an avid homesteader, I strive to keep the ingredients for these recipes relatively easily obtained from your local supermarket and to use the equipment commonly found in the kitchen."

This excellent collection of articles begins with a detailed examination of the ingredients and equipment needed to make cheese at home. Included in the equipment section is a link to a homemade cheese press you can build yourself.

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