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Besides debt-free, it’s also about not having a consumer mindset but a producer mindset.

Also I think we can become slaves to keeping a back stock of things we think will be useful. Everything I own also has real estate in my head, not just my house or sheds. The more I have, the more I have to take care of.

If we haven’t used something in 6 months to a year, something we thought we would, like maybe a chair we thought we’d refinish, we pass it on. I bought a lot of half pint jars because I make a lot of jam. Then my apricot tree got a late freeze last spring and we got nothing from the tree. Got hundreds of pounds the year before. So I traded the half pints for quart and half gallon jars because now I’m dehydrating lots of food by the wood stove and using larger jars instead of canning. I still have enough half pints, but I didn’t need to be storing too much of something I’m not using.

That said, I do have extra of important things in case I can’t get them at stores sometime, but then that begs the question: what if I can never get this ever again in the future, can I learn to live without it now or find an alternative I can produce? Like a homemade plant medicine, or cloth napkins, or cloth TP, or lots of things. I’ve really gone back to figuring out how to produce a lot more than I used to. My grandparents did that, but I got out of the habit.

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I really like this idea. I do a lot of darning and mending and teach hand sewing. I’ve got an article coming out in Homesteaders of America’s spring magazine about hand sewing. It’s such an important skill and a lot of young people just were never taught it. People are going to need to know how to alter hand-me-downs or take care of sturdy but expensive to replace work clothes.

There are a lot of clothing related historical ways of dressing that are useful, too. From the Dark Ages all the way to the 1920s, most men and women wore linen undergarments to keep outer layers clean from body odors and sweat. A cotton tank top or pullover smells in a day but linen can be worn 3-4 days without being washed. This kept middle layers cleaner with only the undergarments and very outer work layers to be washed more frequently.

I know we, today, throw everything in a washer, but if you do off-grid laundry, it is a real back saver to wear good linen underclothes or slips. I make mine from thrift store linen dresses and shirts I take apart and sew into undershirts that fit me.

I definitely agree that sewing will be a desirable barter skill.

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Thermal slow cooking: My husband is building me a haybox, but in the past I have just taken a pot of stew or soup or rice and cooked it about 5 minutes, then set it on the bed and wrapped the pot up in quilts to finish cooking.

Solar cookers: I’ve had a SunOven in the past but I don’t have enough sun where I live now. Too many trees.

Kelly Kettle: A few little sticks from our yard and we can make hot water for his coffee and my tea or place a pan on top and cook up a little something or heat up some food for one person.

Sun tea: I drink a lot of tea so in summer I just make a half gallon jar of tea and use it throughout the week.

On the wood stove: we use it for heat and it’s not a cook stove but we dehydrate a lot of our food next to it and can heat water and cook food on it in winter.

Dutch oven: if you have a fireplace or wood stove, you can bake bread in a dutch oven instead of running the regular oven.

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Used to play the tin whistle. Always wanted to learn to play the uilleann pipes.

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If I could have designed our house, I would have used a lot of passive solar and gravity-feed rainwater. Solar heated water (not panels, just black tanks) running under the floors for heat maybe. I also would have lived somewhere less humid but still had four seasons (is that possible?) so I could use evaporative cooling in summer. I would also have a nice but small wood cookstove which would also heat the house. And light tubes in the ceilings to replace a lot of lanterns or candles – well installed so they don’t constantly leak rain. I’d also have a nice laundry wash-tub set-up in a large cool room/pantry. Definitely want a root cellar and if I was super lucky, would have a spring and build a spring house around it. An outhouse is good enough for me. I don’t like composting toilets in the house. I’d rather have a honey bucket inside for cold weather and still go outside for the smellies.

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The city keeps telling us we are already at the lowest tier for water use and our bills were around $32 a month for years. Now they are $60 a month. They added two $10 fees for sewer development and waste water and then general rates went up as well. We could use twice the water we do and still pay the $60. So there’s not much we can do there. We already use rainwater in the yard.

Our electricity runs the fridge, lights, washer and dryer, and laptops. I only have a washer and dryer because my stepmom moved and hers didn’t fit in the new house so I got them. I use the dryer maybe 4 times a year. I have always hung my laundry on a clothesline. I usually only do 1 load of laundry a week, maybe a second for linens or dirty work clothes and I use the “speed wash” setting because one wash and rinse is enough.

We have gas heat, hot water, and stove/oven. I used the think if the power went out we’d be fine on heat because it was gas. Not anymore. Gas heaters have an electric “safety” switch so if the power goes, so does the heat!

So we got a wood stove and we heat with wood now. We did buy some wood this year, but usually neighbors take down trees and we get the wood free.

I also now use the winter wood stove heat to dehydrate a year’s worth of pantry food. It did take a plan based on the recipes I wanted to stock up for and it’s going well. Next year, it will come from mostly foraged or harvested foods from the yard and local fields and less from the store, but I had to start somewhere and it didn’t really cost much.

We’re just starting to use a haybox my husband built for me. We’ll make a soup/stew to last half the week and it only takes about 10 minutes of cooking and several hours in the haybox to make it. We can reheat it on the wood stove or for maybe 5 minutes on the stove during the week. A haybox is like a non-electric crockpot.

The house is kind of dark, but we don’t need much light so we leave the lights off a lot and we go outside more. The natural light is better for our eyes and we noticed a difference.

I never bought a bunch of kitchen gadgets and appliances. I don’t have a TV or stereo or cell phones. I don’t have humidifiers, dehumidifiers, night lights, fragrance plug-ins or any of the other stuff most people use.

Our bills are currently about $60 a month for water, $40 for electricity, and $40 for gas (not running heat). That’s about $40 more a month total than in the last six years we’ve lived here.

We do use some air conditioning in summer as my husband needs it mostly so that electric bill will go up for a couple of months. But we wait until it’s 80+F in the house and too humid to be at all comfortable. If we lived in a dry place we’d have a swamp cooler instead but that won’t work here.

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How wonderful! Comfrey is a wonderful healer. Thanks for sharing your story.

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Thank you. Yeah, I think he’s pretty amazing. But yes, it’s a matter of knowing which plants are affected and by what methods of preservation. Like I said, if you want anti-oxidant effects, for example, you don’t want to sun-dry or use a dehydrator with too much heat, but shade dry or cure in a cabinet to preserve the antioxidants. If he has included that specific information, that’s fantastic. Most herbalists don’t. Still drying does cause significant loss of SOME constituents no matter what drying method is used. Which is why I’d rather not have to look up each and every plant I would use and just use fresh. I mean, I tincture a lot. I don’t use dried plants (leaf and flower) for much more than infusions anyway. I do dry seeds, like dock and lamb’s quarters. I do dry roots if I have no use for them fresh at the time and want to have some stored. It’s not like I never dry plants. Maybe because I use tinctured preparations primarily, I just don’t want to have to look up each one to see what constituents would still be there after drying. But I will check out more of his stuff. I do love listening to him when he speaks or teaches. He’s very well-respected.

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Good point about the basement water.

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Your water sounds lovely! Ours is so hard, we can’t use actual soap anymore, and the kitchen water has been smelling more of chlorine lately. We have a filter, but still, it’s so sad.

Too bad about all the governmental nonsense you’ve had to endure. It could make you mad enough to spit!

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I had a roommate in college who played the uilleann pipes. LOVED them! I was the only roommate he could get because of it. LOL

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I also have the same issue with my water bill now. I pay very little for the little water I use, but it’s all the other fees. And we have to pay separately for trash removal because it’s not a city service.

But we never started trash service with anyone. I take my tiny grocery bag of trash with me to the store during the week and throw it out there. It’s about half a small grocery bag so I don’t feel bad about it. I figure it’s the little bit of packaging from there, they can get rid of it for me.

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When we lived in Australia, I also saw them on power outlets. You could turn the outlet off which took it out of the circuit. If enough were off and not being used, there was a lot less usage because there was simply less ready current flowing through the house. I miss that. That and the half flush toilets that use less water.

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I absolutely agree that drying is perfect for teas and infusions. I simply disagree with the claim that using dried materials in tinctures is as good as using fresh when science has proven otherwise. I use dried materials (flower and/or leaf) all the time. I always keep several pounds of dried nettles, comfrey, red clover, eleuthero root, elderberries, and more around as we use them frequently. Just not for tincturing. I think that’s really just the distinction I would be making.

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It has certainly been a long lifetime of learning. I learned midwifery from the old midwives as well as clinically trained midwives from the UK where it was legal and respected. There is so much traditional as well as scientific knowledge and they meet up well. Everyone just wants a safe birth and at least 94% of all births and pregnancies are within “normal” or usual expectations, no extra help needed.

An infusion is made like a tea but steeped much longer. I make a quart at a time if it’s something I want to add to my diet for the day or a few days. One ounce of dried plant material, like stinging nettle, comfrey, red clover (half ounce of linden) in a quart jar, then covered and filled to the brim with boiling water. Cap loosely (or the jar seals and it’s hard to open) and let steep 4 hours at least. I make mine at night and leave it overnight. Then strain the material and squeeze it all out to get all the goodness from it and screw the lid on and refrigerate it for up to 3 days. It really starts to oxidize and lose nutrient quality after that.

There’s about 400 mg of bioavailable calcium in one cup of stinging nettle infusion whereas cow dairy calcium molecules are large and difficult to absorb which is why the USDA says we need so much of it – because you will never get all 1200 mg from 4 glasses of milk, you’ll likely absorb about 300. Plant and other calcium sources (like fish bones) are more easily absorbed. Nettle also has a ton of other nutrients. Comfrey is the only plant with B12.

Elderberry syrup isn’t “syrupy” at all. it’s very liquid. I take one cup of dried berries and let them simmer in 5 cups of water for 45 -60 minutes COVERED to neutralize the toxins in the berries and get all the medicine out. If you don’t cover it, the water will all evaporate away and you wasted your time. I use 5 cups to account for some evaporation and I’m left with about 1 quart of the liquid. Then I use a good strong wooden spoon as a masher and squash the berries in the liquid to get all the good stuff out but you don’t have to go crazy doing this. It’s just something I do. Then strain the berries and seeds through a wire mesh strainer into a bowl. Wear rubber gloves unless you want purple hands and when it’s just cool enough, squeeze the liquid out of the wet berries. Put the liquid back in the empty pan and heat enough to add a little honey to your taste and melt it. I don’t use much; I don’t care if it’s very sweet. I use just enough to take the bitter out. Compost the berry mash; the seeds are toxic if chewed but swallowing a few won’t hurt you as they’ll pass through and digestive juices neutralize the toxins. But you want to avoid a lot of berry seeds in general such as elderberry or poke. You can swallow one or two of either but you don’t want to be eating more or crushing those seeds in your mouth. Store in jars and refrigerate. Mine lasts months if I put it in a good cold spot – not the door. I tend to put some in a jar in the freezer and some on the fridge to prevent any possibility of mold forming because it may have been there too long and allows to warm and then cool as the door opens and closes. That’s why I keep it in one of the coldest spots in the fridge. I just drink a sip every day or take a teaspoon of it. If you get sick you can take a teaspoon several times a day to help keep the viruses from spreading and making it worse.

You can also take that syrup and make gummies but I haven’t ever done that. I think it’s because then I’m not sure how much of a dose I’m getting because there are other ingredients and I haven’t done the math. But they could be useful if you are traveling or away from home a lot.

Hope that helps! There’s so much love on this earth to help us from birth to death. I’m not sure how we got so far away from it.