Grain Mills

We rarely do recommendations for companies on our blog, so when we do it is because we think that their product is amazing for the modern homestead.

Last Xmas I was able to buy Rosie a Country Living Grain Mill. and we have been using it off and on for a little less than a year now and I wanted to let our readers know what I thought of it.

This mill is amazing.

Most of the mills I looked into stated right up front that you would probably have to run your grain threw them more than once to get a fine flour. The County Living people claimed that one pass was all you would need with their mill, and they where right. We have been grinding hard wheat, buckwheat, and corn almost every day for the last few weeks and this mill has never given us any problems. Every batch of flour has been very fine and surprisingly consistent. 

There are a few issues with the mill that I would like to see done differently but the usefulness of the mill more than make up for them. One Issue I have is that the mill body is made from aluminum, this has not been an issue but I would rather see it made from steel. Another correctable issue is that the flywheel is a little small and grinding hard wheat without the "power arm" can be a little tough but not undoable. Lastly the price of this mill is a little high, the next cheapest mills are about 1/2 the price of the Country Living Mill although the next mill in quality above the Country Living Mill is about 2-3 times the price.

If you are thinking of adding a grain mill to your own homestead  this is the mill you want to get. The flavor and texture of fresh ground flour or meal is as far beyond store bought as our fresh farm eggs are above store eggs. Some things I would suggest if you are going to invest in this mill; get the power arm, it will be worth it in the long run. After all if it is a pain in the butt to use the mill you are less likely to use it and then why even get one? Also get the corn and bean auger, this part can be  used when you want to grind something bigger than a wheat berry, you could "probably" make do without it and just try and grind corn meal with the standard auger but it would be a pain and may not work very well. Now this mill is not cheap, it will run in the $400 range but it is of the highest quality and will last you the rest of your life (you will have to replace the grinding plates every so often). There are some cheaper mills that will also do a fair job but you will have to run your flour threw them up to 4-6 times to get a good consistent flour. It takes about 15 min to make a couple of cups of flour in our mill, if you had to run it threw even 4 times then you area looking at an hour of work rather than 15 min, and that is a huge difference. The Country Living Grain Mill is fast enough that I will grind flour for the breakfast scones while I am waiting for my coffee to finish brewing.

Grinding our own flour has been a surprisingly satisfying experiment and next time you are able to join us for a meal that includes some sort of bread it will be from flour that was ground be hand in our kitchen. And that act of grinding our own flour is as strangely liberating as the flour is strangely better tasting than any flour I have ever used.

Homesteading with a baby - diapers

I realize that it's close to a year since Ivan joined our home and we have not really posted anything baby related. One thing I wanted to talk about is how awesome cloth diapers are for the homesteader. You will need a clothes washer to make it go by faster,but you can even wash those by hand.

My mom used cloth diapers on us so my first experience was washing Lucy's diapers. I recall scrubbing them on the steps at my grandparent's home. I next looked into modern all in one diapers when I was working for my previous employer, Naomi. For her children we used primarily G-diaper for when they were tiny and then BumGenius. They worked well but had a tendency to have the velcro get gunked up.

I was able to find an assortment of some 30 something cloth diapers on craigslist and brought those home. As Ivan was born prematurely we were able to use conventional cloth diapers. The amusing part is that someone brought us some as a gag gift but they ended up working marvelously. As he came home tiny we used a standard three fold diaper and tied it around the waist where the three sections met or we held it closed with a three section holder. As he grew we moved on to a larger three fold diaper, which worked well for him for many months. As he got big enough to start wearing his all in one diapers he started with TinyTush diapers as well as FuziBunz. My brother Juan and his family also gave us a FuziBunz all in one that has worked really well as you can alter the size of the diaper with new elastic bands along the legs to allow for a change of size on the leg openings as well as the overall length that is standard for most all in ones. We've only had issues with older FuziBunz and having some of the snaps break off, but we should be able to contact the maker and have them replace it.

And now for the reason that I'm even writing this post: How the diapers differ and why we recommend them.
Pros: Less costly, less garbage, less smell, just as easy to change, and you can use them for multiple children. Cons: I don't consider this a con but people might - will need to do laundry daily or every other day, if you are traveling you'll have to carry the dirty diapers as well, and you'll need to change the diaper more often.

Cloth diapers are not disposables, please do not try to use them as such. I'm met people who try to leave cloth diapers on their babies for hours and then complain that their children have rashes. Think of it this way, if you happened to have wet or dirty underpants, would you want to wear them for hours? Actually, don't do that with disposables either, that's just gross. Disposables use a re-hydrating gel to "lock the moisture" in, cloth diapers use fabric to contain the liquid, but like with a towel if it is squeezed or rung then the liquid escapes. Babies have tiny bladders and will empty them frequently, watch for signs that your baby has urinated and change them as soon as possible. Most babies have some tell tale signs that they have used the restroom. Look out for these and this might also help you when it comes time to potty train. We are not there yet, but we've managed to get him to urinate into the toilet already.

As we live on a farm, we have a tendency to do laundry quite frequently anyways so that just fits into our schedule. We've dried his diapers in the dryer so far, but will start hanging them up out in the sun fairly soon. The dryer does use up a lot of LP but it's just one year and that's totally worth it to have clean baby clothing quickly. The sun will also help kill off bacteria and help air out the diapers. I'm looking forward to being able to dry everything out on the laundry line again. And while we're talking about laundry, please wash your dirty baby diapers frequently. I don't think I would let them go for more than a day since I don't want bacteria buildup on them, I don't want them to pile up, and we have only enough diapers to last us two days and thus I would have to wash them that frequently. Also, if they poo, you can wash them out in the bathroom so that you don't have caked poo that you place in the washer. Don't worry, it's not going to kill you, you can do it. It will also make your laundry pile not smell so bad. We've found that if Ivan eats home food his poo is normal and it pretty much stays self contained until we place it in the toilet to flush. This helps not have to deal with smeared poo when we're changing him and when we have to wash the diaper.

This post has gotten long enough, but I also wanted to say that if you just pay attention to your child when you will be able to tell if they have an issue so that your little one doesn't have to deal with a rash. I've met people who let their baby's rash get so bad that it bleeds (The quote was, "Oh, that's not bad. She's not even bleeding.") and that is insane. If you do not want anything like that happening to you, do not let that happen to your child. As adults we are the protectors of our little ones and as such we have to make sure that they are healthy and clean(ish).

Sorry if this post sounds a bit rant like, but it was actually supposed to show the positive advantages of using cloth diapers on the homestead. =) Hope that helps.

Insanely efficient

If your home gets cold when it freezes and you need something that is insanely efficient I would highly recommend a wood burning stove. We picked up our Morso shortly after we purchased our home and found out that our fireplace was a lookin' fireplace rather than a functional one. The Morso 2B is supposed to heat a max of 1200 sq ft but it heats our 1400+ sq ft home very well. As I said yesterday, it froze last night so I started a fire (while breastfeeding no less - thank you Jed and Aaron for those fire starting lessons!!) threw in a couple of pine logs, let it catch, then turned it down. I added a couple more this morning around 10am to keep the fire going. And to add to the awesomeness I just threw in a couple more logs and once again I started them with the coals from this morning's fire. When we returned this evening from visiting my little sister the house was at 70 degrees while the outside temp was in the 50s. Oh yeah, and you can cook on it as well and to make it uber awesome, the state of California is doing a tax rebate if you buy/install one as well as the fed, and if you're really lucky your county will be running a promotion as well. That is how Jed and I got a our stove for about a third of the original price. =) I loves me my Morso.