Welcome to TheModernHomestead.US

Boxwood

Big Site Update!

Between today, October 24, and the end of 2008, I will be adding a huge backlog of new material to the site (mostly articles published during the past year in Backyard Poultry, Mother Earth News, and Countryside & Small Stock Journal). Please check in often. New articles will be listed below. ~Harvey

. . .Nyssa. . .

Your Hosts: Ellen. . .

Unlike our ancestors, many of whom lived on traditional homesteads and small farms, most of us today have the apparent “luxury” of buying all our food in the marketplace. The decision to forego that luxury and work hard to produce more of our own food is a fundamental one. We are thus making not simply one more selection from the Lazy Susan of available food choices, but choosing a way of life, a new direction.

This site is dedicated to the skills and philosophy for more self-reliant living. Whether you have access to fifty acres or only a patio pot, you have the opportunity to produce more of your own food for yourself and your family, to enter more fully into the yearly cycle, and to know your place in the web of life.

. . .Titmouse

New on the Site (Since October 24, 2008)

January 1, 2009: Best wishes to all my visitors for a happy and healthy new year! What can we expect in 2009?
- My own Musings are in the blog-type corner of the website, “Happy New Year! (How Bad Will It Get?)”.
- James Howard Kunstler, author of The Long Emergency, has graciously allowed me to post his “Forecast for 2009”, in The Coming Storm (Overview section). It is well worth reading.
December 31, 2009: Added to Poultry section:
- The Poultry Overview subsection has a new entry-level guide to poultry husbandry, “The Home Flock for Beginners”; and two reflective pieces on the role the home flock can play in a time of historic change in our economy and way of life—“Poultry Husbandry in a Changed Energy Future” and “The Homestead Flock: Pets or Partners?”
- The Poultry Miscellaneous subsection has “New Kid in the Flock”, a discussion of the challenges of bringing new members into the flock.
December 26, 2008: I have long offered “Achieving Food Independence on the Modern Homestead” as the “flagship” article on the site—the grand overview of our approach to homesteading. Though I am keeping that piece on the site, in many ways it is now superseded by “The Integrated Homestead”.
December 22, 2008: I have reorganized the Poultry section, adding three subsections:
- The Poultry section now opens with a Poultry Overview subsection, into which I have moved the “Poultry 101” article, “Starting a Small Flock of Chickens”. (I will add a couple of other overall guides to poultry husbandry, for different levels of experience.)
- The new Butchering Poultry subsection now contains the extensive pictorial, “Homestead Poultry Butchering”. (I will be adding an article on making a home-built “Whizbang” poultry plucker.)
- The new Poultry Miscellaneous subsection now contains “The Homestead Waterfowl Flock” and “Caponizing: Reviving a Lost Art”. (In the future, I hope to add a Question & Answer page in this section.)
December 21, 2008: The pages in the Resources section (“Books and Magazines”, “Seeds and Plants”, “Links”, etc. have been expanded with more refererences to other sources of information.

“The Homestead Waterfowl Flock” now has photos.
December 18, 2008: The Poultry section has new entries in Housing (“Chickens in the Winter Greenhouse”) and Breeding (“Breeding Your Backyard Flock” and “Making and Using Trap Nests”).
December 12, 2008: The Resources section has a new subsection we're happy to share with you—In the Kitchen. Recipes and tips so far include:

November 21, 2008: The Feeding section (under Poultry) has a new article, “The Challenge of High Feed Costs”, which was published in Backyard Poultry.
November 15, 2008: The Garden section has a new article, “Growing and Using Medicinal Herbs”, the original version of the article published as “Homegrown Medicine” in Mother Earth News.
November 15, 2008: The new Tools subsection (in Grow It!) has two new articles, “With Scythe and Cart and Broadfork: A Meditation on Tool Use” and “Completing the Tool Kit”, based on work I did for the article “Best Low-Tech Tools,” published in Mother Earth News.
October 28, 2008: The Grow It! section has a new subsection, Tools. I'm especially excited about the first article, “A Handcrafted Broadfork”. Larry Cooper, a traditional blacksmith, made his version of the broadfork after seeking information from me earlier this year about its design and use. In this new article, he tells the story of his broadfork—and offers to make one for you if you like! Check it out.
October 27, 2008: The Resources section has a new subsection, Book Reviews. The first review, of “In Defense of Food, Michael Pollan”, was written by Ellen for the Summer 2008 issue of the Weston A. Price Foundation's quarterly journal Wise Traditions.
October 24, 2008: The Grow It! section has a new subsection, Composting. Since I receive so many inquiries about our use of vermicomposting, I am including there “The Boxwood Vermicomposting System” as the first addition in the current update.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Ricky Nelson, owner of Blizzard Media, host for the site, for his invaluable help scripting the backend voodoo that makes it all work, and for his kind support (sometimes hand-holding) for this non-geek.

Thanks to Alexandra Howarth, who prepared the site's first 250 image files to be web-ready. Her offer to do so was made via the website, completely out of the blue, because she wanted to contribute to the site's mission. Her generosity is astounding, and the online friendship that accompanied the work most gratifying.

Thanks to Heather, my daughter, who inspired me to find and develop new tools—php, mysql, cyber-magic—to make the site more dynamic and useful, and who has been so supportive of this effort.

And always, always, thanks most of all to the love of my life, Ellen, who sometimes suffers with enormous patience the loss of a husband down a black hole in cyberspace.

To help block a crushing load of spam, I now ask that you fill in the Contact form if you want to be in touch. It would be good to hear from you.

Thanks for visiting, and enjoy the site! ~Harvey and Ellen Ussery

Oh, no!—not again!

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