Farm Store Open Saturday, December 2nd, 12-4pm This Saturday come say hello and do some holiday shopping! This month’s special is 10% off all candles! We offer a wide selection of candles to bring a warm glow to these dark winter days. They also make great gifts! In the farm store we’ll be fully stocked with all of our local offerings: soaps and […]
Archive for the ‘Household’ Category
Farm Store Open Saturday: Candles On Sale
Posted in Farm Store, Household on November 30, 2017 | Leave a Comment »
Farm Store Open This Saturday- Sale on NEW Candles and Soap!
Posted in Farm Store, Food & Beverage, Household on July 31, 2017 | Leave a Comment »
Farm Store Open Saturday, August 5th, 12-4pm This Saturday come say hello and do some shopping! This month’s special is 10% off our NEW Aroma Naturals candles and body wash! Details about the Aroma Naturals line and what we carry are in the article below. In the farm store we’ll be fully stocked with all of our amazing offerings: soaps and […]
Restocked with Whispering Willow Soap, Order Now!
Posted in Farm Store, Household, Uncategorized, tagged health on June 7, 2017 | Leave a Comment »
This week we received our latest order from Whispering Willow, our friends’ soap company in North Carolina. We are now fully stocked in all of the products we carry, including one new offering! We now offer a 64oz hand soap refill for $35 in all of the hand soap varieties: tea tree, peppermint, lemongrass, and […]
The Homestead’s Own Immunity Booster Tea
Posted in Food & Beverage, Health, Household, tagged food, health, homestead, kitchen on January 6, 2017 | Leave a Comment »
This winter one addition to our farm store is our very own Immunity Booster tea blend. This tea is a caffeine-free blend of herbs that strengthens your immune system and helps you stay healthy during cold and flu season. The tea is packaged in a glass mason jar, making a beautiful gift. The jar is also […]
Farm Store Open This Saturday 12-4pm, Beeswax Candles on Sale
Posted in Household, Uncategorized, tagged farm store, homestead, winter on January 5, 2017 | Leave a Comment »
Farm Store Open This Saturday 12-4pm We are enjoying our new arrangement of having the farm store open the first Saturday of every month. It’s great to have this regular time to welcome customers and share our offerings with you! We work very hard to offer high quality products, and it’s a joy to see […]
Reusable Ice Sheets, Perfect for Transporting Milk Home
Posted in Food & Beverage, Household, tagged eggs, food, goat milk, homestead, meat, rabbit meat, raw milk on November 4, 2016 | Leave a Comment »
We all have situations where we need to keep things cold. For some of you, that includes transporting home your farm fresh herdshare milk! For that situation and many others, I highly recommend flexible ice sheets. Here are some that are a great value. We bought these about a year and half ago, and they’re […]
New in the Farm Store!
Posted in Household, Uncategorized, tagged farm tour, homestead on October 10, 2016 | Leave a Comment »
In anticipation of Loudoun’s Fall Farm Tour, we’re updating the farm store with some new products. Today I’ll highlight the farm-themed magnets we’ve made! These magnets were made ourselves from wood we had leftover from various projects. We cut the wood into squares, stamped them with fun farm stamps, sprayed a sealant, and attached magnets. […]
Surviving the Snowstorm!
Posted in Animals, Ducks, Energy, Farm, Goats, Hogs, Layers, Rabbits, tagged american guinea hog, ducks, feeder, goats, homestead, snow, tractor, winter on January 27, 2016 | Leave a Comment »
Along with much of the East Coast, we just endured a record-breaking snowstorm. When you live on a homestead with livestock, weather is a big deal. The livestock need to be cared for every day, and that means getting to them, and making sure they can get around, no matter what the weather. As we […]
Friday on the Farm- 2/27/15
Posted in Beekeeping, Chickens, Ducks, Friday on the Farm, Goats, Household, Layers, tagged bees, chicken, chickens, chicks, ducks, eggs, goats, hens, homestead on February 27, 2015 | Leave a Comment »
It’s been another busy week on the homestead. This morning we’ve been busy preparing for the pekin ducks that will arrive next week! Look forward to some delicious, healthy pastured duck meat to be available around the beginning of May. Love for Whispering Willow Lip Balm I recently tested the Whispering Willow Lip Balm we […]
Homesteading and Hazardous Chemicals
Posted in Food & Beverage, Garden, Household, tagged candlemaking, candles, cooking, garden, gardening on January 2, 2015 | Leave a Comment »
I wrote this book review addressing the challenges regarding potentially hazardous chemicals in our everyday products. We have discussed how we would like to lessen any unnecessary chemical exposure in our home. Our homesteading work has done a lot to give us chemical-free options. Our organic garden gives us food free of herbicides and pesticides. We […]
Book Review: The Non-Toxic Avenger by Deanna Duke
Posted in Health, Household, Reviews, tagged book review, health, homestead, plants on August 14, 2014 | Leave a Comment »
Recently I read The Non-Toxic Avenger by Deanna Duke. I first stumbled upon Duke’s blog a couple of years ago, and found some useful takeaways from her writing. Therefore, I was looking forward to reading her book. While poorly edited and containing many irrelevant asides, the book would be helpful for those curious about the […]
Wood Processing
Posted in Energy, Household, tagged chain saw, garden, maul, shavings, splitting, truck, wedge, wood on January 19, 2013 | Leave a Comment »
The installation of our wood stove brought about a new need, firewood. The first round of wood we struggled to get to our house in the back of our jeep. It took about three trips to get the wood seen in the picture here to our house. That clearly was not very efficient, though the price (free) was right. Now that we had the wood we had to split it. After a few tries with our ax we realized that another tool was needed.
Wood Burning Stove
Posted in Energy, Household, tagged energy, fire, heat, stove, wood, wood stove on January 16, 2013 | Leave a Comment »
Last summer we were researching alternate home heating solutions, well we settled on an option! We decided to go with a Jotul Wood Burning Cast-Iron Stove. We were able to pick up a floor model from a company that recently changed locations for a steep discount. We hooked it up through our existing fireplace and obtained a fire/heat resistant floor mat to place in front of the stove to keep our floor from melting.
Book Review: The Self-Sufficient Life by John Seymour
Posted in Food & Beverage, Garden, Household, Reviews, tagged garden, garden bed, gardening, homestead on August 15, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
I’ve spent some time absorbing all of the information in The Self-Sufficient Life and How to Live it by John Seymour. This book is an amazing resource that covers so many aspects of homesteading! Since the book covers a wide range of topics, it doesn’t go into too much depth on any one. I could […]
Book Review: Exposed by Mark Schapiro
Posted in Food & Beverage, Garden, Household, Reviews, tagged book review, chemicals, environment, health, review, toxins on August 13, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
Yesterday I read the book Exposed: The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products and What’s at Stake for American Power by Mark Schapiro. This book was clearly written with a liberal bias. The author praises the European way of addressing the chemicals present in everyday products, and is very anti-Bush administration. I could be okay with […]
New Windows Coming Soon!
Posted in Energy, Household, tagged energy, heat, homestead, money, windows on August 2, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
We are about to get new windows! We had a few replaced last year, and this year most of the rest. Here’s a picture of one of the windows we’re replacing:
Lining Curtains
Posted in Energy, Household, tagged conservation, energy, homestead, sewing on July 29, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
So one of the benefits of being self-sufficient and doing things yourself is not being restricted by what’s available on the market. Last summer we hung up curtains in our living room. The curtains that matched our style and color scheme were pretty flimsy, though. They weren’t lined, which we wanted. We bought them anyway, […]
Product Review: Scalibor Tick & Flea Collar
Posted in Household, Reviews, tagged dogs, fleas, homestead, review, ticks on July 26, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
We have some wonderful homestead dogs. These poor dogs have had some struggles with homestead ticks, though. Our region is a hotbed of tick activity, unfortunately. I spoke to the vet about the problem, and she recommended a product that’s a new import the US market from Europe. It’s a Scalibor Tick & Flea Collar. […]
Mornings on the Homestead
Posted in Garden, Water, tagged conservation, homestead, water, yard on July 23, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
Since it’s summertime, I’m off! It’s a great part of being a teacher. I enjoy doing some morning chores around the homestead a few days a week. I usually begin with filling a bucket from the rainbarrel, and using that water to water the plants around the yard. I will also take a bucket of […]
DIY Bathroom Fan Replacement
Posted in Household, tagged attic, bathroom, DIY, exhaust, fan, pipe, replacement, vent on July 21, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
When we moved into our homestead we found many of the appliances and household utilities to be in need of repair and/or replacement. The fans in our three bathrooms were all original, noisy, and did not seem to move much air. We decided last summer while we were re-painting all the rooms to replace the fans. Neither Martha or I had ever replaced a bathroom fan before but it seemed easy enough. But of course as with all household projects there are always unforeseen problems and challenges. I’m writing this post to share some of the experiences and nuances of replacing bathroom fans so that if you take on the task you might be better prepared, although I’m sure there will always be more challenges, unique to every situation.
Candlemaking: Attempt #1
Posted in Energy, Household, tagged beekeeping, bees, beeswax, candlemaking, candles, comb, homestead, reuse, solar energy, solar oven, solar power, wax on July 17, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
After receiving this wick material and these wick tabs I was anxious to start making candles! Here at Independence Homestead we try to reuse as many materials as possible, so I had the idea that we could make candles in containers using repurposed glass food jars. We have quite the collection of baby food jars, […]
Melting Beeswax
Posted in Beekeeping, Energy, Household, tagged bee hives, beekeeping, bees, beeswax, comb, filter, melting, solar oven, wax on July 16, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
We needed to melt down the beeswax in the comb so that we could use the wax for candles and other potential crafts. George did some research, and found that it was common to use solar ovens to do this. We had been wanting a solar oven for other reasons so it was a good opportunity to go ahead and build a solar oven!
Building a Solar Oven
Posted in Energy, Food & Beverage, Household, tagged conservation, homestead, solar energy, solar oven, solar power on July 15, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
For a while now we have been wanting to build a solar oven. This summer we’ve made it happen! First we did some research on solar ovens. There are several different configurations one can build. We went with a box cooker design. This is not the type of solar oven that gets the hottest, but […]
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