Why do my interests in canning, couponing, and homesteading overlap so often with blogs with titles like ‘The Obedient Housewife’?
Like, I’m like, “I want to learn to make soap and farm,” and suddenly I see 500 “traditional family” motherfuckers like no you are mistaken. I am just a simple lesbian anticapitalist looking to limit my consumerism as much as possible.
‘these fun crafts will keep your kids occupied until your husband gets home!’ no i want a clothespin crown for me
As a nerd who homesteads, let me share the data I have gathered!
First is my megalist of homesteading-related links I’ve gathered over the years. I’m a mod over at r/homesteading and this is where I’ve put a lot of good sources (not all, admittedly some are still sitting in my bookmark folder waiting to be added). The search function at reddit is wretched, but there’s also been lots of good things I’ve shared there too. Please note that many of these sources are not actual webpages, but PDFs. That’s not an accident, PDFs are where you find the really good in-depth stuff.
Many of my sources are from the Extension Service. They won’t try to relate to you based on your lifestyle or sexual identity or religion or whatever, but due to that, they also won’t be alienating you either.
The Cooperative Extension Service (US only) exists in all 50 states and in most counties. It is taxpayer funded. The Extension Service exists to help people become more self sufficient, for farmers to be more successful, for people to be healthier, for kids to be well adjusted, to figure out how to grow the best plants in your area, etc. Some county offices even offer cheap classes in things like gardening, canning, soap making, and they’re taught by people with training in these areas (I once heard a great talk on composting from a soil scientist that way). Do you want to know what type of plant something is? Do you need help figuring out a plant disease or pest issue? You can now contact them online and get great info.
I HIGHLY recommend checking out your state’s extension service website, because they do offer different types of information, depending on what is grown/raised where you are (and how well funded they are). My county extension puts out a monthly gardening newsletter, which includes a helpful ‘this is the time of the year to do —-’ part.
Here’s an example from New York – they have a calendar at the bottom, showing how they have things like hydroponic and urban agriculture workshops coming up.
Interested in raising animals? Penn State Extension is really really good. They have tons of free materials and courses available online, some I pulled for my megalist at the top of this.
National Center for Home Food Preservation – they cover the important aspects of food safety, and also have some recipes. Many state Extension Service websites will have lots more recipes.
If you have kids, check out4-H programs for them. It’s part of the local public school system here. If you’re homeschooling, you can also purchase their science-filled educational and self sufficiency materials (materials are divided by age ranges – Cloverbud Member: ages 5-8, Junior Member: ages 9-13, Senior Member: ages 14-19). One of my coworkers is in 4-H, she’s still in high school, and last year she raised an award-winning heifer.
Congress grants the money for funding these programs, and they’re connected with various universities. There’s a level of cutting edge scientific knowledge and academic rigor you don’t find in blogs or even most books. There’s LOTS of homesteading books filled with outdated information like ‘till the earth every year’ hell I still have older coworkers who do it and I’m trying to figure out how to gently tell them that they’re destroying their soil that way, and that there’s better methods now, methods grounded in science.
the republicans are only in the majority in the senate by two seats. at least three senators have to vote against the bill to avoid a tiebreaker by the vice president. these three senators probably represent the best chance to flip.
There’s a witch in the garden again, smoking hand rolled cigarettes. The first time I caught her there, she was pulling up everything but the weeds. Out went the tomato plants and the lemongrass. Perennials, up by the roots. When I asked why, she closed her hand hard around a thistle and then released it, watched it spring back into place and showed me the blood on her palm. She said, have you ever seen anything more resilient?
I didn’t ask her name until the third time. She was perched on a rusted lawn-chair talking to the fog. She swatted me away and said she didn’t have one; but things get lost in translation sometimes. I have come to understand she doesn’t have only one name. Calls herself Driftwood, calls herself Cockroach Woman, calls herself Patron Saint of Doorways and laughs about it. Urchin Heart, Abundance of Softness. I ask what her mother called her and she says it sounds so far away. She says if people change, she doesn’t understand why names get stuck. She calls it false advertisement and offers me a sugar packet from the pocket of her purple coat.
The next time she shows up, it’s at my front door instead. She has a suitcase, a backpack, and a box of mugs. I rent her a room on the second floor but she rarely ever sleeps there. I wander into the kitchen at odd hours to find her rolling cigarettes and making tea, hanging herbs up to dry, paging through old notebooks. One has moss hanging out of it, one leaks all over the kitchen table every time it’s closed. She says these are normal setbacks when you’re tasked with collecting a life between pages. She says, nothing is ever real until she writes it down. She takes two full months to write that she lives here now.
Thistle Witch asks me for help tightening her corset. She tells me that she used to just tie the laces to the doorknob and throw herself in the opposite direction. She says it’s nice to have someone there to anchor her, but after she says it, she frowns. Leaves for three weeks and comes home without acknowledging her absence. She just walks back into the flat one morning and upends her purse on the counter. I count twenty-seven different branded sugar packets. She curls up on the rug in the living room and I don’t ask where she’s been.
@staff I’ve deleted a number of posts on 5/4/12, between the hours of about ten and midnight- possibly as late as one am. Can you assist me in recovery the posts somehow?
The Carving Witch 