Cd Greier

I don't wash my hair often. Maybe once a week.

Savannah, me, too. Hairdressers always comment how healthy my hair is and I attribute it to not over-washing and seldom blow-drying (except in winter- no wet hair in -40!); I don't use "real" conditioner either- after a wash I slather my face and hands with hand lotion and drag them through my towel-dried hair.

A while back I tried just baking soda and water to wash my hair. Because it doesn't feel noticeable in already wet hair, I was never sure how well I'd worked it through but once it dried, my hair and scalp felt as clean as ever. I would like to do it that way all the time (cheap!) but somehow I acquired a virtual lifetime-worth of shampoos and feel like it would be a waste of money to dump them. On the other hand, though my hair is healthy, my scalp is increasingly sick-scaly and itchy. Maybe the shampoos are to blame?

I heard the coyotes howl, nearby, then in another direction, and another, and they were coming in closer.... The coyote was only a few feet away and it never budged or backed down.

Faye, close call  the other night with those coyotes!  I would have been too scared to save anything but myself! We have coyotes and occasional wolves but only chickens, which they have ignored; we want to get other small livestock but haven't put up fences or shelter.  Besides locking them in the barn at night and the limited 8-foot fenced area for the goats, what else do you do or plan to do to prevent coyote attacks?

My ground-level bathroom abuts the masonry heater so we modified the "bench" to act as the floor of the shower. So far so good!

The conversation about mass-heat being perceived as warm all over even within a cool room strikes a chord with me. I'm a big fan of slippers; warm feet = warm body! So it makes sense to me that simply adding a heated bag of cherry pits to the foot of the bed or a heated brick to the feet in a wagon or sleigh, as our grandparents did, would make a cold room or ride comfortable; a warm floor to walk on can keep a person feeling warm all over, too (and last longer... and burn less fuel...and avoid sudden temperature fluctuations...).

Your towels are gorgeous! I'm inspired to follow through on my weaving lessons!

So I am at her place hemming those slacks and she's in mortal combat redoing those zippers....

What a wonderful arrangement! I think that I would get a lot more done if I could do it with someone. Imagine a neighbourhood work bee and everyone could bring whatever portable chores they wanted....

Hunter-gatherers ate from hundreds of different food sources.  The average western-culturally-deprived citizen eats, what, less than 50.  They also fattened up in the summer, and semi-starved in the winter (at least, in the colder northern climates).  

Absolutely, Bryant and Gordon. My family had home-grown frozen vegetables and home-canned fruit most of the winter but my husband grew up eating "fresh" produce all year round so that's a bit of a problem. I plan to grow plenty of good "keepers" like root vegetables and squash when we can tend the garden regularly (we don't live on-site yet) and hopefully we'll compromise

As for varied diet, my dad grew up on deer they could hunt all year, potatoes, cabbage and a couple hundred jars of saskatoons (serviceberries) his mom put up every summer. (That was a family outing for them: G'pa, G'ma and nine kids out berry picking.) My mom was even more limited: fat-beef broth on Sundays and milk sauce (flade) all week.  They were too poor to even start a garden (!) and she said that in spring, the siblings foraged greens and ate them in the field like the goats. But they turned out to be the smartest, most resourceful people I know.

We all have to do what we can and make our way without the can'ts.

Another reason not to produce everything yourself is having neighbours with whom you can trade goods (and services). Our slice if paradise is too sandy for most gardening but many of our neighbours are cattlemen and others are grain farmers so I plan to source them for manure and straw for long-term soil amendment instead of giving money to chemical companies for their short-term fertilizers. Happy neighbourhood, happy local economy.

Cats are not the only vermin control animals. Sometimes a helpful hawk or itinerate fox is just as valuable (assuming you don't have other target prey like chickens).

Re: litter
I have had a number of feline pets who preferred to do their business outdoors, even in miserable weather. (We range from -40C to +40C!) I accidentally discovered a way to train them to go outdoors: clean your litter area (in my case, the bathroom) with Pinesol cleaner. Cats hate strong-smelling cleaning products, especially pine-scented. A little goes a long way, too!

I have never heard of anyone providing litter to barn cats. It is their nature to conceal their waste and I, for one, wouldn't violate their privacy by looking for poop