8504_BestofMENCollectorSeriesWinter2017

Table of Contents

32

DIY AND BUILDING 6 Cob Construction:

Build With Earth & Straw Hand-sculpt your custom, mortgage-free home.

12 How to Make a Solar Still Make your own distilled water using these DIY plans.

18 Build a Homestead

Classic: The Outhouse

For homesteaders in remote areas, a properly managed privy might be a better idea than a full-blown septic system.

22 Do-It-Yourself

Pole-Barn Building

Put up a pole building for a fast, solid, and cost-effective workshop, storage space, or livestock shelter.

22

1-3 TOC.indd 1

27 Make Your Own

No-Space Potato Barrel

As long as you have a sunny spot, you can grow your own potatoes!

28 How to Build

a Grain Bin House

These simple metal structures can be used as houses, and more!

FOOD AND COOKING 32 5 Minutes a Day for

Fresh-Baked Bread

Discover this ridiculously easy — and cheap! — technique that revolutionizes home baking.

38 How to Store Fresh Eggs

We experimented with various methods of storing fresh eggs, both with no refrigeration and for a long haul in a refrigerator.

41 How to Make

Homemade Apple Juice

No juice extractor? No problem!

Here’s an easy method for making fresh, delicious apple juice.

42 Easy Cheesy:

4 Super-Simple Recipes

Making cheese in your kitchen isn’t difficult. In 30 minutes make fresh homemade mozzarella.

37 Homemade Cream Cheese

45 An Inexpensive and Easy

Making homemade products is easier than you might think. Try these two simple recipes.

Gary Miller shares a recipe using fruits or honey to create a homemade wine.

& Sour Cream

28

Homemade Wine Recipe

COVER PHOTOGRAPH: ISTOCK/ATTILA HUSZTI

Turn simple bread recipes into delicious, freshbaked loaves.

The Best of MOTHER EARTH NEWS • Collector Series

42

9/13/17 10:53 AM

46 46 Build Your Own

Wood-Fired Earth Oven

With this nifty, easy-to-make oven you can bake crusty breads, tasty pizzas, and even roasted meats.

50 Got Cabbage?

Make Sauerkraut!

This fascinating fermented food is delicious, easy to make, and good for your health.

52 Build a Solar

Food Dehydrator

Preserve your harvest with free energy from the sun.

GARDENING 55 Grow Free Fruit Trees

Grow your own delicious peaches, nectarines, and apricots from seed, and save!

58 Best Vegetables

to Grow in the Shade

Even in shady conditions, you can bask in great garden harvests if you choose the right crops and make a few easy adjustments.

62 Grow More Food

in Less Space (With the Least Work!)

Blending the best principles of

92

62 biointensive and square-foot gardening will yield a customized, highly productive growing system.

68 8 Strategies for

Better Garden Soil

Use these natural methods recommended by a garden expert to build healthier soil.

74 The Best Tomatoes to

Grow Where You Live

Enjoy bumper harvests by growing varieties recommended by organic gardeners in your region.

80 Make Your Own Potting Soil

You can save money by giving up exotic ingredients and use your own soil and compost to make potting mixes your plants will love.

83 The 10 Worst

Garden Weeds

The votes from more than 2,000 gardeners are in! From crab grass to bindweed to thistle, here are the best control strategies for North America’s worst garden weeds.

88 Start a Quick & Easy

Food Garden

This season-by-season planting plan for a no-dig easy-care bag garden features 25 favorite crops.

103

74 92 Vertical Gardening

Techniques for Maximum Returns

You can grow bigger, better cukes, beans, tomatoes, and cantaloupes with simple, sturdy trellises.

HOMESTEADING 96 Plan the Perfect Homestead

Turn your dreams of country living into reality with advice from those who did just that.

103 Things You Should

Know (Or Wish You Had Known) Before You Start a Goat Farm

A blogger offers her advice on the dos and don’ts of raising goats.

106 10 Easy Ways to

Save Energy at Home

From using ceiling fans to adding power strips to finding creative new uses for bubble wrap, there are a variety of easy and proven ways to lower energy bills.

108 How to Raise Honeybees

If the draw of fresh honey has given you bees on the brain, learn how to raise honeybees for excitement and sweetness for years to come.

108

130 115 Handmade Braided Rugs

Create your own version of this old-fashioned floor cover.

116 Portable Chicken

Mini-Coop Plan

With this unique design, anyone can keep a few chickens, even in small backyards.

118 If I Could Do It All Again …

Homesteading Lessons Learned

From planning your home to laying out garden beds, a longtime homesteader offers advice 20 years in the making.

122 Choose DIY to

Save Big on Solar!

Consider installing your own solar electric system. Doing the work yourself can add up to serious savings!

127 Fish Farming

It’s a lot like vegetable gardening, only wetter.

130 Home Wind Power:

Yes, in My Backyard!

Considering residential wind power for energy self-sufficiency?

Find out whether a home wind turbine is right for you.

148

135 135 Best Chicken Breeds

for Backyard Flocks

Our survey results can help you choose the best chickens for eggs, meat, temperament, and more.

NATURAL HEALTH 138 Top Ways to

Get Rid of Ticks

Nix ticks from your yard, home, and body to prevent Lyme and other diseases that threaten your family.

142 Grown Safe, Natural

Mosquito Repellents

These naturally mosquito-repellent plants and homemade mosquito traps will help you have a less buggy summer.

146 8 Natural Treatments

for Bee Stings

To get fast relief, here are a few treatment options you can use at home. You likely have what you need in the kitchen cupboard!

148 Natural Treatments

for Bronchitis

Sometimes what starts out as a cold or flu develops into a deep bronchial cough that just won’t go away. These natural treatments

158

146 can help you heal your bronchitis without antibiotics.

149 Discover the Benefits

of Lemongrass Tea

Whether or not it aids digestions or helps high blood pressure, lemongrass tea is a refreshing beverage. And if you live in a warm climate you can grow the plant yourself.

150 12 Strategies to Strengthen

Your Immune System

Bolster your immune system naturally with these easy tips!

153 Six Natural

Allergy Remedies

Breathe easier with medically proven allergy treatments.

156 Give Chiggers the Brush

Avoid these pesky ‘red bugs’ and take the itch out of summer.

158 Make Your Own

Homemade Soap

Follow along as we make decorative bars of soap using herbs and flowers.

160 Tips for Safe Flea Control

Deter fleas the natural way with these non-toxic remedies.

160

WWW.MOTHEREARTHNEWS.COM

1-3 TOC.indd 2-3

3

8/3/18 10:08 AM

How to Make a

SOLAR STILL

Make your own distilled water using these DIY plans.

By Eric Smith

M

ake your own distilled water from stream or lake water, salt water, or even brackish, dirty water, using these DIY Solar Still Plans. With just a few basic building materials, a sheet of glass and some sunshine, you can purify your own water at no cost and with minimal effort.

Distilled water is not just for drinking, and it’s always worth keeping a few gallons of it on hand. Clean water free of chemicals and minerals has a number of valuable uses: • Always refill the lead-acid batteries used for solar energy systems or automobiles with distilled water • Water delicate plants like orchids with distilled water; minerals and additives like fluoride or chlorine that are present in most tap water can harm plants • Distilled water mixed with antifreeze is recommended for car radiators, as it’s less corrosive • Steam irons become clogged with mineral deposits unless you use distilled water The principle of using the sun’s heat to separate water from dissolved minerals has been understood for millennia, salt ponds being the best example of how this knowledge has been put to use in the past.

In salt ponds, seawater is drained into shallow ponds and then baked and purified in the sun until all that remains are crystals of salt. In this case, the pure water that gradually evaporated away was considered a useless byproduct, but as far back as the time of the ancient Greeks it was 12 THE BEST OF MOTHER EARTH NEWS

12-16 Solar Still.indd 12-13

known that seawater could be made fresh and drinkable by this process.

A solar still works like a salt evaporation pond, except that the water that invisibly evaporates is extracted from the air; the minerals and other impu-

rities are left behind and discarded.

As the hot, moisture-laden air rises up to the slanting sheet of relatively cool glass sealed to the box, water condenses out in the form of small droplets that cling to the glass. As these droplets get heavier, they roll down the glass to the collector tube at the bottom and then out to the jug.

Capture distilled water for a variety of uses with your DIY solar still. Use the sun’s energy to accomplish the task.

DO-IT-YOURSELF • WWW.MOTHEREARTHNEWS.COM 13

8/3/18 10:14 AM

If you want to have one thing you do every day that is simply perfect, baking this bread is it!

ball a quarter-turn as you go, until the bottom is a collection of four bunched ends. Most of the dusting flour will fall off; it doesn’t need to be incorporated.

The bottom of the loaf will flatten out during resting and baking.

Place the ball on the pizza peel. Let it rest uncovered for about 40 minutes. Depending on the dough’s age, you may see little rise during this period; more rising will occur during baking.

Twenty minutes before baking, preheat oven to 450 degrees with a baking stone on the middle rack. Place an empty broiler tray for holding water on another shelf.

Dust the top of the loaf liberally with flour, which will allow the slashing, serrated knife to pass without sticking. Slash a quarter-inch-deep cross, scallop, or tick-tack-toe pattern into the top. (This helps the bread expand during baking.)

With a forward jerking motion of the wrist, slide the loaf off the pizza peel and onto the baking stone. Quickly but

6 7 8 9

carefully pour about a cup of hot water into the broiler tray and close the oven door to trap the steam. Bake for about 30 minutes, or until the crust is browned and firm to the touch. With wet dough, there’s little risk of drying out the interior, despite the dark crust.

When you remove the loaf from the oven, it will audibly crackle, or “sing,” when initially exposed to room temperature air. Allow to cool completely, preferably on a wire rack, for best flavor, texture and slicing. The perfect crust may initially soften, but will firm up again when cooled.

Refrigerate the remaining dough in your lidded (not airtight) container and use it over the next two weeks: You’ll find that even one day’s storage improves the flavor and texture of your bread. This maturation continues over the two-week period. Cut off and shape loaves as you need them. The dough can also be frozen in 1-pound portions in an airtight container and defrosted overnight in the refrigerator prior to baking day.

10

Neapolitan Pizza Dough

The secrets to this pizza are to keep the crust thin, don’t overload it, and to bake it quickly at a high temperature so it doesn’t cook down to a soup. It’s unlike anything most of us are used to eating — especially if you make fresh mozzarella! Makes 1 12- to 14-inch pizza to serve 2 to 4.

1 Twenty minutes before baking, preheat the oven with a clean baking stone at your oven’s maximum temperature — the hotter, the better. (Another option is to use the baking stone over a grill, which takes about two-thirds of the time.)

2 Prepare the toppings in advance. The key to a pizza that slides right off the peel is to work quickly.

3 Follow Step 5 of The Master Recipe (Page 35).

4 Flatten the dough into an 1⁄8-inch-thick round with your hands and a rolling pin on a wooden board. Dust with flour to keep the dough from sticking. (A little sticking can help overcome the dough’s resistance to stretching, though, so don’t overuse flour.) You also can let the partially rolled dough relax for a few minutes to allow further rolling. Stretching by hand may help, followed by additional rolling. Place the rolled-out dough onto a liberally cornmeal-covered pizza peel.

5 Distribute your toppings over the surface, leaving some of its surface exposed so you can appreciate the individual ingredients — and the magnificent crust! — of the final product. No further resting is needed.

6 Turn on the exhaust fan (or use lower heat and bake a few minutes longer), because some of the cornmeal will smoke. Slide the pizza onto the stone (back-and-forth shakes can help dislodge it). Check for doneness in 8 to 10 minutes. Turn the pizza around if one side is browning too fast. It may need up to 5 more minutes.

7 Allow to cool slightly on a rack before serving.

COURTESY THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS

1 pound pre-mixed boule dough Cornmeal for covering the pizza peel TOPPING: your favorite seasonal ingredients

36 THE BEST OF MOTHER EARTH NEWS

32-36 Artisan Bread.indd 36

9/7/17 3:24 PM

Supereasy Homemade

CREAM CHEESE & SOUR CREAM Making homemade food is easier than you might think.

Try these two simple recipes.

By Deanna Duke

T

wo items that we seem to buy every week from the grocery store are cream cheese and sour cream. Why I haven’t started making these myself is beyond me. Most likely because I didn’t realize how extremely easy it was to do both. For the cream cheese, I’ve read several recipes that call for fancy equipment or hard-to-find ingredients, but there are other ways of making it that won’t make your throw your hands up in frustration. And, considering the amount of plastic packaging involved with both items, making them at home will also limit the amount of waste involved (although we do recycle both kinds of containers). These recipes are so easy, you’ll wonder why you never tried them before.

Homemade Cream Cheese

GETTY IMAGES/HANDMADEPICTURES

1 quart homemade or store-bought plain yogurt (whole milk or lowfat, depending on your preference) Place a clean kitchen towel or clean muslin in a colander. Place the colander in a bowl that is large enough to hold it. Add the yogurt to the lined colander and wrap the towel over the top to cover (or use a plate). Leave this to drain for about 5 hours in the refrigerator. If you want a thicker consistency, leave it longer, making sure to empty what is draining so it doesn’t reach the bottom of the colander and get reabsorbed. Store your finished cream cheese in a resealable container in the fridge. Better yet, use one of your old packaged cream cheese containers to do the job!

Your cream cheese will last as long as your yogurt would, so if you used purchased yogurt (rather than making it yourself), check the expiration date and use that as your guide. (I highly recommend trying to make the yogurt yourself since this will cut down on additional waste especially if you can get your milk in returnable glass bottles.) If you want to get fancy, you can add flavorings to your cream cheese. Try adding homemade straw-

berry jam for strawberry-flavored cream cheese. If you spent time dehydrating onions, then adding those (or fresh green onions) and chives from your garden will make a tasty chive-and-onion cream cheese spread.

Homemade Sour Cream 1 cup heavy cream 1 ⁄4 cup sour cream or cultured buttermilk (or even white vinegar will work) In a screw-top jar or Mason jar with lid, combine the heavy cream and sour cream or buttermilk. Shake the ingredients up a bit to thoroughly mix and let stand, covered, at room temperature for about 24 hours or until it becomes very thick. You can store your sour cream in the refrigerator in the original jar you mixed it in (or use some other resealable container) for up to one week. Make sure that your sour cream is well chilled before using.

If you want to make a lighter sour cream, substitute whole milk for 1⁄2 cup of the heavy cream.

FOOD • WWW.MOTHEREARTHNEWS.COM 37

37 Cream Cheese.indd 37

9/19/17 1:31 PM

Finish plaster

Height of door opening is 63 percent of interior oven dome height

Second layer First or thermal layer

100%

Brick floor and tongue on 4-inch sand bed

63%

“Urbanite” (recycled broken concrete) or other foundation filled with rubble and rock

Grade

Determine your oven’s size by deciding how many loaves, pizzas or cookies you want to bake.

The Floor Twenty to 27 inches is a good size for the oven floor, but to determine your exact needs make a mock-up of what you want to bake and calculate how much space it takes. Make your oven floor by setting standard red or fire bricks on a level bed of smooth, tamped sand, 4 to 6 inches deep. Used bricks are great, but should be free of old mortar. Set the first one level and solid. Hold the next brick level and just above the sand; gently kiss its long side to the long side of the previous one. Set it down flat and firm. Don’t

Build Your Own

WOOD-FIRED EARTH OVEN Article and illustrations

by Kiko Denzer

D

id you love to make mud pies when you were a kid? Even if you didn’t, you can still build this easy outdoor oven that works as well as a custom-built masonry or ceramic model.

46 THE BEST OF MOTHER EARTH NEWS

46-49 Earth Oven.indd 46-47

Cost? Next to nothing. Material?

The earth under your feet — one of the best building materials on the planet. And the only skills you need are just the ones you were born with.

Follow the steps outlined below and you’ll enjoy crusty, chewy and richly flavored bread, pizza and other baked goodies in no time.

Get Ready Collect your shovel, a wheelbarrow and/or some buckets, a tape measure, scraps of lumber, a plastic tarp and kitchen utensils (for sculpting).

To start, prepare a base for the oven.

If you’re going to use the oven a lot, you’ll want to build the oven floor at waist-height. Use what you have — rocks, broken-up concrete, logs, old metal barrels, or even sawhorses. If you don’t mind working low, build on the ground.

Make a Form Shape a pile of moist sand on the floor bricks. (This can be any kind of sand, or even loose topsoil. The form will be covered with your mud mix, then removed to form the oven’s interior.) The form should be a few inches higher than half the oven floor’s width.

(For example: An oven 27 inches wide [one-half of which equals 13.5 inches] should stand 16 to 20 inches high.)

Hold a level across the top; measure the distance to the floor to calculate the interior height of your oven.

Multiply it by 63 percent (0.63) to determine the proper height for your oven door. Write this number down!

Mix Mud

UPPER RIGHT: DAN WING

With this nifty, easy-to-make oven you can bake crusty breads, tasty pizzas, and even roasted meats.

wiggle it. If one brick stands up a bit proud, tap it down to make it flush with the rest.

Make a sand form for the oven.

Good oven-building soil usually is found below the topsoil. It contains clay which, like cement, holds things together. Use it straight out of the ground or mix it with sand.

If you have nowhere to dig, look for construction sites, road cuts or river banks. Clay subsoil should feel sticky, slippery and a bit greasy (in contrast, silt and organic matter feel floury and

Why Earth Oven Bread Is Better A conventional gas or electric oven bakes bread with a lot of hot air, or convection. An earthen oven uses conduction, convection, and radiation, providing faster, more thorough baking and better flavor.

Here’s how it works: Build a fire in the hollow earthen dome. The dense walls soak up heat for two to three hours, after which the oven’s interior reaches about 700 F. Remove coals, sweep the oven floor, and let the temperature stabilize and even decline a bit. Slide your loaves onto the oven’s hot floor.

Heat is conducted immediately from floor to loaf, creating a higher, airier loaf (an effect called “oven spring,” see photo above). The intense heat drives moisture from the crust, making it crisp and filling the oven with steam.

Convection then disperses that superheated steam, caramelizing sugars in the crust and creating the unique flavor and texture of authentic hearthbaked bread.

The oven walls radiate heat equally throughout the oven — no hot or cold spots — so many loaves bake as thoroughly as one.

An earthen oven holds heat for several hours, so after the bread (or pizza) is done, you can cook anything: vegetables, meats, casseroles, soups, stews, cookies, cakes, pies, or puddings. And when the oven is too cool to cook (usually after several hours), you can use the remaining heat to dry the wood for your next fire.

FOOD • WWW.MOTHEREARTHNEWS.COM 47

8/3/18 10:28 AM

Best Vegetables

TO GROW IN THE SHADE

Success in the Shade

Even in shady conditions, you can bask in great garden harvests if you choose the right crops and make a few easy adjustments.

By Colleen Vanderlinden Illustrations by Frank Fretz

F

or many gardeners, the optimum conditions most vegetables prefer — eight to 10 hours of full sun — just aren’t possible. Whether from trees or shadows from nearby buildings, shade is frequently a fact of gardening life.

Luckily, shade doesn’t have to stop you from growing food. If you start with the most shade-tolerant crops (see the chart on Page 60), take extra care to provide fertile soil and ample water, and consider using a reflective plastic mulch, you can establish a productive shade garden and harvest a respectable variety of veggies.

How Much Shade Is Too Much?

All shade is not equal. Some shady conditions will yield much more produce than others will, while some areas are better left for hostas and moss. Gardeners should be familiar with the different types of shade, but should also keep in mind that measuring how much shade your garden gets isn’t always easy.

For instance, nearby trees may cast dappled shade on your garden for some or all of the day. If the tree canopy is high enough and the branches aren’t too dense, the conditions nearby can be shady but still fairly bright. Trimming any lowhanging branches can help let in more sunlight.

More challenging than dappled shade is partial shade, which can be quite variable, ranging from only a couple of sunny hours and many hours of shade to the opposite. Shade from buildings is more difficult to deal with than shade from trees, as it often plunges the garden into total shade for large parts of the day.

As a general rule, if you have a few hours of full sun but dark shade for the rest of the day, you can grow some crops, but the yields won’t be as high as if you had bright or dappled shade during the rest of the day. Maybe your garden has a little of everything: some areas that get a couple of hours of sun, some that get dappled shade, and some that are in complete shade — and the amounts of shade will change seasonally. With such a scenario, adding up the exact amount 58 THE BEST OF MOTHER EARTH NEWS

58-61 Shade Gardening.indd 58-59

8/3/18 10:29 AM

8

STRATEGIES FOR BETTER GARDEN SOIL

Use well-aged humus and compost.

Keep your compost pile going all year-round.

S

tarting a new garden isn’t difficult.

Most people begin by going out into their yards with a shovel or garden tiller, digging up the ground and putting in a few plants. Add a little mulch or compost, and you’re well on your way to homegrown vegetables. But, in the long run, the success of your garden depends on healthy soil. The more you can do to keep your soil healthy, the more productive your garden will be and the higher the quality of your crops.

I often discuss the value of soil care methods that imitate natural soil communities. These include protecting soil structure, feeding the soil with nutrients from natural and local sources and increasing

the diversity and numbers of the microbes and other organisms that live in the soil.

In this article, I’ll focus on specific ways to achieve these goals. There are many ways to do this, but they all revolve around two basic concepts: For more fertile soil, you need to increase organic matter and mineral availability, and whenever possible, you should avoid tilling the soil and leave its structure undisturbed.

Add Organic Matter For the best soil, sources of organic matter should be as diverse as possible.

1 Add manures for nitrogen. All livestock manures can be valuable additions to soil — their nutrients are readily available to soil organisms and plants. In fact, manures make a greater contribution to soil

aggregation than composts, which have already mostly decomposed.

You should apply manure with care.

Although pathogens are less likely to be found in manures from homesteads and small farms than those from large confinement livestock operations, you should allow three months between application and harvest of root crops or leafy vegetables, such as lettuce and spinach, to guard against contamination. (Tall crops such as corn and trellised tomatoes shouldn’t be prone to contamination.)

However, because some nutrients from manures are so readily available, they are more likely to leach out of the soil (where they’re needed) into groundwater and streams (where they’re pollutants). Also, if manures are overused, they can provide

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: FOTOLIA (4)/YELLOW, JBPHOTOGRAPHYLT, CURTO, JOHN BRAID

Use these natural methods to build healthier soil.

By Harvey Ussery

Planting in rows with a variety of trellises in place will help as the gardening season continues (above); at right, a well-tended garden showing off its blooming splendor.

68 THE BEST OF MOTHER EARTH NEWS

68-73 Better Soil.indd 68-69

8/3/18 10:31 AM