8856_MENCollectorSeriesModernHomesteading2ndEd

Table of Contents

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SELF-RELIANCE 6 Financial Planning

for an Off-Grid Homestead

A young couple from Idaho shares their savings plan and investment decisions for purchasing land and building their dream home.

8 Build a More

Resilient Homestead

A longtime energy and resilience expert offers advice on how to make your home and land disaster-resistant.

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15 Self-Reliance

Is a Family Affair

The Atwell family is working together to build a homestead haven in Hawaii, complete with hardy crops and a solar-powered home.

16 Targeting Tractors

A closer look at your farm and acreage is the first step when considering a new – or newto-you – tractor purchase.

20 Small Farm, Real Profit

This inspiring half-acre urban farm in Oregon is proving that size doesn’t matter when it comes to profitability.

24

24 Cob Construction:

Build With Earth and Straw

Hand-sculpt your custom, mortgage-free home from dirt-cheap local materials.

30 How to Choose the

Right Chainsaw for Your Homestead

Find a chainsaw to fit your needs, and then follow these simple maintenance tips so you can put it to work for years to come.

COVER PHOTOGRAPH: GETTY IMAGES / RACHEL DEWIS

How to create permanent garden beds and paths.

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40 34 Start a Self-Sufficient,

1-Acre Homestead

Live off the land with these strategies for establishing selfsufficient food production, including advice on crop rotations and raising livestock.

LIVESTOCK 40 Hatch a Flock

Get insider tips on incubating eggs.

43 Feed Your Flock to

Boost Omega-3s

Three poultry management rules will help you provide healthful, omega-3-maximized eggs and meat for your family and your customers.

46 Build Your Own Incubator A poultry farmer offers up the lessons she learned after constructing her own incubation cabinet to hatch rare heritage chicks.

49 Mob Grazing Made Simple A mob of cows in a paddock system can help you cut hay expenses, improve soil and pasture health, and maximize herd performance.

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49 52 The Multiple Benefits

of Grass-Fed Meat

Grazing ruminants play an important role in maintaining our health and protecting the environment.

57 Turn Food Scraps

Into Poultry Feasts

Give your chickens additional nutrition by balancing their rations with good and garden waste.

60 Backyard Chicken Basics

They’re less work than house pets and more fun than a tire swing.

64 Heritage Breeds: Why

They’re Important

Traditional animal breeds benefit both homesteaders and consumers with their hardiness, adaptability, flavorful meat, and genetic diversity.

DO-IT-YOURSELF 69 DIY Outdoor Cookers

You can build a fire pit or assemble a clay-pot smoker in just one weekend.

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57 72 Solar-Powered Pumps Pump water with the power of the sun.

77 Cordage: How to Make

Natural Thread

Extract fibers from plants to make your own strong, sustainable string.

80 Homestead Hacks

Our readers share clever projects that will help you live a selfsufficient life in the country, the suburbs, or the city.

83 5 Affordable DIY

Rocket Stoves

These compact cookers are the perfect addition to any campsite, homestead, canning operation, or backyard.

86 Build This Cozy Cabin

Anyone with basic carpentry skills can construct this classic one-room cabin for just about $6,000.

92 Craft Your Own

Coonskin Cap

Turn a raccoon hide into a warm and hardy hat.

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99 96 Rainwater Harvesting

Think beyond the rain barrel: This simpler, cheaper approach will help you harvest much more free water for your garden!

GARDENING 99 5 Expert-Recommended

Tools for No-Till Plots

These ingenious implements allow you to raise crops organically while preserving the health of your soil.

102 Grow a Community

Giving Garden

With ingenuity, creativity, and a touch of grit, this small North Carolina town cultivated a garden to produce healthy food for neighbors in need.

105 Tips and Techniques for

Water-Wise Gardening

Tap these efficient gardenwatering systems to save on your water bill while still growing food despite drought and heat.

110 How to Make

Cheap Garden Beds

105 114 Eat From Your

Garden All Year

With these expert-recommended techniques and crop varieties, you, too, can break through season barriers in your climate.

119 Prune for Small-

Space Fruit Trees

This revolutionary pruning method will enable you to grow any type and variety of fruit in small spaces.

123 Control Weeds

Without Chemicals

Practice organic weed-control methods and watch your vegetable garden thrive.

FOOD & RECIPES 127 Pawpaw Mead

Foraged fruit + fermentation = funky firewater.

130 Brewing Beer: The Basics Bottle your own beer by using four ingredients and following four steps.

134 Pickle Recipes

for the Picking

Ferment or quick-pickle your harvest with this assortment of ideas from Mother Earth News bloggers.

140 Easy, No-Knead

Artisan Bread

Methods guaranteed to make everyone a baker!

146 Pressure Canning Basics Learn how to use a pressure canner to safely preserve food, and you’ll save money on groceries all year long.

150 Freezing Fruits and

Vegetables From Your Garden

Tap these straightforward freezing tips to turn your garden harvests into sensational, off-season meals.

154 Grab ’n’ Go Homemade

Convenience Foods

Need quick snacks and meals?

Opt for these healthful edibles that work well in a pinch.

158 Herbal Heart Tonics

Here’s how – and why – to create permanent garden beds and paths, and why framed or raised beds may be optional.

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119

Incorporate these five delicious herbs into your daily routine to strengthen and gladded your heart.

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Financial Planning for

Monthly, Off-Grid Expenses

AN OFF-GRID HOMESTEAD

A young couple from Idaho shares their savings plan and investment decisions for purchasing land and building their dream home.

Article and photos by Alyssa Craft

I

n 2013, I was working as a graphic designer in Boulder, Colorado, and making nearly $50,000 a year.

Despite my steady job, I was deeply unhappy. I felt like a chronic consumer, and my urban apartment didn’t provide many opportunities for self-sufficient living.

My partner, Jesse, and I decided to turn our lives around by saving for a rural piece of property in Idaho where we could build an off-grid home. For the next two years, we worked extremely hard to reduce our overhead living expenses and save money for a down payment on

a piece of land. We spent huge amounts of energy selling Jesse’s brick-and-mortar business, building micro-businesses online, and fixing up an old house in exchange for reduced rent. No words can describe the chaos, stress, and excitement of this two-year time frame. We lived in four different houses, each worked 80 to 90 hours per week, and often plugged away until the wee hours of the morning.

We understood that starting our own homestead and building an off-grid home from scratch would help us achieve our financial goals in the long run; we also knew that we’d need a substantial amount of money to get the ball rolling. A loan

would’ve worked against our goal of financial freedom, so we crunched some numbers to understand approximately how much money we’d need to save before getting started.

We moved to 5 rural acres in Idaho just five months ago. Since then, we’ve spent more than $30,000 on various aspects of our journey and thought it would be helpful to others to provide a breakdown of our necessary expenses.

Keep in mind that while our initial investment was high, our household expenses will taper with time, as will our monthly bills. This is our fast-track plan to financial freedom.

The 11 yards of 3⁄4-inch unwashed gravel for the couple’s driveway cost them $160 with delivery.

Initial Investments Instead of sitting in the bank, our money is wrapped up in physical assets. These assets help us build our home for a fraction of the cost of buying a home and having a mortgage, plus we can resell them if we need to or when we’re done.

• Land: $4,500. We negotiated an “owner carry” contract with the seller, which is a great way for people with bad credit or low incomes to afford bare land. Our 5 acres cost $45,000, and we negotiated a down payment of $4,500. We hope to pay off the land in a year or two but can take longer if needed.

• RV: $2,500. We’re living in a 19foot travel trailer while we develop our property. This one-time payment has allowed us to own the roof over our heads rather than waste money on an apartment lease.

When we’re finished building our home, we hope to resell this trailer for at least twice the price we paid for it, if not more.

• Pickup truck: $1,750. Neither one of our vehicles was equipped for towing or construction work, so we sold our brand new car and paid cash for a used truck.

• Generator: $2,300. We bought a portable 3,000-watt generator and were OK with splurging for one that was quality, quiet, and lightweight. Our property is off the grid (and will remain that way), so this purchase wasn’t optional for us.

• Land development: $7,000. This

has included getting a septic permit, having our septic installed, renting an excavator (twice!), and paving our driveway with gravel (see photo, above).

• Assets/tools: $9,050. Although we had a vehicle full of tools upon our arrival, we spent the first three months of our journey investing in additional tools, both large and small, and materials. Some of the items we bought include a fourwheeler, a utility trailer, and a powerful chainsaw for milling lumber.

We were able to acquire $20,000 worth of building materials for half that cost by using reclaimed materials, searching Craigslist for deals, and bartering for better prices.

• Total: $27,100.

This is what our monthly expenses look like five months into our journey (excluding personal expenses that we’d have either on- or off-grid, such as groceries and insurance). Our goal is to eventually eliminate, or significantly reduce, these expenses as we get closer to living entirely off-grid.

• Propane: $30. This is for heating the inside of our RV and cooking.

• Generator fuel: $150. If we’re outside, then we’re likely working with power tools. If we’re inside, that probably means the weather is too harsh to work on the property, and we’re working online instead, in which case we need to fire up the generator frequently to charge the RV batteries and our laptops.

• Water: $1.25. We don’t have water on our property yet, so we fill up in town.

• Laundry: $25. We do laundry in town.

• Internet: $65. Internet is a little more expensive off-grid.

• Land: $357. We hope to pay off our land in a few years but can take up to 15 years if we need to.

• Total: $628.25 per month.

If you’re a hopeful homesteader, we hope this gives you a realistic rundown of expenses and support in your venture!

Jesse and Alyssa quit their corporate jobs to create financial freedom and build their own home.

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To protect against flood damage, keep mechanical and electrical equipment out of basements and even above the first floor in flood-prone regions.

This is good practice even in areas where flooding is rare.

By building a super-efficient home, you can minimize the need for mechanical heating and cooling equipment and often put in much smaller systems than are common in most homes.

Our home heating system is an air-source heat pump (often called a “mini-split”). The indoor unit is mounted high on a first-floor wall, while the outside unit is mounted on the south side of our house, well above the ground on blocks.

Wind Resilience With scientists predicting more intense storms with climate change, almost any new building should be designed and built with state-of-the-art measures for storm resistance. This could include a particularly robust structural frame, use of hurricane strapping and various tie-down strapping, installation of wind-rated shingles or metal roofing, and impact-resistant windows or exterior storm shutters.

Wind resilience also means paying attention to surrounding trees that could fall on a building in a heavy wind. Consider removing high-risk trees or branches.

A specialized aspect of wind resilience has to do with tornadoes. It isn’t reasonable to design homes to withstand tornadoes, during which winds can exceed 250 miles an hour. But for homes in FEMA Wind Zone IV (the so-called Tornado Alley that covers

Cork insulation is part of the super-insulation strategy that allows the author’s family to heat their home with an 18,000-Btu-per-hour air-source heat pump.

coming downhill during an intense storm or spring runoff when the ground is still frozen. Free-draining stone and drainage tile below should keep the building dry. We also put in similar drainage on our 1812 barn, which had suffered moisture damage in the past.

To assess your risk of flooding, get hold of Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) flood maps for your area. I recommend going further than just avoiding the 100-year flood zones; also avoid the 500-year flood zones. Be aware that in some areas, the FEMA flood maps are out of date, or they don’t account for smaller streams and rivers that could flood in an extreme event.

much of the Midwest), at least incorporating a reinforced safe room to provide emergency shelter makes sense.

Passive Survivability

Resilience is about keeping your family safe and secure, no matter what happens.

A key tenet of resilience is that the home should function reasonably well during a power outage. Passive survivability is defined by the Resilient Design Institute as “ensuring that livable conditions will be maintained in a building in the event of an extended power outage or interruption of heating fuel.” It’s achieved via superb energy design: • A super-insulated building, including high levels of insulation; triple-glazed, low-E windows; and airtight construction.

• Passive solar design, including orientation that puts more of the windows on the south side, careful glass selection to allow high solar gain for south windows, and thermal mass inside the insulated building envelope to store solar heat.

• Passive cooling measures, including shade trees or vines to keep out the summer sun; overhangs above windows; careful glazing selection, particularly on the east- and west-facing windows to limit solar gain; and design for natural ventilation.

At Leonard Farm, we did a major renovation of the 200-year-old farmhouse, creating 1-foot-thick walls and adding a new roof with 16-inch-deep rafters. For our walls, we framed in with 2-by-3s

to create a 7-inch cavity, which we filled with spray-fiberglass insulation, and we added a 6-inch layer of cork insulation to the exterior. We installed double-hung windows to complement the historic house (double-glazed with a high-solarheat-gain, low-E coating and argon gas fill), but then added low-E storm windows on the outside of the prime windows — so we effectively have triple glazing with two low-E coatings. Our 1,500-square-foot home is so well-insulated that we heat it with a single 18,000-Btu-per-hour air-source heat pump. Even in freezing temperatures, that heat pump keeps the house warm. Though we almost never need to air-condition the house, the air-source heat pump has that capability.

Supplemental Heat In cold climates, one should have a means to provide supplemental heat during an extended power outage. In rural areas, a clean-burning woodstove is ideal. In our house, we have one of the smallest Jøtul woodstoves on the market, and we use it rarely.

Most other heating systems depend on electricity to function, so unless you have a backup source of electricity, those systems can’t be called resilient. At our old place, we had a pellet stove in an apartment above our garage, and I bought a kit that allowed

The barn’s 18-kW solar array is “group-net-metered.” The author’s family owns 12 kW and a neighbor owns 6 kW.

Left: The author has a woodstove for backup heat. Right: The indoor unit of his home’s air-source heat pump hangs on the far kitchen wall.

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The best thing about our emphasis on resilience is that it also helps the environment.

me to operate the two fans in it using an automotive-type 12-volt battery if we experienced a power outage.

Some gas wall heaters, including systems made by Empire (www.empirezone heat.com), can function sans electricity, but these tend to be lower-efficiency models. I recommend against unvented (vent-free) gas-fired heating equipment for health and safety reasons.

Backup Power Being able to operate electrical equipment during a power outage is a huge convenience, and it can be a lifesaver. In addition to gas- and oil-fired heating systems that need electricity, virtually all lighting is electric, and for most homes in rural areas, electricity is required for water pumping. While gas stovetops can function without electricity, nearly all gas ovens require electricity for the glow-core.

You can provide conventional backup power with a gasoline, propane, or diesel generator, but these systems depend on fuel availability, and in a prolonged outage, fuel may run out.

Solar-electric systems with battery backup offer the most resilient backup power option. For off-grid homesteads, batteries are almost always part of the system, but with grid-connected solar systems, incorporating a battery bank is unusual. Partly, this is because a battery system is expensive and requires maintenance — and it just sits there 99.9 percent of the time. To add

By growing food organically, the Wilsons sequester carbon in the soil while producing much of their own food.

battery storage to a grid-connected solar system usually requires adding a separate inverter — as we would’ve had to do.

We had wanted to put in a battery system, but the cost was just too high. We opted for a new type of inverter made

by SMA (www.sma-america.com) that allows us to disconnect from the electric grid during an outage and — during the day — use an outlet directly connected to the inverter. This setup doesn’t work at night, though, so it’s not a great option.

I’m hoping our new Chevrolet Volt can be used as a backup power source, but I haven’t been able to confirm that possibility. The first-generation Volts could function that way if you clipped an inverter to the 12-volt battery (not the high-voltage battery systems that power the motor). I think using a plug-in electric vehicle (EV) for backup power is the best option because those batteries aren’t sitting idle most of the time. I’d like to see plug-in EVs begin incorporating inverters directly into the vehicle to simplify this use.

Resilient Water Supply In our area in rural Vermont, the biggest hardship for most homeowners during a power outage is access to water. Because we aren’t on a municipal water supply, we depend on our own drilled wells and submersible pumps. We developed a spring above our house that runs all the time except during severe

droughts. We also plan to install a hand pump on our well. Today’s state-of-theart, high-performance hand pumps rely on the same principle as the sucker rod pumps our grandparents used, but with precision-engineered components that eliminate the need for priming before use.

Hand pumps from Bison Pump (www.bisonpumps.com) and Simple Pump (www.simplepump.com) can push water from as deep as 300 feet, and they’re installed into the same well that houses the electric submersible pump. Weep holes are drilled into the pipe well below the frost depth, so water drains back into the well to this The author’s wife, Jerelyn Wilson, displays a harvest of green beans from the garden. level. outdoor cookstove made by BioLite (www.bioliteenergy.com) Rainwater-harvesting systems can be another water-supply with a small fan to aid in combustion that is powered by a piezooption. In this case, a high-efficiency filter plus ultraviolet or electric device (a unit that converts thermal energy into electric ozone treatment may be required to purify the water. current). In fact, this wood cookstove even includes a USB port Related to the issue of access to water is the challenge of to charge cell phones while operating the stove. human waste. The best solution is a composting toilet that requires no water. Those with deep storage vessels tend to perCommunity Resilience form better with little maintenance — such as the products made by Advanced Composting Systems (www.compostingResilience is about more than individual homes and hometoilet.com) and Clivus Multrum (www.clivusmultrum.com). steads; it’s about strong, tight-knit communities where neighbors who know each other are better able to respond to interruptions.

Resilient Food Systems There are many ways to build more resilient communities, but Most Americans are dependent on food that’s shipped hunmost start with getting to know your neighbors. Organize potdreds or even thousands of miles from where it’s grown to where luck dinners and other community gatherings. Figure out ways it’s consumed. This food-supply system has a lot of vulnerabilities. to work together on projects — whether farming or seasonal A diesel-fuel shortage or extended trucking strike could interrupt clean-up walks. food transportation. An extended drought could have a major Resilient Transportation impact on food availability and cost. And during natural disasters, grocery stores are often stripped bare from panic-buying.

When we considered where to create our homestead, one A more resilient food system is one built around local proof our key considerations was whether we could bicycle into duction. Growing your own food and supporting local farmers’ Brattleboro — the nearest town with grocery stores and other markets and community-supported agriculture programs (CSAs) services. My wife and I regularly bike the six miles into town to brings food production closer to home and adds resilience. avoid using our cars, so it’s nice to know we could bike into town Home food storage is also important relative to food security. if we really needed to. The need for more sustainable — and I recommend keeping a six-week supply of food on-hand, commore resilient — transportation argues for our getting involved prised of nonperishable or long-shelf-life foods, such as dried in our local planning commissions and organizations that advobeans, flour, whole grains, dehydrated fruits and vegetables, and cate for creating more pedestrian-friendly communities. canned fruits and vegetables.

Putting It All Together At our home, we put up dozens of quarts of canned tomatoes, along with smaller jars of jam, pickled peppers, and beets. We also We’re lucky at Leonard Farm that we’ve been able to put a lot store fresh vegetables and fruits for months. We don’t have a root of pieces of the resilience puzzle together. Our farm can also serve cellar, but we’re planning to build a CoolBot — a relatively new as a resilience hub for the 30 homes in the village next to us that type of walk-in cooler that uses a specialized controller that allows aren’t as resilient. To me, the best thing about our emphasis on an off-the-shelf window air conditioner to maintain temperatures resilience is that it also helps the environment. We operate our close to 32 degrees. house on a net-zero-energy basis, and by growing our own food Also consider how you could cook food during an extended organically, we’re improving the soil and sequestering carbon. outage. We have a woodstove with a top surface that we could All this makes us feel great. We’re able to practice what we’ve cook on, as well as an outdoor grill. We also have a new type of long been preaching.

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Cob Construction

Building with earth has a long and successful history. Cob construction is particularly easy to learn, requires no fancy equipment, uses local materials, and can be done in small batches as time allows — making it extremely accessible to a wide range of people. (See “DIY Cob-Building Technique” on Page 28.)

After her initial success with cob, Ott traveled to Oregon to apprentice with the Cob Cottage Co. When her family relocated to the mountains east of Nashville, Tennessee, Ott used her new skills to build a small cob house for less than $8,000. By age 23, she was mortgage-free and teaching cob-building workshops all over the United States as the “Barefoot Builder.”

Cob lends itself to incorporating salvaged and eclectic construction materials. This “hobbit In the U.K., tens of thousands of cob house” in Wales was built in four months and cost about $4,600 in materials. buildings are still lived in, some of them more than 500 years old. When the British immigrated to the United States, Australia, and New housing” led to its near demise. By 1985, there hadn’t been a Zealand in the 1700s and 1800s, they brought the technique new cob building constructed in the U.K. for more than 60 with them. In Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, parts of Asia, years, or in the United States for at least 120 years. and what is now the southwestern United States, cob was Modern Cob developed independently by indigenous people. In Yemen, cob buildings stand that are nine stories tall and more than Today, building your own house is the exception to 700 years old. the norm, and it is almost unheard of to build with local However, with the industrial age came factories and cheap materials. Instead, houses are built by specialists using expentransportation in the West, making brick, milled wood, sive tools and expensive, highly refined materials extracted cement, and steel readily available. Mass production led to and transported long distances, often at great ecological cost. mass marketing and the promotion of these new materials Industrial materials have many benefits — performance, predictability, speed and ease of installation — but they have as signs of progress. The perception of cob as “poor people’s

BUILD WITH EARTH & STRAW

Hand-sculpt your custom, mortgage-free home from dirt-cheap local materials.

I

n early 1999, a young woman from Florida happened across an article online about the recent revival of an ancient British method for sculpting dirt houses. Intrigued, she used her savings to travel to Vermont for a five-day workshop, where she learned how to mix clay, sand, and straw by foot, and then knead lumps of the stuff into solid walls nearly as durable as concrete.

After returning to Florida, she and some friends used the techniques she had learned to build a small pottery shed in her parents’ backyard. Some people predicted Florida’s humid air and torrential rains would melt her “mud hut” back into the ground. Following Hurricane Lili in 2002, however, the

This California utility building features an attached cob oven and natural paints.

sturdy little building, which had cost just a few hundred dollars and a summer’s labor to build, proved to be one of the few buildings left standing in her neighborhood. Christina Ott had discovered cob building.

Cob’s Origins Cob building gets its name from the Old English term for “lump,” which refers to the lumps of clay-rich soil that were mixed with straw and then stomped into place to create monolithic earthen walls. Before coal and oil made transportation cheap, houses were built from whatever materials were close at hand. In places where timber was scarce, the building material most available was often the soil underfoot.

CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: CHRIS MCCLELLAN; SPECTRUM PHOTOFILE/BRIAN MCCONNELL; PAUL ADLAF

By Chris McClellan

Cob Pros and Cons

Pros • Uses local, generally inexpensive or free materials • Can include creative, beautiful detail • Nontoxic • High thermal mass helps temperatures stay consistent and comfortable • Negligible environmental impact • Compatible with other natural materials (wood, stone, lime) • Fun to build with friends • Earthquake-resistant Cons • Labor-intensive • Needs additional insulation in cold climates • Will be unfamiliar to building code officials and insurers

Gain building experience by enrolling in a workshop. Find one near you at www.cobcottage. com/workshops.

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HERITAGE BREEDS

By Jeannette Beranger

T

hroughout the centuries, the world’s farmers have developed thousands of livestock breeds. But now, at least one breed becomes extinct each month, and 20 percent of the world’s cattle, goats, pigs, horses, and poultry breeds are currently at risk of extinction, according to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

How did we get here, and how can we reverse this trend — and why should we care? The story is complex, but the future can be bright if we act now.

Whether you’re a farmer or a consumer, preserving the genetic diversity of animals is a critical issue. Traditional, or heritage, animals bring many beneficial characteristics to a homestead: They’re often sturdier and more adaptable to local conditions, and in general their slower growth compared with industrial hybrids results in richer flavor and more delicious products.

Don’t believe me? Try Devonshire clotted cream from Devon cattle, sugared hams from Mulefoot hogs, or roasted Rouen duck. These animals also deliver beneficial services: Pigs help cultivate land and remove stumps, some cattle breeds make excellent draft animals, and goats can control invasive plants.

Traditional breeds are crucial for farmers who face environmental struggles, suffer inbreeding challenges with their animals, or seek niche markets to stay competitive and profitable. Successful heritage animal breeds can keep the food supply secure by lending qualities that are essential for the long-term health of breed populations — for example, the traditional Cornish chicken is the foundation for the world’s broiler industry.

Why They’re Important

Traditional animal breeds benefit both homesteaders and consumers with their hardiness, adaptability, flavorful meat, and genetic diversity.

Horning In on Hardiness

The Gloucestershire Old Spots breed is valued for its foraging ability and maternal instincts.

Historically, farmers operated on smaller acreages with a wide variety of usable plants and animals. Globally, more than 7,000 known breeds of cattle, poultry, pigs, sheep, and goats have been recorded.

The interaction of criteria, culture, and climate has hatched a diversity of breeds.

In other words, every breed had a purpose (criteria) for which it was created by a particular culture, and the breed could

be expected to thrive in the climate in which it was created. These marvelously adapted animals needed little input from their keepers.

The Texas Longhorn is a perfect example (see photo on Page 67). This cattle breed was developed over hundreds of years from a foundation of hardy Spanish cattle, which arrived in the earliest days of North American colonization. Ranchers needed tough cattle that could thrive on poor seasonal forage, handle predator pressure, and produce and raise healthy calves. Over time, a breed emerged with unique horns that could fend off predators and push through thick brush. These cattle developed powerful jaw muscles to forage on scrub, weeds, and cacti. They could also go without water for days.

Despite the tough living conditions, Texas Longhorns could begin producing calves before 2 years of age and continue to produce annually into their 20s. These cattle shaped the culture and economy of Texas for generations, producing wonderfully savory meat.

Much has changed for the Longhorn during the past century. Ranchers have brought in larger cattle breeds that are less adapted to local conditions, and the Longhorn gradually became a nostalgic symbol instead of the region’s primary breed. Longhorns were crossed with other cattle to produce larger, more impressive horns — what traditional breeders call “Wronghorns.” These cattle have overtaken purebred animals in great numbers. The last census conducted by the Cattlemen’s Texas Longhorn Registry in 2013 found scarcely more than 1,200 true Texas Longhorns left in North America. The breeds that are replacing the Longhorn don’t survive as easily on native forage or birth calves without assistance, making them poor choices for homesteaders seeking sturdy livestock.

Larger + Faster = Weaker The scale of farming changed during the 20th century. Industrial farms discovered the efficiencies of feeding large amounts of grain to animals raised in concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) to produce slaughter-weight animals in a shorter amount of time.

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Build This

COZY CABIN

By Steve Maxwell Illustrations by Len Churchill

Anyone with basic carpentry skills can construct this classic one-room cabin for just about $6,000.

R

ays of early-morning sunlight gently peek through the windows, easing you awake. Looking down from the sleeping loft, you see everything you need: a pine table, a box of split firewood, and a compact kitchen in the corner. This is the cabin dream.

On the following pages, I’ll show you how to build a 14-foot-by-20-foot cabin with a sleeping loft over the porch, all for about $6,050 (see Page 89 for the design).

I’ll alert you to the main challenges of framing a cabin and explain how to clear the most important hurdles. Even if you never build a cabin of your own, these instructions will be useful when building a garage, shed, or other outbuilding.

I believe in building for the long haul.

When it comes to cabins, this means working to the same standards of durability and beauty that you’d apply to a fullsize house, even though the style, size, and soul of a good cabin are entirely different.

I’m sold on durability because it takes such small amounts of extra care, materials, and money to yield a huge increase in the project’s longevity.

Although a cabin certainly can be framed less stoutly than the design I’ll show you here, I’m convinced the wisest use of resources often means going beyond what’s merely good enough.

A Firm Foundation Every well-built structure begins with the foundation. In regions where frost isn’t an issue, site-poured 16-inch-by-16-inchby-6-inch shallow-depth concrete pads work just fine. If this is similar to the approach used on new houses in your area, then it’s OK for use under your cabin.

Cold climates are a different matter, and one of the best cabin foundations you can choose is established easily with minimal tools and time. Concrete piers extending below the frost line, poured within round cardboard tubes, are a time-proven approach to lightweight construction that offers a couple of advantages. Besides raising the structure off the ground and isolating it from the annual freeze/thaw movements of the

soil, concrete piers provide good support around the perimeter of your cabin.

In this cabin design, you need one pier at each corner of the cabin, one in the middle of each long side, three piers spaced evenly on the front of the porch and one in the middle of the rear wall.

In light soil, it’s reasonable to dig the 10 holes you need for 8- to 12-inch-diameter pier forms using a long-handled shovel.

Otherwise, call in a neighbor or contractor with a tractor-mounted auger. You can use 8-inch concrete piers, but the larger size is more forgiving if you don’t get the alignment just right.

The best way to mark your foundation outline is with 12-inch spikes pushed into the soil and connected with nylon string. Regardless of the foundation design, the main construction challenge is the same: leveling the top of the foundation pads or piers. Try to borrow a laser level from a friend to successfully level the foundation.

When setting concrete pier forms in the ground, dig the holes large enough to allow room for side-to-side adjustment.

The outside edges of the pier forms should extend a bit beyond the outer dimensions of your building. As inexpensive insurance against frost jacking of foundation piers (when the piers are pulled toward the surface by seasonal freezing, even though they extend below the frost line), wrap the outside of each pier tube with black polyethylene plastic before setting them into the holes and packing soil around them.

While the concrete is wet, vertically embed 5 ⁄8-inch L-shaped threaded metal rod anchors, extending at least 7 inches above the concrete, short end down. Later on, these will hold down the base of the floor frame.

Building the Floor Frame There are many ways to frame a cabin floor, but I favor the timber-rim approach. “Timber rim” refers to a loadbearing frame of timbers that defines the

Cost Estimates for Your Cabin

The following includes the frame, rough floors, and shingled roof, but not windows, doors, and exterior siding. All costs are rounded up to account for miscellaneous expenses.

TOTAL COST: $6,050 Floor assembly: $1,100 • Two 20’ 6-by-6 rot-resistant beams (timber rim, length sides) • Two 14’ 6-by-6 rot-resistant beams (timber rim, width sides) • Twenty-seven 14’ 2-by-10 boards (blocking, joists, and headers) • Nine 5⁄8” plywood tongue-and-groove subfloor panels Walls and porch frame: $1,300 • Fifty 8’ 2-by-8 studs (walls) • Fifteen 14’ 2-by-6 boards (wall plates) • Five 8’ 6-by-6 rot-resistant wooden posts (porch) • One 14’ 6-by-6 rot-resistant beam (porch) • Twenty-one 7⁄16” oriented strand board wall siding panels (wall planks) • Six 14’ 2-by-6 fascia boards (exterior wall trim)

Roof: $3,200 • Thirty-four 12’ 2-by-8 boards (rafters) • Two 12’ 2-by-10 boards (ridge board) • Seventeen 14’ 2-by-6 boards (crossties) • Four 8’ 2-by-4 studs (rafter support) • Two 20’ 2-by-8 boards (blocking) • Seventeen 3⁄4” spruce plywood panels (roof planks) • Wooden shakes for 550 square feet of roof surface; roof liner; gutter apron Hardware: $450 • Six 12” spikes (foundation markers) • Ten 10” Sonotubes (pier forms) • Ten 5⁄8” threaded rod anchors (foundation) • Eight 1⁄2” x 6” carriage bolts (header anchors) • 10 pounds of 31⁄2” Ardox (spiralshanked) nails (wall studs, floor joists) • 10 pounds of 21⁄2” Ardox nails (subfloor, roof planks) • Eight 1⁄2” x 8” lag bolts (post tops) • 15 pounds of 1” roofing nails

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