Welcome to Our Permaculture Homestead
After 13 years of researching “doomsday preppers” and homesteading for my apocalyptic novel, We Can Save Us All, I realized I had none of the survival skills I’d been writing about. I wanted to change that. Without becoming a total weirdo.
We began preparing our home to survive a grid-down situation, and dove into homesteading projects to inform our new lifestyle.
Here’s what happened next…
Permaculture Homesteading How-Tos and Articles
How to Build a DIY Deer Fence for Gardens #2: Step-by-step instructions
In Part 1, we covered the different types of garden fences you can choose to keep deer away from your vegetable garden — like wood, welded wire, electric fences, and natural/chemical repellents — along with detail on the planning phase, including how to determine your fence line and choose materials. Here in Part 2, we'll give you our full recipe for the heavy duty, half-invisible/half-very-conspicuous DIY wire mesh fence we made for Thunderbird Disco, with step-by-step instructions to follow.
How to Build a DIY Deer Fence for Gardens #1: Planning
Deer can jump over regular fences up to about 6 or 7 feet high. But with the installation of a tall, heavy duty, and reliable deer fence, you can create a barrier that will effectively keep these beautiful jerks at bay. At first, we got some insanely high professional estimates to build our fence, and while they would've completed the job in a weekend (it took us closer to two years; tough to carve out the time), we built our garden fence ourselves for a fraction of the price, using the materials we wanted, and today the finished project is extremely satisfying to look at. Here's what we did to DIY it.
How To Build a DIY Solar Water Heater
At the start of pool season, Jack got it in his head that we could heat up the water with some combination of pumps and tubing and buckets and fire. He gets a lot of these ideas—they keep him up at night—and sometimes he organically shifts to a new project or else I can redirect his energies, but this one stuck around for weeks. He kept presenting me with new hand-drawn schematics and eventually I had to admit, "I. DON'T. KNOW. HOW. TO. DO. ANY. OF. THAT." Nevertheless, he persisted.
How To Build a DIY Mud Kitchen Using Wood Pallets
Jack and I wanted to make something for Rose's 3rd birthday, and we settled on this DIY mud kitchen because the girl loves to cook. We used salvaged wood pallets, and a few other inexpensive materials, here’s a step-by-step.
How to Build Raised Garden Beds
On the last day I *went shopping* before quarantining in mid-March, my impulse buy was a bunch of lumber. I remember thinking it might be the last day I'd be allowed out of my house for a while. I called our local hardware store/lumber yard and asked if they were still open. “Today we are, but who knows if we will be tomorrow,” they said, which in hindsight was both true and an excellent piece of salesmanship.
Renovating Our Outdoor Studio
With new baby Rose on the way, my upstairs office was slated to become her nursery, so Kate informed me that it was time for me and my personal archive of business papers and Phish tapes to GTFO.
In March 2017 we hired our good friends Scott Wilcox and Gabriel Allan (more about these impressive men in a moment) to help transform this villainous outbuilding into a functional lair...