Two years into this homestead we no longer buy the following items from the supermarket:
milk (we bought two registered La Mancha dairy goats, and their RAW milk is delicious superfood)
bread (Lynette ordered whole grains and grinds them and bakes our bread, delicious!)
beef (uh, we live on a cattle ranch)
yogurt (home-made, fresh from goat's milk)
cream cheese
refreshing beverages (home bottling kombucha, etc)
hummus (Lynette buys some sesame seed peanut butter and chickpeas and blends it herself).

In addition, Lynette's been making fermented products that pique the palate and are either 1. really refreshing (KOMBUCHA) or 2. powerfoods (BEAT KVASS and KEFIR).

My fav is the kombucha. Mmmmm... fermented black tea and sugar with fizzy zing!

So it's a start. We buy all our veg from the farmer's market now, and just harvested the 500 onions, with okra growing vigorously despite the drought. Brought in a terrific crop of tomatoes, both celebrity heat-setting and Roma. Also had bell peppers, which seem to have stopped fruiting with the tomatoes because of extreme heat, dryness and wind. We water, but the stress is high.

Producing food is 10 times more rewarding than the savings alone. I've been keeping track, and with organic milk at $6 a gallon, we're still saving money feeding our six children goat milk even feeding the goats premium feeds and pampering them.

So far so good on the two-and-a-half acre homestead.

Hooray, too, that the US Senate voted to do away with ethanol subsidies! Yay! Now down with GMO!!!

Time to Put Wild Game in the Freezer

Pictured above is a feeding frenzy my sons and I encountered last weekend at Port Mansfield. Mainly Spanish Mackerel, but I fished from my kayak (if you look closely at the photo you can see me) and saw numerous sharks and jack crevalle. A jack ripped my lure, a Rattlin' Rapala as soon as it hit the water and towed me a mile out to sea, literally, in a Texas Gulf Coast-style "Nantucket Sleigh Ride."

As soon as Hurricane Ida is done and the Gulf waters have calmed, we'll head up for the flounder run, throwing Berkley Gulp, or live finger mullet free-lined on a number one offset circle hook.

The chest freezer is bare. Except for snapper and tuna, we never freeze fish, so it gets eaten quickly and not put into the "food supply pipeline," i.e. the freezer. The only way to prepare fresh fish, in my opinion, is to poach it whole on the grill after gutting. No meat gets wasted this way, at all. Frozen fish like snapper can be beer battered and deep fried for excellent results.

Fish, however, is a luxury, and is very seasonal. The meat that gets us through as a family is gathered in the chaparral or out on the coastal prairie: wild pig, venison-or even better-a nice nilgai antelope.

I love to still hunt rather than sit in a blind, but this year I vow to sit still longer in some of the likelier looking areas for deer. After extensive scouting and an early-season hunt, I have a fair idea of where to find a nilgai.

The boys and I have also been baiting for pigs, but so far all we have lured are javelina, which we do not care to eat but are delightful to watch.

It's also time for fall season planting here, and we'll have updates on that.

Living life like our great-grandparents lived it is more rewarding than it sounds!

Be good to the land and it will be good to you!

Green Building Part II, Notes on Passive Thermal Design and Home Layout

First of all, whether urban or country, get a good quality satellite image of your home. I've always relied on so-called "aerial topo-photo maps" for hunting and fishing, and they can be used with great effect for proper home layout in relation to the sun.

So-called "passive solar design" is a fancy way of saying, "line your home up correctly with the sun's path, along with considerations made for cold winter winds and cool spring breezes." To do this, you have to be able to see it. Google Earth will do, but I like to have a nice glossy map like the topo-photo I got from mytopo for being a member of Outdoor Writers Association of America.

Fierce afternoon sun is a killer on central air-conditioning during summer months, but that same western orientation of your home's walls during the winter can save considerably on heating costs during the winter. Except that the sun will be farther south in the northern hemisphere (off one's left looking west) during the winter. This movement of the sun to the south during the winter makes for good southern exposed warming during the winter. During the summer months, this doesn't come so much into play because the sun is more directly overhead, particularly true the farther south one goes.

A windbreak to the north and shade directly west of the house are both advised in green building circles. Natural vegetation is a lifesaver here in hurricane-prone South Texas, because those scrubby little mesquites and thornshrubs of the chaparral create enormous amounts of friction from the ground to about 10 feet off the ground.

During winter months, fierce cold fronts whip in from the north with extreme ferocity, and an icy wind saps the heat out of your home. This can be profoundly reduced by having a windbreak to the north of the home.

Make sure that you have closet space on whatever west-facing walls you do have if you live in a hot climate. With closet doors closed, you can feel for yourself the insulating difference a closet will make in a room on a summer afternoon. My water-heater closet is downstairs on the west and the upstairs has mostly closet space on the west, with the air handler and a clothing closet blocking off the afternoon heat from the main envelope.

A comfortable home is an energy-efficient home.

The Ranch House I Built, taken at Night

Green Building, PART I

When I renovated the ranch house where we live now, I was well-versed in two areas I do not regret having stayed up many nights boning up on: Miami-Dade Hurricane Code and the Greenbuilding Guidelines of the Texas Veterans Land Board.

I won’t go into Miami-Dade Hurricane Code here, but I will talk about practical green-building areas homeowners will want to implement in new construction and consider in renovations.

Here are some guidelines from the Texas Veterans Land Board Green Building Website:

“Use of passive solar layout which is positioning the house such that solar heat gain is maximized in cool weather and minimized in hot weather (in winter the sun comes through windows to warm the interior of the house, but in the summer the same windows do not receive direct sunlight) natural breezes maximize ventilation during hot weather (southerly breezes cool the house in the summer, while walls protect from northerly winds in the winter time natural day lighting illuminates without heating (Plant shade trees)

Orient towards the south north side shields interior heat during winter south side exploits cooling during summer

Optimize material use, thus minimizing waste

Materials

Use low-maintenance building material

Choose products that incorporate low energy in production and transportation, are locally produced, and salvaged, or made from recycled materials

Use non-toxic material

Use high levels of insulation, high performance windows and frames, cool shell and attic

Land Use and Site Issues

Create transit friendly, walkable and bikeable communities to reduce vehicle dependence

Renovate older buildings

Encourage in-fill and mixed use commercial and community development

Value site resources and minimize impact on site

Design water-efficient, native, low maintenance landscaping

Equipment

Install high efficiency heating & cooling

Install high efficiency lights and appliances

Install water efficient equipment

Install mechanical ventilation equipment

Install rainwater collection”

I will discuss EnergyStar™ guidelines at some point in the future, and I did wind up with a rather energy-efficient home that busts summer heat with central air for less than $300 a month.

But I want to touch on those aspects of “green building” that are good for your family and for the land:

Paint with low VOC paint.

Volatile Organic Compounds are the nasty poisons in paint, and Sherwin Williams sells an excellent low-VOC paint. A little pricey, but undoubtedly worth it. My sweet wife was 8 months pregnant with Rosaleigh when the nesting hit her hard at the end of construction on the home, so she painted most of the interior. I would have disallowed it had the paint not been low VOC.

One thing not on this list is to KEEP NATIVE LANDSCAPING. Now I know a lot of new homes are built right over farm fields (more on this later), but if you get a lot with a bunch of mesquite trees, fiddlewood, granjeno and the lot, KEEP THEM UP! Don’t wipe everything out when you grade and clear the spot for the house, or you throw the baby out with the proverbial bathwater. I am still proud of the beautiful, mature, xeriscapic plants around my home, like the huisache trees, the large lotebush, the wild Turk’s cap, and a gorgeous ebony tree.

Regarding low-maintenance building material, we used James Hardie Hardi-Plank siding, because the ranch house was wood-frame construction, the core of which dated from the 1940s. This also means galvalume metal roofing, which we had installed after the hurricane ruined all our sheetrock.

I would love to have foregone the sheetrock, but had no alternative that I could afford, and that was as sustainable. After all, sheetrock is gypsum, and if you know anything about gypsum, you know it’ll never run out, and if it does, so what? Definitely not low-maintenance once it’s hit with water, unless you use the blue or green waterproof sheetrock throughout, which we did not…

Look for Part II of the Green Building Installment, where I discuss energy efficiency, an investment I pursued aggressively during the renovation, and which has paid for itself already! (Can’t skimp there!!!)

THIS JUST IN:

Our son Daniel saved his money and ordered 25 sexed Rhode Island Red pullets. To the layperson, this means that some knowledgeable poultry person tested the sex of the 25 chicks in the photo and guaranteed they are females.

A pullet is a young female before she begins laying and becomes a hen.

Daniel plans to raise the chicks up and sell the eggs produced by free-ranging, happy hens. The pullets that make it should be ready to lay by next summer, God willing.

Unfortunately, one already got out, wandered under my toolshed, and hasn't been seen since. If helpless chicks don't illustrate the frailty of life and the reliance young have upon adults, then nothing does.

Here is a promised photo of the Glinting Green Beast.

Part II of my travels brought me through Arkansas, all the way to Little Rock, and I was eating a quarter-pounder at McDonald's when I saw "Texas Flooding" headline on CNN.

Damn. Just where I wanted to drive, too, out on State HWY 45 to Tyler and Palestine, where I could cut straight down to College Station to Lynette's Uncle Larry's place.

Not to be. As I pulled out of Jefferson, I called my brother Eric, who directed me like air traffic control through some of the weather.

"You'll thread the needle's eye of two very bad thunderstorms if you stay on 59 South through Nacogdoches," he said. "Like Moses parting the Red Sea, but you have to hurry."

I hurried. I got through Nacogdoches with just a few sprinkles, and then in Lufkin, where the road got confusing, it was raining good. It tapered off as I approached Livingston, just north of Houston, and my westward jaunt toward College Station. There was crazy lightning in the way, though. Things weren't looking so good.

I got to over Lake Livingston which looked like darkwater East Texas hell in the darkness with the lightning and narrow causeway death route cruising. In Huntsville, the water starting to pour down, and as I cruised through a tapering-off spot and got back up to 60 mph just west of town, I spotted water over the roadway too late.

BOOOOM! SHHHH! I hit the overflowing San Jacinto River like a ride at Sea World, but the Suburban went through it. I was shaken, and I now know where that term comes from. I think it's East Texan, like "Boy, I was shaken like a leaf." Or something.

I called Larry in College Station with the last little bit of cell phone battery I had, and he told me the roadway should be fine. As the rain tapered off, with lightning playing in the sky, I hauled ass for College Station the last 30 miles, doing on average 75 mph in that tree-lined two-way East Texas highway.

In College Station, Larry waited up, I got another shower and brushed teeth and dozed off, and he treated me to a great breakfast in the morning. I called in sick to work because they don't give me an option for calling in for a transnational vehicle pick-up.

Got home that Monday and Lynette heartily agreed she had found a winner, and thanked me sufficiently for bringing it down unscathed.

So began my diesel "survival wagon" adventures, more of which I can feel to come.

See the USA in a Chevrolet. Suburban. That your wife found on E-bay.

Just a little south of Milwaukee.

Indeed I Facebooked it at 3:00 am Saturday morning one week ago on my status update.

"Flying to Milwaukee to pick up the Suburban I bought."

It's just like the one pictured above, except with the GM Teal Green metal flake paint. Fancy vehicle.

Four-wheel drive with the same 6.5-liter turbodiesel that powers all those Humvees in the American military. An engine with which I am very familiar. And a 2500 to boot.

So here's how I did it. Financing through USAA for $5,750 because I put the $500 deposit in PayPal upon purchase, I packed the cashier's check, hopped Delta Airlines flights from Brownsville (5:30 AM) to Houston, Houston to Atlanta, Atlanta to Milwaukee (2:45 PM).

Duke van Welden, the northern Illinois wildman who sold it to me, picked me up in the airport, in the Glinting Green Beast. I was thrilled that it looked so good.

"Duke!" I yelled, clutching my carry-on. "Ben!" he called back. It was love. He was into me for my money, and I was into him for his car.

We were back in Grays Lake IL in short order, having dispossessed each other of those respective items, and after Duke and his wife Nancy led me out onto IL-59 South, off I went. I departed northwest suburbs of Chicago at 5:15 PM, bound for my sister Julia's house in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, 8 hours to the south.

After blasting down the highway at 65 comfy mph, and a quick bite at the Cracker Barrel in Bloomington, IL, I found myself driving through downtown St. Louis. Unexpectedly beautiful, with that arch all lit up and the Mississippi River casting back the city's lights in the 10 PM darkness.

I fueled up south of the city with 500 miles on the thing and another 300 to go on that tank, just to be safe, and zoomed away into the Missouri hinterlands.

Just north of Cape, just after midnight, I began hallucinating like a nutjob because I was so tired. The car in front of me became a rocket spewing blood, blasting blood all over the road and surrounding landscape. What a mess, I thought.

I'm hallucinating, I thought. Damn I'm tired. Damn I have weird hallucinations.

At that point I decided to compose poetry, because the horned moon was coming up crescent above the Mississippi on my left, so there was some thought about Baal, then the Ishmaelites' crescent and Gideon and the night camel. No, never did do any drugs. At all. Sorry. Can't explain the wacked out musings.

Got directly to Julie's house because of the GPS my brother Carl had lent me, and woke her up, showered, brushed my teeth and was asleep in their posh basement by 2:00 AM

My three adorable nieces woke me up at 7 AM sharp, and with five good hours of sleep I rose and was treated to an excellent breakfast.

Went on down the road at 9:30, with a lot of Missouri yet to beat and all of Arkansas. My plan was to stop at wife's uncle's house in College Station, Texas, home of the Aggies.

Flooding, unbeknownst to me, awaited me in Texas. More tomorry.