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On to the eggs. I think big-ag and the FDA wants to irradiate more of your food to sell you more drugs. However, there is a simple solution to this fiasco. Find a farmer who is selling farm fresh eggs from chickens that are not fed a bunch of junk food and have free range. I am not talking about a door to the outdoors, I am saying they wander around all day in the pastures. Better yet get 5 or 10 hens and raise your own chickens! You will never go back to store bought eggs. Feed them your kitchen scraps and give them a little organic scratch. Want Omega eggs? Feed them handful’s of Flax seed or other such seeds and nuts full of the good oils. Heck, you can grow them a Organic Wheatgrass lawn and really dose yourself! You can be responsible for your own food! It’s a great proposition. Choice.

Raising a small ‘herd’ of your own chickens is about the simplest farming you can do. They are wonderful little animals that not only give you healthy, delicious eggs, but also keep bugs down and provide fertilizer for your little raised bed garden. Go for it! Jump in and try it out, you’ll be happy you did. If you do decide to go about it, I would suggest you get one of these breeds:

• Buff Orpingtons
• Silver Laced Wyandotte
• Australorp

Free-range eggs have three times more omega-3s and are 220% higher in vitamin E and 62% higher in vitamin A than eggs obtained from battery cage hens (Karsten, Pennsylvania State University, 2003). I do not heat our little chicken house in the winter, and egg production does slow down, however we generally get 3-6 eggs a day from 6 hens. It’s so great!

Do you have any comments or suggestions? I’d love to hear them! Please contribute!

Organic Coconut Oil has many, many health benefits. You might be thinking I am crazy, since Coconut Oil is so high in saturated fat, but the reality is that the saturated fat in Coconut oil is actually healthy for you! Coconut Oil contains Medium Chain fatty acids that are easily used by the body. Organic Coconut oil also helps keep your Thyroid healthy as well as removing stress from the Pancrease to help increase your metabolism. This results in faster weight loss.

Trinity Coconut Oil Organic – $69.25

Coconut oil is easy to digest. It has been proven to curb heart disease and increase immunity against pneumonia and other illnesses. However, my favorite thing about Coconut oil is the taste. It is delicious. I use it like butter on toast and oil my pan with it before I cook our fresh eggs. Add it some cookies in place of butter and have a cup of pineapple coconut juice instead of milk with you cookies. It’s a tropical delight!

If you would like to read more about Organic Coconut Oil and the benefits of Coconut oil, check out these websites and studies:

• Get a Killer Deal on 1gallon of Organic Coconut Oil – $69!
• http://www.organicfacts.net/organic-oils/organic-coconut-oil/health-benefits-of-coconut-oil.html
• http://www.coconutresearchcenter.org/
• http://meeting.chestpubs.org/cgi/content/abstract/134/4/p139001
• http://www.coconutoil.com/

Some of my favorite sunflowers to plant are the Mexican Sunflowers, Sundance Kid, Giant Sunflower and the Moulin Rouge. The Moulin Rouge is really amazing with it’s deep red pedals surrounding a black center. Sunflowers are perty easy to grow. Just plant the seed after the last freeze and water a little. Sooner than you can believe, the sunflower will begin to show itself above the soil. Two months or so later, you will have a full grown beautiful plant that will add richness to any garden or simple raised bed set up.

Last winter we had an energy audit done by our electrical coop. They said we’re ahead of the majority, doing everything you can. So what is the culprit?! Maybe I am just being unrealistic with how much it costs to electrically power a small home, but I don’t ever remember paying more than $100 a month in the winter living in a cold canyon in Truckee. Our energy costs were around $.09kWH there if I remember right, and they are $.11kWH here.

I began looking for a way to measure our electrical uses. Kill A Watt is real popular, but I cannot plug in all of my appliances really easy. I came across the Blue Line PowerCost Monitor and Energy Meter and thought, this is what I need. It get’s good reviews on NorthernEquipment.com, only 2 reviews at Amazon and none anywhere else I could find. It’s a good buy in my book. I haven’t had it in the rain and snow, so I cannot say about the durability. The display is real nice and the features are simple to use and setup is a snap. The only thing I can gripe about is the lack of a USB port or any sort of connectedness to a computer. I want to be able to download and graph my usage. I cannot do that with this model. Blue Line has come out with the Blue Line WiFi pack, but I am not about to shell out another $100+ for it’s features.

My favorite function on this device is the Appliance button. You can push the button, turn on the culprit appliance and wait a couple minutes to see the usage in $ and/or kWH. Nothing in our home uses much electricity. The only time we get a spike is after a shower. We had been thinking about getting Hot Water on Demand to cut costs, but were not convinced the “efficient” hot water heater was really the problem. After 2 showers my wife said she saw $.60/hr on the meter for over 2 hours. I take a show every day. That’s $18 right there. If we have guests?! Meh…

To wrap it up real quick. We have an efficient house. Our electric bill was more than I thought it should be and I wanted to find out what was costing us. The Blue Line PowerCost Monitor and Energy Meter works great helping you narrow down your problem. We need to either take cold showers, get a smaller hot water tank or go with hot water on demand to fix it traditionally. Our solution is to work towards energy independence by saving for a Photovoltaic Solar Electric System in the near future.

What are you or have you been doing to cut your electric use? Start a conversation by leaving a comment below!

Organic gardening is also cost effective as the majority of what you put in your soil can come directly from your kitchen, lawn and yard. Setting up a compost bin is really simple with 8 bales of old straw in a square. Start dumping your lawn clippings, leaves, kitchen scraps and other decomposable goods into the ‘bin’ and turn once and a while. After a few months, depending on your area, you’ll have some black gold ready to use in the yard or garden. If you do need to amend your soil with fertilizer, there are plenty of organic options on the market today. Bat Guano, Chicken Manure or a general Dr. Earth Organic All Purpose Fertilizer will work great. Better yet, get some chickens and a couple sheep or goats and build a little shed for them. Keep adding bedding material to their little home and in about a year you should have a real thick mat of good organic manure you can grind into your garden. Your plants and soil will benefit from these options, and you do not need to worry about it leaching into your neighbors ground water.

Growing your vegetables organically is better for you and your family. By growing organically, you are ensured that you are getting fruits and vegetables free of harmful pesticides, herbicides and other such chemicals that have been linked to everything from birth defects to cancer. My wife, children and I are 100% in contact with the soil in our garden. Having it free from all that bologna is very comforting to me. I want to give my children every advantage I can to help them grow up healthy, loving and strong.

I hope that these thoughts help you create a safe and sustainable area around your home. I have added some great links for more information below. Add a comment if you have some thoughts or ideas!

Links to good articles:

• Organic farming produces the same yields of corn and soybeans as does conventional farming, but uses 30 percent less energy, less water and no pesticides, a review of a 22-year farming trial study concludes.
• ‘Balanced’ Ecosystems Seen in Organic Agriculture Better at Controlling Pests, Research Finds
• The Real Science of Organic Farming

Some great books from Joel Salatin:

• Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal: War Stories From the Local Food Front
• Family Friendly Farming: A Multi-Generational Home-Based Business Testament
• Pastured Poultry Profits

So far the only difficulty we’ve had is when the warmer spring days give way to a night or two of hard freezes a month after the planting. All of the greens go to seed real quick. We weren’t the only ones who got effected by this as a local organic farmer had told me the same thing during conversation at the farmers market. Watching for this to happen will allow you to get a second planting in before it’s too late for the succession. If you have some crops that have grown really quickly in the earlier season, let them go to seed and collect it. You’ve got some really viable seed for next spring.

I have been collecting windows and sliding doors for a couple years and plan on building a small green house or even a few smaller cold frames to grow Broccoli, Cabbage, and Cauliflower starts in. I’ll let you know how it turns out! If you have any comments or suggestions, please share in the comments section below.