The Autoimmune Summit Starts

TODAY!!!

The on-line Autoimmune Revolution Summit starts today, January 30^th. This FREE educational program runs through February 7^th. Register at hto:/care/air

I’ve cleared my calendar and plan on listening to as many sessions as I can each day.  I have written several blog posts ahead of time and will post them through my sabbatical as I get them edited, completed and on-line.

I invite you to join me in listening to this life-altering program. The current research projects that autoimmune disease is the new cancer and that this is going to be the new health epidemic of the future. We must all work to get the word out.

Autoimmune diseases and the physical, chemical and emotional pain they create impacts millions around the world. The primary way doctors treat these diseases today is to prescribe immune suppressing drugs. Unfortunately, this approach has failed to achieve a meaningful outcome and has created an even greater health crisis — what Dr. Peter Osborne calls “The Prescription Pain Trap” — which you will learn more about during this event.

There are now toxins everywhere in our words; in the air, the water the soil and in our food. And unfortunately there is no magic pill to save our thyroid glands. We must instead take responsibility for healing ourselves and for working in partnership with specialists and fight for our own health. We must inform ourselves, empower ourselves and takes the measure necessary to stop this painful and debilitating condition before our thyroid stops working and our bodies then begin to attack our own thyroid.

Don‘t miss all the great talks and interviews that start MONDAY, January 30^th. Each talk is free for just 24 hours and after that if you like you can purchase a DVD from the program to listen to over and over and to share with your family and friends.

Here are the details for Healthtalk On-Lines site:

Each day’s talks will be available for free on demand for a 24-hour period. They begin at 10 A.M. U.S. Eastern (New York time) and end the next day at 9:59 A.M. Once a 24-hour period has ended, those talks are only available on Encore Day or by purchasing access to them.

We’ve put a countdown clock on each day’s page to tell you how much time you have left to watch.

USE THE LINK BELOW TO ACCESS EACH DAY’S TALKS* <–
(you may need to clear your browser history each day)
http://autoimmunerevolution.org/event
*NOTE: This link will not be active until the summit starts!

DAILY PRESENTATIONS Each day’s talks will be available for free on demand for a 24-hour period. They begin at 10 A.M. U.S. Eastern (New York time) and end the next day at 9:59 A.M. Once a 24-hour period has ended, those talks are only available on Encore Day or by purchasing access to them. We’ve put a countdown clock on each day’s page to tell you how much time you have left to watch. –> USE THE LINK BELOW TO ACCESS EACH DAY’S TALKS* <– (you may need to clear your browser history each day) http://autoimmunerevolution.org/event *NOTE: This link will not be active until the summit starts!

Small House Autoimmune Warrior, Donna

My DYI Chalk Painted Lampshade

I tried a little experiment today.

I had a seriously discolored lampshade on a DYI lamp that I put together a couple of decades ago from an old canning jar and stones. I was visiting a hardware shop in Shipshewana, Indiana and purchased a DYI lamp making kit.

I photographed this image so that you could see the cord set-up coming out from under the shade. That’s my handmade paper on canvas artwork on the wall behind this vignette.

I found this large quart Ball jar and added the screw on lid, added some pretty black stones I had gathered and I had a small-scale lamp. I was a young bride and I was pretty proud of myself then.

I noticed this past week that the white replacement lampshade was mottled and discolored. I automatically set it aside to go to Lowe’s with the intent of purchasing a new shape. Then it occurred to me, why not try to paint it before I discarded it? I even had the same color chalk paint that I used on the dresser turned family room storage unit that it sits on.

I have successfully used chalk paint on wood, metal, and a vintage leather top table so why not give it a try? It was incredibly easy to do. I watered the paint down very lightly, used a regular paint brush and painted it on taking care not to load too much paint on the glued edge.

I am really pleased as how the fabric took the paint. Not only does it cover the stains beautifully the finished shade has a lovely velvety look to it.

A vintage Ball Perfect Mason jar holds Petoskey stones I gathered over the years.

This little trick save me the cost of a new lampshade and even more important it saved me over an hour’s drive to get to the closet home improvement store. It also saved a lampshade from going into the landfill. What a win-win!

A repurposed and painted gentleman’s chest in maple wood and sea foam green chalk paint adds a bit of pop to the window wall in our family room as well as needed extra storage. This chest which is adjacent to a bathroom is filled with TP and paper towels!

This is one DYI experiment that worked!

Small House Homesteader, Donna

Finding the Courage to Paint my Island

I’ve have wanted to paint my kitchen island for a long time now. But I have had this irrational fear of a future buyer (most likely my age) not buying my home because my kitchen island is now chalk painted. I know this is crazy but honestly this is how I have felt. I know it’s only paint but the fear of a future buyer being turned off by the idea of a painted island has stopped me in my tracks every time.

My maple island “before” its current transformation.

But every decorating magazine or book I pick up shows the kitchen island painted a lovely color,, a look I adore and I LOVE-LOVE-LOVE chalk painted furniture. This week I finally decided to forge ahead and paint it anyway. This kitchen island will stay here while any of my other painted furniture pieces will be sold or go with me to our new place, wherever and whenever that will be.

I do love my maple kitchen cupboards and am grateful to have such a lovely kitchen to cook in but if there is such a thing as too much wood in one room then this room is definitely the poster child for that. I knew I wanted a deep dark green and that I was going to start by painting and waxing the drawers. I would leave the sides maple to start. I often paint furniture in a two-tone kind of way leaving quite a bit of the natural wood showing and this is my way to test the waters, so to speak.

The finished island with its original maple pulls put back on. It looks like I had better stain and polyurethane the back of the second chest!!

I purchased a quart of chalk paint by Annie Sloan in the new color called Amsterdam Green. Roadblock # 1: I did not like that shade of green color. It was just too Christmassy green for my room. So I reverted back to my old favorite stand-by Michigan Pine green, by CeCe Caldwell. I had just about enough left to accomplish my goal.

I quickly realised that Michigan Pine green is a much better choice of green for our home and especially for the deep shade of green found in my green, rust, gold and brown runner that lies in front of this island. My area rugs were chosen with dogs and our homesteads ample outdoor dirt in mind!

This runner has a forest green color that just works with the Michigan pine chalk paint. 

This is the Amsterdamn Green that was too christmassy looking for my tastes.

We put down a light-colored bleached wood look linoleum floor throughout our home when we moved here in 2000. When we moved here Small House had a country-practical dark brown carpet and the space look way to dark for my taste.

This linoleum is laid using three varying sizes of linoleum strips that make it look just like wood to most guest eyes. This runner was put down when my Labrador Retriever Spirit started aging and was having trouble managing the slippery floors. This runner also keeps my granddaughters from tripping and falling to.

My original plan was to take it slow and paint just the island front and then wax it with black wax. I know I can always paint the other sides later on if I really like this new look.

My newly “tweeked” kitchen with the repurposed maple shelves, the black stove vent newly painted and kitchen island adorned in Michigan Pine chalk paint. 

Yes, I know that using dark wax directly over paint goes against the “rules” of chalk painting but I do this all the time.  I love how it look when completed to. Just call me a chalk painting rebel!

Yes, all the directions tell you to wax with clear wax first and then wax with dark wax but that is not how I do it. I like dark wax right over the paint. I expect to put the old maple wood pulls back on but I will see how that looks and decide if I will go safe or make a change to go a bit more spiffy with new pulls.

I extended my storage space by adding an antique chest. This piece holds placematts, linen napkins, candles and tall vases that my homes lack of storage cannot house. 

What do you think? Do you like it painted green?

Small House Big Sky Homesteader, Donna

 

Spray Painting the Range Hood

It only took me fifteen years but I finally got our old beige colored stove hood re-painted. I wanted it to be refreshed and black like the rest of my appliances for a number of years now. My goal was improve the look of the vent so it coordinated better with the other appliances and give it a nice refresh.

The shiny black appliance paint looks almost like I bought it new. 

When we had our roof re-shingled last year I made sure that my stove vent was working properly and that the cooking odors were successful venting from the kitchen out through the roof. It is functioning just fine in every way but definitely needed a little bit more pep in its step.

The guys work together to get this hung and reattached. 

Now that I am healthy scratch cooking for two special diet protocols I spend a LOT of time in my kitchen prepping and cooking so I like it to feel good to be working in as well as to work correctly.

This is full view of my country kitchen.

When we moved into the Small House this property was what is called “an estate.” This means that the people who lived here had passed away and left the property to their children. This also meant we were buying this house and outbuildings in an “as is” condition.

This house came with a 1980’s beige colored stove, fridge, dishwasher and a washer and dryer. I AM grateful that this home came with working appliances because that allowed us to save for new ones.

While Gene was still working fulltime at his City of Kalamazoo job, we saved up enough cash in a few years to replace the stove, fridge and dishwasher. After we had achieved that goal that we sold the old ones locally.

I had wanted though about purchasing a new black stove hood but they were quite a bit over my budget and we had so many other repairs that we needed first, like the entire septic system within the first three months of moving here. I’ve even considered stainless steel appliances until I saw their high price tag and that quickly nixed that idea.

So plan B was to get the range hood painted black by taking it to a car paint shop. But I had to disconnect the electrical, take it off, deliver it and then pick it up and that simply never happened. I considered have a wooden cover built or painting the vent hood using chalk paint but with both options I was concerned about keeping them clean. Stoves can be a greasy place for sure.

Then one day I was reading a magazine and discovered a Rust-Oleum Appliance Epoxy spray paint. This paint can be purchased in white and black and is designed originally for those who want to change out an appliance panel.

The light bulb in my head went off. Why not use this paint to refresh my old-style stove vent hood? This paint was only $3.99 a can. On a recent trip to Lowes, I bought three cans just to be sure I had enough.

Since it was winter and cold in Gene’s workshop this was a project I asked our handyman Frank to tackle this project for me. Frank has a heated workshop and was happy to do this for us. He came, dismantled the hood and took it home with him to clean, sand, paint and reassemble.

In a couple of weeks we had it back and reattached. In addition to painting the outside Frank thoroughly cleaned off the metal grills and degreased the entire unit. What a guy!

I’m happy to have my stove vent back so now I can reconnect the smoke alarm. With the vent out of commission I kept sending the smoke alarm into the noisy”danger”zone.

Doesn’t this look nice? The entire project cost me less than $50.00 and was worth every penny. This defintely quilifies as debt-free living!

Small House Big Sky Homesteader, Donna

 

 

On Sabbatical This Month – Busy Studying and Learning

Did you know that January is Thyroid Awareness Month?

EVENT ONE:

I wanted to let my followers know that I’ll be busy with two self-study programs this month and I will not be posting on a regular basis until around mid-February. I am devoting myself to listening to two free on-line Healing Summits between now and the February 7th.

The first summit comes from Health Talks Online a terrific Facebook page that promotes health and many important on-line health related programs. For more details and to sign up go to: http://healthtalksonline.com/

The first summit I am focusing on is called The Thyroid Secret.Com And check out the thyroid secret.com/trailer /new.

And tune into the thyroid secret.com/trailer /new and the thyroid secret.com/hidden-epidemic.

This is a 9 day, FREE on-line learning opportunity showing 9 episodes of this newly released documentary (sharing one episode per day) which will help to educate anyone interested in knowing more about  autoimmune thyroid disease.

This program is being hosted by pharmacist Dr. Izabella Wentz, author of the New York Times bestselling book, Finding Your Root Cause. Dr. Wentz is known as The Thyroid Pharmacist and is one of the leading voices about the condition I have that is called Autoimmune Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis. You can read more about her and her work here: http://www.thyroidpharmacist.com/

A DVD of this program will also be available for purchase through this website as well.

EVENT TWO:

Also mark your calendars for another pertinent on-line summit that begins on January 30th.

Dr. Peter Osborne has created The Autoimmune Revolution, on-line and free from January 30 – February 6, to help you prevent and reverse pain from autoimmune diseases. For more details to to: https://autoimmunerevolution.org/checkout/

You can help support the cause by doing the following;

1. Register for free: hto.care/air
2. Invite your friends and family!
3. Own all 30+ expert talks: hto.care/airown
4. “Like” our hosts: Dr. Peter Osborne, Health Talks Online

Functional Medicine Physicians are telling us that autoimmune is the new cancer and that medicine is facing an epidemic of autoimmune diseases that the current system will not be able to handle.

These experts have banned together to help spread the word and to educate the public, conventional doctors and health officials about this issue.

If it’s time for you to achieve greater health and improved happiness you can break the cycle of pain and start living again. You can access this event here -> http://bit.ly/AutoimmuneRevolution

And sadly, the average lifespan of someone with an autoimmune disease is 10 years shorter than a healthy person. That fact alone freaked me out when I learned it and it’s what keeps me motivated to stay healthy and vibrant. I want to be here a long time and to have fun, be a mom, wife and business woman with energy and vitality.

So now, it’s time to achieve greater health and improved happiness so you can break the cycle of pain and start living again! Join me and watch The Autoimmune Revolution, online and free from January 30 – February 6, 2017!

Don’t forget, if you wish to receive notice of future heath summits visit this Facebook page; Health Talks Online.

Will you join me in this healing journey?

Small House Big Sky Homesteader (and avid healer) Donna

My New Article in The New Pioneer

Another one of my short “How to”articles was published this month in The New Pioneer, Spring 2017, Country Almanac #218. You can tell that as soon as the fall rush is over and we have moved inside for the long Michigan winter I get busy contacting my editors! I spend the summer months thinking up sellable ideas too.

The New Pioneer magazine runs a column in each issue called, “It Worked for Me!” This is an opportunity for freelancers like me to come up with a unique and targeted idea for their readership.

This is my second submission to this magazine (Psst, please don’t tell anyone but I am building my reputation with my editor and plan to make inroads to eventually pitch and submit a cover story for this publication. I know JUST the story too.)

This quarterly publication is geared to folks who wish to homestead, live off-grid and to become more self-sufficient. Readers are always looking for simple, healthy ways to live debt-free.

This is the photograph they choose to illustrate my written piece.  I took this photograph of our Cochin eggs last year.

As a long-time homesteader myself, I know the right hot button for many of these publications. One area of interest for nearly every homesteader is solid ideas of ways to earn some extra cash while on the homestead.

Many homesteaders, while rich in land and homegrown food, are all too often cash strapped in the short-term. So a good idea about how to market and earn some out-of-pocket cash is always welcome.

My piece is about how I found, marketed and sold our organic eggs to the five-star Yelton Manor B&B in South Haven, MI. See their website here:www.yeltonmanor.com/

I shared several of my tips and trade secrets to finding, pitching and selling my eggs and blackberries to this unique bed and breakfast establishment with readers and my editor gave me the place of honor, top billing on the inside back page, page 128.

Writing these articles is one more way I earn some out-of-pocket cash for our homestead needs!

The link to the publication can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/NewPioneerMagazine/

Small House Big Sky Homesteader, Donna

The Art of Aging Gracefully on the Homestead-Mother Earth News

We are in the current issue of Mother Earth News!

My latest contribution to the current issue of Mother Earth News has hit the news stand. This magazine for those of you who might not know it; is a guide to living wisely while being self-sufficient on the homestead or farm.

The article is titled Aging Gracefully on the Homestead. This is a piece about the challenges of senior homesteading; a topic we know a little something about.

Although I pitched an ongoing column geared to senior homesteading they opted for a one time “how-to” article. Perhaps they know more about the age of their readership than I do! My contribution was four photographs (out of the eight published) and a part of the text.

Double click on this PDF and I believe that the article will open up. aging-gracefully-1

Homesteading is hard work, and Gene and I are not getting any younger. I doubt anyone will argue with that. There are definitely multiple challenges to continuing to do the physical work required by homesteading as one gets older.

We moved to the Small House Big Sky Homestead fifteen years ago. We started out getting as much done as we could and added additional outdoor projects like the chicken complex and the water containment system each summer. And worked on the house during the winter months. This was a good thing we got a lot done in those early years since even then we weren’t spring chickens. (We were 50 and 55 years old.)

Eventually we got the major items on our to-do list knocked down. Every year we try to accomplish a project or two more outside during the nice weather and a few more small indoor project in the house during the indoor winter months.

Now that we are 65 and 72, our age and our health is beginning to be a real consideration. Fortunately, I started thinking about this several years ago. I asked myself what will I do and how will we manage when it becomes more difficult to do the work we need to do?

This past season I hired hourly help in the garden and yard. We found a local young girl of fourteen who is strong and looking to make some money for school clothes. It’s not a perfect system as Olivia is only available on Sunday afternoons because she runs cross county and runs her daily miles every school night, but we have managed to make it work. And this past winter when Gene had his hernia operation we hired a local small business in the short-term to plow our driveway and another local boy to run the snow blower to clear our paths.The total cash out of pocket during Gene’s recovery was less than $100.00.

Some homesteaders find an apprentice or a farm worker and offer room and board in exchange for work. Others turn a spare bedroom or cabin into an Air B&B for extra cash income on the homestead.

Obviously, there is more than one way to make this work but this is what is woring for us.

The moral of this story is to plan ahead about how you might make your elder years’ on the homestead work for you and how you can turn your homestead into a property that will sustain you when you are older.

I hope to convince the editors at MEN that a monthly column written by me with interviews of senior homesteaders who ARE making it work will be both inspirtional and informative.

To help support this idea please send your letters/e-mails to:Rebecca Martin martin@ogdenpubs.com>

As always, thank you for following and if you are aging homesteaders and want to share tips with me about how you have made senior homesteading work for you, please contact me. I am always looking for new ideas on how you in the hometead trenches are making it work!

Small House Big Sky Homesteader, Donna

What We Love About Homesteading

One of the aspects we love about homesteading here is that this life takes us out of the consumerist life of the city to a life of production and creation. We may not have enough lifetimes to realize our fantasy of full fledge farming (with mini goats and horses) but in our own small way with our garden, our blacksmith forge, the art studio and the restoring of this home and the outbuildings, we feel that we are making, giving, repurposing, and creating more than just buying our way through life.

And when a thing is truly needed there becomes first a reason to repurpose, reuse and to shop auctions, thrift store, flea markets and more.  These items are meant to be used another generation (or two) and the end result is that our home looks like it has always been this way, even when it hasn’t.

I love sharing our life with my granddaughter who is growing up in the city. She has this opportunity to see nature close up and learn about how we care for it. She loves my chickens and egg collecting and it’s amazing to watch her learn, grow and question how things work.

We also love living with the seasons. There is a natural rhythm to homesteading or farming that is so different from life in the city. For us it is natural to wake with the light and sleep with the dark. It is natural for mankind to be our most productive spring through autumn and then rest, plan, regenerate and restore during the winter months.

We love the ability to search, forage, and gather plants, fruits, berries and to turn them into a productive edible feast or a healing tincture or syrup. This brings joyfulness along with a deeply felt sense of beauty and accomplishment as well.

We love having the ability to control the food we put into our bodies. We grow it ourselves or source it from trusted growers near us putting that money back into our own community.

We love the freedom this life gives us to go into the woods, marsh, fields and farmland once a day to hike, explore, walk our dog, bird watch, observe nature and be one with the natural world.

Living here and homesteading lets me practice my ethical belief of acting on behalf of the common good.

There is way of recapturing the spirit of the past found by people like us who have made the decision to slow their lives down to farm or homestead. This is a revival of the pastoral life of long ago while adapting and evolving it to our personal need and tastes.

In no sense was this house, the life the life of our dreams. But over our lifetime this has instead slowly turned into something better, the house and the life of our realities.

These images are the Grand Finale to our saying goodbye to fall on a foggy, fabulous fall morning.

Small House Homesteader, Donna

Glass Storm Door Replaced

Today we had the front storm door glass on my studio building replaced.

In the meantime I learned that all storm doors are made of safety glass that will shatter if hit hard enough. Imagine how you could be hurt if you slipped on the ice and fell into a glass door and that glass broke into large shards. Glass doors are made this way to protect us from a fatal accident.

We will never know for sure how this happened to our door but we think a stone was thrown from our lawn tractor and hit the glass because we found it shattered one morning late this fall.

A phone call to our insurance company and seven week later we have a new glass door insert. In the meantime the pieces shattered in a zillion pieces and fell into our stone landscaping. That meant vacuuming out many tiny pieces of irregular shaped glass and then hauling over new pea gravel from the other side of our property and revamping the stone bed. That translated into five or six hours of hard physical labor.

We worked with Glass Images out of Holland, MI. They came to measure, order and then replaced the glass insert. They did an excellent job for us.

After we cleaned up the glass pieces we put down a large vinyl tarp to keep the rest of the glass from falling out into the landscaping again. And on top of that we put large field stones to keep the tarp from blowing up in our high winds and sending glass pieces everywhere.

This glass insert had to be a custom order and the main hold-up was that this door has mini blinds in between the glass. That also meant that it the insert to be rebuilt to match the back door, hence the long delay in replacing it.

With property there is always something that needs to be repaired. Today we have a new door insert and that is one more chore is ticked off my winter to-do list.

Small House Homesteader, Donna

Anna in the Laundry Room

I had a chicken in my laundry room over the holidays.

Poor Anna one of my four Rhode Island Reds who had a bad case of Bumblefoot in mid-December while she was also undergoing a very heavy molt. She was one sick chicken.

Bumblefoot is the term used to describe an infection on a chicken’s foot; it is referred to as “plantar pododermatitis” by medical professionals. Bumblefoot is characterized by swelling, sometimes redness and often a characteristic black or brown scab on the bottom of the foot.

I noticed her distress in two ways; one when her legs and feet turned an out of character shade of pink and two when she was hanging out under the coop for hours at a time and not interacting with the other chickens. I knew something was wrong. So I checked out her feet and they were very swollen and she had two pencil eraser sized black dots under both of her feet. I diagnosed Bumblefeet. This was the first case of Bumblefoot in our flock.

I brought her inside tthe ouse and set up the dog kennel in our laundry room. I put leaves and pine shaving as litter in thekennel for her and gave her cat food cans of water, greens and layers feed. I quickly ordered Susan Burek’s Bumblefoot tincture from her Moonlight Mile Herb Farm  You can find her website here http://www.moonlightmileherbs.com/

I’ve used Susan’s herbal products before and have found them to be very effective. In fact, I follow her Poultry Natural Living  and Herbal Care group on facebook.  I have learned almost everything I know about using herbs for chickens from that.

According to the written instructions I gave Anna the Bumblefoot tincture internally using an eye dropper as well as putting on her feet bottom with a second eye dropper. This is definitely a two-person process; one to hold and one to administer the drops.

In the meantime I fed her extra protein in the form of my “high-test” feed (blackoiled sunflower seeds, layers feed and meal worms soaked overnight in olive oil that has steeped in herbs,) and cat food for building feathers and gave her a warm place to rest and heal. I made sure she had oyster shells as grit and plenty of fresh water.

I tried soaking her foot in a warm foot bath but failed as she would screech and jump right out of the pan. She wanted no part of that water even if warm and filled with Epson salts. While some chicken keepers cut out the infected plug out of the bottoms of their chicken’s feet in a kind of home surgery, I knew I was not up for that.

I caught Anna’s infection early and still I was amazed at how quickly those black spots turned into a quarter size, red, puffy and an obviously painful infection. She let me knew that she was hurting. On sunny days I would take her outside in the warmer afternoon to dust, dig in the dirt and keep her acclimated to her flock.  Then it turned bitter cold around Christmas and those trips outside ended.

She was inside for about three weeks while healing. Once she began to feel better she adapted quickly to life inside and actually seemed to thrive in it. She loved to walk out of her kennel enclosure and walk around the laundry room and stand and watch her shadow in the glass of the front loading washer and dryer.

As soon as she began to feel better she wanted to walk out into the kitchen and check out the dog water bowl and was always interested in  what I was cooking. I had to watch her very carefully to keep her from flying up and into whatever food I was prepping. She loves her greens the best and I swear she has a sixth sense when I am ripping kale. She would come running toward me and toward the kale and I would have to quickly shoo her back into the laundry room.

I had never before understood about chicken keepers having “House Chickens” but having seen how quickly Anna adapted to us, our dog Sassy and lots of food I now understand how this might happen. She quickly grew very content with three square meals a day without any other chicken competition and our company. She clucked softly at me and I talked back and we bonded very quickly.

These friendly chickens and their sweet behaviors never cease to amaze me.

Small House Big Sky Homesteader, Donna