Homesteading to a High Standard

Foundations for Farming,  connected with the Well Watered Garden Project and our friend Noah Sanders, uses four key principles in farming, homesteading, and all of life. Honestly, we aren’t perfect, and we are still working to reach optimal stewardship of what we’ve been given. But we still wanted to share these principles with you.

Principle #1: High Standard

God has called us as Christians to steward well what he has given us, and to multiply it. This means doing our best, working hard, and not skimping on anything. It’s a powerful witness to unbelievers to see an orderly, beautiful homestead, and it often saves you work in the long run.

Practical Tips

Doing your work to a high standard goes from the little thing to big things:

    • Don’t bite off more than you can chew. Work with portions that you’re able to do to a high standard. Then work up from there!
    • Straight rows
    • Clean animal environments (see this post about clean nesting boxes)
    • Keeping records
    • Planning
Straight row

How do you all keep your work to a high standard on the homestead or other contexts?

Poison Ivy Results

I had a bout with poison ivy a few weeks back and had several great remedy recommendations.  Two worked pretty well…

1) Aim a hot blow-dryer at the sores for several minutes multiple times per day (as needed) to dry the oil and reduce the itchiness of the sores.  This worked well.

2) I grew up using a product for poison ivy called “Rhuli Gel“.  It disappeared and was moved around to different Big Pharmas and brand labels for a number of years.  We still had some under a different label, but this worked really well.  Now it’s available again as Rhuli Gel, so I’d highly recommend it.

3) I had a recommendation from one of my co-workers about Tecnu soap product.  I didn’t notice much benefit washing my skin with it.  But I believe it was very helpful for washing clothing that had the bad oils on them.

We loaded the washer with the exposed clothing items and lots of hot water on a soak setting.  Then we put in a tablespoon or so of the Tecnu soap, ran a soak and spin cycle, and ran all the suspected clothing again in hot water with regular laundry detergent.

What tips do you have to clean up after poison ivy exposure?