By the Health & Safety Team Pull up any standard emergency kit checklist. Water, food, flashlight, radio, batteries, first aid kit, whistle, dust mask, wrench, can opener, local maps, phone charger. It is a solid list, and it has quietly assumed for decades a household of people who never menstruate, never get pregnant, never nurse … Read more
By the Homestead Team A dark asphalt roof on a summer afternoon reaches about 170 degrees Fahrenheit. A white membrane on the same building on the same day sits near 105. That is a 65 degree difference produced by nothing but color, and it is not controversial: you can calculate it from first principles, and … Read more
By the Homestead Team We built one in a barn on a permaculture homestead in Colorado, the kind of barn that holds tools and equipment rather than animals, and the thing nobody warns you about is what it does to the room. We expected a heater. What we got was the place everyone ends up. … Read more
By the Homestead Team This is the technical companion to our piece on how rocket mass heaters work and whether you should build one. That article covers the decision, the code and insurance problem, and the safety case. This one assumes you have made the decision and want the numbers. Nearly every failed rocket mass … Read more
By the Preparedness Team Almost everything written about water preparedness assumes the tap has stopped. Filtering from a creek, storing barrels in the basement, catching rain off a roof: all of it answers the question of what to do when nothing comes out of the faucet. That is the dramatic failure, and it is also … Read more
By the Climate Team Most of what a household prepares for arrives without notice. Tornadoes give you minutes, earthquakes give you nothing, and a grid failure announces itself by going dark. Seasonal climate patterns are the rare exception. They build slowly, they are visible months ahead, and they shift the odds of specific hazards in … Read more
By the Pantry Team Start with the honest version, because most of what you will read about beef this month is written to frighten you. There is no beef shortage at the American grocery store. The cases are full. What has happened is that the price of what is in them has climbed past the … Read more
By the Homestead Team There is a number in the USDA’s avian influenza data that most flock owners have never seen, and it reframes the entire subject. Since the current outbreak began in 2022, roughly 1,431 poultry flocks in the United States have had confirmed cases. Of those, about 652 were commercial operations and about … Read more
By the Climate Team A heat wave that began in the last days of June has now stretched across most of a month, and it is not finished. As of late July 2026, a fresh and unusually strong heat dome has built over the Rockies and Plains and is pushing east, and the numbers underneath … Read more
By the Homestead Team Most water-harvesting advice starts on the roof: gutters, a downspout, a tank. That is worth doing, but it solves only part of the problem, and it depends on a roof, a pump or gravity feed, and a tank that can crack, freeze, or run dry. There is an older, quieter way … Read more