B2B Book Reviews 1: Homesteading, Herbal Medicine, and Homeschooling

When I was a senior in high school I took an aptitude test. I scored highest in music and home economics, lowest in police work and sales! As you can imagine, that means that trying to promote anything (most especially my own books) is truly difficult for me. The Back To Basics Living Bundle folks put together a really nice marketing package for their affiliates, but instead of presenting you with a more typical sales appeal, I'm going to do what feels comfortable for me, i.e. a series of book reviews from this year's bundle. So from one book lover to another, here are some of the B2B books that I really enjoyed.

Homesteading

There are many homesteading resources in the bundle, and for those who are looking to get started, this one by Carmen Nuland is a really great little book. 8 Steps to Homestead Beginnings: How to defeat overwhelm when starting a homestead talks about the reasons for homesteading and then helps you develop a vision for your future homestead. It takes you through evaluating your resources, planning, goal setting, getting started, identifying obstacles, tracking expenses and income, and review. It includes all the things that need to be thought through in order to create a plan and take the first steps toward success.

Herbal Medicine

For those of you interested herbs and natural healing, Kami McBride's How To Make Healing Herbal Oils is a really nice addition to the bundle. In it she introduces the benefits of using herbal oils, and then teaches you how to make your own. It starts with the basics of making infused oils with either fresh or dried herbs, then shows you how to make two useful oils from lavender and comfrey. She details her seven favorite herbs for infused oils, plus gives recipes for making a variety of healing blends: Aches and Pains, Bumps and Bruises, Relaxation, Scrapes and Scratches, Headache Oil, Healing Bath Oil Blend, Luxury and Massage Oil Blend. She also includes a chapter on preserving your oils, plus a list of resources.

Homeschooling

One of the homeschooling resources is a set of five unit studies from Carol J. Alexander's Lessons from the Homestead series. She has included:

• Lessons from the Bee Hive
• Lessons from the Garden
• Lessons from the Hen House
• Lessons from the Seed Catalog
• Lessons from the Tree House

These parent guides help you adapt your own homestead resources to a variety of grade levels and subjects: math, science, geography, language arts, art, home economics. Each booklet includes a vocabulary list and resources.

My favorite in the series is Lessons from the Tree House. It uses the unschooling approach which is such a natural fit with homesteading. In her introduction, Carol cites a work which states that American children typically only get 30 minutes per week in unstructured outdoor time, whereas they spend over 30 hours each week in front of some kind of electronic screen. She writes, "Those sobering statistics compelled me to go outside and take pictures of their fort for future scrapbooks. While out admiring their work, I couldn't help but think of all they learned while working on this project."

Divided into The Design Phase, The Building Phase, and The Enjoyment Phase, this little eBook helps parents develop both academic as well as life skills in their children. I only wish it was available when I was homeschooling my kids!

The Back To Basics Living Bundle will be available through January 22 and includes 73 homesteading, self-reliance, natural living, and preparedness resources for $29.97.

Click here for more information or to purchase.

BONUS: If you buy the bundle through my blog, I'll gift you with your choice of one eVolume from my The Little Series of Homestead How-Tos. After you place your order simply email me at 5acresandadream @ mail. com, and let me know which one you'd like. I'll send you a link to download a free copy.

Tomorrow I'll review three really good books from the bundle that deal with food preservation and storage.

B2B Book Reviews 1: Homesteading,

Herbal Medicine, and Homeschooling

© Jan 2017 by Leigh at http://www.5acresandadream.com/

Our Kitchen Floor Is Here!

9" wide yellow pine plank flooring. Shipping weight was 500 lbs.

Finally. Doesn't look like a lot, does it? That's 206 square feet of 9 inch wide yellow pine tongue & groove plank floor boards. Seemed to take forever to arrive and for awhile, we didn't think it would arrive at all. We ordered it online from Lumber Liquidators (which for some reason I always want to call "Liquid Lumberdators."). The product reviews were excellent, and so was the price; $1.99 per square foot. Plus we got free shipping by picking it up at our area store.

Wide planks like this are not usually kept in stock and must be special ordered. This means a long lead time, usually 6 to 8 weeks, though this company makes no promises. We made the order in December, and kept an eye on their online order tracking. When the status never changed from "order accepted," Dan finally called and got an expected delivery date.

That date came and went so he called again. Over the weeks we went though two more postponements, and by that time he was a tad frustrated because no one could give him any clue as to the actual status of our floor. There were always five orders ahead of us. While we waited we worked on all the little kitchen projects we could do, but eventually we got to the point where installing the floor was next.

In the end, persistence paid off. Not because they were tired of him bugging them, it just took getting the right customer service rep; someone who was willing to look into it. Thanks to one gal being willing to make a few phone calls, the situation was resolved promptly. Turns out it was in stock all along at another store. They even delivered it to our door at no extra cost!

Unfortunately, situations like this always reflect on the company. Any of the other folks we talked to could have made inquiries for us too, but for whatever reason, didn't. Sometimes a company is grossly mismanaged, but sometimes the problem exists at another level. Have you ever looked at an empty shelf in a store and asked an employee if they had any more in the back? How many times have you immediately been told no? I have, and then turned around and asked another employee the same question. That person was willing to help and went and got it! What does that tell you?

Personally I think it has to do with a work ethic that has long been lost. Or perhaps people just don't know how to take the initiative anymore. These are things that have to be taught, they aren't caught. We taught our kids a work ethic. They had chores and responsibilities because this is how the family functions; everyone helps out according to ability. That meant that as they got older, work load and responsibilities increased. They got an allowance as well, but this was not payment for their chores. We did this because I did not want them to grow up thinking that they should get something in return for everything they did. Helping others was a character trait I wanted to develop. We help others because it is the right thing to do, not in expectation of getting something in return. If they shirked on their chores, their allowance wasn't cut, but there were other consequences (more work and loss of privileges.)

They got an allowance because they were members of the family and because families share resources. They were however, expected to tithe from it, and put some in savings. With the remainder, they could do as they pleased. While we never cut their allowance as punishment, it did increase as they got older and willingly took on more responsibility. In looking at the kind of adults my kids are now, I have no regrets about how we raised them. They are willing, responsible, hard working adults who handle their money well.

Good grief. How in the world did I get here from there.

Anyway, yellow pine is actually classified as a hardwood, which is good for my kitchen, considering what a klutz I am. The next step will be to find a place inside for it, so it can acclimatize to the house. Then we can get to work putting it down.

Next: problems preparing the old floor

Our Kitchen Floor Is Here! © February 2012 by Leigh at http://my5acredream.blogspot.com/