Most Americans’ idea of a dream home is something like a large mini-mansion with six bedrooms, six full baths and four living areas.

Not mine. I want to live in an earthship.

An earthship is made of rammed earth tires (tires filled with packed dirt) with solar panels on the south side of the house. The tires are either built up against the side of a hill, or straw bales coated with plaster encircle the outside of the tires. The spaces between the tires are filled with materials such as plastic water bottles or rocks.

Earthship under construction

Why do I want to live in such an unconventional, strange-looking home? Easy. Jerry and I want to be off the grid, and you can’t be off the grid if you have central air and heat. And in a regular, modern-day house you need central air and heat in north Texas.

As Michael Reynolds explains in Comfort in Any Climate, the combination of rammed earth tires and the actual earth itself or straw bales create an indoor environment similar to the adobe houses of the Southwest. In the heat of the summer, the earthship is cool. In the frigid winter, the south-facing solar panels provide a passive heat source.

Although a space heater or wood stove may be necessary to maintain a comfortable temperature in the winter, you certainly don’t need to expend the amount of energy needed to heat a regular house.

And central air conditioning cost is non-existent, as are the costs to repair and eventually replace air conditioning and heating systems.

Having spent eight or nine grand on our two A/C units during the past five years, Jerry and I are more than ready for an alternative. It will save us money and headaches, as well as drastically reducing our carbon footprint.

Not only that, but you can run plumbing and electricity into earthships, the same as any house, and build it as big or as small as you want. We plan to build one (er, uh, have one built) between 1200 and 1500 square feet.

Maybe you like your big energy-sucking house and enjoy paying hundreds of dollars in utility bills every month. That’s you. You be you, and that’s okay with me.

But we’ve decided that simple means less maintenance, less money and a whole lot less stress. I can hardly wait for my earthship home.

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Why dehydrate your food? Is it the best method of food preservation, or is food dehydration just more convenient?

I began to ask myself these questions a couple of years ago when I got into eating raw food. I had been happily using my Excalibur 5 Tray Food Dehydrator for a few months when someone challenged my notion that dehydrating was healthier than canning. The person asserted that you would surely preserve more nutrients with canning, because dehydrating food means cutting or slicing it up and leaving it exposed to the air for a relatively long period of time. That oxidation causes a loss of nutrient value.

That bugged me. I knew that for sure dehydrating on low temperatures keeps the food’s enzymes alive, and that was important to me. But what if I was saving the enzymes meant losing a good chunk of the food’s vitamins, minerals and other nutrients?

The World Wide Web to the rescue! A brief search reassured me that indeed, food dehydration is the superior method of preservation.

Six reasons to choose dehydrating over canning

1. The nutrient value lost during the cutting and dehydrating process is actually less than what is lost through the cooking process. And, as I mentioned above, as long as you dehydrate at low temperatures, the life-giving enzymes are kept in tact.
2. Easy to do. No standing for hours in a hot kitchen. Simply put your food in the dehydrator and leave it until it’s dry. All you have to do is check it every few hours to see if it’s done.
3. Economical. No buying canning jars and huge vats. Well, okay, the Excalibur Food Dehydrator will put a dent in your budget at first (and believe me, you don’t want to by the el-cheapos from discount department stores), but the convenience and effectiveness will be well worth every cent! And besides, if you want to be really cheap frugal, you could always build a solar dehydrator.
4. Dehydrating food requires MUCH less storage room than canned food. And all the people in the South who don’t have a basement said, “AMEN!”
5. No preservatives necessary. The food will keep without salt or sugar, making it even healthier than canned food.
6. Safe. As long as you dehydrate a given food long enough, all the moisture will be removed. This makes it impermeable to botulism and mold. Dehydrated food will also last for years at room temperature.

Why dehydrate? If you need to do something with excess produce, or follow through on your plan to have an emergency supply of food, dehydration is perhaps the best way to preserve it!

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Learn the principles of living in optimum health.

Looking for natural, chemical-free treatments and cures that work? Try undiluted, unadulterated essential oils.

There is no better supplement than Masaji. Find out how it changed my life here.

You’re improving your health; ready to get really free? Check out my other blog, freetoliveyourdreams.com.

On Earth Day, I showed you what my square foot garden looked like at the time. Since then, it’s grown just a little bit. And give us some food in the process! The good news is, we’re not even close to being done with harvest time!

Check out the video and see why square foot gardening is so awesome for small spaces.

Yes, picking aphids off by hand is a pain, but I think I know how to prevent the problem from now on. And it’s totally worth it to have fresh produce from my garden!

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Looking for natural, chemical-free treatments and cures that work? Try undiluted, unadulterated essential oils.

There is no better supplement than Masaji. Find out how it changed my life here.

You’re improving your health; ready to get really free? Check out my other blog, freetoliveyourdreams.com.

Those of us who are getting back to living closer to the earth, back to a simpler life, throw around the term “self-sufficiency” liberally. But what exactly does that mean?

The term implies that you are independent from everyone and do everything yourself. You go out into the deep woods, chop down trees and build a cabin with tools you forged yourself from found metals and/or stone. Then you forage your food, until such time as you can save seeds from edible weeds and begin to plant them yourself, and domesticate squirrels and pigeons for their meat.

You have no computer, TV, radio, telephone of any kind, or motor-powered vehicle, because you can’t make them yourself. And you never read any kind of book, because then, God forbid, you would be learning from someone else.

But what “self-sufficiency” implies and what it actually means in today’s world are two different things. The slow-but-sure growing movement of individuals, couples and families to be more self-sufficient hinges on the desire to be able to take care of one’s basic needs without government or other large organizational interference (such as food and drug companies).

What can self-sufficiency look like?

• Having a backyard garden.
• Learning a trade, craft or art that can allow you to make money without having to work for someone else.
• Homeschooling your kids.
• Living off the grid, using solar, wind and/or water power to run your home.
• Taking a martial arts class.
• Learning how to hunt.
• Running a small farm and selling your produce and meat products at farmer’s markets.
• Walking and bicycling when you can, instead of using gas-powered vehicles.

If you do any of these things, or any combination of them, on a regular basis, you are on the move toward self-sufficiency.

When self-sufficiency becomes the wrong thing to do

If you are developing a more self-sufficient lifestyle because you believe it is the best way to provide a solid future for your family; if you’re doing it because you want to get out of the rat race; if you’re doing it because you enjoy it, or because your personal philosophy of sustainable living compels you to…

go for it!

But if fear is your sole motivation – fear of not having, fear of losing (your job, freedom, etc.) – and you never have any sense of peace or joy about what you’re doing…

you are doing the wrong thing.

Wanting to be able to grow your own food because you will be healthier is a good thing. Doing it because you are in constant fear there may be no more grocery stores tomorrow is not.

My family is making the move toward greater self-sufficiency, and I encourage you to make that move as well. If nothing else, grow a pepper plant in a pot, and see how fulfilled growing part of your salad feels!

Just make sure you’re doing it for the right reasons: for greater personal freedom, for better health, to make a positive impact on your world. Then, you will be living life to the fullest.

But if you are living in fear, you are not living at all.

To the anti-environmentalist, or anti-”green”, crowd, any kind of environmentalism seems extreme. The main reason being that they don’t want anyone to step on their greedy materialistic toes.

Enough about that for the moment.

I strongly believe in creation stewardship. I believe that although technology can be a good thing, we’ve taken it too far and allowed it to ruin both our health and the health of every ecosystem on the planet. And I don’t believe that is what God intended when He commanded us to have dominion over the earth.

However, there are certain environmental groups who make spreading the “green” message to our resistors all the harder because of their extreme philosophies and actions.

The main problem with extreme environmentalism

I could probably list at least a dozen semi-related problems with extreme environmentalism, but they would all fall under one umbrella: It puts the planet before people.

I heard a story on the radio the other day of how a school-aged girl, having been bombarded with a curriculum put together by the Environmental Protection Agency, told her grandmother that she couldn’t come to visit her unless Grandma took the bus instead of a plane.

Stupid. Number one, Granny probably only sees this particular family a couple of times a year, if that. Number two, it’s not like she charters a private jet and is the only passenger on the plane.

Then there are people like Peter Singer, who might actually have a credible voice among a wider audience if he would quit making stupid declarations, such as an adult chimpanzee is more valuable than a human unborn baby.

Listen, if you are against recycling because you don’t like being told what to do, start taking Masaji so you can eliminate that nutrient deficiency that is making you so angry. But if you’re going to continue to be a jerk, at least stop lumping everyone who voices their concern for the health of the environment together.

Growing your own food means you are going to be healthier and live longer, and therefore be more apt to fulfill your great potential. Cutting back on carbon emissions will help make the air healthier for you and everyone else to breathe (can we just forget about global warming for a second and consider how many poisons we involuntarily inhale every day?).

Recycling lessens the stress on the earth, helping it to thrive. Cutting back on spending forces us to be more creative (thus decreasing our risk of developing dementia later in life), save money, and stay out of debt, while reducing the amount of factory by-products that are spewed into the air by the ton every hour.

Environmentalism, per se, is not evil. It is a movement that can help you to “live long and prosper.” Just make sure your need to “live green” never goes so far as to put Planet Earth above people.

To celebrate Earth Day, 2010, I thought I’d share a video with you of my springtime square foot garden.

A few notes: The self-watering planter is homemade using a Rubbermaid tub. You can google “homemade self-watering planter” and find instructions.

The cages my husband made to keep out the cabbage moths are working.

For you northerners: spring warms up quickly here in North Texas, so broccoli and cabbage tend not to do well after March.

Where I am pointing out the peppers, the smaller plants you see are baby zinnias, not peppers that aren’t growing. I forgot to mention that.

Enjoy!

I have written about the joys and glories of raised bed gardening, particularly Mel Bartholomew’s square foot gardening method. It comes with a lot of benefits, such as requiring less weeding and having easier- to-drain soil then beds existing on the ground, in the native soil.

But a couple weeks ago, I was looking up pest information in an old container gardening book, and some other information caught my eye. The information about plants in containers being less susceptible to slugs and snails. The information that you can better provide for the watering and fertilization needs of individuals plants when they grow in containers (especially tomatoes).

In addition, my back has gotten tired lately of bending down and twisting around to check my babies for aphids. The idea of having plants up at knee or even waist level appealed to me more and more. And after having several baby spinaches liberally chewed upon – despite the diatemacecous earth I have been diligent about spreading around my greens – not having to worry about slugs and snails has become even more appealing.

There was only one thing standing between me and my desire to transition to container-grown veggies and fruits: my husband, Jerry. After all, pots and potting soil cost money. Although I have a few pots, and can take some of the soil from my existing raised beds because they are filled with potting soil and finished compost, eventually I would have to spend a good chunk of change to fulfill my new container gardening vision.

Since during the past year or so I’ve made a few spending decisions that ended up not bearing any fruit, I wasn’t sure if I should even bring the subject up with Jerry. Besides, we’d already spent all that money buying landscaping bricks to use as the perimeters of the raised beds.

A few days ago, I discovered Smart Pots, and got even more turned on to container gardening. Later that day at the park, I confessed to Jerry that I’d been thinking about the change. One reason, I explained, is that I want to start a fall garden this year (thank God for warm climates!), and as I would still have plenty of plants in the raised beds providing food, I wouldn’t have much room to plant my fall plants there.

Jerry accepted that logic, so I went a step further.

“You know, I’d really rather grow spinach and lettuce in pots, because then I don’t have to worry about slugs.”

Then I started singing the praises of the Smart Pots, how they’re lightweight, made of natural material, allow for root aeration, etc. (I discovered the next day that Smart Pots are comparable in price to plastic pots, which was even better.) A few minutes into our conversation, Jerry said, “I’ve always liked the idea of using containers for growing vegetables.”

Turns out, if I had let him had a say back when I first asked him to build the raised beds, he would have pushed for containers. Mainly, he likes the fact that you can move them around. He even came up with a couple of ideas of how I could grow lettuce inside in the summertime.

Isn’t it great when your spouse agrees with you long before realize it? I prefer it to arguing and persuasion any day.

Eventually, around 85% of our crops will be grown in containers (I want to keep melons and pumpkins sprawling on the ground). Organic gardening is a must for anyone serious about eating nutritious food. Raised bed gardening will save you a lot of headaches. But in the final analysis, the ease of container gardening wins the day (for me, anyway ).

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Organic gardening – or any kind of gardening, for that matter – does not come without its challenges. If you’re thinking about starting an organic garden, here are seven tips that, if followed, will save you a lot of headaches, time, and sore muscles.

1. Use raised bed or container gardening.

Raised beds are a bit labor-intense to create, depending on which technique you use, but once you start using them you will have very little digging or weeding to do. Containers require no weeding or digging, are back-friendly, can be set up as self-watering systems, make pest control easier, and allow you to meet the individual watering and fertilizing needs of the plants better.

2. Start small.

And unless your livelihood depends upon it, keep it small until your oldest child is at least three or four years old. Believe me, you don’t need the kind of “help” that a toddler offers in a garden. Even if you don’t have little ones around, you are likely to experience burnout and frustration quickly if you try to grow all your own vegetables the very first year that you garden.

3. Don’t treat organic sprays as chemical sprays.

Unlike conventional pesticides, the environmentally safe, natural sprays will only take care of the pests that you see. After the odor wears off a couple hours later, the hidden hungry critters will come out. Check your plants daily, and spray as needed with such products as Neem, a sesame oil-based spray such as Organicide, or garlic pepper spray. Depending on how many pests you see, you may need to spray as often as every other day to prevent infestations.

Also become familiar with the sprays that will control powdery and downy mildew, as this knowledge could help save an entire harvest.

4. Plant naturally repelling plants when you plant the vegetables.

Plant blooming repellent flowers – such as marigolds and nasturtiums – and six- to twelve-inch tall herbs around your tomato, pepper, cucumber and other transplants as soon as they go into the ground. That way, you have an instant insect repellent built into your garden and may make #3 irrelevant.

5. Learn your bugs.

Use online or print sources on gardening to find pictures of beneficials and pests. The last thing you want to do is kill off the beneficial bugs in your garden.

6. Befriend diatomaceous earth.

After every watering/rain, sprinkle this fine powder around your greens and on top of any plants where you just picked off aphids, cabbage worms or any other pests. Slugs and snails shrivel up and die when they come into contact with it, and it will dry up any bug that gets hit by it or accidentally walks into it. Diatomaceous earth is also much less costly than organic sprays such as Spinosad and garlic pepper spray.

7. Build your garden near your main water source.

Plan and make your beds as close to the outdoor faucet and/or rain barrels as possible. There’s nothing more frustrating than having to drag hoses all over kingdom come or walk a hundred steps to fill up your water can. This one tip will make caring for your vegetables a much more enjoyable task.

Be sure to apply these strategies as you begin your journey as an organic gardener, and you will soon be wondering why you didn’t start sooner!

I confess, I’d never heard of  heirloom seeds until just a few years ago. The idea fascinated me. Then I got my first heirloom seed catalog, and just about fell out of my chair with excitement. Dozens of varieties of tomatoes, peppers, carrots, even lettuce that I had never heard of sprang out at me in bright color photographs.

What are heirloom seeds, and why are they so great?

Not only can you get varieties of different colors, sizes and shapes, but you can even get ones that are best suited to the climate and region that you live in. How does this happen? Heirloom vegetable seeds are seeds that have been carefully selected by the best of the crop. They may be selected based on the taste or size of the fruit.

For example, a farmer may, for several years, save the seeds from the sweetest bell peppers of a particular harvest. S/he plants those the next season, then again saves the seeds from the sweetest peppers. After, say, ten years or so the peppers that are growing are the sweetest around. They probably also have a higher nutritional value than the run-of-the-mill varieties found in stores.

And, as the name implies, heirloom garden seeds are passed down from generation to generation so that future descendants can benefit from the wonderful characteristics of the food.

Usually, these seeds are organic, and most have a story attached to them. Some of the seeds I have on hand right now include a cucumber that does better in chillier weather (I plan to plant them this fall), currant tomatoes which are so teeny that you need about a dozen to equal the fruit in a quarter of a regular tomato, and watermelons the size of a softball (great for small gardens like mine, because you can train them to grow vertically).

There’s a dud in every bunch

Not all heirloom seeds are what they’re cracked up to be, however. Last year and this I’ve had tremendous difficulty getting my heirloom peppers to grow, and the plants that finally come up look sickly. The one that survived last year never produced anything. However, all my other seeds have done pretty well, so it could be that that particular harvest of pepper seeds were bums.

Where to find heirloom seeds

You can buy heirloom seeds online at such places Seed Savers Exchange and Baker Creek. There are also a few free seed exchange websites, where you can trade seeds you’ve saved with seeds of another avid heirloom gardener.

However you choose to begin your heirloom garden, I encourage you to obtain at least two or three of each vegetable crop you want to grow, then find out which ones grow the best for you and begin saving those seeds. Eventually, you can save up enough so that you can not only grow a plethora for yourself and your family, but also begin to swap them with other heirloom seed fans.

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Do you take as much time to make yourself beautiful inside as you do on the outside?

Woman applying mascara

Many natural-living sites have articles or blog posts that teach you about chemical-free beauty products. (Even me: see this article and this blog post.) But if you look like Miss America but act like Atilla the Hun, you won’t be attractive to anyone who gets to know you.

Do you regularly find yourself doing any of the following?

• Complaining
• Gossiping
• Throwing a tantrum (slamming doors, screaming, giving your partner the silent treatment, etc.)
• Having hateful thoughts toward someone you believe wronged you
• Arguing in order to prove yourself right

If so, perhaps it’s time to put away your makeup kit for a few days and use the extra time to focus on what really matters: your attitude.

A negative attitude is not only annoying to the people around you, but detrimental to your health, as well. Are you aware that negative thoughts disrupt the delicate balance of your bodily fluids and make you considerably more vulnerable to illness and disease?

Furthermore, when you walk around with a dark cloud over your head, you can’t see the light that surrounds you. And if you are blinded to all the good things–a faithful spouse, helpful friends, opportunities, sunrises and sunsets–you will become stagnated in your life. Your mind will tell you that you can’t achieve your goals, and you will believe it. You will walk right past wide-open doors of opportunity to improve yourself spiritually, financially, physically, and emotionally.

However, when you have a positive attitude, the opposite happens. You believe bigger, and therefore achieve more. You see others as helpful and friendly, and they respond in kind. You take every opportunity you can to better yourself, therefore life is constantly a fun challenge and you continually grow.

And, of course, you get healthier in the process.

So how can you go from grump to great? Here are five steps to help you along the way toward increased inner beauty.

1. Recognize, write down, and release grudges.

If you are holding on to unforgiveness, the only person being punished is you. Seek Divine help, and then psychological help, if necessary. Announce out loud that you forgive so-and-so for thus-and-such. Let as many cleansing tears fall as necessary, but do not continue holding the grudge.

2. Make three positive statements for every negative one.

Whenever you catch yourself saying something negative–whether about yourself, someone else, or a situation–make yourself think of and say aloud three positive ones. The more you do this, the more you will get tired of doing it and eventually stop saying negative things just so you won’t have to think so much.

3. Start a Gratitude Journal.

Every evening for a month, write down five things that happened that day for which you are grateful. After two weeks, you will probably be looking for things to be thankful for during the day, and your complaining will drop off so much that your friends will ask if you’ve started taking a new medication.

4. Use essential oils.

If you’re a woman like me, you may be perfectly happy for two weeks out of every month, but as soon as you ovulate, boy, watch out! If PMS is the main culprit for your negativity, essential oils such as lavender, chamomile, and (especially, I’ve found) rosemary can turn your bad mood around in a matter of minutes. The absolute best and most effective oils are provided by Be Young.

5. Phrase your goals as questions.

This puts your subconscious to work, both in keeping you in a more positive frame of mind and in finding answers to questions, with little work on your part.

For example, if you want to get out of debt, ask, “How did I get out of debt so quickly?” If you want to lose weight, ask, “Why is taking off thirty pounds so easy?” If you want to eat healthier, ask, “Why is it so easy for me to stick to a healthy diet?” Whenever your mind brings up a related negative thought, shoot it down by asking your goal-question.

(By the way, The Goals Guy is an awesome resource for people who need help putting the right focus on the right things in order to achieve their goals.)

Tired of hearing yourself whine? Or of your irrational mood swings? Put these steps into action, and begin to transform your life in a wonderful, positive way!

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P.S.–Did you know that nutritional deficiencies can lead directly to negative thinking and emotions? Read my personal story at http://maqui-and-friends.com.