Extopian

Cucumber Gardening Made Easy

Tyler Onbekend — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 21:08:49 +0000

One of the easiest and most rewarding ways to grow cucumbers is in a raised bed system. Not just any old system but a cinder block garden. This garden system requires no hammer, nails or wood. It uses cinder blocks for the walls. Inside the blocks you can tailor your soil mix to suit your personal needs and worry less about the limitations of your local soil conditions. It’s even attractive enough to replace those sterile plots of plant life we call “lawns” and sidewalk green space. Raised bed containers can use as little as ¼ the space of a conventional row garden and need up to 1/4 the time and water to grow the same amount of food.
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Easy Home Made Fruit Leather

Tyler Onbekend — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 23:21:14 +0000

Those dried, chewy strips of fruit found in the snack and health isle of your grocery store are an excellent replacement for candy bars but command a premium price. Ironic really, if you consider that like jams, fruit leather is just one more way to get additional mileage out of low to middle quality fruits before they go bad. Pretty much any fruit that can be made into jams can be made into fruit leather (i.e. I haven’t had much luck with things like citrus and bananas). One drawback (or advantage, depending on your nutritional outlook) is that the fruit leather described below do not have the powerful artificial preservatives present in their commercial counterparts. As such, they should not be stored for long periods at room temperatures. Either consume within a couple days or freeze for later.

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© Tyler Onbekend for Extopian, 2009. | Permalink | One comment |
Post tags: Frugal, Fruit, Fruit Leather, Healthy, Natural, Preserving, Recipes

Binoculars, Understanding Features & Specifications and Selecting the Right Pair

Tyler Onbekend — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 23:13:28 +0000

Whether you’re a nature enthusiast, recreationalist, hunter or just a full/part resident of the outdoors one essential piece of gear that is often overlook are a good set of binoculars. Choosing a set for general use can be a bit tricky as many people can only differentiate gross magnification and price as a gauge of quality. This can lead to some powerful, but ultimately, inadequate, gear choices as well as wasting a great deal of money. Here’s what you need to know and consider when purchasing binoculars.

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Identifying Disaster Stress Reactions

Tyler Onbekend — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 04:23:42 +0000

Experiencing a disaster can be overwhelming. Even when one has avoided the numerous physical challenges and dangers of a disaster, the psychological threats are often harder to identify, evaluate and address. These threats can serious degrade your ability to cope with the disaster and its ongoing situations, as well as result in lingering psychological issues well after the actual disaster has subsided. As with most dangers, the first and best defense is the ability to identify them.

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© Tyler Onbekend for Extopian, 2009. | Permalink | One comment |
Post tags: Disaster, Disorders, Psychology, Stress, Trauma

Hunting Season Around the Corner; Understanding & Appreciating Venison

Tyler Onbekend — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 02:21:38 +0000

Depending on your region and hunting technique, hunting season for deer and some other large game is just around the corner (a few weeks to a couple months). While I haven’t had the opportunity to do as much hunting as I’d like, I have enjoyed several excellent venison meals in my life, so it always comes as a disappointment when I hear about people having bad experience with venison. I think most of these experiences are rooted in some of the fundamental differences and expectations between game and domestic animals. The following is a basic overview of venison and how best to appreciate it.

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Not Just A Pretty Face; Harvesting and Processing Rose Hips

Tyler Onbekend — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 02:07:59 +0000

Roses can do more than grace our landscapes and floral designs. Like its cousins the apple, pear, peach and cherry, roses produce a fruit. Rose Hips are a valuable source of vitamin C, containing as much as 20 times more vitamin C than oranges. They are also an excellent antioxidant. Rose Hips can be found in dried form in most health food stores, but why not gather your own? You’ll save money and you’ll know where they came from and the conditions in which they grew. Furthermore, you’ll be adding to your own self-sufficiency by locating and gathering a nutrient-dense food source to nourish yourself and your family. In many parts of the country, large hedges grow in great abundance producing attractive and fragrant pink and red flowers.

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© Tyler Onbekend for Extopian, 2009. | Permalink | No comment |
Post tags: Foraging, Herbal, Jam, Nutrition, Recipes, Rose Hips, Syrup, Tea, Wild Foods, Wine

Curing Meat The Old Fashioned Way for Seasonal Preservation

Tyler Onbekend — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 22:01:55 +0000

Curing was a widely used method of preserving meat before the days of refrigeration. Both Salt and Sugar (as well as combinations of both) have been used to cure meat by means of the process of osmosis. The higher concentration of salt in external water (Brine), actually causes moisture to evacuate the tissue. In addition to drawing the water from the food itself, salt curing also dehydrates and kills the bacterial organisms in food that are the primary agents of spoil. Although normal table salt can be used with some success, the most common types used are partly or wholly either sodium nitrite or sodium nitrate.

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© Tyler Onbekend for Extopian, 2009. | Permalink | One comment |
Post tags: Brine, Curing Meat, Food, Preserving, Smoking Meat

Harnessing Well Water For A Free, Low-Tech Refrigeration Source

Tyler Onbekend — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 00:14:35 +0000

Many homesteaders and other people that choose to set up households in remote areas quickly realize that transmitted electricity is a premium resource, if not completely unavailable in some particularly remote areas. Even in reasonably developed areas, on larger properties paying for “last mile” utilities may be prohibitively expensive. Some turn to ingenious but expensive kerosene or propane powered models for appliances such as refrigerators when they may have an inexpensive, low-tech refrigerating system right beneath their feet. For the same reason utilities are hard to come by, many locations also rely on a private well and that’s where our solution starts.
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© Tyler Onbekend for Extopian, 2009. | Permalink | One comment |
Post tags: Cooling, Energy, Free, Low Cost, Refrigerator, Water, Wells

Buy Land—They Ain’t Making Any More Of It; Government Real Estate Disposal Sales

Tyler Onbekend — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 00:33:20 +0000

The United States General Services Administration (GSA) is a federal agency responsible for promoting effective use of federal real property assets, as well as the disposal of real property that is no longer mission-critical to federal agencies. With thousands of properties in the federal portfolio, disposing of underused federal property is a considerable task. GSA—while working together with partner federal agencies, state and local governments, non-profit organizations, business groups, and citizens—leaves a lasting positive impact on communities by making valuable government real estate available for numerous public purposes.

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© Tyler Onbekend for Extopian, 2009. | Permalink | One comment |
Post tags: Auction, Buildings, For Sale, Government, Land, Property, Real Estate

Rope Craft: Two Techniques for Making a Rope Ladder in the Field

Tyler Onbekend — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 02:50:40 +0000

A few nights ago I was watching a documentary about an expedition into the Caldera de Luba, an isolated and steep-sided valley on Equatorial Guinea. With some descents as steep as 70 to 80 degrees, sections of the journey were more like mountaineering than hiking. To assist in one particularly challenging segment, the crew built a rope ladder. Although, the technique was not explained in detail and was a bit hard to follow, it could be gathered that it was essentially a series of looped knots that secured stout lengths of wooden saplings into a highly serviceable rope ladder. I decided to research the technique (along with another, more minimalistic one) and share the process with you.

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© Tyler Onbekend for Extopian, 2009. | Permalink | One comment |
Post tags: Craft, Gear, Knots, Ladder, Rope, Techniques, Tips