Various Links...odds and ends for sustainable living

Build Your Own Adobe Oven

Not a bad tutorial -- I can taste the pizza already! And it doesn't seem all that hard to do with their great tutorial either.

Materials list

You'll find most of the materials you need at a home center, except for the cardboard barrel, often used by movers. (You cut it in half lengthwise and use it to form the oven's curving top.) Look online under Barrels & Drums for a local source.

• 14 concrete building blocks (8 by 8 by 16)
• 14 concrete cap blocks (8 by 2 by 16)
• 68 firebricks (2 ½ by 4 ½ by 9)
• One 28- to 30-gallon cardboard barrel
• One empty 1-quart can
• 6-foot square of 6-inch wire mesh (used to reinforce concrete driveways)
• 10 feet of 30-inch-wide chicken wire
• 4 feet of rough-sawed redwood 2-by-4
• 2 feet of redwood 1-by-3
• 16 1 ½-inch deck screws
• 3 feet of 6-inch-wide aluminum flashing
• Eight large wheelbarrow loads of adobe soil (heavy clay garden soil)
• Three bags Portland cement
• 1-foot square of ¼-inch galvanized wire mesh
• Exterior latex paint
• Optional: 24 precast 1- by 2-foot concrete steppingstones

You'll also need a tape measure, hacksaw, circular saw with masonry bit, wire cutters, saber saw, drill, screwdriver, large wheelbarrow, hoe, shovel, sturdy rubber gloves, sponge, small piece of scrap lumber or plywood, old towels, and plastic tarp.

Building a Barrel Smoker

Emergency Preparedness Guide PDF
geared toward earthquakes, but still very useful common sense.

Herbal Information

The Texas Manual on Rainwater Harvesting

Safe Handling and Storage of Oils and Fats

Water Treatment and Storage

Several Disaster Preparedness PDFs for pets, livestock and horses

Standard First Aid Kit for Home
I would hope you have several of these on hand, but are also prepared with at least the basic knowledge and common sense to know how to do other things. If you can stock bottles and containers of salves to keep you set up, that's great, but knowing what to plant and harvest from your garden and land to make your own salve would be better and more practical.
Also note, peroxide is good, but iodine is better as it will not only clean, but help control the bleeding as well. And several tubes of plain old ordinary SuperGlue...we just used it to close a pita-pocket sort of cut on middle child's toe ad hold it in place so it could seal itself and heal. handy stuff.

First Aid and CPR Manual to Download

Common First Aid Myths and Mistakes

Various Gun Manuals to download free

Making an Olive Oil Lamp

Making your lamp is relatively easy, and most likely you will have many of the materials on hand already. Here’s what you’ll need:

A wide-mouthed glass jar (a quart-size wide-mouthed canning jar works really well)

A short length of flexible steel wire (1 1/2 or 2 times the height of the jar)A wick

Olive oil

Irish Potato Famine Fungus strikes early and fast

ScienceDaily (July 5, 2009) — Home gardeners beware: This year, late blight -- a destructive infectious disease that caused the Irish potato famine in the 1840s -- is killing tomato and potato plants in gardens and on commercial farms in the eastern United States. In addition, basil downy mildew is affecting plants in the Northeast.

Common sense is simple and short -- "If you suspect the government doesn't want you to have it, stockpile it!"