Through our chat together Kirsten shares what and why she and her husband focused on when moving to the land. That she earns an income off the farm, and what they are developing to make one on it. The value of a partner who shares your dream, which she has in her husband. The relationship we have with our animals, including what develops from bottle feeding a baby goat, when your geese imprint on you and having a guardian dog as part of your family. Engaging your local community, while also leveraging social media to stay connected, learn new skills, and promote your farm and farm business. We get into quite a bit in our time together, which also reminded me of how technology is not always the most reliable at the end of a rural lane. You’ll hear a few places where we have less than perfect audio, but those are minor compared to the wealth of information Kirsten shares with us in this conversation.

You can read Kirsten's blog and learn more about her journey at HostileValleyLiving.com, and you’ll find her book at newsociety.com.

While lauding Kirsten’s book, I mention that I like the questions she asks to help you perform a self-assessment and decide whether or not this really is the path you want to pursue, something we don’t talk about enough within the permaculture community. Those questions can help you with preparing for rural life, understanding the seasonality of living on a farm, the reality of raising children on the homestead, and more. A few of those questions, from the chapter on Skills and Resources for Rural Living, include: What is your plan for keeping food fresh or preserved? How will you bathe and get fresh drinking water? How will you keep your animals warm in winter? As you read each chapter and answer those questions, if you want to learn more and dig deeper, Kirsten provides a relatively comprehensive list of books for each topic. From the same chapter, some of the books she recommends: The Encyclopedia of Country Living by Carla Emery Raising Goats Naturally by Deborah Niemann I’m a fan of her suggested reading because many of the books are ones I would personally recommend from my own library, or have been suggested by guests at one point or another. Overall, if you are called to the land, you can learn a lot from Kirsten, her blog, and her books. I missed her at Mother Earth News Fair in PA this past year, as I was hanging out with Jereme Zimmerman at the time talking mead, but look forward to meeting her this September and sitting through some of her presentations. If you can make it to that or any of the other events, she’ll be at, seek out the opportunity. If not, read her work.

After listening to this episode, what do you think about making a move to a homestead? Have Kirsten’s insights changed your views? Will you need to take some time to build your skills?

Let me know by leaving a comment below.

Until the next time, consider whether or not a homestead is right for you and your plans, while taking care of Earth, yourself, and each other.

Along the way she tells us about the process of distilling, including watching for our heads, hearts, and tails; the poisonous compounds found and concentrated in distilled alcohol we need to look out for; equipment every distiller should own to keep them and their final product safe; and why we should think twice about making sugar-shine.

Find out more about Victoria and her work at victoriahedheadmiller.com, and her books from New Society Publishers at newsociety.com.

If you’re interested in making booze at home, after listening to our first episode together on the legality of this practice and deciding it is worth the concern, I highly recommend her book, Craft Distilling, as you can learn all you need from Victoria’s hands-on, experience-based approach. If you want to learn more about making beer, wine, or mead as the basis for your at-home still runs, I recommend the following books from my days as a brewer, vintner, and mead maker. The first of those is Charlie Papazian’s classic The Complete Joy of Homebrewing. This will tell you just about everything, and I do mean everything, about making beer. From there, on the wine side, one of the favorites that got me started is The Foxfire Book of Winemaking, filled with memories and recipes for wines, juices, and punches based on the traditions of the region I call home, Appalachia. Finally, when it comes to making mead, though I like The Complete Meadmaker and several others, my go-to is Jereme Zimmerman’s Make Mead Like a Viking. He’ll have you wild fermenting honey in no time, and after a night of drinking with Jereme before an event can say that a honey-based gin is a delightful thing.

At this point, I would like to offer an update in my comment about methanol and damaging the optic nerve. The amount required to do so is 10ml or about 2 teaspoons. To me, that’s not much, but looking into it further the risk of creating and consuming methanol in that quantity from a single batch of alcohol is unlikely. The issue increases, however, through multiple distillations as we combine and concentrate larger amounts of alcohol. Play it safe, use the alcohol refractometer, and make sure you separate your heads, hearts, and tails. 

What did you think of this episode? Did you learn something new? Are you interested in brewing beer or setting up a still? Leave a comment below.

Resources
Victoria Redhed Miller
Craft Distilling
From No-Knead to Sourdough
New Society Publishers
The Legality of Craft Distilling (Our First Interview)
The Complete Joy of Homebrewing
The Foxfire Book of Winemaking
Make Mead Like a Viking

I had a great time interviewing Rachel and am thankful for her, and co-author K. Ruby Blume's, perspectives on living a regenerative lifestyle based in permaculture. The artwork and photographs in the book are wonderful, it's well written, easy to understand, and contain a number of hands-on projects to get you started in whatever your area of interest may be. The chaptering of the book is a logical progression, with each chapter containing a description of the subject, information on it, interviews with people or organizations and how they are working with the idea, and hands-on projects.  Throughout there are some sidebars with more information and in some chapters a time frame you can use to implement gradually and not get overwhelmed. My favorite parts of this book are the Principles of Urban Homesteading, the interviews, the hands-on projects, and the inclusion, and focus on, the non-material. The Principles of Urban Homesteading reflect the way the Principles of Permaculture arose over time through the action of it's practitioners. They reveal a way to consider the urban environment while trying to practice permaculture there. The interviews are reminders that others face the same challenges we do.  I find them empowering and inspiring. Many books on Permaculture can be overwhelming with the amount of knowledge and information that is imparted in just a few pages. Rachel and Ruby have spread that out and the projects help to give us little things to focus on and then take action.  The reader can move forward without being caught up in paralysis by analysis trying to figure out "What do I do next? There's so much!".  Find something you like and do it.  Many of these can be done in an afternoon with supplies you already have at your home. The non-material is something that, though we discuss it as being part of our ever growing need to implement permanent-culture, I feel it is often overlooked as the focus becomes one of design, food, and stable ecosystems.  We also need to work on our stable social-systems. Urban Homesteading: Heirloom Skills for Sustainable Living now has a permanent place on my book shelf and is on the short list of recommended reads for people beginning their path to permaculture.  If you've been doing this for a while and want something for someone who is still on the fence, this is the book. You can buy the book directly from the authors at: https://urban-homesteading.org/ And, if you'd like to listen to Rachel speak and possibly get to meet her, she will be at the Northeast Permaculture Convergence July 22-24, 2011.   Note:  I received my copy of Urban Homesteading from Skyhorse Publishing, Inc. for review.  Only after reading it cover to cover, and feeling it would be a value to you my audience, did I contact Rachel for the interview.