Homestead mailing list

["Marie McHarry" <mmcharry AT gmail.com>]

On 2/1/07, EarthNSky <erthnsky AT bellsouth.net> wrote:

> I should be making cheese from storebought milk.  I think it would be
> cheaper than buying it, but I just haven't had time.

I doubt it would be cheaper, and I really doubt that it would taste
any better. Really. It takes 10 lbs of milk to make a pound of cheese.
Store-bought milk has already been homogenized and pasteurized and
generally beaten up, so the cheese from it is likely to be pretty
blah.

> I can't remember how much it costs for us to do this, but we did do it
> two years after buying the generator.  It wasn't that expensive because
> Ron did it himself and it seems like we did it for under $50--$30 sounds
> right..and we wondered why we had procrastinated doing it for so long.
> If you are interested, I will try to get Ron to tell you what he did.  I
> know zip about electricity.

It's not that cheap if you have an electrician do it, which I did
about 10 years ago. IIRC, the bill was in the $300-400 range.

> We have a crawl space, but I am more afraid of snakes and spiders than
> of tornadoes, so I barricade myself in TJ's closet with a bunch of
> pillows and sleeping bags, my purse, important stuff, shoes, flashlight,
> and the Baygen.

I live in a Civil-War-era pile of bricks, and I assume they would all
fall in on me if the house took a direct hit. Pix are now up at
http://tinyurl.com/2mjmtz. I do have a basement, sturdy rafters that
hold the house up even as we speak, and heavy duty stairs that I could
sit under. I think it would come down to if anyone wanted to dig me
out.

Marie