Gardening is the best way to fight back against skyrocketing food prices and compost is the best way to provide rich loam to the garden that will grow healthy, lush fruits, vegetables and herbs. Who would’ve guessed? Actually, composting can be fun! Instead of boring trips to the garbage bin, you can route household fruits and vegetable scraps to the compost. Coffee grounds, leaves and yard clippings can get thrown in as well. You’ll want to mix a compost every once in a while, but other than that, it can be left alone to meld and become that fragrant, rich loam that plants love. It isn’t a great idea to add meat or dairy products in with compost because they have a shelf life of Methuselah, which means it will take forever for these products to break down. Plus they may introduce unfriendly bacteria to the garden. However, compost is not picky and is are quite happy with animal wastes, so if you’re raising chickens, goats, or any other homestead animals add their “clean-out” materials, including hay, in with compost. (Read more....)

***The following is a guest post for Survival by Fred Rasmussen*** My recent activism comes from a concern that the freedoms granted by our constitution are being eroded away by the greed, corruption, and disloyalty of our political system. Instead of government being our servant, they are clearly trying to become our master. In fact they already have, but not by authority that is rightfully theirs.  So in the meantime, what can a person do for his own personal freedom? I have some ideas about this. But it isn't as much a political matter as an economic one. It's an urgent matter of survival. Suppose the victims of hurricane Katrina could have known six months in advance that the disaster was coming. Certainly many would scoff, others might want to prepare for it but not know how. Still others might make drastic changes in preparation, asking themselves tough questions, like "what would I do for clean water?", "what about food?" (Read more....)

Do you believe that it is possible to live on twenty percent of the income that you make right now? (Read more....)