Lehman's Country Life

The farm I live on, World Hunger Relief, Inc. in Waco, Texas, uses composting toilets rather than flushing toilets.  I had heard about them before I came and thought it was just a quirky thing that they did, having a toilet that didn’t require plumbing, but I quickly realized upon my arrival that every toilet in common use on the property uses sawdust instead of water.

I remember my first tour of the place—I arrived at night and was given a quick tour of the dorm by Melody.  We walked into the bathroom, with two sinks and a small shower and a teal-colored door in the back.  Melody worked up a bit of theatrics for us:  “And this,” she said as she opened the door, revealing a teal staircase with teal walls leading up to a bench with a toilet lid on it, “is the throne.”
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SNOW! It’s SNOWING outside our windows here at Lehman’s (in northeast Ohio). Ok, ok, we realize many of you have already SEEN the white stuff this fall, but we were caught offguard this morning. Brrr…it’s chilly out, too. Time to fire up the wood stoves!

The scene outside our office window this morning - can you see the flakes?

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Monday, Oct. 26, 2009

United Feature Syndicate
MARYJANE’S EVERYDAY ORGANIC

There is nothing more comforting on a cold winter’s day than the lush, radiant heat of a woodstove. Its warmth soaks into your skin, and its flame enlivens a room with a presence all its own. I’ve always loved the way fire dances and illuminates, warming hearth and soul. And I continue to invite the spirit of flame into my home, even after suffering the very real nightmare of a fire that consumed my house 13 years ago. In a mid-winter cold snap, 10 below zero, a faulty new chimney spread fire up through my rafters. To this day, when I think about how close I came to losing my children, I find myself short of breath.
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The wire skeletons of old lampshades can be transformed into olive oil chandeliers using common canning jars.

Monday, Sept. 7, 2009
United Feature Syndicate

MARYJANE’S EVERYDAY ORGANIC

There’s something about gazing up into a starry night sky that is deeply soul stirring. The sight of all that infinite diamond-studded darkness has the power to erase the trappings of modern life, bringing us back to a more primal part of ourselves, a part that is still exuberantly wild.

Not so long ago, you could simply drive a few miles out of town after dark and find nighttime as nature intended it — silent shadows draping the landscape, a black canopy of limitless stars arching overhead.
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“Hurry, bring the water in,” Mom called as we dawdled at the pump on that bright morning. We were watching Daddy pile up tools nearby – shovels, a crowbar, hammers and nails. He and another hired hand were going to clean out our well.

Mom called one more time, then Daddy looked up. “Better get that water to your Mom,” he said, and we scrambled. Daddy never gave orders much to us kids, but when he did, it was time to move.

We pumped hard, bringing up great gushes of pure, cold, sweet water to rock the bucket hung on the lip of the pump spigot. The two buckets were filled quickly and we ran them to the house and came back for another filling.

“That’s enough,” said Mom,
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On almost any Monday morning, you’d catch Mom in the kitchen, first filling the old wringer washer with hot water, turning it on, then filling the swishing tub with dirty clothes that hit the suds one by one with a satisfying plop and blurble. Like a hungry monster, the washing machine pulled the clothes downward into the steaming, soapy water. After a moment, they’d rise like undersea monsters, pale colors and shades of white, mounded like the smooth back of some creature… then they’d swish and swoop downward, only to rise and do it again.
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This Saturday, March 28th, millions of people around the world will turn out their lights for one hour to draw awareness to global warming. Now, I’m not going to get political, environmental or any other “al” about the whole thing (to each his own, I always say), but it does seem like a rather simple, and dare I say, pleasant thing to do. Just turn things OFF – the lights, the tv, the radio, computer, etc., etc., etc. -  and have a little quiet time with those vaguely familiar humans who inhabit our houses  (our families).

As purveyors of hundreds of non-electric products and the publisher (for over a quarter century) of the Non-Electric Catalog, one hour without power sounds pretty easy, and even somewhat amusing to us. After all, many of our loyal customers live this way the majority of the time…

There are myriad activities one could enjoy with the lights (and other appliances) off, but here are a few suggestions that spring to mind.

Light an oil lamp and open a good book

Light a candle and pray, meditate or just think

Sit in the dark and tell stories, reminisce or have a family planning or brainstorming session

And, if none of those are appealing, why not go to bed early and get some (probably much-needed) extra shuteye?

Are any of you planning to participate this Saturday? If so, please comment and let us know what you did and how it went. We await your responses!

For more information, visit www.earthhour.org.

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By Francis Woodruff, Editor and Publisher, The Dalton Gazette & The Kidron News

Reprinted with Permission

When temperatures drop below zero in the wintertime, there are few outside activities that many of us can do. But for several Amish families this weather presents the perfect conditions to cut, pack, and store ice in their ice houses for the coming summer months. The Amish, who live without electricity, use the ice for food refrigeration.

Recently, Joe Miller watched as his son David J. Miller and his family slid the heavy blocks of ice down a wooden plank board into a room designed for ice storage. “This is perfect weather for cutting ice,” Joe Miller said. “The colder the better.” He explained the colder it is when the ice goes into the storage room the better, because it stays colder longer. In addition to refrigeration, the room can also be used to freeze other foods, he said – like a giant freezer.
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It was a couple of years ago that Euell Gibbons got me all fired up about making my own maple syrup. It was late winter then and I was not prepared for my venture into syrup making at that point. But the following year I was ready. And I was fortunate enough to get me some of that sweet, golden nectar.

Yes indeed, there was some work involved, but the results far outweigh the effort. I was in it not to sell bottles of syrup, but to just make enough for my family and even a few friends to try.

With just a few maple trees (we will discuss species later), you too can have your own sugary sweetness. It doesn’t take a lot of fancy equipment; in fact, about the most expensive thing you will need is time.
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Jaclyn at Lehman’s recently demonstrated how to assemble and light an Aladdin Lincoln Drape oil lamp. This is another video available on Lehman’s YouTube channel.

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