How does my house perform in a polar vortex?

 

It’s a good thing I have plans to get out of the cold if being swooped down on by the polar vortex is going to become a regular thing thanks to climate change. I’m getting the mudroom finished up and preparing to leave Dancing Rabbit for the winter, so maybe I don’t have to worry about how my house performs.  But even so, it’s nice to know it does pretty well on a sunny day when it’s 5 degrees F.  The problem is that we don’t get very many sunny days in winter, so I think I’m better living somewhere during wintertime where I don’t have to heat my house.

Using Pallet Wood to Build My Walls: Mudroom Pt 4

At Dancing Rabbit we try to build our houses out of reclaimed and natural materials as much as we possibly can, so I’m siding my new mudroom with reclaimed pallet wood. We’re fortunate enough to have a guy nearby who reclaims good boards from deconstructed shipping pallets.  I was able to get some of the better boards for doing the exterior siding on my new addition.

Making Feta Cheese on a Homestead Scale: Setting and Cutting the Curds

This is the next in the series on making feta cheese on a homestead scale from fresh raw cow’s milk.  In this video we add the rennet and set and cut the curd.  This is the fun chemistry part of the process where the milk transforms into something else.  I also talk a little about raw milk products and why they are so hard to come by in our economy.

Making Feta Cheese on a Homestead Scale Pt 1

This is the first in a series of videos making feta cheese with raw milk from our local dairy farm.  If you want to make cheese on a larger scale, this is an easy way to do it without having to set up a warm water bath or having a heated jacketed stainless steel vat.  It’s all about the transfer of heat from one place to another and then keeping the heat where you want it.  There are easier ways to do it than what they tell you in the cheesemaking books.