Solar Cooking

My brother has a small oven he bought one time, long ago. These ovens are amazing! You can build them, really, out of anything from cardboard to wood and I think it would be great to make one with a glass window on top that you could see things cooking but nothing could get into it. This is definitely one on my to do list. Besides, it’s just fun to use solar energy to cook!

Plans for Solar Cookers

The website above has lots of info about solar cooking and the results of my experiments this summer I will post here. 

Also,  Backwoods Home  has a lot of information on solar cookers and loads of other information as well. 

Happy Cooking!

Solar Energy Cells Derived from Butterfly Wings

I am certain nature has things figured out pretty well. Animals have been relying on solar energy for millions of years, even we relied on it a great deal more than we do now. We are constantly looking for new ideas on how to make better solar energy when nature has really done most of the work for us already. Butterfly wings absorb solar energy naturally. Now, scientists are looking at butterfly wings and building better solar collectors from what they have learned from butterfly wings. I think this is one of the most amazing things I have heard of recently. Hopefully, we can learn much more from nature on how to conserve and use all renewable energies. Solar Energy and Butterfly Wings

(Yay! I figured out how to name my links!)

 We are looking into ways to make our home more self-sufficient and I believe the time to change is now. Hopefully we will have more economical ways we can convert our home to renewable resources than we have had in the past. Hopefully, we will be able to go to the market for only things like fresh vegatables and milk. 

On another note, I have been reading that people are starting to go to cloth instead of toilet paper. I seriously would do this! I kind of have to do things in small incriments for my family. If  I do something wacky too quick they seem to think that I have lost all sense of reality when I really do understand the whole need to become self-sufficient. It costs us between 15 and 20 dollars a month just in toilet paper for this household. I hope to change that to 5 dollars someday.  At least for me it makes sense to think about it. 

I found this great blog on one woman’s excursions into this realm of decision making.   Eco-quandry

In the meantime, I will continue to ponder my options and while I do I will wonder if the sale of flannel has went up tremendously in the past year or two.