IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

Courtesy of USHistory.org

Let freedom ring.

Planted: Lakota blue squash, the strawberry plants, and all the rest of the sweet potato slips!

Sweet potatoes are wonderful things. If they grow in your area, grow them. They are so easy to propagate; just cut off a piece of the vine and stick it in water, where it will make a bunch of roots. Now you have another plant (they call these ’slips’), that will be happy to stay in water for months, or make lots of sweet potatoes when put in the ground. They’re my kind of plant.

Harvested: more onions and shallots

Preserved: pickled the rest of the sweet peppers my neighbor gave me. Set the shallots out to cure, I’ll probably bring them in today and store them with the rest in the pantry.

Managed: Brought Shadow out to run around (she’s very particular; only if her Highness feels like it will she deign to allow you to handle her, so she only goes out about once or twice a week) and while she was running around the back yard I changed her bunny bin, cut a bunch of weeds for bunny breakfast/mulching, and cleaned up her cage.

Local: put my order in at the food co-op. I have until the 10th to finish up the order, but I think I got everything. It’s good to check again near the end of the order cycle, as sometimes producers put more up on their page.

Made: still working on this pair of socks, and started crocheting a hooded baby blanket for a friend of my daughter’s who’s pregnant. I need to ply the yarn I’ve spun so far … where to find the time…

One of my favorite articles on managing a homestead is this one: Nature’s Pace

There are no wastes on a sustainable farm, only opportunities.

So … what do you have an abundance of on your property? How can you turn this into an opportunity?

Well, *I* have an abundance of weeds, which is why I chose rabbits. Since I wanted to learn to spin, angora rabbits. Not only are they cute and quiet, they eat weeds, and give me fur, entertainment, and fantastic compost without stinking up the place.

But the weeds give me other opportunities. Shredded weeds can be dried and used for mulching my garden, saving money on buying mulch. Some of these weeds, I find out, are edible. And for the part of the yard that’s too much for bunnies to eat or for me to use for mulch, the weeds provide employment for the teenage boys who mow our yard during the summer.

Even something as awful as weeds can be a good thing.

I’ve made jams and jellies for a long time. I didn’t have to peel the peaches, so it went much quicker than my last canning adventure. I now have 7 1/2 half-pints of preserves (the half-jar will go in the fridge for eating now!)

If you get a chance at a large amount of fruit or veggies at a good price, canning is a great way to preserve them, and making fruit preserves is about as easy as it gets.

The difference between jam and preserves is (as far as I know) that in preserves you have chunks of fruit in there.  You need fruit, jars with lids, sugar, lemon juice (if it’s a fruit that browns when exposed to air like peaches or apples), pectin (I normally use commercial pectin, which comes in little boxes that are usually near the canning jars in the grocery store), and a pot to cook the ingredients in.

I simply followed the instructions in the pectin package.

I use the open kettle method unless for some reason the jars don’t seal. A wide-mouthed funnel and a lid lifter help tremendously, and can be obtained online if you can’t find them with the jars and pectin.

Fun!

My family loves fajitas, so much so that one of my sons to this day will put homemade stir-fry in a tortilla rather than put it over rice. Now if only I could make tortillas right … mine resemble cardboard (but taste much better!).

Uh, yay.

Well, in any case, here’s what this month had to offer:

Gasoline: due to … not driving much, I used 7.5 gallons so far this month (for 4 people) — 4.6% of the US national average

Electric: 3207 kWh — 354.7%. Not a good month, and I don’t see the next few months being any better; DH insists on having the thermostat at 74F …

Natural gas: 11.3 Therms — 13.7%

Water: 5180 gallons for 5 people — 34.5%

Averaged out for the past 12 months:

Gasoline: 25.2% of the US national average

Electricity: 278.1%

Natural gas: 34.2%

Water: 37.4%

Here’s where I started, for comparison –

Gasoline: 59%

Electricity: 425%

Natural Gas: 42%

Water: 44%

I could get used to this

I could talk about using the internet, or the library, or the bookstore, but what I think is the basic question here is how to learn things. Schools don’t seem to teach how to learn much anymore. They teach how to answer tests, how to present yourself, how to work with others, some facts, but the process of how to learn on your own and a love of doing that seems to be missing.

Fortunately, we have an overload of resources available to anyone with the ability to read and a computer. Here’s what I do:

1) Figure out what I want to know.

This isn’t as obvious as you might think. Say for example you want to learn how to sharpen tools, and you go Google ‘how to sharpen tools’. If you actually need to sharpen a chainsaw, information on sharpening a shovel might not help you. The ability to narrow down exactly what you want is a skill that works in a number of life areas.

2) Find out where what I need is

This also isn’t as obvious as you might think.

Like I mentioned before, there are millions of possible resources available on a particular subject:

• Family members, neighbors, or friends who might have the skill you need (ask around!)
• Local classes or shops that might give you advice (the guy at the hardware store might know how to sharpen that chainsaw!)
• The library (Is there a book on how to sharpen a chainsaw there? Perhaps the information you need is inside another book about tool-sharpening in general.)
• Internet interest groups

This might sound silly in the area of chainsaw sharpening, but there are email interest groups for just about everything, full of people with years of knowledge you can access for free. Look through Yahoo Groups or Google Groups, to start. Also, if you have a very specific product you’d like to learn to use, there are sometimes user forums for that product (check the manufacturer’s website!) that can give you tips.

• Websites on the internet

One of the things that deter people from using the internet is the torrent of information that appears when you use Google or one of the other search engines. Learning to work your way around search engines is a skill that can come in handy.

As far as I can tell, there are several types of websites:

Many sites combine features, to try to make their site more appealing (well, like right here!).

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to discover sites that provide the information you need to sharpen that chainsaw (or whatever you’ve decided you need to learn). The biggest challenge is to not get sucked up into wasting time reading about things that aren’t pertinent, or to end up buying something you don’t need!

3) Apply the information

This can be the most difficult part. Most of us don’t work in jobs where we need good hand-eye coordination, and learning a manual skill for the first time takes a lot of patience and willingness to fail and persevere. Applying the information we get to a real-life situation (sharpening that ^%&*% chainsaw!) may require going back through the process again, finding someone to show us, or going through a search for tips to make this easier.

Do not fall into the trap of thinking, “oh, I can just read about this and figure it out when I need to do it,” and think you know how. You don’t know how to do something unless you’ve done it. Many times.

So that’s it in a nutshell. If you’ve never thought about this before it can seem frustrating, just like learning to do anything else is at first. But soon you’ll know how to learn about anything you want.

(cue dreamy music)

I thought of beautiful jars filled with perfect golden slices, layered ever-so-nicely, rows upon rows in my pantry …

That’s not how it went today.

First, I had the idea to get the skins off by putting them in boiling water then ice water. Which works really well, when it works. I used my sun oven to boil the water.

They tell you to use RIPE peaches for a reason, one of which is that if the peach is not completely ripe, the boiling water/ice water skin removal trick DOES NOT WORK, and you can boil and freeze that puppy til next Tuesday and the skin just won’t budge.

Next came the separating the peach from the pit, which is not as easy as you might think with a boiled, iced, peeled, lemon juice added (to keep from browning), slippery little peach. The perfectly ripe ones came away from the pit great. However, a high percentage of those had … well, worms. So I had to cut away the bad parts. Not too bad.

But if the peach wasn’t ripe enough, it was a fight to get the peach pit off, and sometimes what was left was more like mushy strips of peach rather than golden perfect slices. But I persevered, and after many hours, from what seemed like 12 pounds of peaches (half of a 25 pound box), I got …

… four pint jars.

Hmm.

Deep breath.

Well, so I put them into the pot and started the water boiling.

.

.

.

A half hour later, this water is still not boiling.

.

.

.

FINALLY it starts to really boil, and I time everything, and all is well. I have four jars of floaty canned peaches. I even heard one clink as it sealed shut!

And I had a huge bowl of lemony peachy mush, and a lot of extra syrup.

Heh.

Peach lemonade isn’t bad!

I discovered that I also have Lemon Mint growing out there, as well as citronella! Amazing what just grows by itself. The purslane has reappeared in the pot by the garage, and it looks as though we’ll be in purslane for a while — the pot is packed full of tiny seedlings.

Everything else is just growing! (weeds and all, although I’ve decided there’s no bad weed; the ones the rabbits won’t eat can still be composted)

So what’s ‘just growing’ around your house?