When I was editor of Craft magazine, I always looked forward to Wendy Jehanara Tremayne’s next “Re-Fitted” column, which profiled a waste-conscious maker and included a how-to project by that person. A few of the projects included making textiles out of plastic bags, turning used clothing into a quilt, and building a beautiful outdoor fence with found branches and tie wire. Even more inspiring than her articles, however, were our phone conversations between magazine issues. After chatting about her next article idea, she’d briefly enchant me with her snippets of how she and her husband, Mikey, left their high-powered jobs in New York and moved to Truth or Consequences, NM, to live as waste-free and off the grid as possible. Always in a rush, I would hang up and then wish I had gotten more details.

Six years later, I was finally able to read about Tremayne’s “decommodified life” in her fresh-off-the-press book, The Good Life Lab: Radical Experiments in Hands-On Living. Captivating right from the start, Tremayne’s tale of quitting her job as creative director of a marketing firm to “live in the waste stream” describes her bumps and triumphs in turning an RV park into their homestead and living a rich life spending almost no money. Both from the city, she and her husband learn as they go, using found and tossed materials to build structures on their property, driving a car that runs on vegetable oil, growing their own food, concocting homemade tinctures from local plants, and landscaping with homemade compost and free dung from a local camel named Stanley.

Tremayne weaves her narrative with colorful charts, beautiful illustrations by different artists, and loads of how-to projects (DIY biofuel, roasting coffee with a popcorn maker, building a decorative fire barrel, making mead, and constructing a sturdy and handsome papercrete dome, just to name a few). Whether for inspiration or as a road map to creating your own off-the-grid homestead, Tremayne’s book is a must read for any maker who fantasizes about stepping off the consumer-centered treadmill and into a life that is connected to nature, unhurried and meaningful.

It’s natural cold storage. A place to store excess produce from your garden at no-energy, low-cost for up to half a year. It works on the idea that when you dig down anywhere, the subsoil maintains a uniform cool temperature no matter the high or low temperature outside. Over 100 different kinds of crops can be kept in this easily made traditional storage. Included are plans for many types, from elementary earth pits to full-fledged basements. And instructions on how to prepare the harvest. These principles can also be used on urban homesteads. This is the definitive book on the subject.

Barricade Fire Gel is a foam that you spray on your house before a wildfire. It stays wet for 48 hours and keeps burning embers from igniting the house. It easily washes off and, unlike most compressed air foam (CAF) systems, is EPA certified as nontoxic.

I tested it on cardboard held over a gas stove flame, and it didn’t ignite in 10 minutes. Also, I applied it to the outside of my home, over a very dry Labor Day weekend, and it stayed put and wet for 48h. (A bear licked some of it off, so it doesn’t taste like petrochemicals.) As the pictures from the vendor’s site show, Fire Gel comes in 1 gallon containers, and you attach a garden hose and an eductor-jet pump to it. What this means is that a small person can lift it and apply it. In other CAF systems, there’s a huge amount of heavy equipment that depends on different power supplies, and it’s heavy and complex. The foam is relatively cheap on those systems — the applicator is expensive. Barricade took a different tack, and put expensive engineering into the foam, which is very effective and tastes good to bears.

Here in the mountains of Boulder, Colorado, Barricade Fire Gel is one part of my fire plan. This is only one part of a fire plan, and I’d urge anyone who buys FireGel to go to a workshop with your local fire department to maximize your chance of coming out unscathed. Another motivation to become more involved in fire protection is that in recent fires here, folks found out that they were woefully underinsured, and can’t rebuild their old house. Less than 10% were adequately insured to rebuild in the mountains, and we’re talking an educated affluent population.

I started using Amazon Subscribe & Save for ECGc (Green Tea) supplements initially out of frustration with my local health food store. They’d be out, only have small quantity options, pricing was all over the place.

Now a couple bottles ship to me every couple months at a good price, with free shipping even without Prime. I get an email in advance so I can skip a shipment, and I can also do an emergency “ship now” if I run out unexpectedly.

I’ve since gradually started putting other regular consumables into the Subscribe & Save queue to save money, time and effort.

[When you buy things using Subscribe and Save, Amazon gives you a 15% discount. I have been using Subscribe and Save for years. I'm surprised so many of my Amazon-using friends have never heard about it. I use it to buy vitamins and supplements, trash bags, cat food, toilet paper, batteries, paper towels, ziploc sandwich bags, Magic Erasers, and dishwasher detergent. - Mark Frauenfelder]

The best way to deal with emergencies is to be prepared for them. The Blackout Buddy emergency light is a flashlight that plugs into a wall socket to remained charged.  When the power is lost, due to a utility outage or other unexpected event, the emergency light comes on.  This illuminates the room immediately with enough light to get safely to the emergency light. After pulling it from the wall, it acts as a regular flashlight. Inexpensive and long-lived, I put one in each bedroom, hallway, and kitchen, where they sit quietly until needed.

I recently moved to a small farm on the outskirts of Baltimore. My favorite feature of our new humble abode is the outdoor fire place. However, I have been run ragged keeping up with splitting enough logs. The backbreaking labor was not helped by the older axe that came with the place. After that handle broke I decided to look for a better solution.

The Fiskar’s 36″ Splitting Axe is like night and day when compared to other splitting tools I’ve used in the past. While I’m envious of those who have a hydraulic wood splitter, I can’t emphasize enough how painless this splitting axe makes the process. Where as my previous axe would get stuck, and require swing after swing, the Fiskar’s cuts like butter. I don’t know why I was so surprised given Fiskar’s stellar reputation (or the fact that they’re designed in Finland, a country where forestry is a religion). The head, unlike a traditional axe blade, is closer in design to a splitting wedge which helps cleave through wood with ease.

Unlike my old axe, the Fiskar has a permanently fixed head. While this may worry some diehard woodsman, it’s a boon for the rest of us. After several long days splitting wood, the head remains as tight as the day I started using it, and shows no sign of letting up. If it does, it’s covered by the generous lifetime warranty. Another distinguishing feature is the plastic handle which is very comfortable and seems to reduce some of the post-strike vibration. My version is 36″ long which is just the right size for my 6’3″ frame; they do, however, produce a smaller model for those shorter in stature.

One nice design feature of the axe is the non-stick coating. I’ve only had the axe get stuck a few times, and even then the wood was wet and it only took a bit of wiggling to remove (which was nothing compared to when it would get lodged with my older axe). I also use Fiskars’ axe and knife sharpener to keep the edge sharp as that was recommended by several resources online.

Splitting wood can be unpleasant backbreaking work. This axe makes it a lot more pleasant.

[Note: This replaces the previously reviewed Chopping Axe that Fiskars no longer produces.--OH]