by: Arsenio Toledo
(Natural News) Maintaining a homestead requires a lot of hard work. Some of the things you need to do for your homestead may take a lot more effort than others. This eats into the time you have to do other essential tasks or to spend with your family resting and relaxing.
With this in mind, what you need around the homestead are some essential machines that can substantially reduce your physical workload. Here are five such machines that can be quite useful around your property. (h/t to TheOrganicPrepper.com)
Waste oil burner
Waste oil is petroleum or synthetic oil that can no longer be used for its intended purpose. Waste oil usually ends up in a dumpsite or in the sea. This is a terrible situation that contributes to ground or water pollution. But if you get a waste oil burner you can take all of the waste oil you generate in your homestead and put it to good use heating up your home.
Burning waste oil in the appropriate heater is a safe and cost-effective way of recycling used oil. Most types of petroleum or synthetic waste oil can be used to fuel your waste oil burner. You can even use the oil derived from your household, such as cooking oil and vegetable oil.
Shredder
Keeping a shredding machine around the homestead will help you become skilled in recycling materials such as PET bottles and other plastics and metals like aluminum.
A shredding machine is a very versatile appliance. If it can take in metals and plastics, you will probably be able to use it to crush and cut up wood or cardboard debris. You can then use the wood and paper for preparing briquettes for fuel. You can then sell your shredded aluminum by the pound for a bit of cash.
Wood fuel generator
A wood fuel or wood gas generator is an appliance that converts wood or charcoal into wood gas.
These generators became widely used in the United States during World War II when gasoline was rationed and people built wood fuel generators to power their vehicles or provide their homes with heating during the winter. (Related: The 5 types of alternative energy that help you survive when SHTF.)
There are plenty of guides all over the internet that go into detail on how to build wood fuel generators. In fact, you can even build a generator to power your vehicle for as little as $125.
Windmill water pump
If you’re raising livestock or growing crops in your homestead, you will know that providing water for your animals or keeping your fields irrigated can be tiring work. You can save a lot of time by using a windmill water pump. Using the wind as your power source, a windmill can pump water to a tank or to a pond, which you can then use for your fields or your barns.
The amount of water your windmill pump can provide will be controlled by the size of the pump cylinder, the elevation from which the water needs to be pumped, the size of your windmill’s blades and how windy it is in your homestead.
A windmill of around 30 feet with a water well of between 100 to 400 feet can have blades spinning at a brisk breeze of 15 to 20 miles per hour. This can generate an average of three gallons a minute, so long as the wind blows, providing you with enough water to keep your fields from drying out and your livestock from getting thirsty.
Grain mill
A grain mill grinds down your wheat and other grains such as oats, kamut, rye and triticale into flour. It can even make flour out of legumes like lentils and other beans. Having a grain mill around means you can create flour to turn into bread using your own natural, healthful ingredients. You can avoid the preservative-filled flours sold in groceries.
There are different kinds of grain mills you can use. You can get a stone grinder, which uses the traditional method of rubbing two stones together to grind wheat down, or you can get more modern models like an impact grinder, which uses blades placed in circular rows on metal wheels. These blades mesh together and run extremely close, allowing them to grind grain very well.
The machines listed above can be built rather than bought by homesteaders with experience in construction. There are plenty of guides on the internet detailing precisely what to buy and what to do to build a windmill water pump or a wood fuel generator. Investing some time and money into building or purchasing these machines will pay off in the long run, as it will make your life in the homestead easier.
Learn more about ways you can make life in the homestead easier by reading the latest articles at Homesteading.news.
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