Greetings! Please forgive me for asking an off topic question. I know little about homesteading and just found your refrigerator root cellar video and wondered did it work well and if you ran into problems what were they? Were mold, fungus, bugs or critters a problem? Did you cover the doors with anything to protect when not in use? Thank you in advance.

MG --- We put together our full sumup of the project in this ebook. The short version is --- it works great during fall, winter, and spring, although we do add a little supplemental heat during the very coldest nights. No need to cover the doors with anything.

Hi - I'm working towards self-sufficiency in Manitoba. I am developing a good barnyard mix chicken that'll be a nice size and is hardy for our weather (small/no combs!). Anyway, I've only "done" about 6 chickens so far and really haven't found the best method for dispatching them. Even the sharpest knife seems to take forever to saw through their skin, and I'm careful to part the feathers. I keep getting told by the old timers to use a hatchet, but I want the bird hanging or in a cone when I kill it. What is your method? And how do you dispose of the parts you don't use? Thank you.

Becky --- Some of this is just practice, unfortunately. I feel like it took at least a hundred birds before Mark felt like he was killing the birds perfectly every time.

That said, here's what Mark does. (I gut and he kills.) He uses a very sharp knife and swears that buying a hunting knife made all the difference. He also wears a thick glove on this non-knife hand, which makes it much safer to cut hard and fast. We agree with you that a knife against a hanging bird's throat is a good method...once you get good at it.

Lucy sits nearby as we work and I toss her the hearts and (if she's hungry enough) the livers. The rest of the insides are buried in a posthole Mark digs in the ground at the end of our butchering day. We stew up the feet and necks to make broth, then dispose of those cooked bones in the wood stove, turning them into biochar. The rest of the chicken, we eat.

I hope that helps! Learning to butcher well is definitely a skill and you'll get better over time. Good luck!