The Home Workplace Author:Organic Gardening and Farming Magazine Inventive, thrifty, resourceful, self-reliant: the qualities that mark the competent home craftsman have much in common with those we attach to successful gardeners and farmers. Of course, there's a strong economic incentive for doing your own building repairs around the homestead--the same incentive as for home canning and saving energy in the... more » home--but even beyond the money saved and the superior workmanship, there's the special satisfaction that comes from being in daily contact with the fruit of your own labors, be it a homemade tool shed, compost bin or simple gate latch. You probably could have bought one as good, but it would never take on the special meaning of its handmade counterpart. Then too, there are many valuable tools and structures that are simply not available commercially--that one must either build for oneself or do without. Many of the structures and devices of traditional, low-technology farming and homesteading fall into this category. Smokehouses, for instance, and springhouses. Cold frames, solar driers, grape arbors, cisterns, hay sweeps, dairy goat and cow stanchions, woodlot sheds and countless hand appliances for garden and orchard that could never be mass-produced at a profit: nothing fancy, these devices and techniques are examples of what is now being called appropriate technology, low-impact technology or post-industrial technology. They're good for what they're good for; they get the job done.« less