What if IT is today? - A Survivalist's Blog

The reinforced fence

2012-01-29T19:34:00.000-08:00

We got two new chickens last night. These came from the same friend who bought four pullets. The problem was three turned out to be cockrels. Boy chickens are not allowed in the city so she had to do something with them. The one we got last week I put into the coop. He is getting along fine with the others chickens. We kept the two new ones in the carrier they came in until this morning. I figured it was as good a time as any to start our new flock in the front pasture. It's got a four foot high fence all around it. The front has the brush in front of the fence. I figured they'd stay in. After all, a friend of mine has his chickens in a pastured area with field fencing. His chickens stay in.

Why would I ever think that anything would go as planned? About five minutes after we put the chickens in the pasture the neighbor's grandson came over carrying a chicken. Is this yours? Yip-yip was chasing it and it ran into their yard. I forgot about Yip-yip. She can go through the fencing to get into the pasture. Last year her father got into the chicken coop and killed 13 of our pullets. We had to go to town for Sunday school so I locked Yip-yip up in her carrier in the house.

Once we got home we changed into work clothes and began the task of surrounding the pasture with chicken wire. We used two foot high wire with 2" holes. All I needed was it to be high enough for Yip-yip to not be able to get in. One side of the pasture has chain link fencing. No problem there. The part between the "lawn" and the pasture has field fencing with six inch holes. That side was 150 feet long. I rolled out the chicken wire and showed girl and boy how and where to tie the wires. I started one on one end and one on the other. I figured that they are so competitive that they'd have a race to see who ended up on the other person's side. I was right!

The side of the pasture that butts up to the driveway is about 200 feet in length. That side took a little while longer and girl started acting up. No problem, you can go do a different chore. You'll wish that you hadn't acted up when you are done. The front, another 150 feet didn't get all the way fenced with the chicken wire. In the areas with the heavy brush across the front I didn't want to wire off the bottom two feet. The wild birds freely go through the fence right now. I want to make sure they have the ability to continue. Since all I was trying to do is keep small dogs out I only had to wire about 5 feet on the driveway side and about 15 feet on the far side. The rest in the middle is covered enough with brush that Yip-yip won't be going through there to get to the chickens.

It wasn't quite how I planned on spending my Sunday afternoon but it was a project that needed to be done. That pasture can hold a lot of chickens. I don't know if I'm going to buy any more or if I'm going to pick a few of mine that are in the coop who like to set. Who knows, perhaps they'll hatch enough baby chickens that we will be able to eat a home grown chicken every week. That would be the life!

No Debt

2012-01-28T22:33:00.000-08:00

I wish...

The only debt I have is my house and oldest daughter's house. Even though they claim it as "their" house that they own, they don't. I put the down payment on and also put on a new roof. After that they are on their own. My plan on that house is when I retire they will buy the house off me or I will put it on the market and let someone else buy it. If I rented it to someone right now (oldest daughter pays all expenses now: the mortgage payment, taxes, and insurance) I'd come out a couple hundred dollars ahead each month after paying the expenses. But I don't want the rental. The couple hundred dollars isn't that important.

My house has a huge loan on it. I pay a little extra each month but not enough extra to make a difference. There's a possibility of me changing jobs next year. The pay increase would be so great that I'd be able to pay off the mortgage five years after I take that job, if I put every bit that's more than I make right now into the house payment. Not one to count my chickens before they hatch, I won't plan on that job and I expect to be paying on the house for a long time. The loan still has 24 years left on it. My plan, without getting that new great paying job, is to pay the house off in 10 years or as close to that as possible.

I know that people say either own it outright or don't pay much on it. I don't like the don't pay much idea. When I'm in my 70s I don't want a house payment. I want to be completely debt free. That brings us to today. On our way to our party this afternoon we were listening to the Dave Ramsey show. The kids were asking questions about being debt free. What does that me? Do I have debt? Why don't I go on the show and yell I'm debt free?

I told them I used to have debt. I borrowed money to go to college but I paid it back really quickly. I used to owe money for my truck. Not any more. It was a six year loan that was paid off in four. The truck is 11 years old. For the last couple of years I've been putting away a small amount of money each month into the "car payment" account. When I'm ready for something else or in addition to the truck I will have the money put aside. I don't want to ask the bank for money.

I explained that I use credit cards but when the bill comes in I pay it all. They didn't quite understand that the bill could come in but you didn't have to pay it. I tried to provide analogies using doing chores and having to do extra chores that don't really count as the number you have to do but it just wasn't coming out right.

If they can get the concept that you don't spend money you don't have and that you figure out what are wants compared to needs, then they will do alright in life. By my living a pretty frugal lifestyle they are learning as they go along that we have to think logically about spending money. A TV show was discussing consumables. That is something that is bought and used up or not any good any more after six months. I try to go as cheap as possible when it comes to consumables. Obviously we spend money for food, gas, etc. But clothing is purchased with the intent of passing it down or wearing it out. Not getting rid of it because it's no longer in style.

While they see that I don't spend, they see their aunts and uncles spending continuously. It's hard to explain why it's not a good idea that son just bought another TV. This time it's a 40". Never mind that a few months ago they bought a 36". They live in a two bedroom apartment, on either welfare or unemployment, and go out to eat all the time. They just got their tax return. $8,000 returned to them. Not bad considering they made $20,000 last year (plus welfare, plus food stamps, plus free medical) and didn't pay a penny into the income tax system. Girl sees her cousin getting her hair done and her nails done. The cousin is 9! Sorry girl. Just because you are a year older doesn't mean I am EVER going to spend money on your hair or nails.

Kids will often listen to others rather than parents. I'll keep listening to Dave Ramsey when the grand kids are riding with me. With all the people calling in telling there stories perhaps it will rub off after all.

Concealed carry shirt and food storage dinner recipe

2012-01-27T21:03:00.000-08:00

5.11 makes a t-shirt that has two pockets in it for concealed carry use. http://www.511tactical.com/All-Products/Shirts/Undergear-Shirts/Holster-Shirt.html It's called their Holster Shirt. It's a t-shirt, either scoop neck or v-neck, with two pouches, one on each side of the chest. I'm going to try to make my own version of this over the weekend. I'll take a couple of old t-shirts and cut one up and hand sew it on to the other. My stitching will just be a long running stitch. Once I get a good design that fits my handguns then I'll use a good t-shirt and make the final product. Why not just buy one? They are $75! I'm sure I could scrounge around for a good sale but if I can make it myself so much the better. I figure even with a well made t-shirt the entire project should cost less than $15. I could also pick up a brand new t-shirt from Michael's craft store for $2.50.

Tonight we had a pretty lousy dinner. Two of the little grand kids came over for dinner. Son and daughter-in-law brought over the "main dish". They were frozen pizza rolls or something of that nature. They were awful. No, worse than awful. How can people eat that garbage? I'm sure they bought it with their food stamps. This product should be banned from being bought with food stamps. It was that bad. Boy asked for seconds. Sure, eat them all. I ate one. That was enough. Never again. I had leftover salmon instead.

Tomorrow we won't be home for dinner as we've been invited to a friend's for dinner. Sunday night I am baking one of my favorites. The recipe came from Cooking with Stored Foods by Tejada and Latham. I bought it back in 1981. Wow, 31 years ago. I must have been 2! It's a good book and can be bought from Amazon for about $4.00. I've tweaked the recipe a little but even the basic recipe is a good one.

Chicken Enchilada Bake
1 can whole chicken (drained reserving broth, skinned, boned and chopped) or 1 or 2 cans of chicken meat (or fresh - skinned, boned, and chopped)
1 1/2 cups chicken broth (mine is from the chicken soup mix from the bulk bins at Winco)
1 4oz. can chopped green chilies (or home canned, or from fresh)
4-6 tablespoons dried minced onion
1 can condensed cream of chicken soup
1/2 cup oil
12-16 corn tortillas
3 cups shredded cheddar cheese
1 package enchilada sauce mix - made to directions or 1 can of enchilada sauce

Add water to the chicken broth to make 1 1/2 cups of liquid if you don't have enough broth. Chop the chicken meat. In a pot combine the chopped chicken, chiles, onion, soup, and broth. Bring to a simmer over medium heat. Simmer for 3-5 minutes, stirring occasionally just to combine the flavors a bit. Remove this from the heat.

In a medium skilled heat the oil. Dip the tortillas into the heated oil just enough to soften. Turn over and cook on the other side. You don't want to crisp the tortillas, just soften them. When I fry I drain the food on a brown grocery bag that's placed in a cookie sheet. So, once you cook each tortilla set it aside on the grocery bag (or paper towel or however you drain fried food). Cook all dozen tortillas.

After the tortillas are all softened I stack two or three on top of each other and slice them into four strips. (think small lasagna noodle)  When I'm all done I will have almost 50-60 tortilla strips (4x12=48 or 4x16=64).

I use a 10x12 baking dish.  You layer the ingredients, just like if you were making a lasagna. First put down a layer of tortilla strips. Don't over lap them, just place them next to each other. For the curved ones lay one down, flip another curved one over and you sort of have a solid piece.  Don't worry about it if you have some spaces. After the bottom layer of tortillas put down a layer of the chicken in the soup mixture, then a layer of shredded cheese. Next do a layer of tortillas, then chicken, then cheese. Then a layer of tortillas. You will either get two or three layers, depending on the size baking dish that you use.  I like to top the whole thing off by pouring enchilada sauce on top and then sprinkle with onions and cheese.

Bake for about 20-25 minutes at 375. Let rest for about five minutes after you take it out of the oven before serving. It serves 4-6.

If you don't have the patience to layer it all then just mix it all together and bake. It's not as pretty but still tastes as good. Remember, this recipe is from the 80s. People weren't used to spicy things then. Now, I'd probably splash on some Tabasco sauce too.

Canned Cream Cheese

2012-01-26T17:44:00.000-08:00

Kraft makes canned cheddar cheese. I've never eaten it but found it on Amazon for about $4.00 for a 7 ounce can. That's about $9.00 a pound for cheese, plus shipping. Considering I can buy shredded cheddar cheese from Costco for around $2.50 a pound, I needed to figure out if I could can this myself. Cream cheese costs between $2.00 and $2.50 a pound when it's on sale. I haven't seen it canned.

Last November 4th and 20th I wrote about canning cheese. I gave recipes for taking cheddar cheese and also cream cheese and melting them and then canning in a boiling water bath. I was pleased with the way the cheddar cheese jars turned out but not the cream cheese jars. We've used several of the cheddar cheese jars. They aren't great if I wanted a piece of sliced cheese but they do make a semi-solid cubed piece of cheese if we want to slice it and eat it that way. It shreds fine and cooks fine.

This morning as we were eating home made bagels and cream cheese from one of those 7 jars of cream cheese that I canned I realized that I never did a follow up to tell you how the canned cream cheese really turned out. I was really disappointed with the cream cheese when I was making the jars. They made a mess during the water bath. There was cheese caked on the lid that I had to scrub off. All the lids pinged anyway, although I didn't believe that the jars could actually have sealed.

I put the jars of cream cheese into the refrigerator. In the morning I cleaned it all up and opened one jar. It had a completely perfect seal. I don't know how but it did. I had to pry the lid off and it opened with a familiar swoosh of air coming into the jar. We ate that jar right away. I put the rest into the home store.

Last night after I made the bagels for today I took out a jar of the canned cream cheese. This morning we opened it, it had a great seal. The cream cheese seemed a little dry but I gave it a stir and it was as good as new. It was almost as easy to spread as the whipped cream cheese you can now buy. The consistency was good. I had read that canned cream cheese tasted cooked and would be more like eating cheesecake filling. That wasn't the case. I definitely recommend canning cream cheese if you like cream cheese.

Splitting wood the easy way

2012-01-25T20:06:00.000-08:00

What a great title. There are two easy ways to split wood. The easiest: Have someone else do it. The next easiest: Use a motorized log splitter. Neither is going to be happening around here. Harbor Freight does have a manual hydraulic log splitter that's on sale right now for $99. So lets just say I have to split the wood myself. Bugout renter taught me a trick that I want to pass along.

I have a large flat round that I use as a platform to place the round I'm splitting. I don't split a round that's on the ground. It's too easy to mess up and hit yourself. I place the round on the platform and put a chain and bungee cord around it. I use the bungee cord hooked to the chain so the chain has some give to it but it's not too loose. You place the bungee/chain about 2/3 up from the bottom of your round. You hit the round with the splitting maul. It splits but the piece that you split stays inside the bungee/chain. You just walk around your round of wood and continue splitting it.

Why is this a good way to split wood? Normally when you split the wood your pieces fly off the platform and you have to reach down and pick them up, place them back on the platform, and keep splitting. You split, bend down, pick up, place back, split, bend down, pick up, place back, split and on and on and on. This new way you split, move, split, move, split, move, done! If you can't picture it imagine your round with a big rubber band around it. Each piece may break off but it will still all be held together with the rubber band until you remove the rubber band. Same thing here. The split wood all stays in place and supports each other. It's so much easier to split wood this way. That is if you can't do it the two easy ways I listed first.

Just had to rifle through the dumpster

2012-01-25T19:50:00.000-08:00

OK, so the dictionary defines rifle through as searching with the intent to steal. Well I suppose, sort of, that's what I did. The dumpster next door is being removed tomorrow. I went through it quickly this afternoon. I was really only able to recover (see that's better, more like rescuing than stealing) a small portion of what I would have liked to get out of the dumpster. Unfortunately Grumpy Old Man's (GOM) kids didn't care much at all about the stuff and much of it was broken or ruined in some way or another. But I did find some treasures - GOM's baptismal record, his college diploma (we both we to the same university, albeit he graduated before I was born!), and family photos. What a bunch of jerks!!!! Between being thrown in and the rain the computer, printer, and office supplies were toast. There were a few trash bags that were thrown in. I opened them and found a couple of unbroken Pyrex measuring cups, a Pyrex baking dish, a nut cracker, about a dozen new boxes of Ziploc bags, a nice Webster's dictionary, and best of all, a brand new pair of good cowboy boots that either boy or girl will fit into in a few years.

A new chicken and a flooded room

2012-01-24T14:47:00.000-08:00

What a day. First I dropped off the junk at oldest daughter's house then headed for Army daughter's house. With the rain we've had lately they had a little bit of a flood in the house. The baby's room had a soaking wet carpet in the closet and out into the room.

Last night when Army daughter called to tell me the room was wet I told her to pull the carpet up in that corner and also put a fan on in the room. When I got there the carpet was pretty dry but the padding was still soaked. I pulled that up and laid it over the carpet for the fan to dry it. I explained to her that the padding may not dry well and she may be better off just buying a 5X10 piece of padding and reinstalling the new stuff. It's not expensive. From the inside of the house it looked as if the water just seeped in from the ground. That's not good.

We went outside and I discovered the problem right away. The house has some rain gutters and only three downspouts. One, which empties at least 500 sq. feet of roof line, dropped the water right at the corner of the house. The downspout didn't redirect the water away from the house. There was a cement pad there but on the outside of the pad the soil level was higher than the cement. The rain water had no place to go so it went inside. Easy fix.

I explained that with an inch of rain, 500 sq. feet of roof will dump 300 gallons of water into that corner. With no place for the water to go it went in. They need to buy some additional hose to attach to the bottom of the drainpipe which will direct the water away from the house. They also need to take down that hump of dirt. I told her it could wait for the weekend unless we got more rain.

While I was there I got a phone call from the mother of one of boy's friends. Last month she bought four chickens so they could get fresh eggs, have bug eaters, and just have something special for her son. The pullets were four months old. Unfortunately for this city family one of the of the pullets wasn't a pullet. She realized this once it started crowing. She wanted to know if we would take it and give it a loving home since roosters aren't allowed in the city. Sure it will go into the coop unless it doesn't get along. Then it will go into the freezer. I got over to her house and took a look at her cute little "Nutmeg". It's a boy all right. So are two of the others. "Are you sure?" Of course I am. Since she didn't want to believe that the person who sold her the pretty little chickens that would all start laying eggs in two months were not going to be laying eggs after all she kept those two chickens. I told her to let me know when she wanted me to pick them up!

Rain and Grain

2012-01-23T17:50:00.000-08:00

In the last three days we've received two inches of rain. That's great since we didn't see a drop in two months. Around here, the soil is a heavy clay. Once it's wet it stays wet for a long while but once it dries out it turns to cement! I had to water the trees a couple of times during the winter which is something I rarely ever have to do. We've had enough rain that I won't have to water for a couple of months now.

Next week it's supposed to be in the 60s outside. Between the rain and the sunny weather the grass should be growing fast enough to make the sheep really happy. I think they are getting tired of leaves but they are fat and happy and almost ready to pop out some lambs. We still have to wait for the coldest, wettest, most miserable day. That will be lambing day, guaranteed.

I can't believe it's almost time to start planting. Yesterday right before it started raining I threw out about 10 pounds of sunflower seeds into the front pasture. I also have oats planted out there. I'm hoping that the sunflowers near the fruit trees do well. I don't know how the rest of them will fare since they will only have rain water and it stops raining in April. The oats should do great. The pasture across the street has oats grown for hay. The oats head out really well.

This next weekend, or even tomorrow since I'm taking half day off tomorrow, I am going to plant 1/2 acre in wheat. I have no idea how it will come out because the seed is going right on top of the ground. The land wasn't disced so it's not bare ground. There's a light layer of dormant grasses right now. Hopefully I'll get something. After reading about wheat I learned that after it's cut the wheat grass will grow back in the fall. The animals can graze on it during the winter as long as they are taken off before the wheat takes off in the spring. That will be good for next fall but for now I'll see if anything grows. Otherwise next fall I'll get more serious and prepare the land better. I have enough fencing to keep the animals out of the wheat and oat pastures.

Most of the people around here just let their pastures get waist high in weeds. That will help hide the fact that I will be growing wheat and not weeds in the back. The oats out front will look like the land just down the road and won't stick out.

It's almost time to start thinking about spring planting of vegetables. Where has the time gone?

Brush piles and trash pickup and tax returns

2012-01-22T21:17:00.000-08:00

The next door neighbor died two months ago. He was a crabby old man of 89. I didn't have much to do with him or his wife because they just spent too much time complaining but I did take their trash cans out to the road before trash day and brought them back up to the house after trash pickup. Just because you don't like someone doesn't mean you don't have to help them out...

This was the same neighbor who hated my brush pile across the front of the property. He complained to everyone and everyplace possible to try to have me forced to remove it. Unfortunately for him there's no laws saying I can have a 150 foot long pile of brush along my front fence. I have berries planted in front of the pile and this spring I expect the plants to take off and start to cover the piles. It will start looking better soon. It's too late for the neighbor though.

After living in the house for 30 years, his three kids (all in their 50s and 60s) packed up their mom and moved her into an apartment three hours from here. She has a brother in the town she moved to. Of course none of the three kids lives near there. Today the kids and grand kids were over at the house. They had several U-haul trailers and were moving all the furniture out. They also had a 30 foot dumpster delivered and they filled it up with whatever they didn't want from the house. No putting stuff out on the road with a big "free" sign for them. It was pretty sad to see someones life just get thrown into the dumpster.

I took a stroll next door to let them know that we are watching over the place and will make sure that all goes well. One of the sons said there's no problem with their place but he'd be happy to send their gardener over to talk to me about me hiring the gardener to clear out my brush. No. It's not going anywhere. I told him my brush pile is an ecological gold mine! The quail population just boomed this year because of the brush. He let me know in no uncertain terms that quail aren't good for anything other than having rouge hunters show up in my front yard and shoot GUNS. Oh no, they wouldn't do that...But I would! He was not happy with me and he turned around and walked away grumbling. Like father like son.

The house has been for sale for a while. Hopefully it will sell to someone who isn't so grumpy. The grand kids want kids to move in. That would be nice, maybe.

The town where oldest daughter lives has yard trash pickup twice a year. You take all your junk, tree trimmings, old furniture, whatever you want and put it into the street in front of your house. The city trash trucks come and pick everything up. Usually when you put stuff out junk collectors come buy and pick a lot of it up. Usually we clean stuff up here at the farm and bring it to oldest daughters for the pickup. This afternoon boy and girl were helping me clean up the mess on the side of the barn. This used to be the bigger kids play area a couple of years ago. They'd find all kinds of junk and make secret rooms with the junk and have weeds thrown on top. They used small scraps of fencing wire, wood with tons of nails poking through (that they pounded in to the wood), old carpet that I tore out of the house about 8 years ago, and anything they could scavenge from the yard and barns. The bigger kids don't play there anymore. Now they work on their truck. So we spent a couple of hours cleaning it all up and loading it into the trailer. It will head into town Tuesday. I was explaining to boy that some of the stuff will get picked up before the trash collectors come. "One man's trash is another man's treasure." He liked that saying. We've gone around her neighborhood and picked up about 1/2 cord of wood, oldest daughter got her sofa table from someone's junk pile. The side of the barn is now a 25X100 foot pasture area for the sheep. The grass is coming in well and I'm sure they will love it in another month or so when I let them graze there.

This morning when the kids were in Sunday school I ran over to Target to return some items and also to buy boy some new pants. All his pants except two pairs are beyond repair for school. He's not yet into a size 10 and barely still fitting into an 8. I hate to spend much money on clothes that he's going to outgrow. On the other hand, he's been so hard on his clothes lately that he'll have them ruined long before they're outgrown. While I was walking through Target I was looking for good items for prepping. The only thing I found was a string of lights (like Christmas lights) that were solar. But the price was almost $30. I really didn't see anything else in the entire store that was calling out for me to buy.

I'm trying to figure out if it's because I'm on a no spending streak again or if it's because there really isn't anything worth buying. I'm going to have some extra money this year from my tax return. I have my deductions set fine but somehow because of credits for having the grand kids I seem to keep getting money back. It's not going to be anything like last year where I got double digits due to adoption credits. But still, it's going to be a good chunk of money. All my bills are paid: no outstanding credit cards, the property taxes are paid until next December, the insurance is all paid up. I'd say the money would be for saving but I am adverse to putting money into the bank to save when they are paying less than one percent interest. I'd rather invest it back into the house. Or put it all in silver and store it in the safe until I figure out what I want to do.

Last year we spent a lot of the tax money setting the garden up. I expect to buy more fruit trees this spring. I am also going to personally plant fruit trees at the bug-out place. I want to add more to the home store. Can't ever have too much food stored, can you? I want to get an above ground swimming pool, not our stock tank swimming pool for the kids, but one to start our hand at fish farming. I figure if I put the pool in a greenhouse then during the winter it won't get too cold for the fish. Also, there's solar aerators so it wouldn't need electricity to help put oxygen into the pool. I'll buy more ammunition. That is something that I haven't done enough of this year. I used to buy a box of ammo each time I'd buy milk. But lately since we've been drinking powdered milk I've gotten out of the ammo buying habit. I'm also trying to research the sun room, but that may have to wait for another year.

Not heating the house experiment - total failure

2012-01-21T09:59:00.000-08:00

My plan was to not heat the house for a good length of time - perhaps forever. Well, that didn't work out the way I planned. From the time I turned the heat off in the house near the end of December until a couple of days ago we didn't have any heat on at all: no propane central heat, no wood stove. Of course it helped that I was out of town for a week! Usually it doesn't really get too cold around here. All was fine with the no heat experiment until we had almost record lows in the low 20s. The house only got up to 56 during the day.

I had enough of wearing thermals under my clothes, a hat, and sometimes even a jacket while in the house during the day. I got cold. If it's not at least 80 I'm cold. It was starting to affect my working and since I get paid to work and I wanted to work at home rather than at the office I really needed to be able to work, not freeze. So I turned on the heater and got the house up to 67. I turned the heat off after that. Yesterday when we had everyone over for dinner I put a fire in the woodstove. The fire kept the house nice and toasty. In fact when I got up this morning the house was still in the high 60s.

We didn't do a good job trying to conserve heat during this experiment. If we really needed to not heat the house I probably could have kept it warmer. I can cover all the windows from the inside of the house with plastic. I could do a better job blocking cold air that comes into the house from the lousy design of the heating system that's housed in the mud room. I could have blocked the heating vents that run through the attic.

I was researching adding a greenhouse room to the front of the house.  The part of the house I would do this to has a U shape. The garage is on one side, across the back is the family room, and on the other side is the living room. The open side of the U faces to the south. I've read that if you build a greenhouse using heavy plastic sheeting you can heat up the greenhouse enough to open the windows and doors into the house and warm up the house. I don't know of anyone who has anything like this. If you know of someone ask them about it, ok? Or if you have a greenhouse how much warmer does is stay during the winter? Does something like this seem feasible?

I'm not happy about failing this experiment. Why? Because if TSHTF I certainly don't want any added stresses. Being cold at home would be an added stress. (I know those of you who really live in cold weather are probably laughing your heads off, but I get cold easily. That's why we aren't moving to the American Redoubt!) The biggest plus we get while preparing is taking as many stressors off the table by planning ahead. I know I could have done things differently to keep the place warmer. But I still suspect that at some point I would have to break down and use the wood stove if the smoke wasn't going to be an issue announcing to the world that our house is a house of prepared people.

We don't have enough wood trimmings from the trees on this property to heat the house full time but we probably have enough to deal with a dozen really cold days. If I cut wood from the bug-out property I'd be able to be self supporting on our wood for heating.

I'm starting the experiment again. No heat but I'm still not going to be reinforcing the windows or doors. I wonder how long I will be able to hold out before I get too cold. I'll use the wood stove. If I'm gone for any length of time or if the house gets really cold I may even turn the propane heater back on just to take the chill off. Best of all, I'm saving money on propane.

Making a Broom

2012-01-20T21:19:00.000-08:00

When I was at the taxi driver's home I noticed the broom that the daughter was using. It looked home made. I asked about it and she said that her uncle makes brooms. She explained how the broom was made. I remember when all brooms were made out of straw. I use a couple of straw whisk brooms for work but at home, other than a whisk broom, our brooms are all synthetic. I wanted to learn more about the broom making process because there may come a time when we will have to make our own brooms.

Her uncle buys straw directly from the farmer who grows broom straw. It's a heavy duty straw and seems much sturdier than if I used the straw from oats or something. I'm assuming that the straw that her uncle buys is really broom corn, which isn't really corn at all. It's a sorghum that's grown for it's broom making ability. It was misnamed "corn" because the stalks looked like corn to someone.

Anyway, the uncle buys his bundles and then brings it home to dry. After it's dried he takes a handful and cuts it to length. He wires the straw to the stick then it's pressed flat and stitched. She said that he presses it flat by putting it into a contraption that looks like a ladder. Imagine a ladder with the top step split in two. The straw end sticks up through the top. Then the uncle, and his sons, sew several rows of stitches along the top of the broom straw. Once it's sewn the bottom gets its final trimming. These brooms will last a long time.

Before brooms were made with the flattened top the straw was bundled up and tied to a stick. The bundle was round, not flattened out like modern brooms. Brooms didn't last very long but they were easy to make. This year I'm going to be growing oats in the front pasture. I'm going to try my hand at making oat straw brooms. Looks easy.

500th post and all I can say is I'm tired and more about Mexico

2012-01-19T21:08:00.000-08:00

I think the title says it all today. This is post number 500! Wow. I didn't think I had that much to say. Sometimes I don't and I just ramble. Sort of like today...

I started my day at 4:15, got the kids up at 4:45 then I left to go to work. I had their breakfast ready and their dinner ready. They are responsible for getting their own lunches, although I put a bunch of food out on the counter for them to choose from. I figure if I made their lunch it would probably end up in the trash, but if they make the same thing they are more likely to eat it. I had a class to teach from 8-10 and another from 3:30-4:30. That wouldn't have been bad except the place I was teaching was three hours from home. Hence the very long day.

During my six hours of driving I was thinking about our prepping. What else was I going to think about? Perhaps dreaming of the rain that we are supposed to get? I was thinking about our food storage and what I learned in Mexico. The family from Cabo didn't have a huge variety of food that I saw. Now they did say that they shop every couple of days for fresh items. I witnessed many people walking home carrying bags of produce and fresh meat. At their house almost every meal included beans and vegetables. There were also tortillas at most meals. The meat was used as a side dish except when it was a special occasion, then it would be a main dish.

Here if I said I wanted a beef burrito the entire burrito would be filled with beef. It could have 1/4 pound of beef stuffed into the thing, maybe even more. There would be very little of anything else in the burrito. At the home of the taxi driver, I was given a beef burrito for lunch. I got a burrito filled with cut up vegetables and chilies and maybe a tablespoon of shredded beef mixed into it. There were beans and rice on the side. It was a complete meal, grain in the flour and rice, protein in the beef and beans, and vegetables.

I don't always use a ton of meat when cooking dinner. In fact, tonight's dinner, if you can call it that, had no meat. I put 3 cups of water, two cups of wagon wheel noodles, and a can of spaghetti sauce into the rice cooker. I turned it on at 4:45 this morning. It cooked up perfectly. The kids ate every bit. I like cooking in the rice cooker because nothing burns and nothing overcooks. This meal was in the cooker for 13 1/2 hours and supposedly tasted like I just threw it together. Now if I was actually home I would have added some sourdough bread or something but the kids felt very grown up getting to stay by themselves for an hour and a half and serving themselves dinner. Me, I missed having a family dinner since we eat together every night.

Back to Mexico. I was thinking that I am working too hard on trying to get variety in our storage. They said they ate the same dinner for two nights in a row. They also had about three or four different dishes that they made each week, that they repeated week in and week out. For Sunday they had something different each week. Sure eating a different main dish and side dish everyday for an entire month may be normal for most people in the US but do we really need to eat that way? Perhaps we should go back to the older times. Monday meatloaf, Tuesday spaghetti, etc. OK not that far back, but still, perhaps a basic 10 or 14? We can still throw in something different or special. It doesn't have to be set in stone. It doesn't have to be as basic as three or four dishes like the family that I visited. But it sure would make the food storage plan much easier if we didn't expect to have such a variety. If I had 10 different dinners then I'd need enough for 35 meals of each type. For example, if I had spaghetti for one of the 10 dinners then I'd know I'd need 35 pounds of spaghetti in my storage to last one year and 35 jars or cans of sauce. If burritos were in the 10 dinners then I'd need 35 jars or cans of beef chunks along with 35 cups of dried beans, 70 chilies, and 100 cups of flour for the tortillas. At least having an estimate of how much I may actually use may be a better way of thinking about storing than how I do now. One bucket of this, a bucket of that. Never knowing if I truly have enough food.

That's enough thinking for tonight. 375 miles, two lectures, 25 emails for work, one blog. Bedtime. Happy 500th post.

Water storage

2012-01-18T15:43:00.001-08:00

As we were driving around the town I noticed that almost every house had a tank of water up on the roof. Even most of the expensive houses had water tanks. It couldn't be for rain water storage as the tank was on a high point. Most of the tanks I saw were black. Are those for heating water? I thought it was a good question, after all, they tried to save on their propane as much as possible. No, that's your water storage tank. Each home is expected to store their own water.

Here at home if I want water I turn on the faucet and the pressure from the well tank just sends me some water. If there is a power outage then I use some of my back up which is the ever full 5 gallon containers or if a long enough outage, the hand pump. In Cabo the water comes from the desalinization plant, so it's clean...at least when it leaves the plant. It runs through really bad pipes, which is what can make you sick. There are purification companies in each town and they charge about $2.00 for a 5 gallon bottle of clean water. The water that comes through the pipes is used for other purposes than directly drinking and cooking. So there's this tank on the roof. What's it for? Since the government send swater through the pipes for only a couple hours per day (not at a set time either) (in places in Mexico where it comes from wells, during drought they may only pump water every couple of days) then you are responsible for storing your water.

There is enough pressure coming through the pipes to fill your tank (tinaco) on your roof. It is set up just like a toilet tank. The ballcock will stop the flow when the tank is full. That's your entire fill of water until the next time the water gets sent through the pipes. Some homes have an underground storage tank, an aljibe or cistern. The poorer homes seemed to just have a tinaco, although that's not always the case. The more expensive homes had the aljibe and also the tinaco. The newest, more expensive homes just have an aljibe with a pump to send the water to the house, much like my well and pressure tank. Almost all homes have a tinaco, which is the tank on the roof.

If they have the money the people will use a small electric pump to pump the water up to the tinaco to get it to fill quicker (thus making sure it's filled during the short filling time) or they'll use the pump to transfer the water from the aljibe to the tinaco. Although people are installing pressure systems in their homes most are smart enough (the natives, not the foreigners) to keep the tinaco and just use the pump from the aljibe to the tinaco rather than pumping straight into the house from the aljibe. Why? The electricity may go off at any time for several hours or days. When this happens those with the tinacos are still able to get water. The electric pumps don't work without electricity.

The water comes into the house gravity flow to the kitchen sink and bathroom. In the house that I was in they went to unusual measures to conserve their water. Under the kitchen sink was a bucket. The sink water went into the bucket, not into the sewer system. This water was used in their toilet. The shower water was also recycled through a pipe that led outside. The only water that went into their sewer system was from the toilet and most of that was recycled from the sink and shower. Where they lived didn't have as steady of a water delivery as many of the other places.

When I was in Hawaii last year I stayed at a home that had a 14,000 gallon water tank in their backyard. Each home in that entire town was responsible for their own water. They collected the rainwater and ran it through an ultraviolet light purification system. There are people in Mexico that are using this same type of purification system rather than buying the separate bottled water.

So what did I learn from this? Sure I have a well and a hand pump that I can pump water out of if the power goes out for any length of time but I sure like the idea of a tinaco to store the water to give some water pressure. Water is so heavy that I'd either need a separate water tower built (I wonder if it could be placed in the top play area of the kids jungle gym?) or the area of the roof that it would be placed would need to be reinforced. I bet I could set something up with a tinaco and also hoses for solar water heating. It's worth looking into.

Back home finally

2012-01-17T20:35:00.000-08:00

No I wasn't on the ship that sunk. It doesn't surprise me that one ran aground while I was on a large ship. After all, I was in Hawaii for the volcanic eruption and just got out of there when the sirens were blaring due to the tsunami. If there's an earthquake, fire, or any other disaster it always happens the day after I was there. Anyway, some of my friends and I went on a cruise. We were supposed to go last year except the ship's engine room caught fire and the ship just floated around until tugs were able to pull it back to shore. That was two months before we were supposed to go but the ship was still being repaired and the cruises for several months were cancelled. Our trip was put off until this year. My mom and nephew were also cruising with us. Mom has been on many cruises, nephew none. The only other cruise I was ever on was when mom and I went from Argentina to Falklands to Antarctica and back to Argentina. That ship had 175 passengers, this one 3,500. Way to many people for my taste.

While my friends spent their offshore time drinking, and drinking, and drinking, I did things more useful-although they would beg to differ. I found an English speaking taxi driver and paid for a day in the life of a real San Lucas (aka Cabo) family and also a day in life of a Puerto Vallarta family. I wanted to learn about their life style. How they live, what they eat, day to day activities, etc. Sure you can read it in a book but nothing beats paying someone $50 (minimum wage in Mexico is a little less than $6.00 a day...no wonder they want to come the the US) and then going to "live with them for a day". Now in each of those cities you can find houses just like ours and larger, but that wasn't what I was looking for. I wanted to hang out with what we would call the lower middle class. I didn't want the extremely poor because I didn't think I'd learn enough.

My first adventure was with a taxi driver who was born in Cabo but the family moved to Santa Rosa, California when he was very young. They lived there until he was 11. His parents divorced and he moved back to Cabo with his mom and five of his brothers and sisters. Two of his brothers stayed in Santa Rosa with the father. So his English was good and he could understand my questions. He was now married and had a little girl.

I went to their home and hung out with his wife and daughter. So technically she made the money. He was able to go back out driving the taxi for a while. Their home was a two room apartment in a triplex. One room was the bedroom, the other the kitchen/sitting room. The bathroom was very small with a shower, toilet, and sink. There wasn't any storage space in the bathroom. The bedroom had a built in closet which he was very proud of owning. The kitchen had a small gas stove/oven and a refrigerator that was probably about 10 cubic feet. There was a table with chairs around it and several rocking chairs, a sofa, and a small TV. There was a row of cabinets and also a hutch that had storage. The stove and hot water are heated with propane.

When I want propane for my 500 gallon tank I call up my propane guy and let him know it needs to be filled. He will show up sometime during the week, fill the tank, and leave a bill on the back door. Sometime within the month I'll send him the money. That's not the way it goes there. A truck drives around with very annoying music blaring out the speaker on top of the truck. (Sort of like the ice cream truck) The back of the truck has propane tanks that he swaps out - they look to be about 30 gallons. You have to flag him down, just like you do with the ice cream man. You have to have cash. Otherwise you wait until the next time the truck with the annoying music drives by. They use the propane very sparingly because the price is about the same there as here.

Because the weather is good year round many of the homes don't have windows. Now I'm not talking about the expensive homes. I mean the homes of many of the regular folks. They have big wooden shutters that open to the inside, which will close the place up at night but during the day the shutters are open and the world can see straight into the home. Out in the countryside there were many homes that weren't much bigger that a storage shed. Many of those had tin roofs and no doors or glass windows. Other homes had tarps for the roofs.

When taking into account how these people live in good times it's really easy to realize that we can live pretty well here in bad times. In coming days I'll write about my cooking lessons, lousy Spanish, and my trip to Walmart.

Going on an adventure - back Jan. 16th

2012-01-07T08:11:00.000-08:00

I'm going on a bit of an adventure for the next week. I'll be back on January 16th and will get back to posting then. I'm not going to have any email or cell phone use during this time. I'm not even sure if I'll have any real knowledge of what's going on in the world. I will be in an area where I don't speak the native language, although there will be many English speakers around. It will be interesting. I'll miss the grand kids as they aren't coming with me.

Last time I used my passport I went to Antarctica, among other places. Not so exotic this time, except this area is much more dangerous. I'll have a get-home bag with me just in case. I will have some silver coins; they are sewn into the hem of my pants. Don't forget about me and I'll let you know how things went on my 8 day adventure.

Grinding wheat - and trying not to starve to death

2012-01-06T13:29:00.000-08:00

The grand kids have three weeks off of school for winter break and I've had them read two books - The Road Home and The Long Winter. The Road Home is a modern times book about an earthquake, chaos, and how a family survives. The Long Winter, by Laura Ingalls Wilder describes how their family survived during a seven month winter out on the prairie. They almost starved to death. The temperatures reached 40 below.

Not to long ago I wrote about our electric wheat grinder. It's a great tool and has the ability to be used without power. I decided to bring the story about the Ingalls family to life for the kids. Let's grind wheat the way they did in the story. You see, that family normally would have their wheat ground at the gristmill. But not that winter. Instead they were grinding their wheat in the coffee mill. The book tells how they had to grind all day long to get the wheat ground into flour to make little loaves of bread. They ate one potato and one roll at each meal and they only ate twice per day. Even with that small amount they still ran out of food and had to take (paid for, of course, but still taken) more wheat from Almonzo's secret stash. That still wouldn't have lasted the rest of the winter. Two of the young men decided to take a chance and set out to bring wheat back to the starving town.

OK back to grinding wheat. Right before lunch today I had boy grind 1/4 cup of wheat in our little coffee mill that was probably very much like the one the Ingalls family used. It didn't grind the wheat very well so I had him do it again. It still wasn't well ground but we are using it like that anyway. I had him warm up some water and the wheat is going to soak. The Ingalls used a sourdough starter, just never using up all their dough, in order to leaven the bread. Since I don't have a sourdough starter going I threw a little bit of yeast into his soaking wheat.

A little bit before dinner time he's going to shape the wheat into loaves. It's not going to work very well because the flour is a very, very, very course flour. It's just a little more ground than if you bought cracked wheat. I'm going to serve that and small potatoes for dinner. When they finish their food I will ask them how they would enjoy eating that twice a day for about five months. I'll also make a comparison between our hidden room home store and Almonzo's secret wall. It will provide some very good conversation.

Then I'll bring out the rest of the dinner. Elk burgers. Home grown tomatoes (in January!) (I dug the plants out of the ground last month and they are growing pretty well in the window in my library). And maybe if they are lucky a fruit smoothie to drink with all home grown fruit, of course.

Toilets and sewer backups - yuck

2012-01-05T03:32:00.000-08:00

After my post the other day about hardware I got to thinking about the toilets in my house. We have two. We also have one in the trailer and have a rather crude outhouse in the yard. Plus I tell boy to pee in the garden. OK back to toilets. I have some items to repair the toilets. I have wax seals, rubber flappers, etc. About six months ago I replaced the entire innards of my tank with some new fangled type of system. It's a push button with a post that floats up and down for the water level. You push the little button and only a little water flows through. You push the big button and it's a regular flush. Supposed to save lots of water. The only problem is it's already broken...cheap China junk. I threw away the old innards. After all, they were as old as the toilet...1974. This means I need to replace everything. The ball cock, the handle, everything. And get backups for it all.

I was visiting GI Jim yesterday and he gave me some other ideas. After all, if TSHTF am I going to have the same ease of receiving water? Am I going to be hand pumping, getting it from a solar powered pump, or will we still be on the grid? Let's assume no grid. If IT is today then no solar powered pump. This means hand pumping for water. Do I really want to pump enough to flush away 50 or so gallons each day? NO. If it's cold weather boy is not going to want to go outside. How about setting the bathrooms up a bit differently? We have a five gallon bucket and a little seat to attach to it. That works fine for the short term. You do realize that five gallon plastic buckets will degrade with use. Over the years we've had dozens break apart. Now these are the buckets we use for food storage that pretty much just sit on a shelf. These buckets are used to haul stuff, wash the cars, etc. But nevertheless they don't last forever. I wouldn't expect the bucket toilet to last forever, nor would I want to sit on it forever!

A homemade urinal? And instead of the urinal emptying into the septic a hose (tube) could be attached with a hole through the wall to the outside. It could either be dispersed instantly or collected in storage buckets or barrels and then used to fertilize the garden. That's a good idea. The toilet could be used for solids and the urinal (even make something that works for the girls) for liquids.

The other thing GI Jim and I talked about was sewage. I'm on a septic. It backed up once. Into the bathtub and shower. Disgusting. It was the week before Christmas. Did I mention that there were 16 people in the house then? The repair guy came and pumped the tank. On Christmas Eve it backed up again into the tub and shower. I called and left a message on his machine to let him know that any time after the holidays we'd be happy to have him come over and pump it again and fix the leach lines. Christmas morning he was over with his son digging up our front yard. Millions of blessings to him and his family!!! Other than that, no problems with our septic system.

What about people who are on city sewer? Most people plan on bugging in not bugging out. If the power goes out the cities will put their sewage treatment plants onto their generator back ups. Most sewage treatment plants were upgraded due to Y2K preparations. But generators won't be able to power the plants for very long. Then what? The sewage will be backing up.

Let's hope that your house is on a bit of a rise. Let's also assume that one of the first preps you city folks do is install a Backflow Valve. The backflow valve is installed in your sewer lateral (the pipe coming from your house that connects with the main sewer pipe), close to where it leaves your house. It allows sewage to flow in one direction only (out of the house) and shuts automatically if flow is detected in the opposite direction (coming from the sewer into your house). The valve will reopen when normal flow is restored.

That's great if you've installed the backflow valve. If you haven't make that the next thing on your to do list! But what happens to the sewage? It starts backing up into the street as well as into other people's homes. In one of the local cities near me they pump the sewage uphill to the treatment facility. That's not a good sign if the power is out and doesn't support the pumps, now is it?

From what I’ve read, over one million Americans become ill each year just from backed up sewer incidents. Most of this is from the sewage coming into basements. Raw sewage contains E coli, viruses, intestinal worms and parasites. Most of those affected suffer stomach cramps and diarrhea, but untreated sewage can also spread cholera and hepatitis. Gastroenteritis and cryptosporidiosis are other parasites contained in sewage. These can kill people.

The survival of the viruses, worms, parasites, etc. depends on a number of things: location (indoors vs. outdoors), season, type of surface contaminated, whether disinfectants are used, and also on environmental conditions such as humidity, temperature, and sunlight. Sunlight (UV radiation) reduces the survival rate of pathogens with numbers decreasing rapidly with increasing exposure to UV radiation. Mild temperatures and higher humidity result in longer survival times.

If you have been affected by a sewage backup and you need to clean up the mess you need to take proper precautions: Wear protective gloves, eyewear, boots, and rain gear. If you get any cuts or scrapes you better stop what you are doing and wash and disinfect the wound immediately. Your life may depend on it!

The following steps need to be taken when cleaning up the mess in your home: Remove excess water. Use a dehumidifier and keep windows open (not going to be a pretty scene if there’s still raw sewage running down the road). All solid waste should be collected and disposed (sure, just put it into the weekly trash pickup…). Throw away all upholstered furniture and mattresses. Pull out the carpets and pads. Throw away the stuffed animals and toys. Don’t even think about trying to clean them. All areas of the house need to be washed with a detergent then disinfected and allowed to dry.

Now it’s time to clean up the outside. This is assuming that the sewage isn’t still flowing down the road. If it is, you need to seriously consider bugging out. If it stops, and it’s summer time, then the microbial population from the sewage flooding onto the lawns and paved areas will be inactivated after a few days due to the UV radiation from the sun. During the spring and fall the bacterial numbers will be reduced to safe levels after two to three weeks. But remember, if TSHTF the sewage will not be going away any time soon.

Stratfor Global Intelligence firm's security breach!

2012-01-04T16:42:00.000-08:00

Just thought I'd pass on an interesting email that I received at work today.

Situation:

This past weekend the hacker group “Anonymous” threatened the release of data claiming to be associated with the Stratfor Global Intelligence firm’s recent security incident, including:

1) “75,000 names, addresses, credit card numbers and passwords for every customer that has ever paid Stratfor; and

2) 860,000 usernames, email addresses, and passwords for everyone who’s ever registered on Statfor’s website.”

The State Information Security Office has received supplemental information that the data was in fact made publicly available for download on several websites (intentionally not disclosed in this message), and that those affected include many current or past state and local government employees who registered on the Stratfor website, purchased products from Stratfor, or both. Additionally, we’ve heard that fraudulent charges have already been made with some of the compromised credit card data.

The Stratfor website (http://www.stratfor.com/) now acknowledges the security incident and informs its customers about the actions it is taking, including the offer of identity protection services.

Recommendations:

We recommend individuals that registered with Stratfor change their passwords immediately on all systems where the same credentials were used and inform any other appropriate parties of the compromise.

We also recommend individuals that have made prior payment to Stratfor cancel any credit cards used for payment immediately and investigate their credit card statements for signs of unauthorized transactions. If other means of payment were used, it is recommended that you monitor your financial statements for unauthorized transactions. Individuals may also wish to take advantage of any credit protection services offered by Stratfor.

Questions regarding the Stratfor incident should be directed to the Stratfor contacts published on its website.

No job after all

2012-01-04T05:03:00.000-08:00

Son called up to tell me that two hours before he was supposed to start working at his new job the boss sent him a text saying he hired someone else. Thanks but no thanks. No job. Son was pissed. I was sort of laughing to myself. Why? Because he was complaining about the lousy pay. How's NOTHING for lousy pay, son? I guess the $10 a hour wasn't going to be too bad after all.

He then wanted to know if I've gotten their taxes filed yet. I do all the taxes for my kids. Turbotax makes it easy, plus I understand what I'm doing so it's not just letting the computer program do the work. I understand that they gave me their W-2 info on Sunday. I wasn't planning on doing the taxes for another couple of weeks. Why do they want it done now? Well it seems they don't have any money to pay the rent on the first of the month. What? You just bought another new TV. You just spent tons of money on your kids for the holidays. Daughter-in-law flew home to visit her family for a few days and you don't have any money set aside for rent? No because he was expecting unemployment and welfare to cover it but that's not going to start for another few weeks and they won't get any money until way after rent is due. Sorry, I'm just laughing to myself. I've got to get off the phone.

I don't understand how people can have their values all screwed up. Now it's one thing if you bring in very little money and you are just surviving and then you stop bringing in the money. But even then, beans and rice, rice and beans, boring but nutritious. I'd think having an emergency fund would be more important than the TV or travel. Guess not. Do I have any money to spare? Not for that. After all, I'm excited that we are saving five to ten dollars per day by not heating the house during the living without heat for a month experiment.

I guess what ticks me off more than anything is that when the kids were growing up I worked hard...often with them in tow since I was a single parent. Even now raising the grand kids I am able to work at home some days but some days must go into the field. When possible they get dragged along with me. I make sure they understand I have to work or they have no roof over their heads or food in their bellies.

Almost everywhere I go I see help wanted signs. I think a lot of people are comfortable living on unemployment or welfare that they'd rather not have to put in the hours at a job (unless it's under the table so they can still collect). (Now don't get on me if you are one of my several readers on disability or such, I'm not saying you are lazy, I promise!) It's all for minimum wage or not much more but if one parent works during the day and the other at night they may not see each other but at least their bills would get paid. Or my son could do what so many others do. Stand outside of Home Depot or Lowe's with a sign "willing to work hard". People get picked up for day labor jobs all the time. He could also go out door to door and if they have any odd jobs that need to be done. If someone showed up at my property and was looking for a job, I wouldn't have them inside but there's outside stuff for someone to do. They could work on the fencing. That's one job I hate doing but would pay someone minimum wage to do. Not to son though. He can find a job somewhere else. I've experienced his "helping".

Hardware necessities

2012-01-03T05:25:00.000-08:00

I write a lot about food. Today it's about hardware. A couple months ago I went to Orchard Supply Hardware and at the door was a store directory handout. So, of course, I picked it up and brought it home. It went on my pile of items to put on the list. As I read through the directory I decided to check off the items that I had and circle the ones that I thought I may someday need but don't have on hand. I was pleased to know that I'm pretty well stocked but at the same time alarmed to realize that if things go wrong I could be stuck with a lot of items around here that will not be worth much more than paperweights.

I'd like to include the entire list but I'm not going to. It's a double sided paper with four columns of items on each side. I scribbled notes all over it. If I get another one I will scan it and include it in a posting. Just not today.

Some of the items just aren't necessary but many are very useful. Let's go down the alphabet with some examples:
A - adhesives, auto batteries, axes (10 items listed)
B - batteries, bolt cutters, boots, brackets, brooms (20 items listed)
C - cable ties, camp stove and fuel, candles, caulking supplies, clothes line, coffee filters (43 items listed)
D - dowels, drain openers, drill bits, drop cloths, duct tape, dust masks (14 items listed)

Q, X, Y, and Z are not represented. The rest of the letters are. I'd suggest the next time you are at the hardware store you pick up a directory. Same goes with the grocery store. There may be things that you may only need once a year or once every five years, but you will be up a creek without a paddle if you don't have it and you can't get it.

Can I shop only every couple of months? And the house is still cold! And friends for the grand kids.

2012-01-02T14:45:00.000-08:00

I will start off with the house. Son built a fire into the wood stove yesterday. He didn't like visiting with the house at 59 - they keep their apartment around 80 (but 60 during the summer). Not a problem. I figured we may have the fire going when we had company. Once everyone left I didn't put any more wood into the stove. We were done heating the house. The wood stove did bring it up to 70 degrees by the time it was all over. It felt warm and I had to push up my sleeves to cool down! Now the house is back down to 64. The temps outside are about the same. It's supposed to be in the mid sixties during the day all week and it's not supposed to drop into the 20s at all at night. This is going to be an easy week to keep the house unheated. If it costs $150 a month to heat the house then so far we've saved $35!

There's a saying we have about food: Get what you can and can what you get. In other words, if you can grow it, someone offers you some extras from their garden, you pick it from the wild, you find the super sale, or sometimes even stop on the side of the curvy road to pick food up where the overloaded produce trucks drop bucket loads of produce over the top of the truck, get the food and do something with it! If you don't eat if fresh then you'd better figure out a way to put it up. Can it. Freeze it. Dry it. Smoke it. Don't throw it away! Then use it during the year.

I was wondering if I could cut my shopping back to every couple of months. Even when I did the experiment of no shopping for a month I was worried that if IT happened during that time then I would have used up a months worth of supplies that weren't replenished. Now, don't think because of that statement that I shop daily or something. I don't. I usually do a big shopping once a month or so but will stop by the store to pick something up if it's on sale. I won't ever drive into town just to shop. That's a waste of two gallons of gas!

Some things I buy yearly. I know that prices of baking goods go down at Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas - things like sugar, flour, etc. I stock up then if I'm buying at Winco. Otherwise I'll just make my major purchases at Costco.

What kind of food do I purchase more frequently than monthly? Bananas, fresh milk, potatoes (we didn't grow a years worth) and whatever is on sale for cheap prices. Could we live without the bananas and fresh milk? Yes. The kids don't even mind powdered but fresh is often cheaper! Would I save money by shopping only a couple of times per year? I don't think so because I'm good at shopping sales. I will buy stuff that's not on "the list" but I've always figured if we eat it then it doesn't go to waste.

I know how long some nonfood things around here last. For example, I buy the bucket of Costco laundry detergent. It lasts between five and six months. How do I know this? I write the date I open the container right on the container. When it's done I get the new container and write the start and end date of the previous container, which then gives me the start date of that container. By showing not only when I start this new container but also how long the previous container lasted I can figure out if something has changed. I have four or five full buckets of laundry detergent in the garage. Since I bought those I thought about making my own from washing soda, borax, and bar soap. So I bought that too. I probably have enough laundry soap for three or four years.

I have several gallons of hand soap and lots of bars of soap. I keep all the bits of soap from the hotels when I travel and also keep the small slivers from home use. They can be melted down and reused. I know how to make homemade soap. During the 1970s it was popular to do things like that, so I did. I rendered the tallow, soaked the wood ashes, and made nice bars of soap. I'm assuming that I have enough soap to last as long as the laundry detergent. So I guess, if all goes well, in about two more years I will go shopping for two or three more years worth of soap and detergent. I write down the start date and end dates of the liquid hand soap and liquid dish soap as well as the dishwasher detergent...just like I do on the laundry soap.

How long does toilet paper last? Forever if kept dry and bug free. (Mice like it too so watch out if you are storing it.) I buy that from Costco too. One roll has 450 sheets. We don't use nearly as much as most households. We go through it very slowly. One roll will last me over a month. I go back and forth between "family cloths" which are the baby washcloths and toilet paper. The grand kids use the toilet paper...when they remember to wipe! When we have guest over then the toilet paper disappears quickly. All totaled we probably use two to four rolls per month. I haven't had the septic pumped in seven years, mainly because very little goes into it that doesn't decompose quickly. We have about 100 rolls on hand. This is about three or four years worth.

Did you know that if you dry off your razor after using it, this includes not keeping it in the steamy bathroom while others shower, then it will last much longer? I buy the Gillette razors at Costco. They come in a pack of 52. Sounds like it's supposed to last for a year. I know people that use up the pack in 6 months or less. But for ladies, if they dry it each time, one razor can last a month or longer! This means that your pack of razors can last for over four years. Same for men. Sometime they will last a month, more often it's about two weeks. So the pack can last for two years. Still not bad.

The next door neighbors have their grand kids over visiting for a week. I'm really glad because my grand kids don't have other kids around for them to play with. During the school year it doesn't matter because they are so busy with school and then helping around the house that they don't notice that the only kids they play with are their cousins. But they have three weeks off of school right now. They've played with each other and their cousins for the past two weeks. Now they have other kids to play with, nice polite kids, so hurray for them. The neighbor grand kids came over to ask if mine can go to the movies with them. They are going to a late matinee to watch We Bought a Zoo. Sounds like a fun movie.

Happy New Year and thanks to my readers

2012-01-01T20:22:00.000-08:00

Last January I had 15 followers and 5,000 hits on my blog. I now have 55 followers and over 45,000 hits. Wow. I'm surprised and also grateful. I write this to keep me motivated. I'm hoping I'm helping keep you motivated to prepare for survival as well. Happy New Year.

Happy New Year

2012-01-01T20:13:00.001-08:00

Happy New Year to all.

Son and his family and Army Daughter and her family came over for dinner. Son-in-law was going to cook but instead Army Daughter cooked with the help of daughter-in-law. Dinner turned out reasonably good. Son made a cake. It was a honey orange cake. He was excited because it was his first cake from scratch. The cake was good, the frosting was horrible. He was so proud of the frosting that I couldn't give him a suggestion on how to make it better. Maybe next time.

Son got a job, starts tomorrow. He's already complaining that it doesn't pay enough. Excuse me? You haven't worked for a year, your wife got let go from her job a month ago and you are complaining? Shut up. To celebrate his new job he decided to take care of some things that he thinks are in need of repair here at my house. I'm not sure if he did anything outside or not. He decided that he needed to hook the TV antenna up to all three TVs. Right now we have the digital antenna connected to the TV in the living room - no cable or satellite here. I just hadn't gotten around to moving the antenna to the attic and connecting the wires together for all three TVs. I figured it would be an easy job. How could he screw it up? Oh yeah, it's my son. He will take any job and make it ten times more difficult, ten times more messy, and ten times more expensive.

My suggestion, and why listen to me, I'm just old... was that if the satellite TV came into the house on a cable that he should just hook up the antenna to this same cable. Unhook it from the satellite, hook it to the antenna. Sounds reasonable. Except he doesn't work on reason. He got into the attic and started pulling wires. Don't pull wires. You can't pull them up without unhooking them from the wall. The wires are all hardwired to the little plastic connector at the wall and they are attached to guides in the walls. It's not like your apartment where it's just got a wire coming out of the wall and running across the room. No. He pulled wires. This meant that he pulled the wires out of the connectors. Then he complained to me that whoever put the wires in did a lousy job connecting them. I put the wires in when I helped with the house remodel.

I was able to reconnect the wire in my bedroom but it's just coming through a big hole in the wall. It's not connected to the outlet anymore. In the the family room he tugged on the wire so hard that it's half way up the wall. This was a sound proofed wall and is full of insulation. He can't just drop the wire. He'll have to fish for it and of course he doesn't have the tools. Then he wanted to pull the wires connected to the plug in the garage and use that since it's got a good connection. NO!!! Don't touch it. How about putting a hole in the ceiling in the family room and running the cord right behind the TV? NO!!! I don't want the wire hanging in back of the TV. He took this to mean that it was OK to punch a hole in the ceiling over the bookcase so it wouldn't be as visible. STOP HELPING!!!!

They ate dinner and went home. The TV in the bedroom and family room still aren't hooked up to the antenna. The living room TV is working great, but then again it was working great when he started. There's a lot of insulation all over the house. What a mess. And he got nothing accomplished other than making a mess in the house, putting a hole in the ceiling, and pulling out the connecting boxes. At least it's not costing me money. Just time to clean it all up. Just what I wanted.

Note to self: Make sure you have extra connectors, wire, and other electrical and cable items in your storage for when son comes over to help.

The new year is starting off just like it ended. Should be a good year!

Don't look a gift horse in the mouth and it's time for resolutions again

2011-12-31T20:45:00.000-08:00

The strangest thing came in the mail yesterday. Two gift cards to Best Buy. I have no idea who sent them. They were ordered on Dec. 24 and I was really who they were sent to. Nobody that I know has told me they sent them. I'm not sure what I'm going to buy with them. I'll figure out something. The strange thing is I never go to Best Buy. Or at least almost never. I was there yesterday buying a new memory card for the outdoor spy camera. Then I came home and got the gift cards in the mail.

It's New Year's Eve. Time to make resolutions for the upcoming year. I made a few last year and actually kept them. I'm going to keep those same resolutions for this year. That's not cheating, is it?

First resolution - no brainer but not always easy. God's rules and expectations are not there to stifle us or frustrate us, but to benefit us. Study the word.

Second resolution - health. Don't do stupid things while I'm pretending to still be a teenager or in my twenties. The body doesn't bend as easily nor lift as much weight. Bend the knees! Don't over eat. Eat healthy.  10-20 pounds more than when you were in your 20s is fine. 50 or 100 pounds more is not.

Third resolution - the farm and house. I had a hard time with this one this year. I don't know why exactly. I expanded the garden and did a couple of extra things around the property but it doesn't seem like very much was accomplished. I want to declutter the house. Everyone wants to store their crap here. I don't mind storing things but let's not store things that we don't want to get rid of but don't ever want to use.  I'm not talking about preps. I don't want to use a hand well pump but I certainly am not going to get rid of it! I want to do more in the yard.  Plant more fruit trees both here and at the bug-out place. Last year the bug-out place didn't get fruit trees. I bought them. Bug-out renters promised to plant them. They didn't. Some died, the rest I planted here.

Fourth resolution - debt and purchasing. This was a new one last year - focusing on bills.   Being successful in prepping can't really be complete when you have debt.  Mortgage, student loans, car loans, credit cards, and big bills from lots of "necessities" of life. The only debt I have is my house. The bug-out place is paid for. Our monthly necessities bills are rather low.  Of course I'm freezing right now in a 61 degree house! I do have some extra money each month to buy prep items or to make improvements to the property, usually.

The savings account is slowly coming back. I spent every penny I owned a couple years ago because of daughter-in-law's accident. Then getting the grand kids who came with nothing was another hit. But we've managed.  While the money talk shows tell you not to use credit cards, I do. Why? Because I get cash back. I like the Discover card. They give 5% back on some things and then with that 5% you can buy discounted gift cards. The credit cards get paid off each month so in my mind it's a money maker.

I bought more silver this year. I have no idea how much is enough. If I sold it all it would amount to a months take home pay. Is this enough? Am I better off buying silver or putting the extra money into other preps or paying more on the house? I just don't know.

But I'm not going to stop prepping because the house isn't paid off. No, it's more important to have my preps in order. But when am I done prepping? I'm talking about buying stuff. What is enough? How much ammo is enough? How much food is enough? How much material to make clothes is enough? How many spare tools? How many fruit trees? How much stuff?

I realized why I write this blog. It's to keep my focused on surviving. It's really that simple. I'm sure for those of you who don't write a blog but spend time reading them, that's probably one of the reasons you do so. To keep the focus. May you have a healthy, happy, and prosperous New Year.

30 year old food ad

2011-12-30T21:12:00.000-08:00

Yesterday when I was working I happened upon a pile of old newspapers. One in particular caught my eye. It was the food ad from January 22, 1981.  Some prices haven't changed in over 30 years:
2 liter store brand soda .79 a bottle - I can go to the dollar store and buy a 2.5 or 3 liter bottle for a buck now! Chicken legs .69 a pound - on sale just last week for .79. Cake mixes .68 a box - on sale for .88 a box recently.

So you are thinking that prices really haven't risen much, at least not by the three examples I just gave. Let's get down to the other items.   Since it's almost New Year's Eve let's talk about alcohol prices.
$1.79 for a 6-pack of beer, $4.89 for a bottle of vodka. I saw the vodka in the latest ad from the same store for $15. Or Johnny Walker Red Label scotch from $9.99 to $32.  Those prices tripled over the past 30 years!

How about real food and groceries in 1981?
Coffee 2.29 a pound
Bubble bread (cheap white bread) 4-$1.00
Toilet paper four pack -.59
Kraft mac and cheese .18 a box
Clorox bleach .78 a gallon jug
tangerines .29 a pound
avocados .25 each
lettuce .25 a head
most beef was between $2.00 and $2.50 a pound
bacon $1.19 a pound
spaghetti .89 for 24 oz.
ragu 15 oz jar for .79! Comparing this to the canned spag sauce for .88 at present meant that ragu was really expensive. No wonder I never bought it in the "olden days".

So much for reminiscing about prices. Buy food and stock up on things that will last. It's better than money in the bank!

Along with the food ads was the daily comic section. I have to repeat one comic here. It's Hagar the Horrible by Dik Browne. The setting: Two people are sitting on top of a rock in the middle of the ocean. Eight sharks are visible swimming nearby. "We're shipwrecked in shark-infested waters thousand of miles from land with no food or water - what should be do?!" "Try not to think about it..."

Most people listen to the news on TV or read it on their electronic devices. There are so many things happening that can have a significant effect on our lives but most people don't really put much stock into what they hear or read. After all, it's easier to be oblivious to the real dangers to our way of life. At some point society will be sitting on that rock, without food or water, and trying not to think about it. I won't be one of those people.

Goals met in 2011

2011-12-29T19:11:00.000-08:00

The news has been reporting that 70% of people polled said that 2011 was a bad year. Less than 30% called it a success. 60% are saying that 2012 will be a good year. I suppose it depends on what criteria you were using to determine if it was good or bad or will be good or bad. If all you are judging the good or bad by is income, then I'm sure that it wasn't a good year for many. I guess it was a good year for me as I only made 25% less than I was making before I had to change things around when the grand kids moved in. The first year they were here I made 30% less! See! Such an improvement. Or I can look at the negative and say that four years ago I was making 25% more than now. Whatever. I'll look for the positive when it comes money being the determining factor of happiness.

For me 2011 was pretty successful. This is my 353rd post of the year. Some days I posted more than once. There were very few breaks. Most were because I was out of town and not able to get internet connections. I'm sure there was one or two times that I had nothing to say!

If I'm judging the success of the year by my improvements in preparedness then this was an extremely successful year. I got myself much more prepared for any What Ifs. Here's what I can remember that I've accomplished in 2011:
Expanded and made additional permanent garden beds
Elective surgery on my arm
Bought a safe
Bought silver
Started a hedgerow along the front of the property
Planted more fruit trees
Expanded the chicken coop
Learned how to butcher chickens
Got my concealed weapons permit
Experienced the tsunami, volcano eruption, earthquake, wild fires...anyone say that I attract disaster?
Put together bug-out bags and get-home bags
Made soft cheese and learned to can cheese
Canned lots of fruits and vegetables
Used the clothesline most of the year
Lived off what we had on hand for a month - aka no spending for a month
Lived without heat in the house (OK it's day two and counting)
Played the no electricity game for a weekend - this means no "tap" water or flushing toilets as we are on a well!
Bought a 650 gallon plastic stock tank, aka swimming pool
Learned how to make belts and straps with paracord
Built a 17'x4' hidden room that's not hidden at the moment but presently is our home grocery store
Met other like minded people who live in the same general area

How low will it go? The no heat experiment

2011-12-28T09:42:00.000-08:00

I've had a no shopping for a month experiment and now the no heat experiment. As soon as the company left after dinner last night I turned the heaters off. We have two separate heating systems in the house, with a thermostat for each. One is in the family room the other in the hall. Their temperatures are 63 and 61 respectively. My bedroom is at 59. It's 35 outside right now and it's supposed to get up to 61 later today. I'm not expecting the house to warm up any!

What am I wearing? Just a pair of sweats (the sweatshirt has the sleeves cut off at the elbow) and a pair of slippers with fur on the inside. I have a wrap around my neck, which isn't any different than if my sweatshirt was a turtleneck. No hat, no gloves. My fingers are cold. I know those of you who live in the cold climates must be laughing! Cold at 61 degrees! The grand kids haven't noticed it's cold. I know people who will hang out in t-shirts and shorts in 61 degree weather. Lucky them. Me, I bundle. I like 80-90 and won't complain too much during the 30 plus days of 100 degrees.

I'm not turning on the furnace. I'm not putting a fire into the wood stove. Maybe I'll have a fire on New Years Day because it's a holiday. We'll see how we fare.

I wonder what the next experiment will be? No cooking with propane for a month? No, get that thought out of my head!!!!!

Gifts - this year and next

2011-12-27T17:06:00.000-08:00

This year my brothers and sisters and I decided we are going to do something different for next years gift giving. Instead of going out and buying gifts, something that I did not do this year anyway, we are picking a theme and the gifts will all be related to that theme. The big gathering is going to be at sister's house in San Diego. The theme? Food.

This is easy for me. I'm going to give everyone home canned food, some sort of perennial - probably asparagus crowns, and photocopied pages of some of my favorite recipes.

This year most of the gifts I gave were home made. I did buy my mother a book that I know she'll read, which was found at the dollar store. Otherwise it was home made all the way. This doesn't mean that gift giving was free. Not at all but I was able to take advantage of sales during the year.

I made decorated holiday themed handtowels and kitchen towels. These were made using a $3.00 hand towel, a little fabric, and some iron on interfacing.

I made fleece pajama pants for all the grand kids. Son said he wants some! Oldest daughter's four kids spent the night last night. It was hard to get the kids out of their pajamas today. In fact, grand daughter got dressed then changed her mind and put her John Deere pj pants back on! I let the boys, ages 14-17, pick their fabric from what I had on hand here at home. One picked a brown leaf camo pattern, one picked a green leaf camo pattern, and one picked black. They looked so comfortable that I decided to make a pair for myself!

Two nieces were very excited about their gifts. The oldest is a freshman in college so she got a blanket with her school colors. The younger one got peace sign pj pants. Their mom lamented that she wished she could sew and make things like this. I told her that the pj pants take about 30 minutes from start to finish. There are only a couple of seams and it's really hard to mess them up. It's a perfect beginner sewing project. I think that's going to be a gift to her this year - spending time teaching her how to sew.

Sewing is easy to do if you use a simple pattern, especially if you have someone walk you through the steps. It can be very expensive though. Home made doesn't necessarily mean inexpensive. Most fabrics are over $10 a yard, so waiting until a sale comes along is important. I've also learned how to take things apart and reuse the fabric. This makes things almost free!

The basic four foods

2011-12-26T22:41:00.000-08:00

I was reading an article the other day (can't tell you where because I can't remember) and it talked about how much food you should be storing for a year. I remember it was a LDS article because it was heavy into storing wheat. The article stated that 400 pounds of wheat should be stored for one person for a year. That's a lot of wheat, but I think this amount was recommended when the storage program meant the basic four: wheat, powdered milk, honey, and salt. Otherwise, if you store other food then you wouldn't need that much wheat.

Nevertheless, the article went with the 400 pounds and how much space that takes up. If you buy from the feed store in 50 pound bags then it's 8 bags. If you put the wheat into 5 gallon buckets, each bucket holds about 25 pounds. This means 16 - 5 gallon buckets for wheat for one person. As I said, for me, a years worth of food isn't 400 pounds of wheat. But it did get me to thinking about my "years" worth of food that I think I have. Do I really? Stored in the home store room, doubt it. If I include fresh food from the garden, the fifty fruit trees, the eggs and chickens, and the sheep, then yes we have a years worth of food "stored". If all I'm doing is counting 5 gallon buckets, then no.

Back to the basic four. My first three books on food storage and cheap eating were 1. Eat Well on a Dollar a Day by Bill and Ruth Kaysing, 2. Making the Best of Basics by James Talmage Stevens, and 3. Esther Dickeys Passport to Survival. I picked these three books up when I was in college way back in the 70s. It's Passport to Survival that emphasizes the "survival four and forty more".

The grocery store filled with 30,000 or so items can be pared down to your favorite 25 or 50 or 100 items. Make a list of your priorities and your food storage program will be much easier to manage. In Esther's case she listed them as follows:
Group 1. Wheat, powdered milk, honey, salt
Group 2. Peanut butter, tomato juice, vitamin pills
Group 3. Soybeans, lentils, dried green peas, millet, yellow corn, molasses, brown rice, yeast, vegetable powders
Group 4. Canned meat, figs, rye, sauerkraut, canned tomatoes, white rice
Group 5. Dried fruit, vegetable oil, evaporated milk, raisins, string beans

While I don't agree with everything in each of her lists, I do like the concept. Not that I would want to live on group one alone, but for under $150 I could buy a years worth of food. That's cheap insurance. I think I'm going to buy more wheat. It's under $25 for 100 pounds of recleaned wheat from the feed store. If you don't want to get it that way, for about $60 you can get 100 pounds of wheat from the grocery store. When I buy it I put it into the freezer for a week to kill off any bug or moths. Then I can put it into buckets.

After you have the basic life sustaining food in the first group then start adding to group two, then three, then four, etc. Your groups of food don't have to match, of course, but if you start off with group one no matter what happens tomorrow or the next day you will be prepared. It won't be a fun, variety filled diet, but you will not starve. In my group one I have honey but also white sugar. In my group two I have pasta and also spaghetti sauce. I have buckets of pasta and about 100 cans of spaghetti sauce. I also know how to make, and do make, pasta from scratch. Spaghetti sauce is also something that can easily be produced from the home garden. But still, these two items are in my number two group.

Back to wheat. Esther's book gives 110 recipes to make using the basic four items. It was probably close to 30 years ago when a friend of mine and I tried our hand at making all the recipes. She had more time than I and made almost everything. I think I made about 10 things. It's hard to live on the basic four when you have a pantry full of other food and a garden full of fresh food. It takes more work to make the food from scratch, and some things you have to start the night before but learning to make some recipes from the basic four would be a good skill. I know I can make a great loaf of bread using those basic items. I can also sprout wheat. I'll soak it and cook up a pot of wheat for breakfast. Oats are my favorite but wheat is good with honey.

How cold can we get?

2011-12-25T21:43:00.000-08:00

Here in the Great Central Valley the temperature will drop into the 20s for a dozen or so nights during the winter. During the day the temperature usually rises into the 40s or 50s, except when we are socked in with fog. On those days the highs may never get out of the 30s. I got to thinking, after spending the last two days in Southern California in a house heated to 75 with the outside daytime temperature in the 70s and the lows in the 50s. What was I thinking? How cold can we let it get before deciding it's too cold in our house? Yesterday morning, right before we left to head down south I turned the heater down to 63. When we got home today I turned the heater on for about an hour. I set it to 68.

We heat the house with propane and wood. The wood stove isn't too efficient. It's a 1970s Earthstove. It's got a fan to push the hot air into the house. It's works fine if I was just heating up the dining room and kitchen. If I have the thing blasting and using lots of wood then it will heat up about 1000 square feet of house to 70-75 degrees. Pretty good except the house is over 2000 square feet. My bedroom never gets the heat. In fact it's really cold in my room... and don't tell me it's because I don't have a spouse!

My bedroom has a cement floor and three sides of the room are outside walls. Only one side of the room is attached to the rest of the house and there's a closet and bathroom between the hall and the main part of my room. There's also a drafty outside door and two good windows that face to the north. It's just a cold room. I just checked the temperature with my Kestrel (a weather tool) and the bedroom is 58. My library, where I'm working now is 62, and the kitchen is 65. And the thermostat in the hall says it's 68. It lies!!!

For all who know me, I hate being cold. Even though the house is not kept warm (I don't want to pay the high cost of propane) I want to be warm. I'm usually found wearing a knit cap, a long sleeve shirt, a sweat shirt or knit vest over the shirt, and thermals of some sort under my pants.

OK, I'm rambling. At the beginning I wrote that I was wondering how cold we can let the house get. If TSHTF and I wanted to save the propane for cooking, it would last a long time if just for cooking and not heating the house or the hot water. But what about us? Can we stand not having heat? Would we eventually put blankets up to block off the dining room from the rest of the house just to keep that room toasty by using the wood stove?  Would we set up a tent in the middle of the house to keep our body heat in an enclosed area?

I am going to have a two week experiment. I'm turning off the heat on Wednesday. No central heat, no wood stove. I wonder how cold the house will get? We do get sunshine coming in the windows during the day. Will the house stay in the 60s because of the heat coming off of the people and pets? Will it drop into the 50s?   40s?  One good thing is that the home store food will stay fresher longer at the cooler temperatures! I'm going to save somewhere between $50 and $100 in propane!

Why not start now? We are having company tomorrow and Tuesday and while I'm up for the experiment, and the grand kids have no choice in the matter, I'm not going to treat our guests to the cold.  Wednesday starts the chilling experiment.

The Symbolism of Christmas

2011-12-23T19:43:00.000-08:00

I probably won't be posting is weekend because I'll be out of town. But then, I doubt that many of you will be on line reading survival posts! I am reposting what I wrote last year because I liked it. While you may not think so, this post does have a lot to do with being a survivalist. Your spirituality is more important than the rest of your prepping.

Many say that Christmas is an American holiday and everyone should celebrate it. They are truly wrong. It is a Christian holiday and those who want to celebrate Christmas as an American holiday because it's fun rather than a religious commemoration are missing the true meaning. We think the commercialization robs it from its religious values but so much of what is thought of as commercialism is truly symbolic. The meaning is forgotten by turning it into an American holiday.

The wood tree - the wood of the cross and life and resurrection.

A star on the top of your tree - the stars that the wise men followed. (same with the lights on your house)

Tinsel - angel's hair and therefore is a symbol of the angels who attended the birth of Jesus.

Mistletoe - is a symbol of life.

The wreath - the crown of thorns.

The red berries - the blood.

Gifts - to remember the gifts of the wise men.

More gifts - for the unselfishness of Jesus.

Each Christmas symbol does have religious importance. When you have these symbols in your home do not distance yourself from the religious significance and adopt them into an American celebration that is merely fun. This is disrespectful to the Christian religion. Teach your children well.

Merry Christmas to my Christian friends. Have a wonderful day. To my Jewish friends Happy Chanukah. So far four nights of family and friends celebrating religious freedom. Four more nights to go!

Non-electric kitchen items

2011-12-22T20:20:00.000-08:00

I love cooking. I have a almost 25 feet of shelves with cook books and cooking magazines. In the kitchen I have a really nice Kitchen Aid mixer, a blender, a small food processor, a stick blender, a pancake griddle, waffle iron, a dehydrator, rice cooker, crock pot, coffee maker, microwave, and the list goes on and on. Most of my appliances are over 10 years old, the dehydrator I bought in 1979 when the company was 6 years old! I don't have a bread maker. I used to but gave it away. I found it was just as easy and made a better loaf if I just made it myself. I also didn't replace the electric can opener. A swing-away is all we need.

Most people don't have many electric appliances because they don't have room for them all. That's not the case here. The appliances I use several times per month are stored in the kitchen. The rest go on the shelves in the garage. I don't buy every gadget. Some are stupid...the mix the egg in the shell gadget as an example... Because I'm concerned about the future, possibly without electricity unless I generate it myself, I have been thinking about my kitchen appliances. How well would I get along without the electric gadgets? So I started listing the gadgets that I have that only need hand power - then I need to figure out if those items would take the place of my electric gadgets or if I could use some other hand gadgets. Hint, hint...it's holiday and birthday time!

The Kitchen Aid: Not only does my mixer have the three mixing blades I have the shredder attachment, the pasta attachment, and the meat grinder attachment. How do I replace all of this? I have several whisks. I have mixing spoons. I also have a hand mixer. It's about 60 years old but it still works. I think they make hand mixers that are a bit more ergonomically better. I have a hand crank pasta maker. A friend of mine just gave me his mandoline slicer. I have an old (100 year old) hand crank meat grinder with different size grinding attachments.

The blender: This I would miss the most because I like to take fruit, ice, and a little sweetener and mix it up in the morning for a drink. I suppose the grinder would work and then I'd just mix it all together with a spoon. I'll have to work on this. Is there a hand crank blender? I do have a Hawaiian ice shaver. They turn ice into snow. On the other hand, if I don't have electricity I'm not going to be having ice that needs shaving!

The stick blender: Another of my favorite tools, especially for blending up soups. I could use the old hand mixer. I could also take the soup and put it into a ricer or the food mill that you rotate the plunger.

The rice cooker, crock pot, griddle, waffle maker, coffee maker: I can use the stove top with a pot, pan, or percolator to replace these. It sure is convenient to keep the crock pot going most of the winter!

The microwave: I'd miss the convenience. There's no substitute. Don't tell me about using a pressure cooker to cook fast. I don't do much cooking in the microwave; it's mainly used to reheat...fast!

I guess I'm pretty well set up in the kitchen if the power goes out. I can say that my new mandoline slicer is fantastic. My sister has had one for a long time and I never really saw the need for it since I had the food processor and the slicer attachment for the Kitchen Aid. But after thinking about no power it seemed like something I would want. My new slices doesn't adjust for thickness but it sure made great french fries tonight. I may be on the lookout for a used mandoline that does adjust for thickness.

Any other kitchen tools that people just love and don't want to live without?

Rising Feed Costs

2011-12-21T21:03:00.000-08:00

I've mentioned before that my sheep are being fed leaves from the mulberry trees and any other leaves that drop on the ground. They have some pasture grasses left to eat but if I was one of the sheep I'd not be very happy with the quality of food. Of course they'd prefer hay. And not just any hay...alfalfa. Last summer hay was going for under $9.00 a bale for alfalfa. Oat was cheaper and grass hay couldn't hardly be given away. Not this year.

Around here grass hay is going for $18. a bale, oat for $19 or $20 and alfalfa has been priced up to $22 per bale. That's 100-120 pounds of hay for $22! The sheep can eat leaves.

On Friday I had just pulled out of my driveway and had only gone about 1/4 mile or so when what was all over the road? A bale of hay that had fallen off someone's truck. It split open and was mostly on the side of the road covering an area about 25 feet in length. I pulled the truck to the side of the road and loaded the hay into the back of my pickup. I drove back home, dumped it into five wheelbarrow loads and put it into the barn. My sheep are very happy.

I needed some more food for the chickens. I called around to Tractor Supply and four local feed stores asking for the prices of hen scratch and layer pellets. One feed store beat all the rest by over a dollar per 50 pound bag. I drove to that store and picked up 7 bags of layer pellets and three of hen scratch.

I also saw they had recleaned wheat for $11 for 50 pounds. That's 22 cents per pound for wheat. At the grocery store it's 56 cents a pound. I bought a 50 pound sack for us. Now that I have the wheat grinder up and running it's easy to make whole wheat flour. Grinding it myself at this price is about 1/4 the price of buying it in the grocery store already ground. And mine's fresher.

I asked the person at the feed store why the hay prices are up so high. I was surprised by the response. Part of the reason is the drought in Texas, so a lot of hay is getting sent to Texas. That makes sense. But that's not the entire reason. She said that the farmers have exported a lot of the hay out of the country leaving not as much for us. Even this isn't the entire reason the prices are up. She said that a lot of the farmers are holding on to the hay. They are expecting the hay prices to rise even higher and plan on selling it to the hay brokers at that time. She said prices may go as high as $30 a bale!!!

I'm expecting a lot of animals to get put up for sale this winter due to the high prices. Either that or they will get sold for meat, which may lower the prices of meat. It might be a good time to pick up a couple of goats. I just hope they enjoy eating mulberry leaves. They aren't getting $20 a bale hay.

Nothing like a friendly chicken butchering get together

2011-12-19T22:15:00.000-08:00

Today was the day to butcher the chickens. Steve and Maureen came over to help. They gave me some pointers about their 40 pound turkey they butchered for Thanksgiving. I was to show them how I butcher chickens (the expert that I am because we went over to Bee Wench farm just two weeks ago). Did I remember all the steps? No. But I was close and it all worked out great.

In the morning I got everything set up. I didn't want to have to keep running back and forth when the next step came along. I set up the picnic table for the area to clean the innards out of the chickens. Two sharp knives and two cutting boards were on the table. I covered the table with a piece of plastic sheeting that I got from Lowe's. (When you are walking out the door of the store note that they have twine and plastic sheeting free for the taking. I always do.) I set up the BBQ to keep the pot of water hot. I hung up strings along the edge of the little shed to hang the chickens. Below each string was a bucket for the chickens to bleed out any additional and for us to throw the feathers into the bucket rather than have them fly all over the yard. I had a rubber cone from Pacific Telephone that somehow came into my possession years ago. We cut it down so the chicken could be put into it. I had the hose out by the table. All was ready. At least all that I remembered.

When Steve and Maureen arrived, two wonderful people that I've been communicating with on the computer but whom I'd never met in person until today, I showed them my garden and the animals. They laughed at the sight of my polish hen. She is pretty funny looking with a big white mop of feathers on top of her little black body. We had the grand kids catch the chickens. The ones needing butchering were gifts from my nephew's preschool class. They raised the chicks but then didn't know what to do with them. My sister volunteered that I'd take them. There were nine.

Three instantly drowned themselves in my water tub in the chicken coop. The other six grew up just fine. They were really nice looking chickens. I don't know what kind they were, something that I'd never raised before. Anyway, of the six survivors five were cockerels! This means baby roosters. You can't have a lot of roosters in the hen house. They will fight each other but worse than that they will continuously go after the hens. So they had to go.

When I was at Bee Wench farm they cut the heads off each chicken as they killed the chicken. I wanted to try doing it a different way. I was told that if you just cut the jugular vein the chicken's heart would still be pumping for an extra 30 seconds or so and this would help bleed out the chicken. The first chicken Steve cut. Then it was my turn. I think I butchered three and Steve two. Some of them the blood flowed out quickly, some sort of slow and we wondered if we did it wrong. The chicken was dead so we didn't do it too wrong!!! The last chicken bled out well but took a very long time to stop with the muscular movements. We took it out of the cone too quickly I suppose. It was a good thing that it was the last chicken that we butchered because if it was the first we would not have been confident with what we were doing.

After the chickens looked like they were done bleeding out we dunked them in the pot of hot water. Maureen made a fantastic suggestion that I will use next time. My pot was one of my hot water bath canning pots. It's big but not really big enough to get the water on all the surfaces of the chicken easily. Maureen said that we just needed the hot water, we didn't need to use the pot. You could use a garbage can or anything that's large and will hold water. I have several large buckets that I use for animal waterers. One of these would have worked much easier. I could have added some boiling water after each dunking to keep the water hot. Next time.

After dunking the chickens in the hot water we hung them back up on the string. I made a slip knot and while I was going to put both feet into the knot Steve suggested we only put one foot in. That way it would be easier to get the feathers in the fold of the legs. It was really easy this way. I called the grand kids over. Besides the two that live here we had two more that had spent the night. Their friend also spent the night but went home about an hour before we started on the chickens. The four grand kids had to help pluck chickens. Boy and Girl had no problem with this. They were eager to show everyone what a good job they could do. The older grandsons were not too happy about plucking chickens but they didn't complain. I don't think it's something they'd volunteer to do but they did tell me that they were happy to know how to do it.

When each chicken was plucked we brought them over to the table for the cutting. I guess we went too slow and should have done one or two at a time rather than having all five in production at the same time. The chickens were getting a little stiff and it wasn't as easy to get them gutted compared to two weeks ago at Bee Wench. Here's where I forgot a step. I should have had an ice chest filled with cold water. When the birds were done being processed they should have been put into the ice chest to immediately cool down.

After the birds were gutted we washed them out with the hose and then put them into plastic bags and into the refrigerator. But we really took our time. I think it took a little over two hours total to process the five birds from taking them out of the coop to putting them into the refrigerator. This evening I took them out and packaged them up with my food saver and put them into the freezer. While I was packaging them I was thinking that I should cut some of them up. Perhaps a bag with four legs, another with four thighs, etc. But I didn't. All five chickens went into the freezer whole.

I've been told by a hunter friend that you don't eat the meat right away. It will be tough. Instead you wait for several weeks and then cook it.

I forgot two things today. First was the ice chest. Second was the asparagus. I was going to dig up some of the asparagus plants to share the roots. I'm digging them up and transplanting them down the fence line in the front yard. One plant is giving me about 40 crowns for new plants so I still have a lot of plants to give away. We talked about digging up a plant but forgot when it was time for them to go. I'll be down there way in a couple of weeks. Since the asparagus crowns can be planted any time, although winter is the best time, they will be able to get them in the ground while it's still our "cold" season.

All in all it was a good day.

So much to do, so little time

2011-12-18T21:44:00.000-08:00

Being a working, single grand parent with two grand kids to raise and a third that I am semi-raising means there isn't a lot of time to do what needs to be done. Yesterday was an exception. We did get a lot done around here because the kids were cooperating. That's because today they were promised a trip to the arcade with their older sister who just turned 14. But only if you do a good job on the chores! So they did. They raked leaves from our yard and pine needles from the neighbor's yard. They cleaned their rooms and put all their laundry away. Boy even cleaned the bathroom. They wanted to know if I did anything or if I was just watching them work. Thanks a lot! I read them the list of chores that I did. That shut them up for a bit.

The biggest task I had was cleaning up the garage. After Army daughter moved out I started with the clean up, but it was a mess and I never finished. The garage is 1250 square feet. That's larger than my first house. It's larger than oldest daughter’s house. About half of it was turned into a disaster area with some of Army daughter's things stashed away. Then oldest daughter and son both cleaned out their houses and dumped things off in my garage. Then I put things into the garage. I ended up with an area about 10 feet wide and 15 or 20 feet long that was crammed full of stuff. I had to get through the stuff just to get to the shelves to clean them up. I have two bikes I'm going to drop off at Goodwill. The garage is clean. I even found my pressure cooker, which had gone missing in the mess of the garage!

The next door neighbors are on vacation for two weeks. They asked me to take in the trash cans, move their truck around, and just keep an eye on the place. Sure, we can watch the place and move the truck. As for the trash cans, I took them straight over to my house. Since they will be gone for two trash pickups, and in this area you get charged $50 a month if you subscribe to the trash service whether you have a pick up or not, I decided to fill their cans. We don't have trash pick up. I usually bring my trash over to oldest daughter's house, since she is in the city and the property taxes I pay on that house pay for the trash service. I also don't normally have much trash. If we are being really trashy we will go through a 33 gallon can in a week. Usually it takes two weeks to fill a can. The trash service around here provides 90 gallon cans! Anyway, I filled both their trash can and their recycle can. I cleaned stuff up from the yard, the barn, and the garage!

I still want to go through all the clothes bins again. I just recently went through the infant clothes because there was a call put out for clothes needed for a three year old boy and girl. We were able to donate quite a lot and still have enough clothes for a size three little one around here if necessary. But Army daughter and son both dropped more clothes off for me to store. I think their kids have enough clothes to wear everything once or twice and then put it into storage.

Today we didn't do much since the kids got to go to the arcade after Sunday school. When I returned home I found two grandsons in the backyard and one of their friends. 15 year old boy is working on his truck. I was given two free Toyota pickups that together almost make one truck. His goal is to have his truck working by the time he turns 16. I think he may make it. I'm really proud of him for taking on this project.

Now what were we going to do for dinner? Going from three people to six, with the three additional being teenage boys could be a challenge. Not really. I had taken out some antelope steak, about a pound total. I just sliced it thin. The friend had never had antelope. Girl told him it was armadillo. Not even close! I cooked up two pounds of noodles and made a sauce with milk, parmesan cheese, and parsley. I added a lot more flour to the bread dough. I put in a bunch of garlic into the dough. Quick, easy dinner. Everyone was full and we had one piece of bread and about 1/2 pound of noodles left.

Tomorrow I'm hoping to get the rest of the garden beds cleaned out and the plants given to the sheep. We are also going to butcher the chickens tomorrow. Our blog friends are supposed to come over around 11:00 to help and perhaps give us some of their pointers. They butchered their 40, yes 40 pound turkey at Thanksgiving! Looking forward to actually meeting them!

I also have a couple of conference calls tomorrow morning. People are trying to rush getting things done so they can take off the rest of the year. I expect to work some each day. We are only going to be out of town on the 24th and 25th, otherwise we'll be around. I'm hoping to do some work travel the last week of the month. I have a project about 100 miles from home that will take two or three days. Lots of friends and relatives have said they want the grandkids for part of their three week vacation. We'll see... Otherwise they will come with me and go hiking around while I work. The hotels in that area don't have indoor pools so it won't be as much fun as when I brought them over to Paso Robles two weeks ago.

There's just so much to do.

Grinding Wheat

2011-12-17T21:30:00.000-08:00

I was given a Magic Mill grain mill a while ago and up until today it's been out in the barn. I used it a few times when I got it but it is so noisy, big and heavy that it wasn't worth its weight. Instead if I wanted some flour from my whole wheat I'd use the hand crank coffee grinder. It's metal, not plastic and worked just fine. I got the idea to use the coffee grinder from reading The Long Winter, one of the Little House books. In fact, The Long Winter was what lead me to the idea of the hidden food storage room! If you recall, Almonzo didn't want anyone to take his seed wheat (or at least he didn't want his brother Royal to sell it). He built a false wall in their cabin and poured the wheat into it.

My mill is about 40 years old but still works.   It's big and heavy and is not something that I can store in the kitchen. I put the mill on a sturdy shelf in the garage. It is so loud that I am tempted to put in ear plugs. The mill has the ability to be hand cranked if there is no power. This is a real important feature. Of course, I don't have the hand crank. I looked on the internet and found it available for $23.99 plus shipping. I'm going to first see if I can make one myself. That's a lot of money to spend for the crank. On the other hand, it's not that much money if you have a bunch of wheat in your storage program and no way to grind it up! I have a years supply of food stashed away but I have very little wheat, instead just storing flour. I know that the flour has a shelf life of a couple years (I store it in the freezer then pack into mylar and buckets) and wheat can last forever. Wheat can also be planted to grow more and give myself an unlimited supply.

In some areas of the country it is illegal to plant wheat that has not been treated with fungicides to make sure that the wheat growing areas don't get infected and all die off. I'm not sure what the regulations are around here since it's not a big wheat growing area. Around here they historically grew barley. Anyway, if I wanted to grow wheat in an area 100 feet by 100 feet (about 1/4 acre) I would need about 20-25 pounds of wheat seed. I'd broadcast plant, which for me would mean putting the seed into the "whirly-twirly" and walk around with the seed getting spit out the front. Yield is anywhere between 2 and 15 bushels (60 pounds per bushel or between 120 and 900 pounds) for that 1/4 acre grain patch. The difference in yield would depend on the amount of rain we get, or the moisture in the ground, or if I water a couple times during the growing season. If I wanted to make a pound loaf of bread each day for the year I'd need 350 pounds of flour.  A 1/4 acre patch should be plenty.  I'm going to buy wheat seed next month and spread it in one area of the pasture that I will be able to fence off to keep the sheep out.

The property across the road planted oats many years ago. The oats grow each year, they mow it down and bale it up for hay.  Enough of the oats fall back on the ground that they don't reseed it each year. It comes back on its own. I wonder if the same could be said for wheat. That way the grain is available if needed but if not needed we don't have to go through the labor intensive activity to process it. It's said that doing all the work by hand from cutting and threshing will take about an hour or two for each gallon of wheat that you can put into your storage program. That's really labor intensive. I'd rather go to the store and buy it, if IT hasn't hit the fan and we can still go to the store!

The Road Home

2011-12-16T21:42:00.000-08:00

A little while ago Rudy at http://preparingyourfamily.com/ gave me the book The Road Home, written by Andrew Baze. I had absolutely no idea what the book was about as I hadn't read any reviews of it. Rudy assured me that I'd like it. He was right. Not only that but I'm going to give it to the grand kids and have them read it over their three week school vacation. This book is a really good book to get the discussion going for kids to get started in prepping.

There are five characters in the book, Dad, Mom, 14 year old son, 5 year old daughter, and bad guy. Dad and son go on a hiking/camping trip a couple hours from home. Mom and daughter stay home. A huge earthquake hits. Son has to step up when dad gets trapped and hurt. Mom and daughter are at home and bad guy breaks into the house. Mom keeps her cool while protecting herself and her daughter. All ends well.

OK there's a lot more to the story than that. It discusses basic preps like vehicles, first aid, keeping your wits, fortifying a room in your house, ham radios, full tank of gas, having water, carrying a weapon, and many other things. I didn't really learn a lot, but the book isn't a manual for a hard core prepper or survivalist. It's pure entertainment for about four hours. It is a good book for the younger kids through teens. I think my 9 year old grandson, 17 year old grandson and the other grand kids in between them would like the book.

There were many things I liked about this book. There wasn't any foul language. Dad fell over the cliff and hurt his ankle. No cussing due to the pain. Do you know how many children's books use foul language? Way too many. There wasn't any sexual content in the book either. Bad guy is in the house with mom and daughter. Nobody is around to help. Even when the bad guy was getting angry with the mom for not unlocking the closet door, the text read, "maybe he would even punish the woman for not letting him in." Not that he was going to beat her or rape her. No, just maybe punish her.

At the back of the book is a list of what the author calls "Bonus Content." Some items in this list include: What should be in your backpack? What is ham radio? What is 550 cord? How can a Leatherman tool be useful? If I was a young teen I'd read this list over and over. There is a lot to learn and it all sounds very exciting and interesting for the youngster. If the grand kids don't like it I'll let you know.

Half Price Certificate at G.I. Jim's

2011-12-16T09:52:00.000-08:00

For any of you local folks, today's Valley Daily Deals is once again featuring G.I. Jim's Surplus and Supply. The sale is only three days long! For $10 you get a $20 certificate that's good for a year. You purchase the certificate and print it up right on your own printer. http://valleydailydeals.com/d/gg7x64xx You can buy up to three certificates but Jim asks that you only use one at a time rather than all three on the same day. It's a nice store and if he doesn't have it in stock he can most likely get it for you. When you get there plan on staying a little while just to chat. Jim has a wealth of knowledge and may be able to answer any questions that you have about prepping, weapons, or home safety. And no, he doesn't give me a discount or free stuff for advertising his store. I just think it's a good store to shop at.

The bottom of the lake

2011-12-15T22:23:00.000-08:00

The other day I had the privilege of being one of a very few who got to go out into the local lake that is being drained. When full it has a shoreline about 19 miles long is about 2300 acres across the surface. Right now it's perhaps a five acre lake. We were able to walk as far down as we could, until we started sinking. Fortunately I only sunk in to my knee. We had rope with us to be able to pull someone out if necessary. Luckily it wasn't necessary. The muck had a thin layer of ice on it for the first hour which enabled us to get down to a boat that had sunk many years ago.

The tall posts that you see are remnants of the pier where the old steamboats used to pull up. Behind the present day dam is the old dam and saw mill. The old dam was put in as a mill pond.

Here you can see the old mill site and the dam.

Some water was backing up behind the dam and many logs and downed trees that had been submerged were now visible. Water was flowing freely through the spillway.

In this picture I was standing on top of the old dam. See that metal wheel stuck in the mud behind the building?

You can't tell in this picture but that flywheel is 8 feet diameter!

Of course, we were allowed to pick up items that we found and show them to the group but nobody was able to keep any of them. The landowners are probably going to pick up some of the artifacts and put them on display at the local museum.

Walking on the lake bottom brought into view many items that you would expect to find on a lake bottom. Namely beer cans! We found several anchors and some really heavy weights that we thought were for catching the Loch Ness Monster's relatives or something. We weren't quite sure why anyone would use some of the fishing gear that we found.

I was given permission to collect some of the junk that was related to the fishing. I brought home two fishing poles. There was a stack of about 50 that had been found over the last few months as the lake was draining, but the two I brought home I stumbled upon in the muck. Before you get too excited about the great poles, I have to tell you that while both of them are still usable, the best of the two was a "Scooby Doo" fishing pole. That can't really be topped, now can it?

In one spot an entire tray filled with bait and tackle must have fallen off a boat and into about 100 feet of water. There were four full jars of stinky bait and a little tackle box. That ruined their day, I'm sure. I got lots of lures and several pairs of sun glasses for the grand kids. We were able to walk where nobody has walked for over 100 years. I had a wonderful day. So why am I telling you this story other than to share the cool pictures?

Walking along the lake bottom made me think about the need for back up supplies. You know the saying two is one and one is none. Do you own one fishing pole? Do you have it wrapped in something that will float in case it gets pulled off shore or dropped out of your boat? What about your tackle? Do you have it all in one tackle box so when that tackle box gets dumped overboard you are left with nothing? Do you have a back up pair of sun glasses? Or regular glasses? Or keys?

Home grown sweeteners

2011-12-14T22:54:00.000-08:00

I once saw a recipe for making sugar from sugar beets. You chopped up the beets, cooked them in water, then used the syrup for sweetening. You could cook it further and then evaporate the liquid and leave sugar crystals. If you live in an area that can grow sugar cane then you can press that into liquid. There's got to be an easier way!

There are easier ways. The first are honeybees. I've just started thinking about bees, not only for the honey but also for the polenization that they provide. One problem with bees is a son-in-law is allergic to bee stings. So if no bees, then what?

How about stevia? Making stevia sweetener is really an easy process. Stevia is a plant that you can grow in your garden. According to Burpee a single plant will yield 1/2 pound of dried leaves. You can buy seeds or established plants from your local nursery.

I have two recipes for making the liquid sweetener, one using vodka and the other water.

Vodka recipe first! (with recipes with alcohol or alcohol free)

1/2 cup dried chopped up leaves. Don't powder the leaves. Put the leaves in a glass jar, then pour just enough vodka over them to cover. Put the lid on your jar, shake it up, and let it sit on the counter for a day or day and a half. Don't let it sit longer than that or it will be bitter. Filter out the leaves by pouring the extract through a coffee filter or cheesecloth.

With alcohol in your final product: Transfer the filtered extract into a colored glass bottle and store at room temperature in a dark place for up to 2-4 years.

Without alcohol in your final product: Gently heat the extract over low-heat for 20-30 minutes. Don't boil it or you will overheat it and destroy the sweet taste. The longer you heat the extract, the thicker and more syrup-like it will become. 15-20 minutes on low heat should be plenty of time. This cooks out the alcohol! Transfer into a colored glass bottle and store in the refrigerator for up to 3 months.

Water recipe!

Line the bottom of a 1/2 pint canning jar with a coffee filter. Put a teaspoon of ground (not quite powdered) dried stevia leaves into the jar on top of the filter. Add two tablespoons of boiling water over the leaves. Let steep for five minutes. Pull out the filter with the leaves. Let drain back into the liquid but don't squeeze the remaining liquid in the filter to get every last drop. This will make it bitter.
Once the liquid cools place it in a bottle that has a dropper in the lid. Refrigerate and use within a week.

Watching TV

2011-12-13T06:04:00.000-08:00

Rourke put up a good post about cutting the TV expenses by watching streaming video off the internet or subscribing to companies such as Netflix. http://modernsurvivalonline.com/ This is great if you have good internet reception. I don't. When I watch any video that's from YouTube it has to be watched in 240p. The 360p or higher stop every five or ten seconds. I'd go mad if I had to watch something that kept stopping. Because of the slow speed I can't watch much internet TV. I can watch some YouTube since many of them have different resolutions.

When people post clips to their blogs they forget about this and usually have things posted in 360p or higher. If possible I go back to the YouTube source to watch it in the lower resolution. If it's not a YouTube video then I am out of luck.

One of the comments that Rourke made wasn't right. He said by cutting the cable or satellite you can say goodbye to local channels. That's not at all correct. In fact, that's what we now have at home because I did cut the satellite in order to save the $50 each month. We have a $30 digital antenna. It picks up all the local stations in HD as well as many stations that I didn't know existed. We get about 20 stations including ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, CW, NBC Weather, France 24 (English speaking European News). This digital antenna is only hooked up to one TV because this antenna is an indoor one that I just haven't bothered to wire to the other two TVs. I could buy an outdoor digital antenna for about $50 and run it through the same wires that the satellite ran through in order to serve each TV. I am planning on doing something because I like having the TV in my room (although if it's on it's for about 5 minutes to check if it's a foggy day school schedule).

If we want to watch movies we either get them at Red Box for a dollar to rent, pick them up on sale for $5 or less, or watch one from Army daughter's, oldest daughter's, or son's movie collections. During the winter we will watch more movies than during summer time. Maybe one each weekend if the weather is bad.

The second biggest thing about cutting the cable or satellite is getting used to not having the sports channels, the big ticket movie channels, or the news channels. And the main reason to not cut the cable or satellite? You need to have something to focus your entire existence around and you like sitting on the couch.

Almost Free Dinner

2011-12-12T20:54:00.000-08:00

Had to write a second post tonight, again about cheap food. Tonight's dinner was really good and filling and very inexpensive. Army daughter and baby were over for dinner tonight. Baby is spending the night because son-in-law is sick. So we had four plus baby for dinner. For this meal baby ate a really good serving.

I made cabbage soup and rolls. The soup consists of home grown ingredients: tomato juice, raisins, and a head of cabbage. There was a pound of antelope stew meat in it although I usually use beef ribs. I also add a little sour salt (citric acid) and sugar. I put it in the crock pot this morning and it was perfect at dinner time.

I also made rolls. It was going to be a small loaf of bread using my basic recipe: flour, water, yeast, salt. I added a teaspoon of sugar. I made the batter up this morning and at about 4:00 this afternoon I put a little flour on the counter and kneaded a small amount of the flour into the dough to stiffen it up a little. I shaped it into a round loaf then changed my mind. I took out the cutting board and a sharp knife. I cut the loaf in half and then each half into three pieces. I then took the six pieces and put them into a sprayed muffin tin. I melted some butter (about a teaspoon total) and brushed it lightly on top of each chunk of dough. I let it sit for about five minutes then put it into a 375 degree oven for not very long, maybe 15 minutes. I can't tell you how long exactly because I didn't pay any attention to the time. When it smells done I take it out. I brushed another little bit of butter on top.

For the drinks I mixed about 2 cups of ice with two cut up pears, a banana that was getting over ripe, two persimmons, half an orange that I didn't eat at breakfast, and a little water to get it mixed. I then added just a tad of honey.

So dinner cost a little sour salt, sugar, flour, butter, banana, and honey. Maybe a dollar at most. Cheap, easy, and pretty sustainable with some minor substitutions if TSHTF and we couldn't get to the store.

Fresh Fish

2011-12-12T15:35:00.000-08:00

Fish is a cheap way to get protein. We haven't gone fishing in a while but we sure like to do so. The pond across the road has some fish in it but we've been so busy that we haven't gone over in a long time. I've also given thought to transforming the stock tank/pool into a fish pond to raise tilapia, although the pool may not be deep enough.

One nice thing about fish is that it cooks really quickly. This is good in any type of situation where you don't have a lot of fuel for the cooking. There's another way to eat your fish that doesn't take any cooking at all. You need to use fresh fish and also healthy fish. The first is just eating it raw. (Think sushi) The second way is ceviche. What is that? It's fish that's cooked in the acid of lemons or limes. You don't cook it with heat. If you like fish you really should try ceviche. You may read that you can only use one kind of fish. That's not true. It's better with a firmer fish but any fish will do. You can vary the recipe just like anything else you cook. Here's a recipe - cut everything into bite sized pieces. Do your own thing and use the ingredients from your garden. And if you are lucky to have your own pond or creek then you can truly make this meal completely home made.

One pound of fillet of trout, tilapia, mahi-mahi, snapper, shrimp, blue gill (anything!!) cut into bite sized pieces
about a cup of lime or lemon juice
a couple of tomatoes, peeled and chopped (I don't peel)
1/2 to 1 onion, chopped (I use white and red for added color)
1 bell pepper, seeded and chopped (or 1/2 red and 1/2 green)
pinch or so of salt
1/4 cup olive oil - optional
1/8 cup red wine vinegar - optional
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley or cilantro
1 teaspoon of powdered sugar - optional
1 finely chopped jalapeno pepper - optional
Rinse the fish. Put it into a nonmetallic bowl. Cover the fish with the juice, stir to coat it. Marinate for anywhere from a couple of hours to all day. Drain the liquid. Mix the rest of the ingredients and pour it over the fish and mix together. Serve cold with crackers or by itself.

Chicken butchering

2011-12-10T15:44:00.000-08:00

This morning we went over to Bee Wench Farm http://beewench.blogspot.com/ to help with the chicken butchering. The grand kids had a great time. They liked walking down the hill to catch the chickens and carry them up to the butchering area. Boy was carrying the chickens by the feet. Girl was cuddling it like it was a little kitten. When the chickens were brought up boy watched as each head was cut off. Girl didn't want anything to do with it. Each chicken was individually placed into an orange cone (like the ones used for traffic control). The narrow end of the cone was cut off to make it easy for the chicken's head to hang through the top of the cone. Someone would hold the cone up above the 5 gallon bucket and Mr. Bee Wench Farm cut the head off.

After the head was cut off, the cone was placed on the rim of the bucket. The chicken was able to start the bleeding out process right over the bucket. By being in the cone it wasn't able to flop around and make a bloody mess, although there were a couple of times that blood got on other people besides Mr. Bee Wench Farm. Boy was really please that the front of his pants had chicken blood on them!

Mr. Bee Wench Farm hung heavy string over the open patio cover. The chickens were individually hung to bleed. Each chicken hung over its own plastic bucket. After five minutes or so they were then dunked into the pot of hot water to loosen the feathers. They had a bbq with a side burner and were able to keep the water hot this way. The chickens were in the water for about 20 seconds. The chicken wasn't dunked until someone was available to pull the feathers. Now it was time to pluck. Both kids did fine on this although they weren't happy about the ones who "made little messes" after their heads were cut off. Boy thought that was disgusting. Sure. But cutting their heads off and pulling out feathers was just fine!

After a while girl got up enough nerve to go to the bucket where the chicken heads were being dropped into and the initial bleeding was done. Not too bad she thought.

I watched the first one get gutted and cleaned. Can I try? Sure. This was easy enough although I kept having trouble getting the lungs out. After a few I got the hang of it. Girl was watching, telling me that it was gross, yet playing with the cut off chicken feet! Then, miracle of miracles, girl wanted to try. (Boy was too busy playing with Bee Wench boy) She cut off the feet herself and got the nerve to cut open the chicken cavity and pull the innards out.

While we were there 15 chickens were butchered. We had leave for our two hour drive home, leaving our hosts with a couple more chickens to do on their own. We had a great time. I told the kids how pleased I was that they learned this new skill. After all, most kids their age, and adults too, think that chicken comes in the plastic bag from the grocery store. There is no connection between the clucking creature and the food we eat.

We have half a dozen chickens that need to be butchered at our house. Next weekend I'm going to see who wants to come over and we will have a butchering party. Sounds kind of morbid! OK, I'll include apple cider to keep us warm rather than having to warm our hands by holding chicken guts. Thanks Bee Wench Farm!

Where's north and south and how much more daylight do I have?

2011-12-09T03:44:00.000-08:00

My work truck doesn't have a compass built in like my personal truck does. Sometimes while driving on windy roads I get a bit turned around, especially if I don't have my GPS going and I'm not used to the area. I come to an intersection and I'm supposed to head in a certain direction. How do I know which direction is which?

What about if you are hiking on a trail that's brought you all around. You are told to take the trail off to the south. Fine, your trail has taken you all over and you don't know where south is. Are you sure that trail doesn't head more toward the west?

It's easy to figure out which direction you are going if you know where the sun is. Sure, it rises in the east and sets in the west. This trick is easier with a dial watch than a digital but it will work if you know what a dial watch looks like, and you have a clock of some sort on you. You take the hour hand of your watch and point it directly to the sun. Half way between that and the 12:00 will be south. You want to head north? Look at the opposite side of the face. That will be north. For example, if you point the hour hand to the sun and it's 4:00, then south would be 2:00. Half way between the sun and 12:00. North would then be facing 8:00. Pretty simple. If you don't have a watch with a face but you still know what time it is you can make your own clock by drawing on a piece of paper or scratching a circle into the ground.

What about if you are out and you have to head back to your vehicle? Do you know when it's time to turn around? How long until it starts to get dark? This time let's pretend that you are just visiting the area and don't know when the sun sets in this part of the country.

Face the sun. Extend your arm out and bend your wrist so your fingers are parallel to the ground. Measure the distance between the bottom of the sun and the horizon with your hand. If the distance is greater than your four fingers put your other hand underneath or above that hand. Each finger between the bottom of the sun and the horizon is 15 minutes. If you have four fingers between the bottom of the sun and the horizon the sun will set in one hour. If you have 6 fingers you have an hour and a half. Two fingers? Well, get a move on!

What's an emergency?

2011-12-08T09:26:00.000-08:00

Last night at bedtime boy took off his shoe to show me his toe. He had gone to the nurses office during school and she looked at it and told him to show me. He has an abscess that has a little pus in it. (Doesn't this sound like what I just read on Survivalblog last night?) I asked him how his toe got this little infection. When did it start?

Then we talked about going to the nurses office. Why did you go? "Because my toe hurt." I told him he is not supposed to get out of class to see the nurse unless it's an emergency. But "my toe hurt!" Not an emergency. If you broke your arm on the playground, if you throw up, if you are running a high fever, if you fell and stubbed your toe...those are emergencies for you to go to see the nurse. Not for a sore toe. You know why? Because it wasn't important enough to tell me, it's not important enough to become an emergency just because it's bugging you in class. Not an emergency.

So what is an emergency? I suppose his toe could be considered an emergency if this infection got into his bloodstream or something of that sort. In our state the term emergency has actually been defined. Why? Because our citizens voted in the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), with sort of mirrors the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA). If you are doing any kind of project that required permitting where the government (state or local) has any sort of say, then that government office is supposed to consider CEQA. So does just about everything that any government body does if it can affect view, noise, biological, etc. Yes, the government has to take all sorts of things into account prior to either going ahead with a project or giving the go ahead for someone elses project. Except, and there's always an exception, in an emergency. So, they had to define emergency. Otherwise everything would be an emergency and nobody would be looking at the environment.

Now before you start with calling me an environmental wacko or complaining about regulations, I will explain myself a bit. I do see a need for some environmental regulation. The problem is while something starts off well, it usually gets so screwed up by people with certain agendas that it ends up not at all doing what it was intended to do. In my job, during an emergency I tell the people I work with that all environmental regulation (at least state regulation, not federal) gets thrown out the window. The problem is after the emergency is over. Then regulation comes back into effect so if you can avoid something during the emergency it's much easier and cheaper to deal with it after. But my saying when I teach is "nuke it" if you have to, just tell me what you did so I can deal with it, preferably before hits the media.

OK I'm really off track. This started with boy's toe. I still haven't defined emergency. An emergency is an occurrence, not a condition. It's that simple. Let's use a leaking roof as an example of the definition. If a tree branch breaks and puts a hole in your roof during a rainstorm and rain gets into your house, that is an emergency. If your roof leaks because it's an old roof in need of repair or replacement and it loses some shingles from the high winds in the rainstorm and rain gets into your house, it may seem like an emergency to you, but not to me. That is a condition. You've put off roof repairs. Too expensive. Too much time. You are afraid of heights. Whatever your excuse. Your roof is in bad condition. No wonder it leaks. See where I'm going with this???

Boy's toe was not an emergency. It may be something that we have to deal with right away but it's not an emergency. It's a condition. He should have mentioned it to me a day or two earlier. He shouldn't have waited until he was sitting in class bored, which gave him time to concentrate on his toe.

A lot of problems we have in life are because we don't take care of "conditions", we tend to wait until they become "emergencies." Keep up on your home repairs, your health, and prepare by doing things like storing food, self defense items, fuel, water, and learning new skills.

Teaching new skills

2011-12-07T20:37:00.000-08:00

I told my kids that I was bringing the grand kids to a new acquaintances home to learn the fine art of chicken butchering among other things. My kids were not thrilled. They remember as children their task of butchering our ducks and chickens and said they don't wish that on anyone, especially their niece and nephew. Too bad, the grand kids are going to learn anyway.

About 25 years ago we used to butcher our chickens and ducks but I really honestly do not remember butchering, plucking, or anything. I must just be getting old. I'm sure that once I do it again it will all come back to me. If not, then it's one of those suppressed memories. Rather odd.

Yesterday I had some fieldwork to do. While I was out there the wife and young son of one of my coworkers came out to watch the bulldozers. The little one had a good time. The wife was talking to me and she said that she has no skills of value and she thought butchering chickens would be a good skill to learn. Just yesterday morning at breakfast she told her husband that she wants to learn how to butcher a chicken. I told the wife that I was going to PR to learn the fine art of butchering this Saturday! I told her that their family should come over to my house sometime in the next few weeks and I will pass on the skills that I will learn on Saturday.

It got me to thinking about the skills we pass on to others. Of course our kids learn: sometimes by watching what we are doing and sometimes by participating. Who else do we teach? Friends? Family? Neighbors? Not that there's anyone else I know who wants to learn how to butcher a chicken...

But what about our gardening skills? Shooting skills? Shopping, storage, and cooking? Sewing? House and yard safety? First aid? Do you have skills you can teach as a gift? The grand kids always make coupon books. They will make my bed, cook my breakfast, and do all kinds of things. How about a gift of teaching a skill?

Pudding

2011-12-06T06:52:00.000-08:00

The grand kids like pudding of every kind. Vanilla, chocolate, and rice are their three favorites. I will make rice pudding for breakfast if we have left over rice from the night before. It takes about 2 or 3 minutes to make to make pudding. It's really that easy. And no, it's not the instant pudding mix package.

It's easy to make your own mix to have on hand. The ingredients are all things you should have in your home storage. If you don't have these items then you'd better add them to your storage program! You still have to add ingredients at the time you make it, it's not one of those home made mixes where you just add water.

Vanilla Pudding Mix - makes about five cups of mix or about 20 servings
3 cups instant powdered milk
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 1/2 cups corn starch or potato starch (don't pack it down when measuring)
1 1/2 teaspoons salt

To make vanilla pudding
In a saucepan mix the following ingredients:
1 cup of the pudding mix
3/4 cups milk
1 1/4 cup water
1 beaten egg
Cook this together on medium to low heat. Mix constantly. Once it starts to thicken cook for another minute. Stir constantly. Turn off the heat.
Add in:
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 tablespoon melted butter (optional and I don't add it)

Chocolate Pudding Mix- makes about four cups of mix or about 16 servings
2 1/4 instant dry milk
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup cornstarch or potato starch (don't pack it down while measuring)
2/3 cup cocoa
1/4 teaspoon salt

To make chocolate pudding
In a saucepan mix the following ingredients:
1 cup of the pudding mix
1 cup milk
1 cup water
Cook this together on medium to low heat. Mix constantly. Once it starts to thicken cook for another minute . Stir constantly. Turn off the heat.
Add in:
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 tablespoon melted butter (optional and I don't add it)

The kids like rice pudding so once the vanilla pudding is done I just mix in some cooked rice straight out of the refrigerator. The cold rice cools down the pudding so they can eat it right away. This rice pudding is certainly not like the rice pudding you make when you steam the pot of pudding in water for an hour or so. The rice does not plump up. Since the kids don't know any different, only I do, they are happy to have it the way I make it. Sometimes I will put raisins and cinnamon sugar in just to change things up a bit. If you wanted to make the rice more soft and plump you can soak the rice in some milk overnight and add that to the pudding in the morning.

These two mixes are easy to make, perfect for a quick breakfast or dessert, and come right out of your food storage.

Brain Overload and no American Redoubt for me

2011-12-05T16:50:00.000-08:00

Every once in a while I work so hard that my brain actually hurts at the end of the day. Please no snide remarks about government workers not working...it's not that at all. Well today is one of those days that I didn't get any breaks for more than a couple of minutes and each phone call or email message was urgent and something that I had to respond to instantly. I never did make it out to the field. That's for tomorrow as long as it doesn't start off like today!

I had one call where I had to explain why I had to do what I was doing for a certain project. I like those...justify your job. Only normally the person is totally obnoxious and they don't want to really listen. This wasn't the case. This person was part of a committee and the committee asked why I had to do what I had to do on their project and the person calling me didn't know how to respond. All he knew was I had to go out and make an inspection and I only wanted to do it in good weather! So I explained and he was satisfied. He will be able to get the answer off to his other committee members and all will be happy.

It's interesting being a government employee in an era of hating government employees. And my job especially is one that may need explaining. The government does WHAT???? On the other hand, when I am in what I call "the wrong place at the wrong time" I've done things like being in charge of saving people's lives and property. So it all works out.

One of the things that I did mull over in my mind is this super push lately on the survivalblog site about moving to the American Redoubt. You know: Idaho, Montana, the Dakotas, etc. Sounds great other than it's COLD there and I don't like the cold. I've been told by a friend of mine with plans to move to North Dakota that you can always hang out by the fire. Sure but at some point you have to go outside to take care of the animals unless you live in one of those houses that has the barn attached - and it's heated! No, I'll stay in the Great Central Valley. I just want to make sure that I'm as prepared as can be in the location that I'm at.

I do have the bug-out place in the hills about an hour from here. With the kids still doing their activities in the city moving an hour and a half from the city and then having to commute in two times per week for the kids and between two and five times per week for my job just doesn't make sense to me. Perhaps when I retire when the kids are older I may think about permanently moving to the other property. The only upside to moving there is that it's paid for and this place that I'm in now is not. I'd be spending less money each month even with the added expense of the commute and building a decent house on that property when compared to the mortgage on this place. But my time has value in that the time I spend in the garden and on the animals would be used for commuting.

So I just keep working on this place here. I make it as safe and secure as time and money allows. Unfortunately, time and money are both sort of scarce!

It's going to be cold once again tonight. We have a freeze warning from midnight until nine tomorrow morning. I'd better go out and check the trees to make sure the coverings I put on are secure just in case the wind picks up.

Cold tonight and heating the outside air

2011-12-04T20:55:00.000-08:00

Around here the temperature rarely goes into the 20s at night. The record is in the low 20s and we average 21 days per year below freezing for the low.  Last night the forecast was that the temperature would dip below 32 for a full 8 hours and for five of those hours be 28 or below. Around here, 28 is the magic number because citrus will die back if it's under that temperature.  The full size citrus trees will have some branches die and it will ruin the fruit if the fruit freezes but it won't kill the tree. For the younger trees, a really cold night can kill the tree.

There are several ways to protect the trees. The large farms have wind machines that will stir up the air. Some even hire helicopters to do the same thing. You can use smudge pots in which you set afire to keep the area warm.  Some farmers run water. Small operations will cover each individual tree. That's what I usually do, cover each tree.

Because of the windstorm that we had on Thursday and Friday people who had trees covered lost the covers. I didn't have the trees covered for that reason. But this morning it was cold so in order to protect the trees I got up and turned on the water. If you wait too long to get the water turned on the pipes freeze. Not enough to burst them, just enough to block the water from coming to the house, or through the hose. Usually this happens around 6:30 and will stay frozen until about 8 or 9. Fortunately for me the water wasn't frozen.  I turned on two hoses and ran the water on the ground around the avocado and the three small citrus trees. The rest of the citrus: lemon, grapefruit, orange, and kumquat were going to be fine. The kumquat can withstand 28 degrees once the tree is established. The orange is large enough that if there's some die-back it won't be a big deal, other than it's got a full crop of oranges on it and I'd hate to lose the oranges. The lemon and grapefruit are next to the chicken coop. I'm figuring that there must be some heat coming from that! Also, there are a couple water jugs in the coop so that will help keep the temperature up.

How does running water help things to not freeze? The water that comes out of the well is 56 degrees. In order for it to fall to 32 and freeze it has to lose 24 degrees of heat. That heat will go out into the air so as the water cools the air heats. All I need is for the air to stay above 28 degrees so running the water will instantly warm up the surrounding air. After all, I'm turning the "heater" on to 56! I can turn the water on earlier in the night, once it gets close to 32. After all, the killer is if it's 28 for any length of time.

If we aren't going to get any more winds then this week I'll get the trees wrapped.

Today we did get some chores done. The grand kids pulled out the rest of the weeds by the blueberries and raked the pine needles up from the next door neighbors front yard. They then spread the needles around the blueberry plants. We will be gathering up a lot more pine needles as I'd like to make one of the garden beds more acidic. Plus, the more pine needles we put around the blueberries the less weeding we will have to do.

I transplanted three peppers into an indoor pot and also one tomato plant. I'm not sure how well the tomato plant will do. It's got a couple of little tomatoes on it so hopefully they will ripen up well and we can have fresh tomatoes all winter. I pulled up all tomato plants because the freeze killed the plants off. I was hoping to pull the tomato vines up and let the rest of the tomatoes ripen in the garage except they all died back from the freeze. I was able to pick about a gallon of tomatoes that hadn't frozen and burst.

The eggplants weren't completely killed off by the freeze but were looking pretty bad. I pulled one out and replanted it. We are going to try to grow it in the house over the winter. If it works out, even if we don't get anything from it I'll transplant it into the ground in the spring to give us a jump start on the eggplant. I picked about 2 dozen eggplants today. I cut one up and boiled it with the spaghetti noodles. It's a good way to get extra vegetables into the kids.

Heading out and not getting chores done

2011-12-02T11:10:00.000-08:00

We lost power yesterday for about a second. Army daughter for several hours. Some people in the city still haven't had their power restored but it should come on soon. A couple people were interviewed on the morning news. Most complained that they need their electricity. One person said he just turned on the generator and has two lights on in the house and the refrigerator and freezer are up and running. Smart but I'm not sure I'd want to advertise that I had a generator. Some things are best not discussed in front of a viewing audience of half million people. Of course, I don't know who the guy was so I'm not going to be one of the hordes of people going over asking him to put my stuff in his freezer or keeping in the back of my mind that this guy is the house to raid.

There was no damage at all to the bug-out place. In fact, they didn't get any wind at all! That's actually a good thing to know. Each area has a different microclimate and for that location to not get wind when less than 20 miles away as the crow flies we are getting blown away is pretty remarkable.

I have to go down south again. I don't expect to be gone too long. Just need to help out for a couple of days. I got everything here ready for my absence. Checked the animals water, gathered eggs, filled chicken feeders. It's too cold for yip-yip to stay outside at night and she's too stupid to go into a sheltered area. She's going to sons apartment for the time being. Hopefully the grandsons won't terrorize her too much. Big dog stays home. I just put out a bunch of food and she's good. She'd rather sleep in the house during the day since she's up all night on patrol but that's the way it goes. Army daughter actually has to do Army things today so baby is here keeping me company while I do my chores and get ready to head out.

I don't know if I'll get any chores done this weekend since I'm not sure when I'll return. The number one item on the list is to transplant more of the asparagus (dig it up, divide it, and then replant along the fence line) and the berries. Next weekend we are going to take a drive and butcher the chickens. While we can do that on our own, I've always found it good practice to learn from someone else. They can tell you what works for them and what doesn't and why.

Blowing in the wind

2011-12-01T15:54:00.000-08:00

In case you missed it, it's pretty windy in central and southern California today. So windy that the 75 foot tall tree in oldest daughter's front yard blew down. Fortunately it aimed right for the street and didn't hit anything. The back of her house didn't fare as well. A branch from the olive tree broke her bedroom window at 3:30 this morning. Good thing she and her husband don't have their bed under the window. Most Californians know that you don't place your bed under the window or below a picture, just in case there's an earthquake, or in this case the wind breaking tree limbs and throwing them through your window.

We fared much better here at my house. One of the sheds shed a portion of its roof. I thought I had spare metal roofing but I forgot it was used up when building the addition to the chicken coop. I can't buy any right now. It's too windy to get it home.

I haven't heard yet how the bug out place fared. While I'm hoping they were spared from the high winds (in some places 100 mph) a part of me was hoping the whole house would be picked up off the foundation and tossed about. I'm sure all's fine.

I brought the trailer over to oldest daughter's so they could buck up the tree and stack the limbs in the trailer. Just last week they were helping a neighbor of theirs cut down some of the neighbors trees so they already had two of my three chainsaws. That's good because their tree was blocking the road so they were able to get that part cleared before the neighborhood tried to get kids off to school. Looking at the size of the tree I'm going to get several cords of wood out of the deal. They have a fire place but they don't use it more than once or twice a year.

Several people have stopped by their house and asked if they can have wood. I suggested to son-in-law that instead of just giving it out to whomever drives by and asks, that he should suggest that they come out and help and then they can take whatever they help with. It's not that I want it all for myself, but unless it's for someone who isn't capable of working for it, I'd rather they work for it rather than son-in-law work for it and give it to them. Even if that means someone raking up the leaves or picking up the dirt clods that the tree flung around the yard as it was pulling its root ball out of the ground. Son-in-law had to take the day off work to do this clean up, others shouldn't take advantage.

Army daughter has to go to school tonight. Since she's leaving before her husband gets off work she dropped baby off here. It took her almost an hour and a half to drive the 17 miles because the signals were out so each signal became a four-way stop sign. At least it wasn't during commute time. I'm sure it would have taken another hour!

What if there weren't supplies to be picked up at the store for the repairs? I could rig up something to keep oldest daughter's fence up. I don't have any spare windows but we do have cardboard, heavy plastic, and duct tape. Good thing I have chain saws. And extra chain, fuel, and oil. Son-in-law bent the bar on the smaller of the two saws. He's going to pick up a new bar today, and some new chain while he's at it.

I need more metal roofing material. We have about 3000 square feet of barns and sheds under this type of roofing material. I have the roofing screws and nails for it but no panels. Some of the panels we have are the opaque white ones to let in light while others are the metal. I like the opaque ones except they only last about five years while the others will last a lifetime if they don't get blown off. Perhaps I should check to see if the rest of the roofing needs additional reinforcement. Just not today when it's windy.

Home Security System

2011-11-30T08:31:00.000-08:00

A year ago I wrote about my home security system. Since we went from having a landline to no landline, I changed the type of system we have to one that runs on it's own cellular calling system.
http://whatifitistoday.blogspot.com/2010/11/home-security-system.html The system we have is better when it comes to contacting the alarm company quicker. Also, if your system works by using the telephone line all someone has to do is cut the line before they enter your house. Have you seen the phone line that comes into your house? It's normally right outside the gate in your front yard somewhere. It's easy to compromise your system. Sure, it will still ring when someone breaks in but it won't send a call out to the monitoring people.

But having the monitoring people know your every move has gotten me thinking. Do I really want ADT or some local security company to know when I am home, when I am away, etc.? If you set the alarm faithfully then the company knows your exact schedule probably better than you do! This can be dangerous if they keep records, and I'm sure they do.

Our system has the away mode, the at home mode, and the off position. When you are away the alarm goes off when the door or window opens and also when there is movement in the house. The movement alarm is often set to not go off with pet movements. The at home mode allows movement within the house and will only go off when you go outside. You can also set the system to bypass a door or window.

We are going to change how we set the alarm system, just to mix things up with the security company. Instead of setting the alarm in the away mode when we are out of the house we are also going to use the at home mode. The at home mode will go off when a door or window opens, not when you have movement in the house. I'm assuming that most people who are going to break in are going to push in the doors or pry open the windows. If they break in that way then the alarm will still go off. If they break the windows and climb in through the break then the alarm system won't catch that. If I keep one of the doors bypassed but still locked (trying to figure out the least likely door the bad guys would enter through) then we can go in and out through that door yet it will look like we are there all the time.

It's a risk that I'm taking but do I really want the alarm company to know when I'm leaving and returning? Has anyone else thought of the alarm company or it's workers using the information for illicit use?

Keeping clothed at night

2011-11-29T21:37:00.000-08:00

Last year I found a few fleece blankets at the second hand store for a real cheap price. They looked fairly new. One was in a camo pattern. It's no longer a blanket. I made boy a pair of pajama bottoms tonight. They aren't finished. I need to take a pair of his pants out of his room tomorrow and measure the waist. Then I'll be able to put in the elastic at the waistband. This is a present for him so I couldn't just have him come in and get measurements taken.

About once a month the local fabric store sends me a flier with their latest sales. The price of material was ridiculous for fleece. On sale it was between five and eight dollars a yard. On Sale! This means a pair of pajama bottoms could cost around $10-15 for one pair. If I wait until Target has their sweats go on sale I can get a pair of sweat pants and have a couple dollars left over. Depending on whether the kid wears it out or outgrows it first, and whether there's someone to pass it down to will depend on which way is the best way to go. (I'd rather wear nice fleece than sweats to bed. - Yeah, you can tell I'm single!)

In my case, by buying the blankets, I was able to make his bottoms for about two dollars. They are thicker than what you'd buy at the store. I will also be able to make the length just right, with a hem that can be let down if he grows. I expect this pair to last for at least two winters.

This blog tonight isn't really about my great sewing expertise. I can, and have, made entire outfits for myself using just a needle and thread and no sewing machine. For these projects the sewing machine comes in handy. No, it's about keeping well clothed.

Living in an area that doesn't get snow, and even the bug-out place doesn't get snow, we don't have to worry about subfreezing temperatures too often. That isn't to say that we don't need warm clothes. Around here the fog will chill you quicker than a cold sunny day. But right now I'm thinking about sleeping clothes. We wear them. I don't know how many of you forget to put something on when you go to sleep.

I remember the Northridge earthquake. My sister was in college there and I was bringing a couple of my kids to her apartment in Northridge to spend a couple of days. When was this trip planned? The day of the earthquake. We put the trip off for a day but that was it. I brought the kids and left them there for a couple of days. I didn't want them afraid of earthquakes. I explained that the apartments that collapsed were the ones built over the underground parking garages. The apartments on solid ground for the most part came out OK. Now there was plenty of damage all around but since her apartment held up just fine I didn't see much of a problem with it. Of course, I was only 10 minutes away by car since I was working in the area, and could get back into the city with out much problem if needed. Even back then they all had "escape" bicycles and backpacks. Why am I bringing up this story? Because when the earthquake hit in the early morning most of her neighbors went running outside. Naked. While it sounds sort of funny, it wasn't for those who couldn't get back into their apartments. Oops. No clothes.

The wood stove at our house doesn't heat the bedroom area only the living area. I don't usually heat the house at night unless it's going to get down into the 30s at night. The main reason isn't the cost of the propane, wanting to conserve, or anything like that - although I do not like paying the propane bill! I don't like hearing the heater running while I'm trying to sleep. I'd rather it didn't run. I suppose it's good practice to not heat the house at night if TSHTF and I had to conserve my 400 gallons of propane for cooking or heating water (I would probably shut off the water heater since it's a propane hog!). This means extra blankets on the bed and warm clothes to sleep in.

We usually sleep in sweats or fleece. Fleece is much more comfortable which is why I buy up lightly used fleece blankets. Now if you buy childrens fleece PJ's from the store the material will be fire resistant. If you buy fleece from the fabric store some will be fire resistant but most will not be. The blankets probably aren't. But so what. The grand kids don't smoke in bed. Neither do I. I'm not worried about our cigarette ashes starting a fire. (OK we don't smoke at all, I was just being funny.) We don't use electric blankets so I don't see the need for the fire resistant material.

It's easy to make PJ bottoms. There are only two pieces. The right side and the left side. To make PJ bottoms you need to take your fabric, fold it in half, lay your pattern on the fabric and cut it out. You sew up each leg (the seam is on the inner leg). Then you turn one leg with the right side out and put it inside the other leg. You then sew from the center front to the center back. That's mainly it. Three seams. Then you turn over a bit of fabric at the waist and sew it. A friend of mine doesn't use elastic at all. She just puts in paracord and you pull it tight. I'd rather use elastic and paracord. The elastic keeps the pants up, the cord makes it adjustable. Then you sew the hem to the right length. (Girl doesn't like hers hemmed. It just sort of rolls up at the bottom.) If you know the waist size and hem length the entire PJ bottoms can be completed in less than 1/2 hour from cutting out the fabric to finishing up the sewing. What's my pattern? Their last pair that's too old and ripped up to reuse. I cut the pants along the seam and lay it out on top of the fabric. I just add a few inches all the way around to get the next size or two larger. I can also take some newspaper or butcher paper, tape the pieces together and cut out a paper pattern for the next time if I don't have an old pair to use as a guide. Tonight I did have an old pair that is ready for the rag box.

Why such detail about bottoms? Easy. If the SHTF, or if you just don't have anything appropriate to wear during cold weather you could easily make these. Kids grow out of things when you least expect it. You may not be able to run out to the store to pick up clothes for the kids. You could just go to the store now and buy some in every size. That way you'll be prepared. Or realize that they don't take too long to make, even if you had to sew the seams by hand. If you don't sew - LEARN.

Cheese, towels, batteries (can't get any more miscellaneous than that)

2011-11-28T21:26:00.000-08:00

My first order for freeze dried foods were shipped today. I ordered a case of cheese. Even though I learned how to can cheese, I still want a supply of freeze dried. It will take up a lot less space, although the price was quite high. I don't know the actual cost between the freeze dried cheese once it's rehydrated and fresh cheese. I remember figuring out the the white meat chicken came out to about $7.00 per pound as rehydrated meat. It's about $2.00-$3.00 per pound fresh. So about three times the price of fresh food. The shipment is supposed to arrive on Wednesday. I'm going to open one of the cans up and leave the others sealed. I ordered 1 Colby jack, 1 mozzarella, 2 cheddar, and 2 Monterey jack. Which should I open? Probably will open the cheddar. Then we can have a taste test between the fresh, canned cheddar, and freeze dried cheddar. I'll let you know the results.

Today at work I was given six battery adapters. They make a AA battery fit into a C or D battery slot. I'd never seen anything like it. Since I have an unlimited supply of AA batteries this is something to use for items that take C or D batteries but I rarely use the item. This way I don't have to keep a lot of C and D cells on hand, just the AA. I'm not suggesting everyone goes out and buys these adapters and stops using C and D batteries. Rather, it's for short term use items only. Unless you buy cheap junky batteries, a D battery should have more power than a C and a C should have more power than a AA. Therefore, if you are using the AA, it will provide the power but for a much shorter amount of time.

This evening I spent time working on gifts for friends and family. I'm decorating hand towels with Christmas fabric, Hanukkah fabric, and sports teams (not shown). It's a really easy to make gift and doesn't take that long to put together, especially if you have left over material laying around. I asked friends and family for their left over fabric. Items such as these just take a strip about six inches wide and about 18 inches long. That is stuff that's thrown away by other people as scrap.

If you want to make a gift like this the best time to buy the towels in during the January white sales. These towels shown are from Walmart. Not on sale they cost $2.97. On sale about $2.00-$2.50 each. A package of iron on interfacing costs .95 and will make 8 - about .12 each. You can make about 12 strips per yard of fabric. The fabric, if you had to buy it at $4.00 per yard would cost .33 per strip. Total each towel costs $3.42 if you pay full price for all the materials. Using scraps and sale towels these average about $2.25 per towel. I've made some for Thanksgiving, 4th of July, and other holidays and seasons. It's a cheap, easy to make, useful gift. OK, not really survivalist items but even in the darkest of days if you have simple little items such as these, it will make things better.

I haven't sewn the trim on yet, it's just pinned. Tonight I got the strips cut out, interfacing ironed on, the strips pinned to the towels. Tomorrow or the next night I will get them sewn on.

We finished up the Thanksgiving left overs. Tomorrow I have to start cooking once again. The kids have religious school tomorrow afternoon so maybe I'll throw a soup together for the crock pot before I go to work in the morning.

Burglar shoots 91 year old

2011-11-27T17:17:00.000-08:00

About an hour from here in a small country town of 4,000 a burglar entered the home of a 91 year old woman and her 63 year old daughter. It was about two in the morning. The women awoke and went to find out what the noise was. The burglar shot the 91 year old in the face. She is alive but the bullet embedded in her spine. If she lives through this it's expected that she will be partially paralyzed. The burglar took some things out of the house before escaping. The sheriff has no suspects and no motive and doesn't know if it was a random incident or not.

Last year the home of one of my friends was broken into while he was at work. He lives in a nearby town, population 11,000. The Christmas tree was visible from the front window. The side window was obscured by plants and the thieves broke the window and just walked in and helped themselves. They used a glass cutter and cut a hole so there wasn't the noise of glass breaking.

In the large city about a half hour from my house, just the other day a family was loading their kids into their car, which was parked in the front of their house. They turned the car on to get the heater going so it wouldn't be too cold. Two of the three kids were in the car. The parents came out with the third kid and noticed that their car was missing. Someone stole it with the two kids in it! The kids were let out of the car about a half mile from home. Their vehicle is still missing but at least nobody got hurt.

I've learned to lock the doors when I'm here. I used to brag that not only did I never lock the doors but I didn't even know where a house key was; it had been such a long time since the house was locked. My kids think I'm a bit kooky because I carry a handgun with me while I'm at home. Perhaps telling them this story may change their mind a bit. You never know what may happen, even in your own home.

Keep yourself alert. Keep your doors locked. Keep yourself armed.

Yardwork

2011-11-26T12:54:00.000-08:00

Today is the perfect day to get some yard work completed. The sun came out around 10:00 and it is sufficiently warm enough to wear short sleeves. The house is clean other than the bookshelves need to be sorted and arranged properly. That's a rainy day chore, or at least a foggy day chore. It's yard work time.

I went out to the garden and pulled up all the corn stalks. There was some dried ears of corn still on the stalks so those got separated and put into a can for winter use for the chickens. (I could also use it for food for us if needed! ) The stalks went to the sheep. Leaves have been getting raked...you rake one day and the next day you rake again, etc.

I am piling the leaves in the barn where the hay used to go. Hay is so expensive that the animals are not going to get any this winter. They are not worth $20 a bale! I have a feeling animals are going to go really cheap at the auction this winter due to the high cost of feed. Perhaps we'll pick up some more animals, feed them on our pasture and leaves and eat them next fall.

Since mulberry trees, in past decades, were grown specifically for animal feed I figure we should do the same. We have two huge flowering mulberry plus the three fruiting mulberry. We have a sycamore and another large tree that drops leaves. Army daughter has some nice deciduous trees at her house too. Oldest daughter doesn't have too many left since they've cut most down. Our leaf pile will just keep growing for the next few months until all the leaves drop. Certainly much cheaper than hay!

We don't have any pine trees on our property but the neighbor does. I'm going to have the grand kids rake up the pine needles and spread them around the blueberry plants. I'd like to get a six inch or so layer of needles. It would sure help with the weeds plus they like acid soil, which we do not have. Needles are cheaper than buying fertilizer, which I don't want to do.

A couple weeks ago boy cleaned out the sheep pen in the barn and put all that good compost into two of the garden beds. I spread that out and those will be ready for planting in the spring.

I pulled some weeds that had taken over the dead squash bed and found a zucchini! We are having zucchini for dinner. Another garden surprise! Watermelon yesterday and zucchini today. After the bed was cleaned out I put in onion seeds. I was hoping to have them started and plant the starts but I didn't get that far and since it's such a nice day out I just put in the seeds.

I want to pull up some of the pepper plants and pot them. They will grow in the house as nice houseplants all winter and can get replanted in the spring. I always plant new pepper plants but these will produce peppers first thing while I wait for the rest.

I have to cut back the berry plants. Perhaps that will be tomorrow's task. I am going to root about thirty berries so they can be planted in the front along my front fence. I am going to add another layer of cut branches first. Last years branches started off about five feet high but are now only about three feet high. They've settled quite a bit. We still have a large variety of birds hanging out in them. We will put another three or four feet on top then in the spring put in the berries. It will eventually be a 150 foot blackberry bramble. I'm looking forward to that! It won't get out of hand because I can mow the side that goes toward the road if it starts expanding too far and the animals will eat it down on the pasture side.

Heard about some work a friend of mine is doing at their ranch. They built a pond that they are filling with water being pumped from a windmill. It's stocked with fish. It has some solar aerators so the water gets oxygen into it. They are in the process of building a root cellar. After that project they are going to install solar panels. I'm not sure if it's going to be attached to the grid or not. They have lots of money for projects so it's always interesting to see what's happening at the ranch. They suggested that I put in a pond to raise some fish. I agree, I can't do it myself and can't afford to have someone else do it. Are they offering? If so, come on over! Otherwise, I better just get back to raking leaves.

Black Friday: A person who is happy with what they have is rich

2011-11-25T20:29:00.000-08:00

Did you go shopping? Hit the mall? I didn't. There is nothing that we need to make me want to fight the crowds. Imagine pepper spraying someone so they stay away from the DVD player that you want! Or getting arrested because you stuffed a video into your pants so you could pull your kid out of the crowd without him getting trampled. What about having a disagreement with the hair stylist leading to having an all out brawl in the hair salon? And this is supposed to signal the start of a holy time of the year? I just don't get it.

A lot of blog talk is about how people are reacting with the Black Friday shopping and trying to compare this to how people would react if the stores were closed and they had no more food. There would be trouble ahead but I think a lot of those people would be sitting around waiting for someone to provide food and supplies to them. There would be a calm before the storm.

The grand kids are spending a couple of nights at son's apartment with their little cousins. After all, they have school vacation so they may as well hang out with the cousins. I didn't have to work today; I spent the day cleaning the house. I oiled the dining room floor. I got totally surprised when I was out in the front pasture...I found two ripe watermelons hidden in the weeds. (Watermelons in November is unheard of!) I gathered a couple more bags of give away stuff. I also took a bag of toys out of the family room to give away. Is it because it's all going to get replaced with gifts later this month? NO!

Oldest daughter came over for a bit today with a grand daughter. She wanted to know what I was going to put into the empty space. Nothing. How much empty space do you have? I know, if you live in small quarters you may not have much. If you live in a larger home (we have over 2,000 sq.ft.) there should be empty space. An empty drawer here, an empty shelf there.

I used to shop on Black Friday. But I didn't shop for gifts. I'd shop for things that I wanted that were a good deal. The types of gifts I give aren't usually on the super sales. But I really have all that I need. Sure it's nice to think about things that I'd like to have. Something that I want. But if TSHTF today or tomorrow, nothing that's on sale for Black Friday would be something that I'd be rushing out to get. (Yes I know some of the freeze dried food places are having sales, I'm not counting them.)

Have you noticed that people who appear to have everything often times aren't happy?  Now, I'm not saying that if you are well off that you can't be happy. You can. I do know plenty of well off people who are happy. It's just that they don't derive their happiness from their stuff. Their happiness comes from their faith and their family. That's a lesson that people who don't have much money need to remember. It isn't about the stuff.

At Sunday school last week the grand kids brought home a video called Enough Already. They watched it a couple of times but I never did. With a quiet house I figured it was time for me to see it. I knew it was a cute video because they were singing "enough already!" The story is about a poor but happy family. The dad, mom, and five kids. They all seem to get along. Then one day dad comes home from work and one kid complains that he needs new clothes, another needs a new blanket, another wants a new bed, another needs something else, etc. Even the mom complains that she needs peace and quiet. They all beg, "just give me this, we'll never ask for anything ever again." (How many times have we all heard that?)

Dad can't figure out what to do to make things better. He asks for advice. He's told to bring the goat into the house. So he does. That certainly doesn't make it better. The next day he goes back for more advice. He's told to bring in a ewe. That doesn't make it better either. The next day a rooster. The next day a cow. Then a hen. None of this makes the family happier - imagine having all these animals in the house with them. They finally say enough. Do not bring any more animals into the house! The next day the dad took all the animals out of the house. Wow. The family had so much more room. The house was quiet. They were all satisfied with what they had after all. They realized that those who are happy with what they have are rich.

After my month of no shopping (almost) I have gone out a few times and spent money. I bought gas, milk and other groceries that were on sale, cheese for my cheese canning experiment, and a shelving unit for my hidden room.  What I'm not going to do is replace what I'm removing from the house with new stuff. Boy could use a few more pairs of pants but even then, I'm patching the knees in the ones he has.  He's just growing out of them. Stop growing!

I want my home storage to get us through until a time that we could grow or create what we need. It is enough.  When I think about things to buy, it's always geared toward helping us to get through whatever may come our way.   We are rich. Not because of money but because we are satisfied with what we have.

Sorry for the rambling. Shopping as headlines drives me crazy.

Canning Leftovers

2011-11-24T09:32:00.000-08:00

Happy Thanksgiving! No matter what your situation in life you can always find something to be thankful for. In fact, you have a lot to be thankful for.

Not that we will have any left over turkey to add to the soup but I'm planning on making soup with the turkey bones and any left over meat we may have. When I can soup I will make 1/2 in pints and 1/2 in quarts. If I don't have enough to fill my pressure cooker I still make the soup but I don't waste the space. Any time I'm pressure cooking for an hour and a half I will fill the extra space with beans.

Canning dry beans is really simple! You take your jar and fill it half way with dried beans. Then pour water over the beans and fill the jar to 1 to 1 1/2 inches from the top with the water. Put on the top and stick it in the pressure cooker along with the other items you are canning. The beans cook up just fine this way and will be ready to use when you need beans.

Tomorrow, since many don't have to work, a fun breakfast for the kids is jam filled pancakes. Made you pancake batter, pour it onto the griddle. When it's just starting to set put a spoonful of jam in the middle. Then pour more batter over to cover. Flip as normal. What a great surprise for the kids!

Happy Thanksgiving.

Do you raise turkeys?

2011-11-23T15:04:00.000-08:00

A couple of my blog readers raised their own turkeys this year. We did not. I have never raised a turkey although I've been tempted to shoot one at the bug-out place. This Thanksgiving is unusual for me. We aren't heading down to Southern California to celebrate with my brothers, sisters, or mother. I'm not having it at my house. Army daughter is holding the celebration at her house with my kids and grand kids in attendance. Oh yeah, I have to bring the tables and chairs or we will be sitting on the floor!

One of the things we look forward to at Thanksgiving besides the family and football is GOOD food. Fortunately, I am making the turkey and bringing it over. Son is making sweet potatoes. He usually puts too much sweetening in it but with marshmallows it's sweet anyway. Oldest daughter is making the pies. She is a fantastic pie maker. Grandson came over today to collect all my pie plates. Seems she is on a roll and ran out of pie plates! Army daughter is responsible for the green beans and rolls. The rolls are store bought. The green bean casserole can't be messed up, can it? Army daughter said she is making stuffing. OK, but I always thought stuffing is part of turkey making. I'll make the stuffing anyway because stuffing made inside the bird is always better than the extra you make outside the bird. I don't think she thought about potatoes but she did buy jars of gravy. Looking forward to it but it's just strange that it's not at my house.

With all the good food that we eat at Thanksgiving, and no, I'm not forgetting about being thankful even though I'm just focusing on food, I was wondering what it would be like if TSHTF and we were celebrating without electricity, running to the grocery store, everyone easily able to travel over here, or even pondering about Black Friday. (Run on sentence, I know!) What about the turkey? So even if there's not much semblance of society as we know it, keeping holidays is one way to keep some sort of state of tranquillity in our lives. So, what about the turkey? What would Thanksgiving be like if you had a chicken or fish? When we celebrate with my sister-in-law we always have a vegetable lasagna in addition to the turkey because she doesn't eat meat. So lasagna has become part of our tradition.

All the side dishes we eat are easy to replicate if you can't get to the store. It's really a very easy meal to grow or make from scratch. All except the turkey. What about at your house? How would you keep the holiday without the main attraction of the holiday (the turkey)? Would you think about raising turkeys? I never really thought about it. I just assumed that I'd shoot one, but then so would everyone else who has property by the bug-out place.

Moving food around and teaching Army daughter a thing or two about convenience food

2011-11-22T22:14:00.000-08:00

With our food storage being in almost every room in the house I've almost completed moving the "home grocery store" to the new hidden room. After the grand kids came back from Army daughter's house we emptied the rest of the garage shelves and loaded up the shelves in the hidden room. This evening I moved my filled canning jars into the room as well. The beans and boxed goods are still in the pantry in the mud room. They will get moved in the next few days.

I think the way we are going to use the new room is to only enter it every couple of weeks. I'll go "shopping" there and take out a couple weeks worth of stored goods. These will then be put into the pantry in the mud room. It will be much easier for me to keep inventory that way.

I was surprised at some of the food items that I found when sorting through everything! After all, not only was I shopping over the last year but Army daughter was too. Toward the end of their stay I was grocery shopping and putting all the canned goods into my bedroom closet. No need to put them with the rest, they weren't going to get used anyway. Army daughter, son-in-law, and baby moved in on Thanksgiving last year and left just a month ago. Army daughter didn't like home made food so a lot of my home canned goods from 2009 and 2010 weren't used, yet alone items from 2011. I can't blame that all on Army daughter. I did find three jars of tomato juice that I canned in 2006 and a couple of jars of plums from 2007. Oops.

I found six jars of jam. I don't mean my home made marmalade, blackberry, blueberry, strawberry, apricot, peach, or plum jams. I mean store bought jam. Strawberry and blackberry store bought garbage with ingredients other than fruit, sugar, and pectin. Have you read the ingredients in store bought jam? Some of the items don't sound like things you should be eating. But according to Army daughter, this is good stuff and you don't have to spend time in the kitchen making it.

Well those thoughts may have worked for Army daughter before but now that they are in their own house she's telling me that money is tight. Really? And what are you feeding that adorable little girl of yours? The $2.50 container of Gerber ready to eat macaroni and cheese still? No, she's now making her a frozen meal of macaroni and cheese. This was only $2.00 for 7 1/2 ounces. So it's almost twice as much food as the Gerber for less money. Such a deal! About a dollar per meal.

What about making it yourself? Even if you don't want to get the noodles for $1.00 a pound and the cheese sauce mix, or even shredded cheese, the frozen stuff isn't any different than Kraft macaroni and cheese for 80 cents a box. And that box is 7 1/2 ounces without any water added. It's probably close to a pound once it's prepared. Let's see, four meals out of one box (baby sized meals, not grown up meals) so it would cost 20 cents per meal.

Then Army daughter said that the frozen is so much more convenient. You are right, you spend 1 minute preparing that compared to 3 minutes for the boxed stuff. No, it takes 15 minutes to make it. Yes, but you don't stand there for 15 minutes do you? You take a pot out, fill it with water, and put it on the stove. 30 seconds tops. Then you go do something else. You come back and pour in the noodles and give it a stir. 15-30 more seconds. You may come back once to stir it or maybe you don't come back into the room for 10 more minutes. Then you give it a stir, drain the water, add the package cheese and a little milk. One minute, maybe one and a half or two. Total time spent: 3 minutes.

Let's compare the time it took to make the meal vs. the cost of the meal. Let's say you made something of this sort for the baby 20 times during the month. If you spent an hour total making 20 lunches of Kraft you would spend $4.00. If you spent 20 minutes making the 20 frozen meals you would have spent $20. That's an extra $16 dollars you spent to save 40 minutes! That equals $24 per hour. (From bulk the price would be $2.00, which translates to $27 per hour more!)

I then asked if son-in-law is earning $24 an hour. No? But you are spending $24 per hour when you make the frozen lunch for the baby rather than $4 an hour by making it "home made". Doesn't make sense to me. When looking at it from that perspective she said that it was really expensive to feed the baby that way. Will she change? Doubt it.

Working on the hidden room

2011-11-21T19:41:00.000-08:00

I took apart some of the shelves in the garage. I put them together in the hidden room and have started moving things in. It's going to be so nice to have the "home grocery store" all in one place! I had my food buckets in the closet in my room, food in the large pantry and also in a china hutch in the mud room, and then the main storage out in the garage.

Each shelf unit is four feet wide, 18 inches deep, and seven feet tall. There are six shelves per unit. All my shelving came from Fresno Rack and Shelving and Bakersfield Rack and Shelving (depending on where I was working that day). They are really heavy duty and a bit cheaper than the gorilla racks from the hardware stores. The nice thing about getting it from the shelving company is you can get exactly what you need. 12, 15, 18, 24 inches wide. Five, six, seven feet high. They will cut the shelves while you wait. I think they come with five shelves but I like six better. It's not a lot more to add the extra shelf.

I don't have any of the 12 inch deep shelving. The 15 is good for holding cases of canned goods but the 18 will hold a lot more even though it's only three inches deeper. I put 18s into the hidden room. I have 24 inch deep shelves in the garage but those hold the bins of clothes and other larger items (ice chests, etc). I'm setting up three sets of shelves to start. I have room for a fourth shelf since the room is 17 feet long. Since the room is only four feet wide, having 24 inch deep shelves wouldn't give me enough room to move around.  I can store other things along the wall if I want. We'll see.

I will be able to keep my inventory more accurate since everything will be in one place. It's going to take a while to get everything located in the exact place I want it on the shelves.  I don't keep the shelves in a hodgepodge. It's really orderly. I think about how things are set up in the grocery store and try to keep the same groupings.

This week's mission for the grand kids Sunday school is to be kind and helpful to your parents. It's a hard one to teach them about honoring your parents when their parents have been abusive. Wait, they aren't your parents anymore. I am! Their adoption was final a year and two days ago. You have to be nice to me! So today they came in my room at 6:00 to give me my menu for breakfast in bed. They wanted to cook pancakes, waffles, eggs, and breakfast muffins. How about a cup of coffee? They brought me that, spilling and sipping along the way. I got half a cup.

Let me sleep until 6:30 please. After I got up I headed to the kitchen to supervise the scrambled egg cooking. I told them there were left over pancakes in the refrigerator so no making more. They toasted some bread. They also got out some tortillas and put the eggs and some shredded cheese into each tortilla. They slathered it with taco sauce. Breakfast was ready. It was all pretty good except for the massive amount of sauce. Why do kids always think more is better? They get to check off helping with a meal.

We've had some ants in the kitchen the last couple of days. They aren't after anything, they always come into the house after the first few rainfalls. I've been spraying the area they come in with my bleach water. It seems to deter them. This morning boy told me that there were ants so he sprayed the area with the bleach water but he also wanted to trap them. He knows we have sticky pads to catch mice so he figured he can do the same for the ants. He poured a line of syrup on the counter so the ants would get stuck! I was surprised that I didn't get mad for more than a split second. I caught myself before I scolded him. Ants LOVE syrup. We need to keep all the food put away. Do you see I put the bowl of scraps for the chickens into the middle of the dishpan with an inch of water in the bottom of the pan? That's so the ants can't get to the scraps. They won't cross the water.

The grand kids are spending the night with their cousin. I'm going to go back to moving food. I have a lot of office work to do tomorrow then the kids are coming home and bringing the baby cousin with them. Don't think I'll get much food moving done tomorrow evening.

Canning Cheese Part 2

2011-11-20T20:51:00.000-08:00

On November 4th I posted a blurb about canning cheese. http://whatifitistoday.blogspot.com/2011/11/canning-cheese.html . I wrote about canning cheddar cheese and also cream cheese. Today I tried my hand at both.

I canned seven jars of cream cheese first. I got cream cheese on sale for $1.25 a box. This was even cheaper than getting it in the large size from Costco. I bought six 8-oz. boxes, using about 5 1/2 of the packages. I canned the cream cheese in 1/2 pint wide mouth jars. I should have used the regular jar but instead used these short jars that are about half the height of the pint jars.

It didn't turn out like I planned. The cream cheese oozed out while the jars were in the boiling water bath. When I pulled them out of the water when they were done they spurted out more cream cheese. According to the directions I had researched the cream cheese would not ooze out so you could take them out of the water right away. Either way the jars were a mess when they came out of the water. They all pinged so supposedly there is a seal. After they cooled down a bit I took off the rings. Cream cheese was caked on to the side of the jar and also stuck in the ring. I got the rings scrubbed out right away. What a mess!

I'm wondering if I tried to do this too quickly. Perhaps the cheese wasn't melted well enough before I put the lid on and processed it. Maybe this was caused by some air bubbles. I don't know. I will try it again, and this time I'll use the regular 1/2 pints.

Next was the cheddar cheese. This time I canned the cheese in pint wide mouth jars. I used the shredded cheese from Costco. It was the cheapest around, about $2.50 per pound. I put the cheese into the jars and heated them up in a warm, almost simmering pot of water. As the cheese melted I pushed more cheese into the jar. I decided not to fill the jars up too high since I didn't want a repeat of the oozing. I also didn't let the top 1/4 inch or so completely melt. None of the cheddar cheese was runny melted, just gooey melted.

I wiped each rim with a towel dipped in vinegar. I did this with the cream cheese jars, too. I put the lids on and placed them into the water bath. I boiled it for about 40 minutes. I decided to take the first one out quickly just to see what it looked like. It didn't ooze out like the directions said it may. But I figured I'd better not take any chances. I put it back into the water! About five minutes later I took all seven jars of cheddar cheese out of the water. They all turned out perfectly. As you can see in the picture there is a layer of oil on top of the cheddar cheese. I used the entire five pound bag of cheese for the seven pint jars.

I don't believe the cream cheese jars could possibly be properly sealed, not after the mess that each jar had on it. I'm putting them all in the refrigerator tonight. Tomorrow I'll open one to see what the rim looks like. If it's good then I'll put them into storage. If the rim isn't good, then maybe I'll try it again only in different jars. Otherwise, I think I hear a couple of cream cheese pies calling out to be made!

Noise at the back of the property

2011-11-19T20:38:00.000-08:00

Today the grand kids were excruciatingly slow doing their chores. I told them that they'd stay out after dark if necessary but that didn't seem to speed them up. They should have been done with what they needed to do by ten or eleven in the morning but since their cousin was here until noon they didn't get a lot accomplished early on. I told them to hurry with their chores because lunch wasn't going to wait all day. This of course meant that they may as well go slow because they could just eat fruit off the trees. Who cares about lunch. So, they went slow. No, slower...

At five thirty I told them I was making dinner and they needed to speed up or it was going to get dark out. Nope, they slowed down. Can you walk any slower??? It was just one of those days I guess. At six dinner was ready. They were still poking around so I said that I was sitting down to eat and I sure hoped that their dinner was still warm by the time they finished up and were ready to come in. At six thirty I opened the door and heard an adult talking. "Who is out there?" I asked the kids. They said they didn't know but they were worried about it. (They didn't come in to tell me because they were "busy" doing their chores) As soon as I opened the door the dogs rushed out of the house and started barking by the pasture fence. The noise was coming from the very back of the property. I realized that it was not on our property but down a ways. I didn't know if it was in the orchard behind us or in someones yard.

Lucky kids... "Get in the house, eat your dinner, and get to bed." I'm going to find out what's going on. "Do NOT go outside. Follow what I say EXACTLY." They did. After all, I was letting them come in to eat dinner before their chores were done!

It looked like people were walking around in the orchard carrying torches. I heard someone say "glad you made it". What was going on? Handgun in pocket, shotgun in hand, flashlight in pocket, wearing all black clothes I walked to the back of the pasture - about 1/4 mile from the house. There was no moon; it's coming up really late. It's supposed to rain tonight but the sky was only half cloud covered and the rest filled with stars. I was able to see well enough that I didn't need to turn on the flashlight. As I was walking out there I was wishing I had a night vision scope. Why didn't I have a spare couple thousand dollars for such a piece of equipment? Then I wouldn't even have to walk back there, I could just look. No such luck, I don't have a spare ten bucks let alone enough for the night vision equipment.

I could see a cross with torches surrounding it. We're in trouble, it's some sort of cult taking over the orchard. I still couldn't tell if it was on an adjacent property or in the orchard. As I was getting closer to the back of the property I was mulling over in my brain whether I should go over my back fence to get a closer look. I wasn't going to ignore this and walk away without knowing what was going on. I walked really quietly along the far fenceline. I then crossed my field, along one of the crossfences. When I was about 100 feet from the back of the property I was finally able to tell that the cross, torches, and now bonfire was a church party at the very back of the neighbors property, not in the orchard.

Thanks neighbors for letting us know you are holding a church event. I need to rethink what I did. If it was a group of "bad guys" I'm sure they would have had some sort of night vision equipment. Except with the torches perhaps it would have been too much light too close to where they were. I don't know enough about that type of equipment. At this season of the year my pasture is too low to hide me as I was walking. I would have been a dead duck if this really was a drug deal, cult, or a group of ner-do-wells. I could have gone down the road further, through an orchard near my property to get to the orchard behind my property. Or, I could have walked the road, which I did after I figured out that it was a party. In front of the neighbors driveway was a sign. Follow Me... to the end of the line!

Sis is getting more like minded and other thoughts

2011-11-19T14:02:00.000-08:00

San Diego sister came up for a visit for three days. Brother-in-law was out of town for a week so she figured why not take the drive up to the farm. Nephew loves playing with his cousins and her dog likes hanging around here too. While she was here we discussed how well they are holding up with brother-in-law having been laid off for the last three months. They went from a 6 figure income to her military retirement pay! Brother-in-law is designing some engineering project that he knows will take off once he gets the design and sample product make up. He's actually working on this full time each day, so it's just that he has no income, not that he isn't working. They are doing just fine. Fortunately for them they put money aside while he was working. They put extra money back into their house, with a pool, extra garage, all kinds of tools, etc. Brother-in-law can fix anything, build anything, etc. Other than living in the middle of a city of a million people they are trying to be self sufficient.

I've taught sister how to garden. She has fruit trees, grows tomatoes, potatoes, and other vegetables. They've even started landscaping with edibles. Their latest are the artichoke plants instead of other perennials. These produce food as well as look great!

Last year when I was down there we really discussed home storage. She took it to heart and put shelves in the garage and started stocking up. She made a chart showing the 50 or so foods she most often purchases. She then made columns for each grocery store she shops at: Albertsons, Ralphs, the commissary, and Costco. When she is up here she goes to Winco. She then spent a day at each store, not looking at the sale prices but the regular prices. She listed all the regular prices on her sheet - updating them every couple months. She then knows where to buy what she needs and is also more aware of prices on items that go on sale. Is it really a sale?

She shops every two weeks for milk - cheapest at the commissary or Costco. Other than that she shops about once a month, depending on what goes on sale that's on her list. If it's a canned item she will buy up to a year's worth at a time. Before she puts the canned or jarred foods onto her shelf she marks the date in a thick Sharpie. She says that her friends just think that's her "little odd thing she does" but she's really thankful for it because they've used a lot of this food storage during the last few months.

She doesn't really use much of the long term storage products. She's not that far into her prepping yet. But she will get there. Sister and nephew left right around lunch time for the trip back home. They were loaded up with pears, persimmons, pomegranates, eggs, eggplant, tomatoes, and peppers of all sorts. When she brings home these types of gifts it just makes her desire to prep a little stronger.

I contacted a semi-local reader of my blog and asked if they will instruct me on a few things. First and foremost, I'd like to watch someone butcher chickens then I'd like to do it myself. Although we used to butcher chickens and ducks when my kids were young I really don't remember how. Sure, I could just go out and do it but there are always good tips to learn from someone who does this regularly. That blogger also keeps bees. I would like to learn more about that as well. Keeping bees would not only be done for honey but more importantly to keep things pollenized. The only problem with bee keeping is that one of my son-in-laws is allergic to bee stings. He will work out in the yard at all times anyway but may be more apprehensive if they bees are actually living here. Anyway I hope to learn more. If I do, I'd be happy to share.

I also got an email from one of the local charities that a family is in need of clothing for infants through size 3. Sure we have that. Girls or boys I don't know so I guess I'll pull out some of the generic items and bring them into town tomorrow. So that's my main task for today, go through the clothing bins in the garage. I'll get things washed up and hung on the line. It's supposed to rain tonight so it all needs to get done quickly.

The Long Interesting Day

2011-11-17T22:42:00.000-08:00

Two interesting things happened today. I found human remains and I was the guest speaker at a dinner.

When you are out in the woods you never know what you are going to come across. Today was just one of those days. There were five of us working, and although I had asked if I could volunteer on this project I ended up in charge. That was fine with me because it was a learning experience for all. Then we found the remains. Just a bunch of finger bones actually, not an entire dead person. It's something that I come across fairly often (as compared to the general public) and not something that I get really excited about. The person that was actually in charge was in a tizzy. Who did he need to contact? How quickly? I reminded him what the law said so slow down, take a breath, and just go through the process. Not too long after that we were joined by two of the area's finest peace officers. Or rather one stuffy officer and one that was interested in our project and tried to help out. It was fun to get someone else involved.

On my way down the hill I stopped at GI Jim's. I told him that I thought the interview went well. He did too. He said that the crew was really interested in the whole preparing topic. One of them was Mormon and had grown up with a storage plan at home. I ordered some paracord and a net for the kids to crawl under. (Yes shopping, although I didn't buy anything, just ordered it) Jim has an interesting selection in his shop. He's always getting new items plus the regular type of items that you would expect in a surplus store. The nice thing about his shop is that if he doesn't have it he knows how to get what you need.

I had to rush back to town because this evening I was a guest speaker at a meeting with about 50 people. Good sized crowd but rather diverse backgrounds between professionals and students. I got to pick my topic so I spoke about mines. I've read so many blogs about if TSHTF you could go out into the woods and find an old mine to hang out at. You may even be lucky and find a gold mine. So while I discussed the 50,000 or so abandoned mines just in California I also mentioned things like arsenic, cyanide, mercury, and other nice poisons that you can stir up without noticing what you are doing until it is too late. I personally know of one person who is comatose from a cyanide poisoning at a mine two years ago, two twenty-somethings who hiked about 25 feet into a mine to succumbed to poisonous gas, and another friend whose son fell into a mine shaft and died. Mines are not places you want to hang out, no matter how glamorous they may seem.

Old Topographic Maps available

2011-11-16T13:57:00.000-08:00

I love maps. The USGS has their Historical Topographic Map Collection with different updates of the quad maps.  http://nationalmap.gov/historical/ It is available for most states. I used to wish that they'd get on the stick and finish up with California. Finally they did! Check it out.

I found the quad map dated in the 1920s where my house is located. This is before the road was even there. It shows several seasonal streams that I didn't know existed. It also shows some springs. Really interesting stuff.

USGS is continuously updating their maps. The last set of our state maps were completed in 2009 without USFS land included in the update.   Next year new California topo maps are going to include more complete surface water data and they will have completed their update of US Forest Service Lands.

Check out areas where you live. Check out areas where you may want to live. Warning - it's a really slow download but it will download. Just be patient.

The BLM has old documents available too. These include land patents, and my favorites - Government Land Office (GLO) maps and survey notes. Unfortunately the maps and survey notes are not available on line for California. They are available to be purchased for relatively cheap from BLM or you can look at them at university libraries or other such places. http://www.glorecords.blm.gov/search/default.aspx#searchTabIndex=0

Survival on the Line - the news report

2011-11-15T07:18:00.000-08:00

I read what was written on the new's website. I haven't seen the video yet. It sounds good though. They interviewed GI Jim. They also interviewed a person who teaches basic prepping. Then they had a young family live without their electricity for 24 hours.

CBS47 Special Report: Survival on the Line

Almost done with the month with no spending and a henhouse full of roosters

2011-11-14T20:09:00.000-08:00

I haven't gone "shopping" in a while now. October 20th was the last day I went to a grocery store. I didn't really go shopping, just picked up some stuff that I know always goes well in the pantry. I haven't completely stayed away from the stores. I haven't shopped since the last time I wrote stating that I shopped. This past month I purchased lunch on the day I was out of town, sticky trays to catch mice, and the extra 2x4s for the hidden room. I also ended up buying another box of wood screws - just in case. Turns out I didn't need them after all. But, they will go into the storage. This has been all I've purchased.

My tank of gas is getting a bit low for my tastes. I have some gas stored at home and will use it to fill up the truck when it comes time to finally fill the truck. (I rotate the gas that I store - I usually buy gas twice a month and once a month I will first fill with the stored gas, then fill the stored gas and the rest of my tank)

The chickens food is running rather low. I didn't buy new food for them before I started this so it's been two months since I've bought food. I'm surprised it's lasted this long.

We've had a couple of things break in the house that I haven't been able to fix yet. First is the light in the laundry room. I'm going to have to replace the entire fixture since I don't like the type of bulb that's up there now. The entire house needs to be put onto regular standard sized light bulbs. The kitchen however, does have under cabinet lights that are the long fluorescent bulbs. I don't have any spares for those. I should get some because I do like those lights.

Girl broke part of the coffee pot filter basket. Rather, she lost the washer that fits on it so the coffee stops dripping when you pull the coffee pot out before the entire pot has brewed. I don't have a replacement washer. I do have an entire second set of coffee pot parts. I like the type of pot that I have. It wore out many years ago so I bought a new brewer exactly like the old one. I got rid of the main contraption but kept the pot, baskets, grinder, etc. So, while girl broke one item, I do have another to use until I am able to get a replacement washer.

We are going to run out of the cheese. I have some more in the freezer but I'm not going into the freezer to take it out. During this exercise I learned how to can cheese and will buy cheese in bulk once the month is over and can it.

Milk. Since it's getting cool out each night (in the 40s or high 30s) I've been making a quart jar of milk each night before I go to bed. It's going outside in the pot cooler. No, I haven't unplugged the refrigerator! I gave the kids powdered milk for dinner last night. No chocolate or strawberry Quik, just plain. They didn't even blink. Perhaps they didn't notice since it's been three weeks since they drank real nonfat milk out of a gallon jug?

Meat. I have gotten into the freezer for some meat. We have been eating very little, with meat not being the main dish but as part of a combination of foods. A couple of times we did eat the meat plain. The other night we had a deer roast. It was probably a pound and a half and it lasted three meals. Tonight we had antelope. It was the first of the antelope that we were given. This package weighed a little over a pound. We ate half the package. We would have consumed less but I nibbled (a lot) while I was cooking. So much for this making three dinners. Two will be all. I used the package of dehydrated chicken, which I thought was great. We've also used canned beef and canned chicken. I even used flavored TVP in the split pea soup. All in all, we have probably consumed half our normal meat allotment, which is probably less than most people eat anyway.

Last spring my sister gave us nine baby chickens. Three drowned in the water container. Chickens are stupid. The other six are doing great except five of the six are roosters. This is not good. They are starting to crow and just yesterday two of them got into a bit of a cockfight. Sister is coming over this week with her little one. He's going to get to see his chickens from preschool but after they leave I think those are going into the freezer! We butchered chickens and ducks when my kids were younger. That was over 20 years ago. I guess it's time for me to remember and then teach the grand kids the fine art of chicken butchering.

Normally, when I have old chickens I put them on Craigslist and can sell them for more money then it would cost to get stew hens from the grocery store. Of course, I'd sell the hens and buy already processed ones. I'd make a little money and I wouldn't have to spend the time or make the mess of slaughtering chickens. I think we need to get back into chicken processing here at home. It's a skill that I no longer have but would be very important in a SHTF scenario.

Survivalists Interview Coming to Local TV Tomorrow

2011-11-13T15:56:00.000-08:00

In September I was contacted through this blog by one of the local TV reporters. She wanted to know if she could interview me. She said she wouldn't identify me or my location. I said NO. But thanks. I did direct her to GI Jim's, which is a local surplus store. Jim, I was sure, would give an interview. I wondered who else would do so?

Tomorrow night we will find out. I was watching TV last night (free TV from the digital antenna) and they showed a teaser commercial for the 11:00 news tomorrow night on Channel 47. Survivalists and how they are preparing. They showed GI Jim. Good. She followed up on what I told her to do. They also showed a couple with two young children. Not smart on their part.

I don't stay up that late but I may just to watch this. I'm sure it will be on the internet on Tuesday if I decide to go to bed on time.

Here's their promo: http://www.cbs47.tv/content/special_features/special_series/story/CBS47-Special-Report-Survival-on-the-Line/KuXPQad340yufZfFacxt0g.cspx
Natural and financial disasters... trouble can strike at any time. But can you avoid devastation with a survival plan? Preparing your family for the unknown. Groups of survivalists are preparing for disaster. CBS47's Evy Ramos is On Your Side with what you can learn from the average family and from the extremely prepared. Monday at 11:00 p.m. on CBS47 News.

Cleaning out closets

2011-11-12T19:31:00.000-08:00

Today was one of those days that I decided to attack a closet. Not just any closet mind you, but MY clothes closet. That is a hard thing to do. After all, if I only lose a little weight I'll still fit into that. Never mind that it's 20 years old and the style is not coming back, or if it does at least I can say I'm too old for that style and will never wear it again!

I really haven't changed weight in quite a few years so most of the stuff in the closet fits. It's more of a matter of why is it in there if I never wear it? A couple of years ago I got rid of a lot of clothes. How? For the new year I turned all the hangers the opposite direction. Normally I hang the clothes straight in with the hook of the hanger facing the back. I changed every single hanger so the hook of the hanger faced the front. When I wore something I would replace it back into the closet with the hanger facing toward the back. That way I didn't have to remember if I wore something or not. The hanger told the real truth.

The next new year, after going through a summer and winter, I removed the clothes that I hadn't worn. Almost... After all, the fancy stuff rarely gets worn. If I was only invited to one formal occasion then of course only one of the four or five fancy things was worn. No, have to keep those. What about a sweater that I'm sure I'll wear next time. Must have just run out of cold winter days. OK, I'll save that one too.

The problem is it's now coming upon the third new year. There were still a few things that had the hanger facing the wrong direction. It's time to take them out of the closet. I know. I can give it to a grand kid. Yes, that's what they all want, the clothing from a 50+ grandparent. Sure. Why didn't I think of that when my grandparents were going through their things? Why? Because I wouldn't be caught dead in most of their stuff.

Now there are some things that the kids do like. They all clamor over my work t-shirts and sweatshirts. I pass those out as gifts. Funny, used t-shirts are cherished. And besides, they look really cool in them and all their friends want my work shirts too. Sorry. I have 11 grand kids, that's enough to pass my clothes to. I buy new uniform clothes each year. I get paid a uniform allowance, and unlike others I don't pocket the money and wear crappy looking clothes. I actually buy new t-shirts and pants each year. Keeps Americans working, you know.

Back to the closet. There are some clothes in there that are really fun looking clothes...if I was 20! Some probably are from when I was 20. There are tank tops, t-shirts both short and long sleeve, pull over shirts, button up shirts, sweaters, and other tops that don't even fit into a category. Funny thing is, during the weekend I'll wear old uniform t-shirts so I don't wreck my good ones. How many good ones do I need?

Also, I've been thinking a lot about the colors of my clothing. Do I want to go for the bright, loud clothes? Do I want to go for the non-camo but still fade into the background clothes? I remember my CCW instructor reminding us that the more we look like we are ready for a fight the higher on the list of "strike that person first" if the bad guy really wants to start a fight. Better to not stand out. No camo (unless you are actually going hunting), no political sayings, no "my guns are bigger than your guns", or anything else that will let you stand out.

When I packed for my trip to Hawaii, I took a bunch of clothes and wore only a few. I washed my clothes and hung them up to dry. When we went back east during the summer it was the same. Only a few select pieces, other than the fancy stuff for the wedding, but guess what? They were generally the same pieces that I had packed for Hawaii. This should be telling me something.

My clothing stash is getting pared down. Sort of. I still want to be able to make sure that I don't run out for myself and the grand kids. What if today was the day? No more shopping trips to Target, Sears, or Penney's to pick up new, non-stained clothing for us to wear. If today was the day I don't think it would matter if the clothes were new and non-stained. After all, it wouldn't be like we'd be going anywhere that would need fancy clothes, now would we? Besides, I can sew and I do have a supply of fabric and notions.

I know. I will take out half. That's right. Half (work clothes not included). Not half my jeans. Half my pants. I have four pairs of blue jeans. They all stay. What about the 5 or 6 or 10 pairs of woolen pants? What about the 5 or 6 or 10 pairs of other pants? All I wear are jeans. I only have jeans for my pants in the trailer for my backup, bug-out clothes. I certainly don't need fancy pants if I'm bugging out, do I?

Sweaters? I love sweaters. I hate being cold. But even though I wore all but two of my sweaters when I had the hangers switched around, some of them I picked solely because the hangers were switched around and I wanted to make sure that I wore everything. If I was just choosing, I would not have picked "that" one. Some of those can go too. Some can be put away for the grand kids...but not too many. Unless I want to wait until they are in their 40s or 50s to give it to them.

T-shirts? I have some hanging up in the closet but I have a drawer filled with t-shirts. I have to keep three or four or five of the red ones. You never know how many grand kids I'm going to take to a football game. Red t-shirts, red sweatshirts. Show school spirit even if I didn't go to FS. Other than red, do I really need two or three of each color? I have some friends who make blankets out of their old t-shirts. They cut out the front design and use it as a quilt square. That's a great idea if the t-shirts were really that important. They aren't. I can tell you a story behind each of my t-shirts that has some fun picture or design but is it worth giving up my nice wool blanket or my real hand pieced quilt for a t-shirt blanket. No. Then the t-shirts need to go.

The pile of clothes is large enough to completely clothe one or two other people. It will all go to charity.

Dear Veteran. Thank You.

2011-11-11T07:31:00.000-08:00

Dear Coast Guard Dad (of blessed memory), Navy sister, retired, Navy brother, Army daughter, Army son, Navy step-son, and all those serving in our nation's military past and present,

Thank you very much for your service to our country. I am honored to know that you are part of my family. While most of the country just sees this as a paid day off, I know that your dedication to the safety and well being of this country plays a huge role in that ability for the rest of us to walk around blindly thinking that freedom is free. It isn't. Freedom comes at a huge cost. I truly appreciate your sacrifices to keep us free.

For those veterans no longer with us, I'm sure you are watching over us. For those of you who are retired or still on active or reserve duty, may you have a safe year.

Dinner for 11

2011-11-10T21:20:00.000-08:00

Last night after a delicious dinner of deer roast, potatoes au gratin with bell peppers, pears, bread, and cinnamon sugar tortillas, I got everything cleaned up then started on dinner for tonight. I took out the two quart crock pot and threw in everything left over from the refrigerator. There wasn't much so I took a cup of split peas and some TVP bacon pieces and put them into the crock pot too. I started a loaf of bread and decided to get creative. After all, I always say you can't go wrong with bread once you have the basic recipe down.

The kids like cold cereal so on days that I'm particularly lazy I will pour them a bowl of something. We have the cereal in clear containers on one shelf. Some of the cereals are highly nutritious with very little sugar. Other cereals are what I call candy cereal. About half the time the kids want the candy cereal the other half they want the good for them filling stuff. One cereal that I like to snack on is mini-wheats with the sugar coating. I'm not sure what they do to the sugar but it's more like dried frosting. At the bottom of the container is all the crushed bits of cereal and sugar. I always save the crushed stuff at the bottom of the containers. When it starts looking particularly unsightly I take the bits out and put it into a canning jar.  Normally, if I'm making granola or even oatmeal I'll throw some of the sugary crumbs in as an extra flavor and texture.

I had about 2 cups of crushed mini-wheats with sugar frosting in the jar. I thought, wheat, sugar, sounds like normal bread ingredients. I should put this into my bread dough. So I did.  I didn't put anything else unusual into the dough. Just flour, yeast, salt, and warm water. The dough had a strange smell (perhaps it was the dried frosting?) but the texture and flavor was alright.

With the dough made I headed out to the office. At noon Mr. and Mrs. Bug-out renter called from my house to tell me they were there and wanted to work on the storage room a little more.  I left the office and headed home. This meant they were staying for dinner. I knew baby grand daughter was staying the night so now dinner needed to serve five big eaters and the baby. Not a problem. A half gallon of soup and bread will be enough. Then oldest daughter called at one.  She's dropping off her four kids for the night. They don't have school tomorrow and they wanted to play with their cousins. Never mind that her husband doesn't have to work tomorrow so they were going to the movies tonight. That's four more for dinner including three teenage boys. Then Army daughter called. The baby wasn't spending the night after all. Oldest daughter was going to drop off the baby along with her four but the baby would be picked up by son-in-law around 5:00.  Son-in-law called at 5:00 and said he'd be here in an hour. You may as well eat over. Everyone else is.

Somehow a half gallon of soup and a loaf of bread was not going to be enough food for ten big eaters and a baby.  Around here, to fill up the kids I will make rice, potatoes, or noodles almost each night. In order to stretch the soup to serve 10 plus baby, I made a big pot of rice. Four cups of rice, eight cups of water. I also made a huge pot of vegetables. For dessert they had leftover cinnamon sugar tortillas that I made yesterday. Everyone left the table full. We still have some rice left but the rest they devoured.

After dinner son-in-law, baby, and Bug-out renters left. It's just me and six grand kids. The big ones cleaned the kitchen. The little ones made forts to sleep in. Me, I'm going to curl up with a good book and go to bed. Morning comes quickly and they'll be starving once again.

Heating the house

2011-11-09T14:18:00.001-08:00

Two nights ago was the first night I had a fire in the wood stove. It's an insert into the fire place, and a top of the line Earthstove at that...from the 1980s, which means it's really inefficient. It sure would be nice to pull it out, block up the hole, and have a wood stove that would actually radiate heat all around it rather than just out the front with the blower. It's still better than heating the house with propane except the heat goes into all the rooms but my bedroom.

My room is usually 10 degrees cooler than the rest of the house during the winter and 10 degrees hotter during the summer. It's a great room but a really lousy design unless I have unlimited money to spend on heating and air conditioning. I don't. Instead, I just throw on another wool blanket during winter.

I remember growing up in Southern California during the energy crisis of the 70s the saying was 55 at night 65 during the day. This was the temperature in your house not just the speed limit. The speed limit was reduced to 55, remember? Anyway, if we were cold we'd put on a sweater or sweatshirt. Maybe even a knit cap. How about now? I remember this past year. Army daughter kept this house at 78 during the winter and 72 during the summer. I could never understand that.

I admit, keeping the house in the 50s in really chilly. But the house will stay in the mid 60s without really trying. If I do any baking, when I'm done I'll leave the oven door propped open. I may as well let the heat into the house rather than let it stay in the oven to slowly cool down. I also open up the curtains to let the sun shine in. We close them up at night.

We all have sweats to sleep in. Boy would rather wear shorts and a tank top now. Later in the winter he will put on two pairs of sweats at a time since it's cold out. He will sweat all night. It's sort of funny the ideas they get into their heads.

Properties that have their own woodlots or are near the forest have an advantage over those who either have to heat by gas/propane/kerosene or electricity. Bug-out place has plenty of trees. The adjacent properties have downed trees. It's only 500 feet off the national forest. Too bad my wood stove is old.

Around here the only time it's unbearably cold is when it's fog season. Then it's not just the cold but the moisture. I will run the wood stove each day then.

I've read about pellet stoves. The wood pellets are cheap (and can be used as super cheap cat litter) and you can also use dried corn if you have a bumper crop that you aren't eating or selling for ethanol. The problem is that they run on electricity but it's supposed to be very little electricity as compared to the heat output of burning the pellets. I've always wondered if it could be hooked up to a solar panel and run that way? Then it would be something that could heat the house be self sustainable if you have a garden and can grow corn.

So how do we get through winter without running out of propane like last year when Army daughter ran us dry in February? If TSHTF I'd rather use the propane for cooking than heating the house. It would last a very long time and would be very helpful in conserving our time and energy in having to cook with other methods.

We can shut off rooms to conserve the heat, which I used to do before they were filled with grand kids. Heat with wood. Cook lots of soup. And put on a sweater.

Light fixture died

2011-11-08T12:35:00.001-08:00

When you don't spend money for a month you start to realize just how often small things need to be repaired or replaced. About how often do you change a light bulb? Or replace the filter on your heater/air conditioner? Fix a leaky faucet? Or in my case this week, need to replace a light fixture?

Several years ago my house went through a major remodel/addition. Because I live in a highly regulated state and county, the county planning department had their say in things as minor as the type of light fixture I could wire up in my mud room, laundry room, bathroom, and closets. This was before outlawing regular light bulbs, so in order to make sure that the overhead lights in those rooms used fluorescent bulbs specialized lights were required. These light fixtures use large circular bulbs that don't last long, flicker, and are overall just a lousy product. But they were required. So in they went. Over the past couple of years two of the fixtures, in the mud room and in a closet, failed and were replaced by regular overhead lights. I went to OSH, looked for the cheapest ceiling fixture and replaced the faulty fluorescent lights.

This week another of the overhead lights died - this time in the laundry room. I switched out the bulb. I have about 5 or 6 spare bulbs...you know me, must have replacements. Unfortunately, it's not the bulb, it's the fixture once again. Only this time I don't have a spare overhead light fixture for the laundry room. There's a window in the room but that doesn't do any good once the sun goes down. I can rig something up, like the brooder light for the chicken coop. Or a flashlight. Or just use a couple night lights. I'd prefer a real ceiling light.

Put this on my list of items to buy: New light in laundry room, my bathroom, my closet. I know those two others are going to go out so I may as well have the new ones on hand. For now though, the room will be dark since I'm still in my no shopping for a month exercise. This doesn't qualify as an emergency or a great shopping deal that I can't pass up. This is one of those inconveniences that I have to live with.

Several years ago I saw chandelier for the dining room. It was non-electric and used candles. I thought it was a great idea but didn't want to replace the ceiling fan/light that is in there now. I wish I had gotten it anyway. It would have been a great light fixture to have on hand. I have oil lamps and candle lanterns for each room in the house should we have a power outage but an overhead light like the chandelier would have been great. Ikea has one but it's really junky. I'd rather have none.

Outdoor "wildlife" camera

2011-11-07T18:42:00.000-08:00

A several years ago a friend of mine showed me his digital wildlife camera that he was using to track deer. I had seen these cameras out in the woods but had never had one explained to me. They are great tools for the wildlife biologist, which he was. He didn't work for the same outfit as I do but our offices were across the hall anyway. We used to discuss field work a lot - or at least every time both of us were at the office, which was rare considering we avoid the office.

I was thinking about when the mountain lion took 20 of my sheep. I had a hard time convincing the county trapper that it was a mountain lion. With a camera like this I would have had proof.  I asked him to order one for me. I knew that he could get a good price since he had ordered many. I gave him some money and that was the end of that. Actually, it was, since he passed away not too much longer after that in a tragic accident. I never got the camera.

Since then the office has been pretty much just used as a storage room. Nobody wanted to be in that office. There were people in that office this afternoon and they were rummaging through the cabinets. I walked in and asked if anyone has inventoried the cameras. If so, was there an extra because my friend was supposed to have gotten one for me.  The person said that he has inventoried items but since he didn't have a starting inventory he had no idea if there were any extra or not. He has said that a few have gone missing since his initial inventory. I told him that one was supposed to be ordered for me and I didn't know if it ever was. He opened the cabinet and showed me a closet full of cameras. Since they were all inventoried he couldn't just give me one but he gave me one anyway and had me sign for it. Not a problem. At some point it will be straightened out but for now, I can't believe I have a camera.

It's a Reconyx PC-900 HyperFire Professional High Output Covert Infrared camera. Would I ever spend the money on something like this now? No, but this was when I was single, no grand kids that I was responsible for, and had extra money. So, now I have a camera.

The camera can take two pictures per second. It takes 3.1 mega-pixel photos. During the day the pictures are color, at night monochrome.  It will print the date, time, temperature, and moon phase. Ok, I don't need to moon phase...  When it takes the pictures at night there is no flash or red light. You can walk right by the thing and you won't know it's there if you have it strapped to a tree.  It's pretty well camouflaged except I was given a Python Master Lock with a bright yellow lock. Yes, that's covert...

It takes 12 AA batteries but can also be plugged into a power source. The batteries are supposed to be able to take 40,000 pictures although that seems completely far fetched, but they also suggest using lithium or NiMH rechargeable ones. It works in -40 to 140 degrees.

You can set the camera up for motion or time lapse. The motion detector works when the animal (or human) is a different temperature than the ambient air temperature. There are two different horizontal detection bands and six different width zones within each band. You can put up to a 32GB SD card in it for the memory card. I only have a 2 GB which is supposed to give me 5,000 pictures. That will do since it's not going to be in a remote location where I won't be able to download the card often.

I'm looking forward to setting this up. I'd like to see what creatures roam around the barn at night. The infrared flash works up to 50 feet or so at night. It would also be a good tool to see if any human creatures are roaming around when I'm not there.

Cheap dinner

2011-11-06T17:56:00.000-08:00

Today we went to Army daughter's house for lunch. She has discovered Costco! Lunch was spinach ravioli's on top of a spinach salad, which was spinach, tomatoes on the vine (what can I say, she still refuses home grown stuff), and feta cheese. It was good but also filling. Needless to say, when dinner rolled around tonight I wasn't hungry. I can't pull that one on the grand kids...sorry, I'm full so no dinner tonight...

Unless you are one of those people who needs to have meat every single night, and I am not one of those people, then a dinner like this is not only delicious but also good for your wallet. On Friday I made a huge amount of homemade bread. Since Bug-out renters were eating over for two days, bread does wonders for keeping people full. We still had over half a loaf left. The chickens are still laying more eggs than we can keep up with. Eggs and bread equals French toast!

I used four eggs, added a little cinnamon sugar, and beat them well. I didn't add milk because I didn't need to extend the eggs. If I needed more eggs I would have just used more eggs. I sliced the bread into 1/2 inch thick slices. Each piece was soaked well. The egg didn't soak all the way into the center but about 1/4 way in. I had some butter that's been sitting in the butter bell for the last week. I melted about a teaspoon and spread it on the griddle with my silicone brush. Then I cooked the bread on both sides until it was a golden brown.

The next door neighbors gave the grand kids a jar of pomegranate jelly that they made yesterday. I put a spoon of the jelly on toast. That with a glass of chocolate Quik powdered milk and dinner was served. It was delicious. Cost? Probably less than a dollar total for the three of us.

The hidden room

2011-11-05T15:42:00.000-07:00

The new room is coming along. Mr. Bug-out renter and I are building it. We got most of it framed then realized that we miscounted the number of 2x4s that would be needed. Although I bought two or three more than planned, for some reason I figured it at 24 inches on center when it's 16. I don't have enough nice pieces out in the barn so I'll have to buy a few more. I need some for the cross pieces and framing around the door.

Good lesson for my not spending for a month exercise. Having to do a repair that takes some 2x4s could become a big problem although at this point in time the lumber is not very expensive. At least they are available and I have the transportation to run into town and buy more. I did not stop everything that I was doing today to go to town though. Instead the project came to a halt. I'm going to town on Monday when I go to work. It will have to wait until then. This is alright since Mrs. Bug-out renter wasn't feeling that well and wanted to go home.

The room is four feet by 17 feet. The door is two feet from the side wall so I can put shelving along the side if I want. I was hoping the room would be 4 1/2 or 5 feet deep but between the electric plugs and the window, 4 feet was what it's ending up as. I will probably put one or two 24 inch deep shelves and 2 or 3-18 inch deep shelves. With the shelves 4 feet wide that will cover 16 feet of the back wall. I can put a a foot deep shelf behind the door or just leave it as a 1 foot by 4 foot space. I don't know what I'm going to do for lighting: there's no window but there are three electrical outlets. Maybe I'll put in a motion detecting light that will turn on when the door opens. That will come in time. Although I'm going to buy some 2x4s to finish the project, I'm not buying anything extra during the month of no spending.

The list of purchases over the last two weeks will be:
$4.25 - lunch with coworkers when I was traveling
$10.00 - 20 sticky trays to catch mice
$15.00 - 5 2x4s
It's nice staying out of the stores.

Canning Cheese

2011-11-04T21:25:00.001-07:00

Thanks to Kris at http://krissimplyliving.blogspot.com/ for providing me with two different websites which give directions for canning cheese. http://www.backwoodshome.com/advice/ajo061220.html provided directions for hard cheese such as cheddar although it was stated that mozzarella cheese was also canned this way. http://canninggranny.com/?p=38 gave directions for canning cream cheese. Both websites made it clear that these are not government approved methods but that they have worked for them and others they've talked to. I'm going to try both. They are easy and will be another valuable item to put into the larder. I still want freeze dried cheese in the storage too.

Here are the directions for both the cheddar and cream cheese canning. For both recipes you need to sterilize the jars by putting them in boiling water for 20 minutes. Sterilize the lids too, which I always do when I heat them before putting them on the jar. Use 1/2 pint jars for the cream cheese and either 1/2 pint straight side or pint wide mouth jars for the cheddar.

For the cheddar cut the cheese into one inch square cubes and place them into the jar. For the cream cheese spoon four to six ounces of it into the jar. Put the jars into a pan of simmering water on the stove. Do not have the water very high, perhaps half way up the side of the jar at most. You don't want water getting into the jar. Once the cheese starts melting add more cheese to your jar. Let that new cheese melt too. Continue to add cheese until it's about 1/2 inch from the top. Be careful that you don't get cheese on the rim. If there's grease on the rim the jar will not seal. Before you put the lid on wipe off the rim of the jar. Use a damp cloth with a little vinegar and water. The vinegar will help cut any grease that you accidentally got on the jar rim.

Boiling water bath the jars, with the jars covered by at least an inch of boiling water: cheddar was listed for 25 minutes (although other sites did list up to 45 minutes) and cream cheese for 40. Do not take the cheddar cheese out of the hot water too quickly. Let the water cool down a little first or you run the risk of having some of the oils get sucked out and ruining your seal. For the cream cheese you can take it out of the water when the time is up. Use your jar lifter to remove the jars and set them on a folded dish towel on the counter. Make sure they aren't set in a breezy location.

The directions for the cheddar cheese said when you are ready to use the cheese put the jar into a warm water bath for a few minutes to warm up the cheese a bit. Then slide a knife down the side of the jar and you should be able to dump the cheese block out of the jar. For the cream cheese, just open and scoop like you would from the package.

Sounds easy. Around here cream cheese will go on sale for a dollar for an eight ounce package. I think I'll stock up and can the cheese. Same with the cheddar.

How's the no spending going? and Storing Cheese

2011-11-04T09:48:00.000-07:00

Just wanted to give an update on my no spending experiment and my not using the refrigerator experiment. The no spending is doing pretty well, the no refrigerator part of it, slight failure.

I have spent a little money since I started this exercise. None of the hotels/fuel costs are being counted since those are work related and work is footing the bill. Again on the trip I just returned from last night I didn't purchase food or drink during the day and a half I was gone. I bought the lunch last week when I had to travel down south, but I knew that before I started this exercise. Wednesday night I did make my only purchase that broke the no spending exercise. Don't forget, prior to starting this I did make the exception that if something came on sale that was "too good to pass up" then I was going to buy it. No reason to not save money for a future prep because of the exercise. I just don't want to buy anything for immediate use.

Tractor Supply had a sale on sticky traps for mice. While I poison mice, use snap traps, and cats, I like to do overkill on the mouse catching because they can be so destructive. The sticky traps were two for a dollar, normally a dollar each. These are the flat kind that you can fold up into a box but I just leave them flat. Getting them 1/2 off was something I didn't want to pass up. So I didn't. That's ten dollars spent.

As far as not using anything from the refrigerator or freezer...I used up the fresh milk. I said that I would do this because I'm not going to have food go to waste. I also set up the clay pot cooler on the patio. I am storing water and instant milk in it. The water comes out of the well at 55 degrees. This is fine if you just want a glass of cold water but if you want cold milk, 55 is too warm. Since the temperature outside at night has been in the 40s, the cooler is easily getting into the high 30s and low 40s and staying in the 40s for most of the day. This is cool enough for the milk. I'm making 3 cups in the evening and it is perfectly cold for the morning breakfast. If I need milk during the day I will use water out of the tap but if we are drinking milk at dinner I will use the cold water in the pot to make more cold milk. It's working, although none of us like drinking powdered milk straight. (It tastes much better with chocolate or strawberry Quik.)

Then how have I failed on the refrigerator part? We like cheese. As I've lamented we don't have any freeze dried cheese in our storage program and we eat cheese at least once a day. I do have powdered cheese and we use that but we like shredded cheese on tortillas, eggs, potatoes, straight out of the bag... We use at least one 5 pound bag of shredded cheese each month that we get from Costco. I could keep the bag of cheese in the pot cooler, it would stay fine in there, but when I started this exercise we only had about a half pound of cheese in the bag. I usually put a pound or so into the refrigerator and keep the rest in the freezer in the garage. When the bag empties I put more into it. There's usually twenty or thirty pounds of cheese in the freezer. During this no spending no refrigerator and freezer exercise I did get into the freezer to take out some cheese, which got put into the refrigerator.

If I bought blocks of cheese rather than the shredded I'd be able to store it outside the freezer. You can keep the cheese in 50-55 degrees. It doesn't have to be refrigerated or frozen. The clay pot would work well. The New England Cheese Making Supply Company has lots of good information about this process of storing cheese. http://www.cheesemaking.com/store/pg/245-FAQ-Aging-Cheese.html During the summer I don't know if I'd be able to keep the clay pot cool enough to store cheese. Since I don't make hard cheese, only soft cheese that gets eaten quickly, in a SHTF situation we'd just be out of luck with getting our cheese other than the powdered kind. I'd like to make cheddar cheese but there's only so much time in a day in the life of working full time, raising the grand kids, and running the five acres that it doesn't fit in. Someday when the working full time is removed from the list then I'll have so much more room in the schedule to be more self sufficient.

Has anyone else used the clay pot cooler method or knows of some other way to store cheese?

Oakland Occupiers - I don't get them

2011-11-03T20:43:00.000-07:00

I'm sure most people have watched the news or read something about the Occupy Wall Street folks, who are now called the 99%ers, who went on a rampage in Oakland last night. They broke windows of storefronts, damaged a Whole Foods grocery store, started fires, graffitied walls and windows (with kill cops and other such sayings). Today some of the more peaceful folks helped clean up the mess, although I didn't hear of any of them offering to pay for the damage.

I'm confused. I thought it was Wall Street and corporate greed that they were protesting. Instead they hit the mom and pop stores, stopped truckers from making a living, and damaged Whole Foods, which is one of the most globally sensitive grocery stores in this country. Men's Warehouse closed on Wednesday and had a sign in their window supporting the strike. Their windows were all smashed anyway.

The talk was that these were not the Occupiers who did this damage but anarchists. Sorry.  In every group you have the quiet ones and the loud ones. These were the loud ones acting out, but still part of the group.  There was dissension among the ranks, some arguing that the lawlessness of the night was not as effective as the disruptions during the day. Others stated that their disagreements among themselves make them stronger and more united.

One of the protesters was interviewed and his reason for being there protesting was that he has worked hard and deserves to have more than he has. He was in his early 20s if that old. All that I thought was I'm sure he worked hard. I'm sure he cleaned his room, set the table, maybe even fed the dog. Whatever his parents asked him to do. He hasn't been a grown up for very long. You don't get to the top for a very long time, it takes more than a year or two. More often than not, you don't get to the top.

One of the shop owners whose windows were busted out and items looted from the window displays and from inside the shop made the comment that she didn't know who the people were that caused the damage. It certainly couldn't be people from Oakland because it's a wonderful community.

The story of one of the businessmen defending his building with a shotgun is not being widely spread. These people took off when they heard him cock the gun. Good for him.

Is this coming to your town? Are you prepared to defend yourself?

My review of Thrive Chopped Chicken - thanks for the sample Misty

2011-11-02T15:16:00.000-07:00

About a month ago Misty Marsh from http://www.yourownhomestore.com/ sent me a couple of free samples of Thrive freeze dried food. I received Cooked White Meat Chopped Chicken and also a chicken salad spread. I promised to use them but with all the traveling I've been doing lately I hadn't gotten around do trying them out. Tonight's dinner includes the cooked white meat.  We are having pasta and chicken (the freeze dried chicken) with alfredo sauce (including powdered milk), peas from the garden, and peach juice (canned during the summer from our fruit trees) to drink. I'd make rolls but I just don't feel like it. I have to travel again tonight and tomorrow so I'm just not in the mood to do lots of baking.

I'd read other reviews about freeze dried meats and some have been good and some have been not too good. Well I think it's great stuff. At least if you compare it properly. Have you ever boiled a chicken? No seasonings, just boiled the chicken. That's exactly what this tastes like. Boiled chicken white meat without any seasoning. After all, I'd like to be the one to season the food the way I want it seasoned. I say it's great. The taste, the texture, exactly like cut up pieces of boiled chicken. Yum. You must be thinking right now that I'm a little nuts. Well, maybe, but back to the food...

First I do want to say if you didn't read the packaging well, or you didn't do the simple math, you would really mess things up and be disappointed in the product. On the front it shows the net weight of the package as 2.29 oz and it serves six.  On the back of the package in the nutrition facts it tells the serving size, which is 1/4 cup dry. This would mean 1 1/2 cups of dry chicken (6 servings x 1/4 cup). I opened the package and yes, there was 1 1/2 cups of the freeze dried meat.

The confusing part was the rehydration instructions. That starts out with, "To make 1 lb. of chicken, combine 2 1/2 c. Thrive Chicken with 2 c. warm water." If I hadn't read the package any more thoroughly I would have wrongly assumed that the 2.29 oz. package that serves six would rehydrate to 1 pound of chicken. Wrong! It rehydrates to a little over 1/2 pound! 2 1/2 cups of freeze dried chicken is ten servings worth of chicken and this pack was six servings.

At $35 for the can of 48 servings, you are paying about $7.00 per pound for white meat chicken.  It's certainly cheaper to pay $2 a can for the 12 oz. Costco canned chicken white meat, which comes to a little under $3.00 per pound. Of course, freeze dried is long lasting and much lighter in weight so there are advantages to having it in your storage program along side the bulky canned chicken. At some point I would like to have both options in my storage program.

Misty does offer free samples, so please check out her website. Don't take the free sample if you have no intention of ordering. While she doesn't know if you are going to order or not when she sends you the sample, she does have to pay for these samples. They are free to you, not free to her, so don't take advantage of her generosity, please.

I am going to purchase the freeze dried shredded cheese from Misty once my month of no spending is over. I'm sure at some point I will add the meat to my storage program but for now, no. I'd rather buy the cheese!

Are we really that stupid? and a bit of community training

2011-11-01T17:48:00.000-07:00

Work sent around a email saying that all supervisors had to take a workplace harassment training from an internet site. We each individually sign in and no matter how hard I tried I couldn't speed up the five hours that it took to get through the thing. It was all common sense, at least I thought it was common sense.

Let's see. George and Tom were sitting around their desks. George just got a new cell phone and Tom was going to help him figure out all the bells and whistles. Diane walks by and George takes a picture of her buttocks (their words, not mine). But wait. He only pretends to since the phone is not charged. Any problems here?

Yes, five hours of that garbage. I wonder how much our wonderful state has to pay the company that produced this? Plus the cost of each of the 400 or so supervisors to take this nonsense? I figure the state is going to spend about $75,000 in salaries for our supervisors and that's only for one department. Sure, for the state it's a CYA (uh oh, since that is a form of profanity I should be aware that my comments can escalate into harassment if I am not going to properly monitor my personal behavior) but when does common sense come into it? I guess it doesn't. After all, I work for the government and they have lots of your money to spend.

In Aliso Viejo (the first place I ever got a speeding ticket) there's a community emergency preparedness academy that teaches residents what to do in an emergency. Their latest class taught what to do after an earthquake.  The following list is good for all kinds of emergencies. I would do the same thing if I came upon a car accident.

When arriving on site, you should follow these basic rules to prepare and understand the situation:
Gather facts
Assess the damage
Consider probabilities (the what ifs)
Assess your situation
Establish priorities
Make a choice
Develop a plan
Take action
Evaluate progress

Take charge in a chaotic situation with a calm voice. Have you ever listened to a 911 recording? Have you noticed that the responder stays very calm? If someone is freaking out, speak to them calmly and give them a simple task to complete. This will calm them down and also put them to good use.

The number one priority on any incident is keeping yourself safe. You are not to put yourself in harm's way unless someone is in imminent danger.  If you do, then you may bring chaos to chaos.

Places with high numbers of people will be the first priority during a rescue. Don't forget to consider the time, date, and location of the incident. For example at 10am on a school day many children could be trapped at their school. If it's 10am on Saturday, the school doesn't become a high priority - the mall does!   Saving 100 people is better than saving one if you have a choice, and if the one isn't someone you love. OK, that last comment is my completely truthful commentary!

Toilets and other tasks

2011-10-31T14:28:00.000-07:00

Have you ever had to repair a toilet? It's really pretty simple to take out all the parts in the tank and replace them with new parts. It's also not too hard to replace the wax ring underneath the toilet. This does take a little strength to maneuver the toilet but other than that it's an easy task. That is if you aren't afraid to do a little repair work and if you have the parts on hand.

It's always an adventure going to mom's house. She's a widow and almost 80 years old. Some of the things she puts up with rather than having fixed amazes me. When she was at our house two weeks ago I told her to make a list of minor fixes that I could do when I was over last week. She made a list of five things.

First was to fix the ironing board. She was mad at me because "I" broke it. Sorry mom, I haven't used your ironing board in years. Remember I moved out about 35 years ago and probably haven't ironed much since? Perhaps it was one of your other kids who visited you? She handed me the ironing board, all the while insisting that I broke it.  She couldn't open it so it must have gotten jammed when I closed it up. I took a look at the board, pushed on the handle and it opened up right away. No problem here.  She was trying to pull on the lever when she should have lifted. So "I" didn't break it after all.

Second was the window in the master bathroom. She hasn't taken a shower in this bathroom for months because she couldn't open the window to let out the steam. Instead, she has taken a shower in the small guest bathroom. That shower is so small that it's almost impossible to raise your arms to wash your hair without smacking your arms on the walls of the shower. But she couldn't open the window. I looked at the latch to open the window. I tried to open the window. The latch was catching on the security lock. I raised the latch back to the middle of the window and it opened perfectly. Two chores down, three to go.

Third was "her birds". This meant that two of the smoke detector batteries were chirping. How long have they been chirping, mom? About a month.  About two months ago a neighbor came over and changed a couple of smoke detector batteries but not all. Obviously these two weren't done. Mom said that she enjoyed the chirping.  Perhaps it's because you aren't wearing your hearing aid at night so it doesn't bother your sleep. The batteries got changed.

Fourth was the toilet. It kept running so she shut off the water to the tank and used a different bathroom. That was a good move because her water bill went up over $20 the first month of it running. She wouldn't tell me how long ago that was. We went to the hardware store and bought a complete replacement kit for the tank. She had very few tools available for me to use...they are somewhere but she can't get to them with all her important things in the way. Since I didn't have my tools because I flew I went to the neighbor's house to borrow what I needed. Got that fixed and the water back on.

Fifth wasn't a repair. I had to teach her how to take an attachment document from an email, add verbiage to the document, save it in "My Documents", and then attach it to another email. This was the most difficult task of all!

All these minor chores got me to thinking.  Mom needs someone to come in more often to do chores. Some of my brothers and sisters do stop by each month but if mom doesn't have a list of chores then they don't do any. She has a high tolerance for things not working properly. Mom would probably have gone the rest of her life without using the master bathroom toilet or shower. She has the money to have someone come repair it but doesn't want anyone to see her clutter. She doesn't have any supplies in case something breaks. She can't get to the tools and there aren't any spare parts to anything even if she could get to the tools. Since she refuses to hire help we "kids" need to do a better job of looking over the house and yard and figuring out what needs to be done, even if it's not on her list. Her next door neighbor will come over and fix things when asked, but is very rarely asked. Are there any older folks near you that may be in the same situation?

Traveling and not spending money on food

2011-10-30T20:05:00.000-07:00

Since I'm on my one month without spending money I was sort of in a bind last week with my travel plans. I was planning on driving my truck, which has several weeks worth of food, clothes, sleeping bag, etc. I was also picking up a ice chest full of antelope. At the last minute my work told me that I needed to fly rather than drive. They had a 3/4 ton 4x4 pickup that needed to be delivered to my office. The night before I was to drive I ended up making flight arrangements.

Once I got to the office down south I found the truck and had two ice chests put into the back. This truck has a locking camper shell like my own work truck. It had two shovels and a first aid kit in it. There was also a case of water and a half case of Gatorade. The first day of my trip I was expecting to go out to lunch and this was supposed to be my only exception to not spending money for the month. I ended up spending less than $5.00 for my lunch. For the three days I was gone I was given about $95 for food. Great, I got to pocket ninety dollars. The hotel and gas were paid for so there weren't any expenses there.

Because I flew I didn't get to bring much food. I just had a handful of granola bars and trail mix. It could have sustained me for the entire trip but I would have ended up being pretty hungry. It would have been a long, hungry 250 mile walk home, if that were the case. Since I wasn't going to spend money on food I had to think about a way to get nutritious food to eat. The first night I picked up my ice chests full of antelope but having frozen meat wasn't going to work.

I had a great idea. Let's go fishing. My coworker and I hit the local lake and I caught a couple panfish. I was really surprised because I'm much better at catching fish on a river than in a lake. He knew where to fish, fortunately for me. As we were walking back to the trucks I saw some thistle growing. Thistle is an invasive plant but it's also edible. I picked a bunch of thistle (sure glad I had my leather gloves). We went back to the coworkers house where the coworker cooked up the fish and I cooked up the thistle and also made a salad out of plants in his yard - dandelion, purslane, mustard, roses and alyssum. He thought I was a little nuts but he ate the weeds anyway!

I then traded the rest of the fish for some deer jerky and salmon jerky. I did eat Friday night dinner with my mother at her house. My meals were:
Breakfast - hard boiled egg (from chickens from home), coffee, granola bar
Lunch - at the Mexican restaurant
Dinner - fish and weeds
Breakfast - granola bar, coffee in the hotel room, pear from tree at hotel
Lunch - salmon jerky and salad, pear from tree at hotel, Gatorade, water
Dinner - meatloaf at mom's
Breakfast - granola bar, coffee, juice from oranges from mom's neighbor, strawberries from mom's yard
Lunch - deer jerky, Gatorade, orange
Overall, I think I did really well with the eating. This menu was lacking in breads but was pretty healthy.

Escape Routes

2011-10-29T18:30:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I had a few hours to spare before I appointment and I was near where my sister worked, so I stopped in for a surprise visit. She was happy to see me and introduced me to one of the owners of the company. I had met him before but it was quite a while ago and he had forgotten. My sister said that her boss had just asked her to find out some information about emergency plans for offices. Sure I can help with that.

The first thing I did was get a tour of the place. It is half warehouse, half offices. It had a bunch of lit exit signs hanging from the ceiling and walls. That’s required by the local laws. I asked where the fire extinguishers were. They showed me two plus I found a third sitting on a shelf in the warehouse. Of the two, one was in the warehouse and the other in the office space. The extinguisher in the warehouse that was hanging on the wall was not visible and I wouldn’t have found it quickly, especially in an actual fire with smoke. The owner said he knows where they are. That’s nice I told him, but what if he is passed out due to something falling off the shelves on top of him and at the same time a fire started. Someone would have to attend to him. Someone would have to contact the fire department. Someone should make sure everyone else evacuates the building. Perhaps someone could try to put the fire out.

Where’s your escape route plan? “What is that”, he asked? It’s a diagram of your entire complex. You know, a directional map like you see at the mall. You are here with a big X. Each office is shown as are the restrooms, halls, and warehouse areas. You have this map in several places in the building with a big X of where you are at that specific location. Then you show with an arrowed red line the route to get out of the building.

But are there different strategies for an earthquake compared to a fire? What about a medical emergency? What about a threat to an employee from a spouse/ex-spouse/boyfriend/girlfriend, etc.?

Do they have a list of phone numbers of the people in charge to be able to reach them during non-peak hours? If they aren’t available, who is in charge? There has to be someone designated at their building to be in charge. Like the chain of command. Who is #1? If that person isn’t available who is #2, #3, #4, etc.?

There is really a lot they need to do. The first thing is the map of the building. After that they can sit down and figure out which is the best way out for each situation. Once they get out, where do they go? In some situations perhaps they need to lock themselves into their offices? Then they need to practice and practice some more.