Today I made / bought / learnt .... (for a post oil world) 2

bromius · Heavy Crude Joined: May 26, 2008 Posts: 142

I've got access to several places where I can print things out for free. Its nice Smile

I checked my two favorite used bookstores for the Ball blue book, but had no luck. Found an interesting book put out by the Moosewood, which was a combination of gardening book and cookbook. I'd never seen such a thing but its a brilliant idea, since I'm more inclined to grow something if I know how to cook it. I've enjoyed some recipes out of their regular cookbooks as well.

Woodenpaddler · Coal Joined: Jul 29, 2008 Posts: 16

I picked up the Ball Blue book the other day at one of those big box stores, Kitchen Etc. I think.

My summer garden was a weed disaster but I started some new raised beds and planters I can check daily as I walk in and out of the house. I've been harvesting stuff like spinach leaves and radishes every night. Not high calorie stuff, but good vitamin sources and cheaper than the store. Bunch of butternut squash out back ready to pick now.

Building cold frames now for some of the raised beds with some awsome sliding glass doors I snagged from my neighbor's curbside trash.

Ainan · Heavy Crude Joined: Feb 18, 2008 Posts: 309

Took more cash out of the bank today, want to avoid the rush. Can you honestly see me line up with those peasants!

It's not like the interest is actually worth it, I can always put it back if the financial system doesn't collapse.
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patience · Expert Joined: Jan 04, 2008 Posts: 1683

Had a great visit on the phone with SpringCreekFarm last night! We shared plans and progress and got acquainted. Very nice to share our forum interests on a more personal level, and come to know each other better.

Stayed up till 2:00 AM planning preps with a friend. We think a lot alike, and after watching the financial carnage of the past couple weeks, have put the Doom-o-meter up a couple notches to where we want to have our stuff together NOW. It will take a week or 2 to do some of it, but the motive is there.

We kicked around medical needs (he has a couple young kids), along with grain raising, livestock, and the possibility of a milk cow on his place. He has 22 acres, if I remember right, and his brother has an unused 10 beside him that he works, and across the next county road, his Dad has some ground. Some of his nearest neighbors are entirely unproductive, simply residents, but there are several farms, too. This is just 2 miles from me, so we can swap work and such.

He will get 5 years worth of farm supplies, and augment his other stuff up to that level within a week, if time allows. He already has done a lot. We loosely planned our ideas of who will provide what foods, goods, and services, and the prospects of neighborhood trade (some of which has been working for years), and how to best expand those concepts. He has a couple diesel tractors, and now that fuel has come down a bit, will stash a barrel or 2 of fuel for them, which would last 5 years+. He is equipped to raise corn, wheat, oats, soybeans, etc., and hay. I'm equipped to keep his machinery running. He is our local internet and phone provider, also. That business occupies a lot of his time.

There is another friend some 8 miles away that has purchased a screw press to make biodiesel from sunflower squeezin's, and will rent the use of the thing. Another guy has a dozer and a backhoe that he runs on recycled french fry oil now. My son in law has my gasoline powered welder at his place, and we plan to convert it to grain alcohol, for which he has the equipment and permits, etc., to produce. SIL also is bilding windmills and will soon start building solar window box heaters for sale.
He just bought a horse-drawn style potato planter and a potato digger that I will overhaul this winter. That makes it practical for him to easily raise a couple acres of potatoes. (I have no idea of the yield, but that's a LOT of potatoes.)

We covered a lot of community needs and how to supply them last night, but it got very late, so today hasn't been the best. We still have to work out potato storage, but SIL has access to used truck reefer bodies, so that might work out.

All told, a LONG, but productive evening, and very enjoyable.
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SpringCreekFarm · Intermediate Crude Joined: Mar 03, 2006 Posts: 931

Had a great time talking to you too Patience. You have a great perspective on things and evidently more energy than most of us prepping. Very Happy

I've taken the day off today to stock up on a few things like a few cans of gas, cut some firewood and basically get my ducks in a row.

I see a lot of panic on the board today and it is unsettling.

patience · Expert Joined: Jan 04, 2008 Posts: 1683

SpringCreekFarm,

I thought about calling you about my panic last night, when I read some of the finance news on Tickerforum.org. Lots of really dire stuff going on. I decided you'd get the word on here.

Being convinced that we are days, or hours, away from collapse, I'm off to the bank this morning to get out my wife's last auto-deposited paycheck. She works for the govt, and they insist on auto-deposit. Then off to buy some last minute stuff.

Things that concern me most at present is:

(1) The inability to get money out of banks, due to bank "holidays" of the govt sort, or bank failure/FDIC takeover, or the recent elimination of reserve requirements in the US by the FED, which means the FDIC is not required to take over a failed bank. The bank can simply say, "We don't have any money, so we can't give you any". A second-hand story to that effect happened day before yesterday here at the National City branch, when allegedly 2 depositors were told that, and refused money withdrawals from a savings account, and a CD. Of course, National City stock is nearly worthless presently,so that is a clue.

With the G7 meeting this weekend on the crisis, there are rumors floating around that stock markets could be closed next week, and/or a bank holiday could be declared, making funds inaccessible. This appears to be speculation,but it isn't worth taking the chance.

(2) Credit Cards. Other rumors of foreign credit cards not being honored in Germany/Europe are mentioned. Any crack in the credit card system could very quickly stop card transactions. That means that I just made my last CC buy yesterday, when I ordered steel for the shop. From here on, it will be COD.

I won't be doing any more internet orders, if there is any other way. My wife ordered a 22 qt. Mirro canner from Amazon about 10 days ago, and they haven't shipped it yet. I can find one locally, for a premium price ,so we may cancel Amazon and get it here, for cash. At least we can GET it that way.

When I tried to order the new fridge we want from the local Best Buy store, the young lady I talked to said I had to come to the store to place the order, since she wasn't allowed to take the credit card over the phone. I don't know if that is a new policy or not, but it bothered me.

(3) Shortages. Karl Denninger warns in a piece posed here under his name, that in a credit sieze-up, we could see shortages of goos within a short time, due to lack of commercial credit to make things move. i mentioned the possibility of shortages of goods a couple times on here, but didn't get much of a response. At this time, I think shortages could be immiment, so I'm racking my brain for what we need.

(4) Food and Fuels. All of the above indicates that the things we buy daily could be difficult or impossible to get, or pay for, so food and fuels are top priority.

(5) Electricity. If I couldn't pay the electric bill for any of the above reasons, or cash was dear enough that I deemed it inadvisable to pay for it, Then I must have a fall back position. For me, that means to get a woodstove up and running, posthaste, and get the solar system fully implemented. A backstop for the solar system is trying to find some forklift batteries that I can afford, to keep on trickle charge as a longer term backup for my Trojans.

I have seen too many remarks by financial people to the effect that the situation is dire, they have never seen it before, "we are in uncharted waters", etc., to be complacent at present. I will buy more seeds today, jar lids, canning jars, fuel barrels if I can find them, and store more gas and kerosene (emergency heat and light), and pick up the kerosene lamps I ordered. Then I will ask my firewood guy to bring me a load, and order some much needed driveway stone.

High on my agenda is implementing a CCTV security system that I have, and some other security measures. We are going at a dead run, from here.
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steam_cannon · Expert Joined: Dec 28, 2006 Posts: 2558 Location: MA

Jenab6 · Posted: Fri Oct 10, 2008 6:02 pm Post subject: Water system filters

In my water system, rain from the roof divides in flow, with half going down the downspout to the buried 1000 gallon cistern, and the other half overspills at one end of the gutter, where I lowered it a centimeter from level. (The bell from a junk clarinet is jammed into the downspout entrance in the gutter to ensure that the water level in the gutter will rise high enough to overspill.)

The gutter overspill lands in a large rubber bucket, which is tilted to overflow (when full) into the fill aperture of rain barrel #1. The bucket is intended to catch the heavier impurities that fall down from the roof. The filter over the aperture of barrel #1 is meant to screen out what the bucket does not.

The problem I've been having is that the filter has been, until today, door screen (12 mesh). That's much too coarse to filter my water properly. Mosquitoes somehow get though, into the water and drown. And wiggle-worms appear in the water, possibly after they (or their eggs) had been bird-dropped on to my roof, then washed down with the water.

But I think I've solved the problem. Today, I replaced the door screen filer covering the fill apertures of rain barrel's #1 and #2 with 100 mesh screen taken from a pair of gold-prospecting pans. Only barrel #1 fills from the roof, so it got the tightest of the covers once I had the finer mesh on them both. Barrel #2 fills from the overflow from barrel #1, via a food grade garden type hose.

Inside the "female" connection of the hose that attaches to barrel #1, right behind the rubber washer, I put a small bit of 200-mesh, replaced the rubber washer in the fitting, and screwed the fitting back on to barrel #1's overflow aperture. So barrel #2 will benefit from a 200 mesh (70 micron) filter.

I also have a 400 mesh pan that I'll use to strain water as it comes out of the barrel from the tap near the bottom of each barrel.

400 mesh is funny. It diffracts light from a "line emitting" fluorescent bulb so that multiple images, blue-yellow-red and combination colors (green and orange) can be seen by looking through it. And the surface tension of water impedes the flow of water through the mesh unless you wet both sides of it first. After that, it flows through just dandy.

ki11ercane

I successfully hunted, shot, and dressed my first two Canadian Geese tonight. First one was around 15 lbs. Second one was around 25lbs. I now have permission for the remaining of the season to hunt in the same spot, and it's only a short distance from my house!

Mmm, Goose on the barby!

FoolYap · Posted: Sat Oct 11, 2008 5:31 am Post subject: Re: Water system filters

countrymomma · Tar Sands Joined: Jun 07, 2008 Posts: 43 Location: Midwest

Ludi

Planted several hundred edible bulbs of Calochortus and Brodiaea in one of my permaculture-scam edible flower gardens.
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FoolYap

Recently:

Made about 2 gallons of sauerkraut today. And only about half of the cabbage used was from our garden; most of the cabbages I planted didn't form decent heads, so I bought two from the store to supplement. Sad

First time I've made sauerkraut, so I don't mind starting out small.

Washed another dozen of the ~ 100 wire-bail canning jars I bought on craigslist. Two dozen more to go. Broke one lid by fumbling and dropping it back into the box of jars when loading the dishwasher. Mad

Split enough kindling for the woodstove for the winter. Tomorrow I'll move the ~ 2 cords of split wood from last fall into the screened porch, if it all fits. Then I'll have space outside to cut & split & stack wood for next winter. (Want to build an open-sided woodshed next year, big enough to hold 4 cords of wood. Ran out of time this year.)

Tried to order 20 dozen new rubber seals for the canning jars yesterday. Place was out, and said to order again in late November when they're restocked. Hope so. I got maybe 50-60 unused new ones from the craigslist seller with the jars. Would like many more.

Took delivery of a bit of gold from Apmex this week. Wish I'd been able to afford more.

Took out more cash from the checking account. Would like to have more on hand.

Ordered a small kerosene stove, which shipped this week, and which I expect to use for canning next year.

Butterfly Stoves

(I have a smooth-top electric range in the kitchen, and they don't recommend using those with canners, so I expect to build a utility table for the screened porch and run the canner out there. Should be happy to keep all the heat out there anyway.)

A couple of weeks ago, took delivery of an Aladdin kerosene lamp and extra wicks & mantles. Tested it. Pretty decent light output; maybe equivalent to a 50 watt bulb? Will hopefully not need to use it soon. Have one big multi-LED flashlight for occasional / short power outages.

Need to pick up some gallons of odorless mineral spirits at the local Big Box hardware store to run the canning stove and lamp. Pretty much the same product as kerosene, and a good deal cheaper, and smells better.

Last week took delivery of an All-American pressure canner. Seems like a really well-built unit. No gaskets to wear out! Already have a water-bath canner, so I think I'm pretty well set now to can more next year. Only made jams & jellies this year. :-/

Last weekend borrowed a chipper and chipped up a brush pile onto a layer of rotting construction hay, which is atop a pile of wood shavings from the shop. Going to get 5 yards of chicken manure dumped on this, to let it rot over the winter and hopefully kick-start the decomposition of the wood chips & hay. Wish I had my own chickens! Probably not going to be ready for those for a couple more years. Sad

--Steve

patience · Expert Joined: Jan 04, 2008 Posts: 1683

My wife and I finally agreed on a new fridge and got it today, a Frigidaire 18 cu ft. with an Energy Star rating of 384 KWHR/yr., or 1.05 KWHR/day. It is more than double the size of some we looked at, and doesn't use a lot more power. Will put the KilaWatt on it as soon as it stabilizes and get a reading for a week or so. Our old 18 cu. ft. used upwards of 2 KWHR/day, on a 2 week check.

The old one goes in the basement for now, to use for produce in season, as long as we can afford grid power for it, but ultimately may become potato storage, buried in the back yard.
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RedStateGreen

This weekend:

Got another 300 gallons of water storage

Went to the Okiefiber retreat ... sort of a party/fiber festival/sleepover for grownups. Lots of fun, and I got to meet some great people. Good networking, and very educational too. And I got lots of cool wool and roving! new_multi

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It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change. -- Charles Darwin