Archive for December, 2009

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Sun Oven and Poverty

12 December 2009

Received my new Sun Oven a couple of days ago. It’s pretty much what I expected. The boys and I got it set up this morning and I set it outside in the snow to heat up (the directions say you’re supposed to heat it up, let it cool, then clean the inside).

It seems to work well — it hit 320°F before it clouded over. I thought that was pretty good while sitting in the snow less than 10 days before the solstice and with an air temp of around 20°F.

So another way of looking at prepping is as preparing to be poor, preparing to live with very little money. I think if you can plan to be poor while you still have money, you have a tremendous advantage over someone who becomes poor suddenly, without warning or preparation. You can stockpile things you’ll need and work on the systems you’ll need to sustain life without external inputs of any kind. Very very few of us can become totally self-sufficient, but most of us can take large strides in that direction and hope that we’ll be able to make it as part of a community.

The Sun Oven is one part of all that: the ability to cook food year-round with only the sun.

Posted in Cooking, Money | Leave a Comment »

First Snowstorm

9 December 2009

We’re having our first serious snowstorm of the season. It started yesterday evening and is still going at 9am today. We have about a foot on the ground so far. The wind has shifted around from the Northeast to the Northwest, and it’s supposed to get very windy and cold later today. Our power blinked off momentarily sometime during the night.

I shoveled the front steps, walk, and driveway today. The snow is sticky enough to shovel well, but not too heavy.

I was a little concerned about the earthworms with the warmish weather we had up until last week and then heading down to zero tonight, but with this much snow on the ground they’ll be well insulated, and freezing of the ground will take place slowly. They should have plenty of time to get below it.

My place of work is closed today and both boys have a snow day, so we’re all together as a family today. That doesn’t happen very often.

We hit a low point in our electricity use of under 13kWh/day for a 21-day period ending 11/7/2009, and it’s been creeping back up to 15.73kWh/day for the 11 days ending today. Why would that be? The refrigerator and the freezer should be running less, we didn’t turn on the furnace until 12/4 and it’s hardly been running at all since, and the dehumidifier is off. I wonder if it could be the water heater needing more electricity as the temperature in the basement drops. It’s time to get a timer on that thing.

Posted in Electricity, Family, Weather | Leave a Comment »

Being Right

7 December 2009

Finally, and for the first time in a long time, I feel as if my understanding of the world is correct and that it’s time for everyone else to come around to what I think instead of the other way around. Specifically:

  • We cannot continue spending money we don’t have, as individuals, as states, or as a nation.
  • Farming is one of the most important activities anyone can engage in, and being a farmer who takes care of his land and everything else under his care is one of the most honorable things anyone can do.
  • We all need to grow as much of our own food as possible.
  • We all need to be responsible for our own health to the greatest extent possible. That means exercising every day, not eating trashfood, and not burning the candle at both ends.
  • We all need to be independent, both as individuals and as families. You only rely on others when you absolutely have to. That does not diminish the importance of community.
  • Debt is bad.
  • Engaging in foreign wars should be avoided at all costs.

Posted in Corporate Control, Family, Financial Meltdown, Food, Gardening, Politics | Leave a Comment »

Winter

4 December 2009

Winter arrived yesterday with 2 or 3 inches of snow and horrible driving conditions on the way home from work, followed by colder temps and wind today. It had to happen sometime.

And so we turned on the furnace today. For now, we just put a floor under the temp by setting it at 60°F — if we want to be warmer than that, we have to use the woodstove. I tend to become more sensitive to the cold as the Winter goes on, so we’ll probably gradually turn up the thermostat as we get into late January and February.

We could have gone longer without turning on the furnace…but we did need to know if it worked or not before it got really cold (seems like in the last 5 years the furnace hasn’t worked as often as it has the first time we’ve turned it on for the season), and I like the idea of putting a floor under the indoor temperature in case we forget to stoke the stove before bed or before going out.

I noticed that it was about 48°F in the basement this morning.

Posted in Climate Change, Heating | Leave a Comment »

Wheat Sprouts

3 December 2009

I added half a cup of our stored wheat berries to a quart jar, got them wet, drained off the excess water and put them on a windowsill. A couple of days later, most of them were sprouting. I ate some for lunch today, and they’re really good.

Seeds of any kind never fail to amaze me, but seeing the hard, dry wheat that we’ve been grinding into flour turn into little plants is practically miraculous.

Posted in Food, Gardening | Leave a Comment »

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