tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-50280184317108944182024-03-12T19:17:54.697-07:00Frontier NerdsThe offspring of Capt. Caveman and Mr. Magoo teach you things. Pointless things.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13758563547271718267noreply@blogger.comBlogger17125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5028018431710894418.post-79686071151069989212014-03-30T17:03:00.002-07:002014-05-13T11:53:11.868-07:00Morel Mushroom hunt in central Oklahoma, 2014No! No, I haven't found any yet! I haven't even looked. But I just found out today that this is morel mushroom season here, so I've done some reading. Here's what I've learned:<br />
<ul>
<li>Look when the plums and redbuds are blooming, after rains. The plums and redbuds just started blooming here in the last few days. Rain is forecast for much of the next week.</li>
<li>Look in cedar thickets, under elms, in forest margins, in Johnson grass, and ditches/other moist areas.</li>
<li>The season can last 6 weeks or more.</li>
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So I'll be out this week to scout likely locations, and will report back.<br />
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UPDATE: Nothing to report. One of the warmest, driest springs in Oklahoma history. Try again next year.</div>
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13758563547271718267noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5028018431710894418.post-46123782357481389892013-10-22T08:02:00.003-07:002014-06-18T13:42:50.405-07:00How to Process Hickory NutsWith the help of my little tree identification book, I misidentified our local hickories as Pignuts - until I ate one. I read that pignuts are usually pretty awful, so I tried one of ours to see if it was a less awful variety, but they were <i>delicious</i>. I did some more research and found that my ID book was not very thorough, and that what we have here are black hickories.<br />
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The sap from hickories can be processed the same as maple, but the sap is less sweet. I was considering doing this when I thought we had pignuts, but tasty varieties of hickory nuts sell for $5 a pound (unshelled!,) so there is no way I'm going to steal sap from these valuable nut trees.<br />
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First, hull all of the nuts. Black hickories hull easily, and do not stain hands. If the hulls aren't pretty easy to get off, set them aside for a few days. Just be sure not to put them anywhere that animals can get to them. If you peel the nuts from the bottom up, it's pretty easy to remove the stringy fibers that cover the nut at the same time. I noticed some worms in the hulls, but not in the nut shells. I think the worms wait until germination when the shell cracks and then sneak into the nut. Do not throw the hulls back under the tree, as this may encourage the insect cycle.<br />
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Next, put the nuts in a sink or bucket and add water to allow several inches of water above the nuts. The nuts that are not good will float to the top. Take out the bad nuts, and stir up the rest of the nuts to allow nuts closer to the bottom to rise.<br />
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Then, remove the nuts and place on a towel to dry a bit. After a few hours, move them to trays and allow them to dry for several days. Store somewhere that will allow air to more between the nuts. I've read that mesh bags are good for long-term storage, and that nuts stored properly in the shell will stay good for months and months. In fact, the longer they dry, the more compact the nutmeat will become, making them easier to remove from the shell. (UPDATE: It has been 8 months and nuts stored indoors have not had nutmeats become any more compact, but are still delicious.)<br />
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The cheapest way to shell hickories is to put them between two lengths of cloth on a concrete surface and smash them with a hammer or brick. Open the cloth and take out the bits. I've read that if you put the smashed nuts in water that the nutmeats will fall and the shells will rise, but I've not had enough luck getting the shells to remove cleanly from the nutmeat to bother with this advice yet. (UPDATE: I've tried this and it does not seem to work.) Hard-shell nutcrackers can also be purchased from companies like Lehman's with a cost of about $40.<br />
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Bury the floated nuts from processing anywhere you would like hickories to grow - some nuts float because they have already started sprouting. Try to break the life cycle of worms by cleaning up all the old nuts and hulls from under trees at the end of the season.<br />
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<i>About our black hickory trees</i>: Our Oklahoma hickories grow in the margins of wooded areas as well as along fences. We have seen them on the west, east, and south sides of woods. They don't seem to be tall enough to compete in the woodland canopy. I started collecting nuts around the end of September, 2013. One tree was already done dropping its nuts - it is in a fairly isolated, sunny area. Perhaps the additional light caused it to ripen earlier. The summer here was not as warm as usual (few days above 100 degrees, and none approaching 110,) and September was warmer than others have been, so I cannot say that the ripening time will be the same in other years. I also do not know if the excellent rains this year have caused an increased yield. One tree in an isolated, full sun area produced nuts earlier, as noted, and another isolated tree only produced about three nuts. The other two trees have yielded 30-40 pounds, but still have many nuts on the tree.<br />
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<i>Update: </i>I did a survey of trees on our west fence in late fall, around November when the leaves changed color, and found that we have easily a hundred hickory trees, with more on the south fence. I have decided that we have enough trees to tap a dozen or so. I got spiles for Christmas, but I still need a book on how to do it and some buckets, so maybe next spring. That will give me time to find the biggest trees and mark them somehow.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13758563547271718267noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5028018431710894418.post-62981058466417112062013-06-23T00:04:00.000-07:002014-03-18T14:23:37.943-07:00Plant Survey Results for 2013<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDAOP93dR2Z07H9w8kbgl4YnD-O0-hJNcH-xIylpCR9cSqZvejF4hx5UGKVg11H7JR6XEbdJW97k7jAynpcnBNZhkcFWqo5LuWTRV5KKlqpAf1-nkf1wg5ADN_A5kJhN9OENV6NBml1JY/s1600/IMG_5057.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDAOP93dR2Z07H9w8kbgl4YnD-O0-hJNcH-xIylpCR9cSqZvejF4hx5UGKVg11H7JR6XEbdJW97k7jAynpcnBNZhkcFWqo5LuWTRV5KKlqpAf1-nkf1wg5ADN_A5kJhN9OENV6NBml1JY/s320/IMG_5057.jpg" height="320" width="213" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A view of trees near the pond.</td></tr>
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Living on the property this year has allowed ongoing plant surveys to determine existing field and woodland flora. This list will become more complete as the year progresses. As the 40-acres are, without seeding or planting, the following plants have been identified:<br />
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Milkweed, green and butterflyweed</div>
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Thistle, variety unknown. Color: white or silver</div>
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Horse Nettle</div>
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Prickly Pear</div>
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Blackberry, possibly sawtooth</div>
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Poison Ivy</div>
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Scurfy Pea</div>
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Greenbrier</div>
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Honeysuckle, probably Japanese</div>
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Virginia Creeper</div>
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Wild Grape</div>
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Meadow Violet</div>
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Vinca</div>
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Ragweed</div>
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Giant Ragweed<br />
Pepper Grass</div>
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Buffalo Grass<br />
Bermuda Grass</div>
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Western Wheatgrass</div>
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Johnson Grass<br />
Indian Grass<br />
Big Bluestem</div>
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Switchgrass</div>
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Little Bluestem</div>
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Canadian Wild Rye, Virginia Rye, and/or Little Barley</div>
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Yellow Wood Sorrel</div>
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White Clover</div>
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Wild Oat, variety unknown</div>
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Very large bearded grain, possibly escaped rye</div>
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Curly dock<br />
Horseweed/Mare's tail</div>
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Fleabane</div>
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Bitterweed<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6Bk70wZ-1H8yIDrVd_gBF8LLTUI415sFfvPyoY76UBCpkIPbMXl3hnvlbdJLK8449s457Yzjp-7dgUIU6MK19VNx_GglGiwlWx3FkKD-3OC4ZRgyX1a9rrU85i4EL0ijJXRdRF_wIrXk/s1600/HPIM0543.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6Bk70wZ-1H8yIDrVd_gBF8LLTUI415sFfvPyoY76UBCpkIPbMXl3hnvlbdJLK8449s457Yzjp-7dgUIU6MK19VNx_GglGiwlWx3FkKD-3OC4ZRgyX1a9rrU85i4EL0ijJXRdRF_wIrXk/s320/HPIM0543.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bitterweed</td></tr>
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Yarrow<br />
Goldenrod<br />
Lamb's Quarters</div>
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Black-Eyed Susan</div>
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Indian Paintbrush</div>
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Coneflower</div>
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Wild Rose</div>
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Ohio Spiderwort</div>
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False Indigo</div>
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Escaped Ligustrum</div>
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Prairie Acacia<br />
Beautyberry</div>
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Winged Sumac</div>
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Small Willow</div>
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Eastern Redcedar</div>
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Red Mulberry</div>
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Black Hickory</div>
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Pecan</div>
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Blackjack Oak</div>
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Post Oak</div>
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American Persimmon</div>
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Sand Plum/Chickasaw Plum</div>
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Elm</div>
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Something that looks like Queen Anne's lace, hemlock, or wild parsley</div>
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There's a bit of Poke Sallet around, but not much</div>
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This is not all that is there, just all I can identify. As more plants flower, the list will grow. This property has very different plants from three surrounding properties, this one having been left more or less undisturbed since possibly the Dustbowl. Many of the plants on this list are natives to Oklahoma. Incidentally, a fair number of plants on this list are toxic to livestock, including Blackjack oak, which (together with invasive Eastern Redcedar) comprises the majority of the tree canopy in the woodland and copses. This property is in the Northern Crosstimbers Ecoregion.</div>
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<b>June 2013, 2013:</b><br />
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A clumping grass, which I think is Switchgrass, is growing in a wide swath on the North of the property. It currently makes a smoky looking area from the seed heads above the plants, but I do not know if this is recent seed production, or if this growth is leftover from last year. Will monitor. What appears to be Little Bluestem is growing over much of the property, especially about five acres to the East. The seed heads are stripped, so I will monitor through the summer to hopefully make a positive identification. Both grasses are currently doing well, though isolated clumps of Switchgrass on the most marginal soil seem to be turning gray or brown. A thin grass which I believe was Buffalo Grass has mostly disappeared for the year already. It grows in a very small, isolated area in the North/Central section.</div>
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A very large area in the Central pasture area is very marginal in quality, and had a flush of widespread but thin grassy growth that never got higher than about three inches. The growth thinned and browned a couple of weeks ago when the temps started staying above 90. The area has since flushed again with an unidentified herbaceous-looking plant, also very short (turned out to be Poorjoe.) It also grows a fair amount of prairie acacia, a nitrogen fixer which grows on very poor soils.<br />
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Blackberries in ditches in the North are coming into ripe berries. Larger stands in the South remain green. I completely missed plum production on the Sand Plums. I checked last weekend and there was no sign of fruit, including mummies.<br />
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<b>August 9, 2013:</b><br />
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The blackberries have been stellar this year. They started producing at the end on June and still have ripening berries on them.</div>
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Central Oklahoma has had a particularly wet year this year, and the weather has been pretty mild for the summers I've seen since I moved here in 2007. The most naturally marginal soils in the couple of acres that surround "deer thunderdome" have started growing up <span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><i>Diodia teres, </i>also called buttonweed or Poorjoe. Most of the top growth on the pasture usually turns a crispy brown by August, so this is the first time we've actually seen that particular area get enough moisture to get an herbaceous summer growth. Poorjoe is an symptom of poor soils, as is the bitterweed that we have seen around the majorly compacted building site areas. Because the rains are allowing this late summer growth, we have seen whole fields (while traveling) growing a monoculture of bitterweed, specifically in overgrazed pastures that would normally just look like dirt at this time of year. For some reason, the Johnsongrass also seems to be totally out of control this year in ditches and pastures that we've seen from the view of the car. I can at least say that we have had a very small amount of Johnsongrass, which I think I learned in school maybe causes Prussic acid poisoning in animals.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><br /></span>I bought wheat and clover seed today, and the rain has been atypically great this year, so I will be planting next week - rain predicted throughout the week. We are particularly excited about the herbaceous residues that will be left this year after the winter kill - most years we don't get this much organic material naturally added to the soil around here. (In this part of Oklahoma, I think we already got our average annual rainfall of 35 inches by some time in July, and as far as I've found, we've gotten more rain for July and August than any other years reported in the online history of Mesonet.) With any luck, the rains will allow us to get these new seeds in to get a better class of plant growing between our native perennial grasses. The idea is to plant between soaking rains because I will not be using any sort of a seeder, just hand-broadcasting. The seeds won't be covered and the soil won't be plowed - we don't want to cause any damage to the existing grasses.</div>
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Did you know that 25# of white clover seed is $160, while 100# of hard red winter seed wheat is only $20?</div>
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<b>August 26, 2013:</b><br />
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It hasn't been raining, but apparently there is sufficient moisture for plant growth, as none of our prairie has turned brown yet. There is little to report on the plant front, as the Poorjoe and the perennial native grasses continue to dominate. The 2 acres or so that I mowed with my push mower around the house have seeded and now I know: I HAVE BERMUDA. Gross. Never mow again.<br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13758563547271718267noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5028018431710894418.post-40593300383974464152013-06-22T16:13:00.000-07:002014-06-18T13:36:33.428-07:00Eating Milkweed and NopalesThistles, Green Milkweeds, Horse Nettles, and Johnson Grass have had us out mowing with the scythe this week. On the second day of selective mowing, I looked up these plants and found that thistles and green milkweeds are edible. Allegedly.<br />
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Thistles can be stripped of their leaves, then the outer, fibrous portion of the stem . The inner pith of second year plants (they are biennial) can be steamed "like asparagus," I read, but found that the stripping process yielded so little vegetable to be unworthy of the caloric expenditure. Maybe they get bigger, though I hope not to find out. I looked around for first year roots, also supposedly edible, but couldn't find any of large enough size to bother with.<br />
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The milkweeds worked out better. I picked young seed pods less than two inches long and boiled them in water for twenty minutes. Though this worked, I found the mush of veg that was left to be bland. I may try it again, cooking for less time next year. I did not find the pods to be bitter, and I've read this is the warning of toxicity. I have read that the young shoots, flowers, and buds are also edible. I will also try those next year. In the week since that first experiment, most of the pods seem to have matured beyond the range of food, and are working on becoming fiber. I will try to collect whatever fiber is available from the milkweed we don't manage to kill before it releases seed.<br />
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The sumac berries are out, and I have considered making sumac lemonade. I have an awful dermatological reaction to the urushiol oil found in mango skins and poison ivy, and it is unclear whether or not I am actually allergic to them. They are both related to sumacs. I thought making sumac lemonade could be an interesting experiment to test my sensitivity, though Caveman has made it clear that this idea is retardulous. So we'll see.<br />
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I had nopales for the first time, ever, yesterday for dinner. I have found a couple of young plants on the property and harvested some pads a few days ago. Cleaning them really sucks. I looked up several ways to do it on the internet, and they all resulted in me picking tiny glochids out of my fingies. I will purchase some rubber gloves. Cleaning by rubbing with a green scrubby while wearing rubber gloves is definitely better than cutting off the glochids. Other than the slime, the nopales steamed nicely, and they made a nice taco of my homemade whole wheat tortillas.<br />
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<b>Nopal Tacos:</b><br />
1 cup cleaned nopal cactus pads<br />
1 cup cooked chicken, shredded or diced<br />
2 or 3 chopped tomatoes<br />
1 chopped onion<br />
1/2 chopped pepper, seeded<br />
1/2 cup chopped cilantro<br />
Juice of one lime or lemon<br />
salt to taste<br />
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<b>Shredded cheese</b></div>
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<b>Refried beans or mashed pintos</b></div>
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<b>Flour tortillas</b></div>
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<b>Slice or chop cactus pads, then steam to desired tenderness. Pour off liquid. Add half of the chopped onion, the salt, and the chicken, cook until well heated. Add tomato, remaining onion, pepper, cilantro, and lemon juice, or serve these 5 ingredients separately as pico de gallo. Serve on tortillas with cheese and beans.</b></div>
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<b>2014 Calendar of Wild Foods:</b><br />
Starting April - (Morels, didn't find any this year), Yarrow<br />
May - Mulberries, Dewberries, Milkweed<br />
June - Plums, Blackberries, Cactus Pads<br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13758563547271718267noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5028018431710894418.post-23203309815583330972013-05-30T07:52:00.002-07:002014-06-18T13:50:18.309-07:00Oklahoma Wildlife for 2013I've decided to list animals I see on the property as a future reference. I wish I had thought to do it sooner, as some things have already gone for the season.<br />
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<b>May 30, 2013:</b><br />
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Namely, turkeys. I can't say for sure that they've moved off for the year, but I'd say it's been at least a week since I heard a gobble. I'll report when I start hearing them again, but it seems like they came around last winter or fall, maybe November or December, and I've been surprised by how long they stayed. They hang out on the dirt road, in the pastures, our yard, out by the big pond, and then in the trees at night. We hear them at all hours. I haven't seen more than one or two at a time this year - though I saw the whole pack last year, and I remember two toms and maybe eight females. My neighbors said they saw the whole pack this year and they counted 14 including juveniles.<br />
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We have Mississippi kites in large numbers. We've had them for several weeks now. I saw them flying and looked them up in the Oklahoma bird database, and was unsure that I correctly identified them (sadly, because I thought anything so lovely probably wouldn't come here) but then I HEARD them, and I feel confident that they are kites. They sound like squeaky dog toys. They don't look quite like the majestic pictures that I've seen because they ALWAYS have food in their hands and are eating it as they fly. They fly primarily around the trees just to the south and the small pond to the east, very close to the house.<br />
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Son of Caveman saw a scissor-tailed flycatcher the other day. We used to have a fair number at our house four miles down the road, and we see them when we travel, but the one he saw is the only one we've seen in 8 months of living here.<br />
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The deer are ever present. We have a 50-foot circle out in the pasture that I call "deer thunderdome" because all the grass is trampled down at all times and the ground in wholly marked with hoof prints. There are also coyote and dog tracks through it. I see deer nearly every time I walk up the drive to check the mail or go next door to work on the remodel, and we see where they sleep in the pastures, areas where the tall prairie grasses are pressed flat.<br />
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The rabbits are everywhere. One that eats near the driveway doesn't even bother to run off at my approach anymore. I've heard people lament the fall in wild rabbit numbers, but I certainly cannot say that our population has suffered at all.<br />
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I haven't seen a roadrunner in at least the last month. I haven't noticed many squirrels this year, either.<br />
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The turtles have been out for at least a month, and they were somewhat spotty before that - they would only come out on the few days that the weather was really warm. The bass and the bluegill have been biting in the big pond, though we haven't had much time for fishing.<br />
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Caveman killed a copperhead under some sheet metal two weeks ago. The brown recluses have been in the house for the last two months or so. The ticks have been outside for about that long as well. Day before yesterday, SOC saw the first scorpion of the year outside, then saw a second one in our bed. As we have not been using any air conditioning (thus it is no cooler in here than outside, so is 60-75 at night at 75-90+ during the day) I am confused as to why they would be coming in the house. The hugest black widow I've ever seen in Oklahoma is living under the corner of the house to the left of the front door. I tried to smash it last weekend and it ran under the siding. I usually only kill brown recluses, but that black widow is just SO HUGE and so close to my door.<br />
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It was about a month ago now that I stumbled onto a coyote as I went out to check the blackberry patch. I got to within twenty feet or less before I got too close for him and he ran out of the cover of an eastern red cedar. I didn't know he was there until he ran off, and I made a mental note to take a dog with me next time. It must have been a coyote with a long winter coat, because it looked like a wolf. We have not heard the coyotes out at night in weeks and weeks.<br />
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I heard an owl very close to the house a few days ago. We have a great owl that hangs out at the ponds and flies off when I approach. His wingspan has got to be at least 6 feet. I don't know if it was him I heard. The owl I heard was a loud hoot, not the screech owl sound which I haven't heard in a while.<br />
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We haven't seen any evidence of raccoons, skunks, mice, or possums since we moved back eight months ago. When we were squatting in the travel trailer in late summer 2011 we saw evidence of quite a few as we had outdoor trash cans. Now, SOC takes all of our trash directly to his job site and puts it in the dumpster, which both saves us money for disposal services and discourages scavengers. We saw one skunk about two months ago, as did our neighbor in the last two weeks, though I don't count them as both were seen walking around in the middle of the day near humans, so we think it likely that they were rabid.<br />
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<b>June 22, 2013:</b><br />
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The turkeys are here!</div>
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I don't know where, but they are here, making little turkey sounds out in the trees. I said last month that I didn't know if they had gone, though where they would go, I don't know. The neighbors report having seen them often in the last month or so, whereas I have only heard them. I do not know why they roam freely in the cooler months but stay hidden in the warmer months.</div>
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Sadly, the kites appear to have moved on. I've seen the Great Owl by the small pond once, and a fairly large owl of some sort on the walk to the big pond. I also saw an Eastern Bluebird on the walk to the mailbox - the first I have seen.</div>
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Caveman saw a family of coyotes, including the young, while walking with the dogs last week. I have seen deer tracks in recent mud, but no deer, which is unusual. The rabbits are everywhere. I was stopped by one in the SUV today as he simply stood and stared at me, then strolled off.</div>
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The grasshoppers are back in force. Looking at oak species on the property yesterday, I noticed the lower portion of the trees had rather moth-eaten leaves. I do not know if this is the work of grasshoppers, or some other insect. The affected trees definitely include the oaks and the persimmons, I did not notice whether or not they were defoliating the pignuts and elms as well. I also saw cactus bugs on the prickly pear on the way to the mailbox, and the plant looked ill.</div>
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Something fell on Caveman's head yesterday (in the house, fell from the ceiling?,) and he quickly brushed it off. It flew onto my face, then on the ground. Closer inspection revealed, of course, that it was a scorpion. The green milkweed and the butterflyweed (also a milkweed) are up and flowering, and the monarchs are out. I've also seen several Black Swallowtails, Oklahoma's state butterfly.</div>
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I stepped on a baby Massasauga Rattlesnake while mowing with my push mower last week. The funny thing is, I didn't initially run off, screaming - I just kept going back and forth with the mower like I was trying to kill it. If this was my intention, I certainly was not doing it consciously. Eventually I realized what was happening and ran off, screaming in little yips.<br />
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<b>August 9, 2013:</b><br />
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No real point in posting about wildlife, I haven't seen anything since the last update.</div>
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Stephen has seen some rabbits in the mornings. Little sign of deer, even in thunderdome, which has started to grow little plants. Saw two doves the last couple of days. My neighbor told me yesterday that she's heard the turkeys, but I haven't.<br />
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<b>August 26, 2013:</b><br />
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I've seen a number of kites since my last posting, but this morning, I saw two groups in formation flying east. They weren't flying very high, but I've never seen the kites fly in groups before, so I'm thinking that they know something I don't about upcoming weather changes.</div>
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View of the pond taken from halfway up a tree.</div>
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I've seen roadrunners a few times, but I've also seen doves. I'd never seen doves here before, and I tend to think of them as a city bird, so I was surprised. I found out from the Sunday local PBS show "Outdoor Oklahoma" that dove hunting season opens this week or next, so that makes sense, but I did not know previously that some doves migrate. I continue to not see deer, and have not heard turkeys at all. The grasshoppers have not been more numerous than other years, but they do seem to be much larger. The Shawnee newspaper ran a story yesterday that snakes are more abundant this year because of the substantial rainfall, although the headline read something like, "Man and Neighbors Kill 15 Poisonous Snakes." People here really hate snakes. My closest neighbor is positively terrified of snakes, like so terrified that it is surprising that she lives in the country.</div>
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She told me the story of her son, when he was a boy, who found a nest of little worms (You know where this is going.) He was going to keep them for bait, until she guessed what they were and went out to find that they were, indeed, a nest of baby copperheads. She told me that when they moved out here, she wanted chickens so badly because that was part of the country ideal, I guess. She was out gathering eggs one day. Saw a snake. Immediately abandoned the chickens. I don't even think it was poisonous. I think that she wishes I would mow more of our acreage just because she assumes there are a lot of snakes out here (which there probably are.)<br />
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<b>February 13, 2014:</b><br />
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I haven't posted in 6 months because there hasn't been much to say. We've seen deer tracks, but almost no deer. They aren't sleeping near the house, and they've abandoned Deer Thunderdome. We hear coyotes, but haven't seen any. My neighbors say they heard turkeys last fall - I didn't. We've seen TONS of bunny prints in the snow this year.<br />
<br />
As of New Year's, an escaped buffalo has been staying on our property. The owner is trying to get her used to eating in one area so she can be tranquilized and moved, but she rarely comes out where anyone can see her. No one who has purposefully gone out to look for her has actually found her. She's so wily. It's looking like there may always be a buffalo living here.<br />
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<b>June 18, 2014:</b><br />
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Dude finally got his buffalo last month. We have seen deer since about March or April, and heard turkeys since about April. Around the end of April or beginning of May, we started seeing the roadrunners. Rabbits are plentiful. The kites came back around early May, and we had Eastern Bluebirds. I haven't seen any lately. No snakes yet.</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13758563547271718267noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5028018431710894418.post-73731087124233450982013-05-12T13:08:00.002-07:002013-08-28T06:57:09.773-07:00Best Cleaning Supplies - Old SchoolModern Americans really are pretty obsessed with cleaning. People don't want things clean - they want them <i>sterile</i>. I do not think most people are interested in relaxing their standards, but for those who are, I have created this post.<br />
<br />
Most people would be appalled by my cleaning standards, because I suspect that the human immune system probably functions better when presented with a broad spectrum of mild challenges. I'm not saying that I let the dogs lick my dishes clean or I wipe my counters with raw chicken, but<br />
(for example) I no longer have a dishwasher to heat-sterilize my dishes - in fact, I often have to use cold water to wash my dishes, as the water heater is only on a few hours a day. I also only use Ivory or handmade soap - no modern detergents. This means I have to wash my dishes very carefully, and it takes longer, but they are old-school clean. I don't clean any part of my kitchen or bathroom with any chemical other than soap or pine cleaner water, though the toilet gets a bit of a scrub with a pumice stone from time to time.<br />
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Modern cleaning products are:<br />
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<ul>
<li>Expensive - and the least offensive or highest quality products are, of course, usually the <i>most </i>expensive.</li>
<li>Too specific in their uses - the list of cleaning chemicals in most household would include: soaps and hair products, dish and laundry detergents, oven cleaner, fabric softeners and stain removers, glass cleaner, all-purpose cleaners, no-scrub cleaners, mildew removers, toilet cleaners, bleach, floor/carpet care products, and air fresheners.</li>
<li>Inconvenient to store - Cleaning products are generally harmful to store near pretty much anything, due to fumes, or the likelihood that their containers could leak.</li>
<li>Harmful to the environment - I couldn't use most modern chemicals if I wanted to because I have an aerobic septic system. An aerobic septic system causes a homeowner to recognize the direct impact of chemicals on the environment, as the water that goes into the septic tank will be sprinkled onto plants. </li>
<li>Almost impossible to get rid of - I had to buy several specific-use chemicals to restore old bathroom and kitchen fixtures/appliances before installation in my new house. I had to eventually give them to a city person who took them to a chemical disposal station. Scary.</li>
</ul>
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<b><br /></b>
<b>This is a list of great cleaning agents, and positively the only ones I use:</b></div>
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<div>
<ul>
<li>Vinegar - I use vinegar in my laundry, about a quarter to a half of a cup per load depending on how large and how stinky. Try to add it during the rinse cycle rather that the start of the load. Can also be used to clean windows, shower curtains, washing machines, coffeemakers.</li>
<li>Liquid bluing - makes whites whiter as they dinge with age. Not really a cleaning application, but bluing can be used as a dye with salt/vinegar as a mordant. Blue and black the only colors I can think of that can't be commonly found in nature.</li>
<li>Ivory/hard Castille/homemade soap - I clean every dish, appliance, and fixture in my house with soap and water on a worn-out green scrubby. I wash myself with soap, as well.</li>
<li>Pine cleaner - Use pine cleaner diluted in water to disinfect floors and other surfaces. It also makes toilets, clothes, etc. smell good.</li>
<li>Borax - A good non-abrasive scrubbing agent and for stains, odors, etc. </li>
<li>Baking soda - Absorbs smells, good scrubbing agent, good for cleaning silver. Can be used to brush teeth, and is awesome for cleaning tea stains off of dishes.</li>
<li>Liquid Castille soap/baby shampoo - To wash people hair and dogs. </li>
<li>Toothpaste - I use commercial toothpaste rather than natural alternatives because I do not have fluoridated water. It can also be used an a silver polish.</li>
<li>I've read a lot of good things about citrus oils, peroxide, ammonia, lemon juice, and salt but have never actually used them myself.</li>
</ul>
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Many of these substances combine to do other chores. For example, I make my own laundry soap by using borax, Ivory/hard Castille/homemade soap, and washing powder. Lemon juice on baking soda can remove tough stains on porcelain. Vinegar and baking soda combined can remove mineral deposits.</div>
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This is not an exhaustive list of what can be done with these substances, only what I use them for. Internet searches yield many more ideas. Try these sites:<br />
<a href="http://everyday-green.blogspot.com/">http://everyday-green.blogspot.com</a><br />
<a href="http://www.almanac.com/">http://www.almanac.com</a><br />
<br />
<b>To clean, I use:</b><br />
<ul>
<li>Broom: Easy for tile and wood floors. I have a vacuum but I rarely use it.</li>
<li>Pumice stone - Mineral deposits in toilet.</li>
<li>Toilet brush - Twice a week toilet scrubbing.</li>
<li>Green scrubbies - For dishes and porcelain fixtures. </li>
<li>Washable cloths made of old T-shirts - Floors, counters, walls, windows, dusting, and any task typically involving sponges or paper towels.</li>
<li>Steel wool - scrubs and shines stainless steel and copper.</li>
</ul>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13758563547271718267noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5028018431710894418.post-40403370082106432412013-05-01T13:49:00.000-07:002013-10-28T08:21:57.901-07:00Baking DayI know this post isn't going to be relevant to too many people, but I'm putting it out there because I couldn't find much of anything about it when I Googled "How to Plan a Baking Day."<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My kitchen on Baking Day.</td></tr>
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<br />
I was a professional cook for a number of years, though my only baking job was making bagels, and that doesn't provide a skill set relevant to home baking. So, though I cook all of our meals at home, I only started making all of our baked goods at home this year. Doing all of the baking in one day assures that it gets done - trying to make these things over the course of a week requires doing set-up, warm-up, and clean-up every time, and that is a sure recipe for failure. Baking Day is not flexible. Things can't "come up." So best to reserve a day solely for the job (and it's a job) of baking.<br />
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<b>Here are the steps and tips that get me through a Baking Day:</b><br />
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#1: Ignore everything I say if you have a job. Baking Day takes an entire day, and people who work will not appreciate using a weekend day to stand in a hot kitchen looking at crackers.<br />
#2: Find all of the recipes you want to use and put them all in one location. Typically, this means finding recipes on the internet and printing them out. I don't have a printer, so I copy them into my recipe book.<br />
#3: Have your ingredients on hand before you start baking. Make a list of everything you will need, check your stocks, and purchase on Shop Day. My Shop Day is Friday, and "Yes" it gets its own day because I live 20 miles from town and I carpool because I'm too cheap to buy gas for even one trip per week. Buy at least as many cookie sheets as you need for your recipe that requires the most cookie sheets. I have 8 because that is how many I need to make Wheat Thins, though I have small ovens, so you may not need that many. If you are going to make crackers, you will need to buy a docker, making cracker holes with a toothpick<i> doubles </i>prep time.<br />
#4: Clean your house the day before Baking Day, especially your kitchen. I clean Monday and bake Tuesday. Do not plan to accomplish anything else on Baking Day. You won't.<br />
#5: On Baking Day, clean the kitchen again and be sure every dish is washed, dried, and put away. If you have containers like jars that you put your baked goods in when finished, make sure they are clean and dry before you start.<br />
#6: Take out every utensil you will need and put them on a large plate on your prep counter. For me, this is - measuring cups/spoons, pizza cutter, docker, knife. Put your rolling pin and rolling board on the prep counter. Put all the bowls, cookie sheets/etc., cooling rack, trivets you will need in appropriate places. Basically, get everything you will need in the place you will need it so you don't have to rummage with dough fingers in the middle of the bake.<br />
#7: Grease anything that will need to be greased. Margarine, butter, and lard grease better than anything else. I'm sorry to say it, but I found out the hard way.<br />
#8: Start with the bread. Bread has to rise twice, and rising times vary greatly on the weather. Get it out of the way and see how it's rising between the other recipes.<br />
#9: Stagger things on cookie sheets with things that are not on cookie sheets if you have a limited number of cookie sheets, giving you time to cool and clean them off between recipes.<br />
#10: After bread, make the thing that has the longest prep time. For me, that is Wheat Thins, which take about an hour to have completely ready for the oven.<br />
#11: Do not turn on the oven until you have something to put into it. While you are waiting for the warm-up, mix up the next baked good. Do not leave the oven on if you aren't using it, but don't open the door when not using unless you are done for the day.<br />
#12: If you make an item like thin crackers that have a bake time of about five minutes, do not try to do anything else during that 5 minutes. Anything that cooks in five minutes probably has about 90 seconds between being underdone and burnt.<br />
#13: Wash dishes as they become dirty. This doesn't apply for measuring items unless they become really gross.<br />
#14: If you have sticky or wet stuff in your measuring cup, put it in a dry item from the mixing bowl like flour. The sticky stuff sticks to the flour and you can scrape it off with your finger or spatula.<br />
#15: Once your cookie sheets are greased, you can reuse them until goo starts to bake onto them.<br />
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My Baking Day:<br />
Clean kitchen, 6 a.m.<br />
Take out all necessary items<br />
Grease all necessary dishes<br />
Prep Bread, 8 a.m.<br />
Prep 2 batches Wheat Thins<br />
Turn on oven<br />
Prep Brownies<br />
Cook Wheat Thins<br />
Prep Granola Bars while baking Brownies<br />
Prep 2 batches Oatmeal Cookies while baking Granola Bars<br />
Prep Banana Bread while baking Cookies<br />
Prep 2 batches Cheese Straws while baking Banana Bread<br />
Prep 2 batches Tortillas while baking Cheese Straws<br />
Cook Tortillas while baking Bread<br />
Make leftover tortillas from last week into baked tortilla chips<br />
Clean kitchen, 4 p.m.<br />
Start cooking dinner, 5 p.m.<br />
<i>This amount of baking provides baked goods for one adult male construction worker for one week, plus a few crumbs for the baker.</i><br />
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<b>I have a few other tricks, myself, but they may not be generally relevant:</b><br />
<ul>
<li>You can substitute light or dark brown sugar in pretty much any recipe that calls for regular sugar. You can make your own brown sugar on-the-cheap by using a tablespoon or two of molasses per pound of sugar in a food processor, or to the recipe. I don't use vanilla because the molasses adds some extra flavor.</li>
<li>Crackers and pie crusts turn out better with cold butter and ice cold water. They will spend less time under your warm fingers if you use a food processor.</li>
<li>Cracker dough is harder to work with when it's warm. This may also be true for pie crust, I wouldn't know.</li>
<li>Save hassle by cutting nuts, shredding cheese, etc. the night before, or at least before the bake.</li>
<li>King Arthur whole wheat flour really IS better than Gold Medal. I haven't started grinding my own flour yet, but I'll let you know what I think when I do.</li>
<li>Baked goods like white cake and sugar cookies really aren't quite the same with the whole wheat flours I have used. Choosing recipes that contain cocoa, coffee, oats/whatever to mask the whole wheat taste and texture isn't a bad idea.</li>
<li>Homemade baked goods don't contain preservatives, so don't expect them to last as long (though I've not yet had a problem with anything going bad. How do you know when they are bad?) Store in airtight containers for best results.</li>
<li>Use refined white flour or King Arthur whole wheat on your rolling pin and board if you are trying to really roll anything out super thin. The chaff or whatever it is in most whole wheat flours doesn't do much for making the dough not stick, and it adds a lot of dry fiber.</li>
<li>The cheapest things I have found (per CUP, not per pound) for "whole foods" baking: homemade brown sugar, peanuts, oats, canola oil, butter, cocoa, whole flaxseed, raisins. If you bake every week, you can buy in bulk. </li>
<li>Home ground flour is super cheap - we can get whole organic white winter wheat, locally grown, for about $.40-.50 a pound. There are 3 cups of flour in a pound of wheat.</li>
<li>I put links to the recipes I use on my Pinterest page and make notes in the comments after I try them. This way, I can share recipes that I have tried and easily find any recipes I wanted to try but haven't.</li>
<li><i>My personal opinion about sugars and oils</i> - Sugar isn't particularly good for you. I make sweeties because I have to feed a construction worker who burns through an insane amount of calories, but many people have a problem fitting in all of the vitamins/minerals/fiber/whatever that they are supposed to have in a day, and sugar and refined grains are just empty calories. People who debate which sugar is best are really voting with their dollars for sustainable processing. Adding blackstrap molasses to recipes will make them a little healthier, but not much. For oils, the best argument I've heard is that processed veg oils like canola contain Omega 6 oils bad,) while butter has Omega 3's (good.) Butter is less likely to be rancid, which is a big concern with a lot of whole foods people. I have no opinion on sprouted grains and store bought yeast at this point because we don't have any gastrointestinal issues.</li>
</ul>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13758563547271718267noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5028018431710894418.post-20784714432676892872012-11-29T07:45:00.001-08:002013-05-10T06:41:08.232-07:00How to Save Money with Foam Shutters<br />
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<b>Tips on How to use <a href="http://nerdfrontier.blogspot.com/2012/11/foam-board-window-insulation.html">Foam Shutters</a> to Save Money:</b></div>
<ul>
<li>Use on all windows except southern windows at any time when a heat source is required.</li>
<li>Put shutters on south facing windows when the sun goes down when a heat source is required.</li>
<li>As a general winter rule, windows are best left exposed only when standing in front of the uncovered sunny window causes your skin to feel warm, or makes the floor warm. The rest of the time, the window is usually leaking more heat than creating it. The opposite is true in summer.</li>
<li>Heat from interior lightbulbs will help to heat your house while producing light, so losing heat to gain light from windows is not the best use of energy. It takes far more energy to heat a home than illuminate it.</li>
<li>Store shutters in a location where they are easily accessed, but unlikely to be damaged, as they will be installed and removed often.</li>
<li>Please note that foam boards, like curtains, are flammable.</li>
<li>Consider shutters for southern windows in the daytime and western windows after noon during days when artificial cooling is required.</li>
<li>On days over 100 degrees, shutters are recommended for all windows. Make sure to use low wattage LED bulbs in the house when artificial cooling is required.</li>
</ul>
<div>
Foam Shutter Craft DIY link <a href="http://nerdfrontier.blogspot.com/2012/11/foam-board-window-insulation.html">here</a>.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13758563547271718267noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5028018431710894418.post-33561894472093828742012-11-28T12:16:00.002-08:002013-06-23T09:47:45.154-07:00Foam Board Window Insulation<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi60qPPipgczGRnLz-nV9XcVvlkCelRctgLCIPNsoJpG5LCHatpt6UGqNYH4ajiOFNjJhtI8FNG7cZ3ZZk98tXRGX-jmDO2ph55NVAiwWyDozHQQpUeY8ZNxPQ_p5L71AkMA5P5sNt0il8/s1600/HPIM0531.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi60qPPipgczGRnLz-nV9XcVvlkCelRctgLCIPNsoJpG5LCHatpt6UGqNYH4ajiOFNjJhtI8FNG7cZ3ZZk98tXRGX-jmDO2ph55NVAiwWyDozHQQpUeY8ZNxPQ_p5L71AkMA5P5sNt0il8/s320/HPIM0531.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Windows, regardless their independent insulating qualities, are never very good. Even with the best residential gas-filled, double glazed windows you can buy, you can get an R-value of maybe 3 or 4. Add 1 if you use insulated curtains. Blue or pink extruded polystyrene (XPS) foam board has an R-Value of roughly 5 per inch, if I remember correctly. By cutting foam board to fit in your windows, you can increase your window insulation by however thick you make your foam.<br />
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Foam Insulation Shutters:<br />
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<ol>
<li>Neatly cut sheets of blue or pink foam board insulation just slightly smaller than your window opening and remove the plastic film. Cut a piece of burlap several inches larger than the dimensions of the foam board. Fold burlap in half with the fold in the middle of the foam board and the other ends over the short edge of the foam board. Like putting in an auto headliner. Use the kind of spray adhesive that is used for foam and fabrics. Apply adhesive to the width of the foam board starting at the fold in the middle and working about a foot down the foam, and up the cloth. Trim burlap. Burlap can be primed and painted, if you like. Make a hole an inch or so away from each corner and put in twine loops so you can remove tight shades from the window.</li>
<li>Bigger shades - Cut the foam board bigger than the window if you don't mind putting hooks on your wall or window frame. Since the foam/burlap is not solid, you can just punch some loops through with a large needle and small twine wherever you need them to fit on the hooks. This will prevent air leaks if you get hooks small enough to hold the foam board flat against the wall or window frame.</li>
<li>Have not tried - Make much more elaborate versions of this project with lightweight wooden frames. Either make two shutters per windows like old-school shutters, or make a top and bottom half and hinge together. Cover fronts and backs with 1/8" or 1/4" plywood. These frames will be heavy and solid enough to damage paint and drywall - best used in applications where they can by permanently fixed to the window frame with hinges.</li>
<li>Have not tried - Glue composite beadboard panels to the front and back of the foam board with the beadboard sides showing (Liquid Nails Projects and Foamboard Adhesive.) Cut panels with circular saw to fit in the window, leaving a little space around the )edges to accommodate a trim piece (and a little extra to get the board in and out of the window. Buy a 1/4" flat trim piece the width of all three of your assembled panels (Ex: 1/8" beadboard + 1/8" beadboard + 1" foam = 1 1/4" trim width.) Apply the strips to the edges of the panels with something like Liquid Nails Projects and Foamboard Adhesive.</li>
<li>Make cloth covers for them, if you'd rather sew. The covers can be taken off and washed, and the foam can be replaced if it becomes damaged.</li>
<li>You can also just put the raw foam board in the window with the non-printed side in and close you curtains. Hey, I've done it. Works super awesome.</li>
<li>I used some Zinsser Gardz water-based multi-surface prep stuff that made it a little easier to work with. Then I used Modpodge to decoupage small pieces of thin kraft paper to it. Needed to be weighed down to stop bowing. You can also prime the foam with water based primer to make it paintable and for adhering things to the board - but wet product applications will try to bow. Only use water based acrylics and latex paints. I read that shellacing first will stop the board from bowing.</li>
<ul>
<li><b>Things I've tried that do not work or read are bad:</b></li>
<li>Large piece of paper</li>
<li>Pre-pasted wallpaper. I haven't tried regular wallpaper paste</li>
<li>Elmer's glue</li>
<li>Polyurethanes other than water based or shellacs</li>
<li>Most spray adhesives - they eat the foam</li>
</ul>
</ol>
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Here's <a href="http://nerdfrontier.blogspot.com/2012/11/how-to-save-money-with-foam-shutters.html">How to Use Foam Shutters</a>.<br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13758563547271718267noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5028018431710894418.post-31486028657005740152012-11-28T06:42:00.000-08:002013-06-23T09:48:52.381-07:00Replacing the Headliner on a Ford ExplorerI found this link a day too late:<br />
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<a href="http://www.wlsheadliners.com/tutorials/ford-explorer-headliner/">http://www.wlsheadliners.com/tutorials/ford-explorer-headliner/</a><br />
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But it's a great tutorial. Wish I found it sooner. But just in case this site ever goes down, I'm going to tell you how to remove the headliner from a 1994 XLT Ford Explorer. I imagine that it's applicable for a lot of Explorers, and probably some other SUV's.<br />
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<li>First of all, a couple of weeks before you start your project, remove one sample of each type of the trim retainers. There is one type around the headliner (12?), another type in the body of the headliner - 3 near the cargo hatch and 2 behind the dome light. There is a third type of retainer that is under the window in the cargo area, I think there are 6 of them. There are also 2 black bar-type christmas tree clips UNDERNEATH the trim above the door, and I don't really recommend removing the trim to get a sample - call the local Ford dealership parts department to find out what you need to know to get some. Order new retainers by measuring the ones you pulled out. I got mine at Clips and Fasteners.com. Or you could go to the parts department at your Ford dealership and they will order all the retainers without taking any out.</li>
<li>Go down to the cloth store and buy headliner cloth with a foam backing. Make sure it's long enough and wide enough. One yard=3feet. Ask that lady, she will show you where it is, and she will cut it for you. The cloth store will likely also have the fabric spray adhesive that you need. She will also help you find that.</li>
<li>Ready? I hope you have lots of tools. Remove the grab handles and the clothes hanger clips with a hex socket wrench.</li>
<li>Remove the visors with a screwdriver or drill.</li>
<li>Remove the dome light cover by popping it out at the side indention with a screwdriver or a 5-in-1. Remove the screws from the dome light. There are three - two obvious, and the third hidden a bit to the side of the light.</li>
<li>Remove the cargo light. I don't know how this was done because I wasn't the one who did it. Ask Stephen.</li>
<li>Remove the trim retainers from around the headliners. There's a special tool to do this, but you could use a 5-in-1 if you had to. Be aware! Most of them will break - it's been a long time since anyone took out these retainers if you are replacing the headliner, so the plastic is probably brittle. You will need a pair of pliers to get out the broken ones.</li>
<li>Remove the 5 big button retainers from the body of the headliner.</li>
<li>Remove the 6 small button retainers from below the windows in the cargo area.</li>
<li>Take the cover plastic off of the seatbelt connecters on the frame pillars. Remove the seatbelt bolts that fasten to the pillar between the seats, and the pillar between the backseat and the cargo area. You will need a T20 or T25 socket, I think, but I may have just made that up.</li>
<li>Remove the screw from the "A" pillar that is down near the bottom of the dashboard. The "A" pillar is the piece of framing between the windshield and the front door.</li>
<li>All of the trim should now pop down. It isn't easy, and you will think that the trim will break. Use caution, and maybe try a prying tool of some sort, but it will take some force to pop the pillar trims down.</li>
<li>When you get the "A" pillar trim off, you will notice a black bar-type retainer over each front door. Remove.</li>
<li>Put all of your removed parts in an empty bag, put the screws in one or more plastic bags inside of the parts bag. Replacing the headliner will likely take you a couple of days, so get it all secured in one place.</li>
<li>At this point, you should be able to remove the headliner. I recommend two people for this job.</li>
<li>Take the guard off of the cargo light hole by bending up the tabs in the back, then pull out.</li>
<li>The headliner is made of fiberglass and has a (green) plastic coating between the foam and the fiberglass. Use a very thin scraper about an inch or so across to chisel in between the plastic and the foam. Take off in long strips. Use a small wire brush to carefully scrape off the residue. If the foam and fabric are pretty much just dust (like the front part of mine,) you will have to take off whatever you can with the scraper, then use a large wire brush to take it down to the plastic. Try not to scrape off the plastic. Removal of the old liner took me about ten hours, but then I meticulously flaked the plastic off of about half of the fiberglass before I found that guy's tutorial and realized I wasn't supposed to. Oops. We'll see how it comes out.</li>
<li>After this, it's about like any other tutorial of how to install the new liner, and I suggest you watch a video on how it's done (pretty easy.) Yeah, step 18 is watch a video.</li>
<li>Lay out the new liner so it will fit over your fiberglass shell.</li>
<li>Fold the bottom half over the top half.</li>
<li>Spray fabric adhesive spray to a small horizontal section of the shell, and a roughly corresponding section of the fabric. </li>
<li>Let sit for 20 seconds, or whatever the container says.</li>
<li>Lay the fabric section over the shell section and press down from back to front. Work out any bubbles as you go. Use your whole hand and a rubbing motion.</li>
<li>Repeat, in sections, until the whole thing is done.</li>
<li>Cut out the holes.</li>
<li>Put everything back together.</li>
</ol>
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UPDATE, Nov. 29th: Seriously, don't scrape the green plastic off of the fiberglass. That half is a little dimply under the new headliner.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13758563547271718267noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5028018431710894418.post-29729090621016801172012-11-27T09:43:00.000-08:002013-05-11T11:49:27.939-07:00Prepping: Power OutageWe live in an area that suffers periodically from week-long power outage related to ice and snow storms. For this reason, we planned our house to survive winter power outages off-the-grid, but summer emergencies like tornadoes also make outages possible. Rural areas are usually less of a priority for the power company, and it's already happened to us a few times. Here are some ideas:<br />
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<b>Lighting:</b><br />
<ul>
<li>Purchase lanterns. Lanterns should be an oil or kerosene-type lantern, or should accept candles. Do not store lamp fuel or kerosene in the house.</li>
<li>Be sure to have a good portable hurricane lantern of some sort if you need to do barn chores.</li>
<li>Mount hooks to receive lanterns in the main room of the house, and consider putting more hooks in other much used rooms like a bathroom or kitchen. Candle wall-mount sconces can also be used, but usually only have a rear guard, so use with caution.</li>
<li>Candle lanterns should be mounted three feet below a ceiling, so don't choose suspended candle lanterns unless you have high ceilings.</li>
<li>Consider hurricane lamps for a mantle or other safe area of a main room to hold a couple of candles. This is an unwise option for cat owners. Always suspend lighting from a ceiling or use wall-mount sconces secured to the wall if you own cats. </li>
<li>At the very least, buy one of those big, cheap bags of tealights. Tealights can be put in pretty much any glass or ceramic dish with high sides as a holder, and five or six tealights in a main room can supply a decent amount of light for a couple of hours. Not that you'll be reading by it or anything.</li>
<li>Never leave candles burning unattended. Cats are not "attendants."</li>
<li>Hand-crank LED lighting is not super awesome. It is not acceptable as a primary light source during a power outage.</li>
<li>Keep special power outage items in the same place, like a box or specific drawer. </li>
<li>Put wooden matches and candles in the emergency box.</li>
<li>Keep at least one good flashlight plus batteries (keep batteries with the flashlight, not in it) for each person. </li>
</ul>
<b>Water:</b><br />
<ul>
<li>Install gutters with downspouts and have them empty into rain barrels. Filter water for consumption.</li>
<li>Buy those five gallon water storage jugs or even five gallon buckets from the hardware store. Fill with water and change water at least every six months. Try to have at least one bucket per person stored somewhere. Do not use milk-type jugs for water storage, they are made to break down faster than other plastic containers.</li>
<li>Learn how to make a simple filter for pond water if you have a pond or other fresh water source. Filter it until clear for general use, put it through a water filter for human consumption. </li>
<li>Distilling salt water could be done, but that's more of a survival skill. Best to just think ahead a little better.</li>
<li>Install a hand-pump on your well. Some pumps are designed to fit onto existing conventional well systems. Or, drill a second well designated as a hand-pump. The pump should be freeze-proof, or it will need to be otherwise protected for freeing weather.</li>
<li>Every country person knows: when the weatherman says there's a bad storm coming, fill your bathtub with water and put in the stopper. That fifty gallons or so will be invaluable in a power outage. Two people would have enough drinking water for two weeks with that much water. Or, it could provide a couple of daily toilet flushes and dishwashing for about a week.</li>
<li>I recommend the Berkey filter for people with rural water and for power outage filtration. Water purification tablets and iodine not recommended.</li>
</ul>
<b>Heat:</b><br />
<ul>
<li>Wood stove. It needs to have a top surface suitable for cooking, and an oven is nice if you like the look and want to spend the extra money.</li>
<li>Call a chimney sweep at least once a year, more if you use the stove a lot. Or clean it yourself.</li>
<li>Gas or propane stove and heaters. Make sure that they do not have electric igniters! </li>
<li>You can use a kerosene stove and heater, but the fumes require fresh air coming in from somewhere, and these appliances are far less safe than your other options.</li>
<li>Buy a onesie. A onesie keeps a warm pocket of air circulating around your body, even your feet. Much warmer than long underpants with socks.</li>
</ul>
<b>Entertainment and communication:</b><br />
<ul>
<li>Old-school house phones that don't have a power cord will continue to work when the power is out.</li>
<li>Buy a car-charger for your cellphone.</li>
<li>Buy a solar charger and necessary charging cords. The days may be pretty bright, even if you're out of power, and you may be able to charge up a laptop, iPod, or small gaming device to pass the time.</li>
<li>Buy a battery back-up pack for an iPod, and batteries. An iPod can run for a lot longer than an old-school stereo on a few batteries - 15 hours on 4 AA's.</li>
<li>Don't bother charging an eReader, just keep some books you haven't read on a shelf with a couple of books of puzzles like sudoku or crosswords.</li>
<li>I wouldn't recommend buying a generator for outages, because people depend on them to try to live normally, which is stupid. But if you have one, run it once a day for a half-hour to an hour when your favorite show comes on the television. Since the TV doesn't take much power, run a splitter from the TV cord to charge up your laptop and other hand-held devices. At the same time, run the well pump off the other generator plug and fill up the bathtub again, then run the fridge for long enough for it to cycle off.</li>
<li>When the weather is nice enough to drive around, go to lunch and see a movie. Hang out at the mall for awhile, if you can stand it.</li>
<li>If your house is warm enough to use your fingers, power outages are a great time for crafts. Keep craft books and supplies on hand. </li>
<li>Clean your house. Not only will it keep you busy and generating heat for quite awhile, but you would be amazed at how much better everyone will weather the storm when things are clean and tidy. </li>
<li>Nighttime entertainment is the hard part. The lighting is poor. The best way to pass the time is to hang out with the people you love. Call your mom. The light may be good enough to play cards or board games. Learn to play the ukelele or the banjo.</li>
<li>Get a NOAA radio. It'll alert you to hazardous conditions and weather in your area.</li>
</ul>
<b>Food:</b><br />
<ul>
<li>Keep a stock of non-refrigerated items for outages. Most people have a fair amount of non-fridge food at any given time. In winter, people want to eat warm comfort food, so be sure to have things like potatoes, sugar, flour, beans, soup mixes, and mac and cheese in the pantry. Rural people should keep enough winter food supplies to feed the family for a minimum of four days. After that, the power may still be out, but a trip to the grocery may be possible. </li>
<li>Having crazy freeze-dried meals and tons of canned goods is probably not necessary for people who cook most of their meals, but people who depend on fast-food and microwavables may want to consider stocking up on that sort of thing. EXCEPTION: I would suggest keeping some canned meats and jerky as fridge and frozen meats should stay where they are.</li>
<li>Most people want coffee. Buy a french press or a percolator.</li>
<li>When the power goes out: quickly grab anything in the fridge that looks usable and put it in an ice chest. This includes: lunchmeat, leftovers in plastic containers, cheese, butter, bread, all drinks, and vegetables that will survive on the counter for a few days (which is most of them,) and eggs. Put the eggs, veg, bread, and non-perishable drinks like pop and beer in a place that is as close to 40 degrees (must be above freezing) as you can. Package lunchmeat, butter, and cheese in smaller, usable portions in ziplock-type bags, put in ice chest with things like leftovers, pack with snow, put outside on the least windy side of a building, cover with snow or straw. Do not open the freezer.</li>
<li>Consider keeping some discarded single-service water bottles or pop bottles. Wash and store. During an outage, pour milk and other perishable liquids into these smaller bottles so you only have to thaw out that amount of liquid when you need to take it out of the ice chest.</li>
<li>After your initial grab, do not open the refrigerator.</li>
<li>If you feel certain that the temperatures will consistently stay below freezing for at least four days and there is snow on the ground, you can take meats out of the fridge and put them in a separate ice chest, fill it with snow, and cover with snow. If the power is out for more than about two days and you don't have a generator, this is also what you can do with meats in your freezer. If you stockpile large amounts of food in a chest freezer, you will need to buy a generator to keep from losing your food. Do not put food back into a fridge or freezer after removal.</li>
<li>Try to keep empty spaces in the freezer filled with water bottles during the storm season. The less airspace, the longer the food will stay frozen.</li>
<li>If you're serious about stocking up, you may want to build a root cellar, if you don't already have a basement. A great choice for sustainable farmers and preppers.</li>
</ul>
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<b>General Outage Mood Changers</b>:<br />
<ul>
<li>Get a sun lamp for seasonal depression and a means of generating power to run it if you suffer from SAD.</li>
<li>Clean your house during the event and put all unusual outage items where they can't be seen.</li>
<li>Stock comfort foods like mac and cheese and cheery foods like cocoa.</li>
<li>Squirrel away some alcohol and/or cigarettes if anyone in the family is going to be more pleasant if they have them. </li>
<li>Have a way to make or listen to music that you like, the more upbeat the better.</li>
<li>Try not to spend your time alone.</li>
</ul>
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Now, this list may seem like a lot of preparing, but we've been without power for a week. I can't tell you how much it sucks. We had no heat, no way to cook, no way to wash dishes, no way to wash ourselves. I did have the presence of mind to fill the bath tub and as many buckets as I could find with water before the power went out, and I had a big bag of tealights. We had peanut butter and bread, potato chips, and soda pop. The days were unbelievably dark - too dark to read for most of the day - and the roads were scary. I wasn't warm once, no matter how many clothes I wore, or how many blankets I piled on. I promised that when I designed my house, I would do better, and so far, it's looking pretty good. And some of this stuff saves us a lot of money even when the power is on.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13758563547271718267noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5028018431710894418.post-10366286615224861172012-11-26T14:22:00.005-08:002013-08-28T06:59:43.274-07:00"The Privy" - the Indoor OuthouseI have decided to talk about my privy. I usually avoid talking about this subject with others because I know most people think it's just completely disgusting.<br />
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The privy is under the stairwell in the garage, but the framing for the stairs contains it in its own area. It has a door to outside, and some open, uninsulated framing allows access from inside the garage. Eventually, there will be a door there. </div>
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The privy is a 4 bucket system. The buckets are the five gallon kind you get from the hardware store. </div>
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<ul>
<li>Bucket #1 is the liquid bucket. It is a bucket with a lid placed firmly on it. The lid has a hole cut in it to receive a large automotive funnel. Inside the bucket, a one gallon milk carton has been cut out just enough at the top to receive the funnel. There is a ping-pong ball in the big funnel. So, when you urinate, the urine goes into the funnel, which causes the ping-pong ball to rise, allowing the urine to pass into the milk carton. The ping-pong ball stops any bad smells from escaping. Paper will not go down the funnel and must be put in the trash bin. The milk carton should be emptied and rinsed out once a day, preferably at night (so it doesn't sit around all night.)</li>
<li>Bucket #2 is the solid bucket. It is a bucket with a special lid that looks like a toilet seat and lid. A biodegradable can liner is put inside the bucket. If possible, only feces should go in the bucket, as urine in composting toilets is usually what makes them smell bad and generally fail to do what they say they will. Put a little of the peat moss in the bottom of the bucket, then use. Cover with peat moss. Repeat as necessary. Remove liner when bucket is about half-full, or at least every week. If it begins to smell bad, remove the liner as this may indicate flies have laid eggs.</li>
<li>Bucket #3 is a trash bucket with a lid and a biodegradable can liner so it can be easily emptied. </li>
<li>Bucket #4 contains peat moss, sawdust, or something similar to absorb moisture in bucket #2.</li>
</ul>
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Bury the biodegradable bags in the yard. Rinse the buckets out once a week and air dry in the sun.<br />
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Now, this is an unconventional system, and Son of Caveman is oddly conventional, and he seriously balked at this idea when it was first proposed. But we had no bathroom last year for at almost two months, and his only other option was to take some tissue to the woods. So he tried it. When we got a bathroom, I asked him how he felt about the bucket system, and he said it was perfectly fine with him, it wasn't smelly or nasty, and he didn't mind it a bit, as long as he never had to empty or clean anything. And he never did.<br />
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We were in a pretty rough place when we last regularly used the privy, so we only had a bin of hand sanitizer to clean up afterwards, although there was (and is) a nice utility sink ten feet away in the garage. We plan to make the permanent privy much nicer in the future, with a lot of stainless steel and real wood. It's hard to convince yourself to go downstairs to the brown-recluse ridden garage privy when there's a nice modern (well, to 1920's standards, anyway) bathroom upstairs. Besides, it was full of gardening tools from the time we last used it up until last week, and we're in winter mode now. Brrr.</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13758563547271718267noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5028018431710894418.post-53044260487759757732012-11-26T13:00:00.002-08:002013-05-10T06:38:38.139-07:00Saving Water and EnergyI don't sweat water usage as much as I did when we lived in town because I know it isn't going to the treatment plant, and I'm paying the same cost whether I use it or not. Still, we do make quite a bit of effort. These are our methods for saving energy and water, and remember that these are rural solutions:<br />
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<b>Yard:</b><br />
<ul>
<li>Never water a lawn. Lawns are stupid anyway.</li>
<li>Do not overmow. Mow as needed in the spring as grass gets high a few days after a soaking rain. When spring rains stop, do not mow again until fall. Mow in the fall only once! </li>
<li>Put gutters with downspouts on the house and run the downspouts into rain barrels.</li>
<li>If trees require water during a drought, water each tree individually by putting a hose on trickle at the base. Cover the hose and the base of the tree with mulch. Move hose as necessary.</li>
<li>Plant drought resistant plants in areas of drought. Remove plants with high water requirements in areas of drought.</li>
<li>If you must water plants, they should produce food.</li>
<li>Put mulch on gardens and use soaker hoses under mulch to water.</li>
<li>Do not have pole lights installed on the property, or have power to them cut. </li>
<li>Only use outdoor lights when needed.</li>
<li>Buy an anaerobic septic system if your location allows it.</li>
</ul>
<b>Dishes</b>:<br />
<ul>
<li>Wash dishes by hand by filling the basins, not by running water over them while washing them.</li>
<li>Do not use a dishwasher.</li>
</ul>
<b>Toilets:</b><br />
<ul>
<li>"If it's yellow, let it mellow. When it's brown, flush it down." Try to limit flushes to about two per day per person.</li>
<li>We have a privy under our stairs with inside and outside access. Great for daytime when the weather is nice, and when we expand to downstairs (currently garage,) it will be great for all seasons and hours.</li>
<li>We have an old-school toilet tank in the upstairs bath. Put closed bottles of water in the tank and it will use less water per flush.</li>
<li>Don't flush anything that doesn't need to be flushed. Get a small trash bin with a self-closing lid to discard used toilet paper.</li>
</ul>
<b>Sinks:</b><br />
<ul>
<li>Buy hand sanitizer and wash hands less often.</li>
<li>Turn off the faucets when brushing. </li>
<li>Turn the hot water off at the wall on hand sinks. People turn on the hot and let it run until it is warm.</li>
</ul>
<b>Water Heater:</b><br />
<ul>
<li>Put the water heater on a timer. 5pm to 10pm gives plenty of water in peak hours.</li>
<li>Get a 20 gallon water heater. Tubs don't get overfilled with 20 gallons of hot water.</li>
<li>Or get a solar water heater.</li>
<li>Or get an on-demand water heater (gas.)</li>
<li>Turn off the electric water heater completely during the winter when a wood stove will be burning during peak hot water usage hours.</li>
</ul>
<b>Baths:</b><br />
<ul>
<li>Bathe together once a day in the evening. No morning showers. Go to bed clean.</li>
<li>Just one person? Take a hobo shower - turn on water, wet yourself all over, turn off water, lather up with a wet washcloth, turn on water to rinse.</li>
<li>Use outdoor shower in summer months with environmentally friendly soap.</li>
<li>Buy an atypically small bathtub. Clawfoots are available in 4 foot lengths.</li>
</ul>
<b>Cleaning Clothes:</b><br />
<ul>
<li>Donate the clothes dryer to the Goodwill.</li>
<li>Disconnect hot water from clothes washer.</li>
<li>Share a bath towel and washcloth. Wash bath linens once a week, bed linens once a month, quilts and blankets once a year. An old-timers trick to doing laundry less often was to take linens out to the line once or twice a week to get sun and air when the weather is sunny, then put back on the beds.</li>
<li>Not all clothes need to be washed every time they are worn if baths are taken and underclothes are changed daily.</li>
</ul>
<b>Lights:</b><br />
<ul>
<li>Trade out lightbulbs for LED's, or maybe CFL's. Use attractive incandescents only in months when the heat they generate will be beneficial.</li>
<li>Trade out light fixtures with multiple lights for fixtures with a single light. Evening lights need not be as bright as sunlight. No room needs more than two lightbulbs. Bedrooms and bathrooms only need one lightbulb. Small closets don't need lightbulbs.</li>
<li>Do not decorate the house with lights for holidays, especially outdoors. If using a Christmas tree, only turn on the tree in the evenings when family is home and turn off before bed.</li>
<li>Use windows to generate light during the day. Open curtains to the north in the summer and to the south in the winter.</li>
<li>Turn off all lights during the day and at bedtime. Very small wattage LED night lights can be purchased if necessary.</li>
<li>Don't use any lightbulb that requires more than 10 Watts unless supplemental heat is desirable.</li>
</ul>
<b>Cooling/Heat:</b><br />
<ul>
<li>Instead of central air, put one window unit in the main room of the house and do not put any in the rest of the house.</li>
<li>Turn off the AC when not at home, or when asleep. </li>
<li>Buy an energy efficient AC. Buy the highest SEER rating you can afford. Buy a heat pump.</li>
<li>Go without AC for as much of the year as possible.</li>
<li>Install ceiling fans to move air around the room, use box fans in windows to more air through a room.</li>
<li>Use windows to advantage. </li>
<li>Consider an attic fan or a roof whirlybird vent.</li>
<li>Use a stovetop humidifier or electric humidifier in cold months. Dry skin feels colder than moist skin. (Close windows.)</li>
<li>Buy storm windows. Get insulated curtains for windows.</li>
<li>Make <a href="http://nerdfrontier.blogspot.com/2012/11/foam-board-window-insulation.html">winter window insulatio</a>n by cutting blue foam insulation sheets to fit in the window, then sew a cloth cover for it to make it attractive from outdoors. Cover on the inside by closing curtains.</li>
<li>Buy an efficient wood stove if wood is available on property or in the area. It should have a cooktop, at least, an oven if affordable. </li>
<li>Use space heaters like electric radiators to only heat rooms being used. Radiators do not blow air across skin - moving air increases evaporative cooling in the body.</li>
<li>Reverse ceiling fan direction and turn on low setting to circulate warm air down and cool air up.</li>
<li>Insulate the home well and seal up air leaks.</li>
<li>Build or buy the smallest home that you can comfortably live in.</li>
</ul>
<b>Appliances:</b><br />
<ul>
<li>Buy an energy efficient refrigerator and freezer. </li>
<li>Buy a mini-fridge instead of a large fridge.</li>
<li>Use a campfire, grill, outdoor oven, or solar oven for warm weather cooking. Cook more outdoors than is needed for a meal and refrigerate or freeze the remainder for quick reheated meals.</li>
<li>Use a wood stove indoors for cold weather cooking.</li>
<li>Eat no-cook foods in warm months.</li>
<li>Don't buy appliances with digital clocks or other digital info.</li>
<li>Donate any small appliance that has not been used in 6 months.</li>
<li>Install solid surface floors and sweep/mop rather than vacuum/steam cleam.</li>
</ul>
<b>Entertainment:</b><br />
<ul>
<li>Don't buy dumb stuff. No power razor, no electric scissor, no waterfall cat bowl, no novelty arcade Ms. Pac-Man game in your basement. This should be obvious, and donating these items is an important first step toward energy conservation. And don't buy stuff like this for other people.</li>
<li>Unplug charging cords when not in use.</li>
<li>Buy a solar charger for charging cords.</li>
<li>Use power strips that can be turned off for most of the day that control televisions and entertainment equipment.</li>
<li>Buy a hand-held game system, or play games on a laptop.</li>
<li>Use a laptop instead of a large computer.</li>
<li>Use a laptop to watch television.</li>
<li>Cancel cable. Cable entices the public to think there is something good on now (but there's not.) Watch television when it's convenient and free on the internet with a laptop.</li>
<li>If a television is still required, buy the smallest and most energy efficient model that is acceptable. </li>
<li>Do not put televisions, computers, or other entertainment equipment in rooms other than the designated entertainment area.</li>
<li>If using a house phone, get the old-school kind that doesn't require electricity.</li>
</ul>
<b>Outdoor living:</b><br />
<ul>
<li>Build a greenhouse or sunporch on the south side of the home for cool weather.</li>
<li>Build a porch, especially screened, on the east side of the home for warm weather.</li>
<li>Build an outdoor kitchen.</li>
<li>Build a privy or outhouse.</li>
<li>Put seating and hammocks in outdoor areas as indicated by season.</li>
<li>Put an outdoor shower connected to a garden hose under some shade trees. Put on a misting wand, put a table under the hose in the trees, and have a mister for the hottest parts of summer days.</li>
</ul>
Obviously, we haven't had an opportunity to implement everything yet (outdoor living list) because we are still building, but we know what to do as we go.<br />
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And, of course, we can't change the septic. I live out in the middle of nowhere, so I do not have municipal water. I have a well and septic. My septic system is the aerobic-type with sprinklers that put the water back onto my lawn. If I could change but one thing on my property, it would be to have a conventional anaerobic septic tank because it does not require electricity. Our septic runs about $20 a month. This doesn't seem so bad compared with paying for city services, but when I look at my electric bill, I find it very shocking that more than a quarter of the cost of our high-usage months is just the septic.<br />
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Consider that the mistake we made to teach others not to do it. It cost about $5000 to put in, it costs about $200 a year for electric, it requires twice-a-year tech visits to keep in good repair, and it's supposed to be pumped out once or twice a year. It will never pay itself back.<br />
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These tips will require some changes in thinking for most people to achieve. It takes some sacrifice to make a serious attempt to lower water and energy costs. Still, these tips are far less drastic than living off-the-grid.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13758563547271718267noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5028018431710894418.post-20817645681547384412012-11-26T08:18:00.002-08:002013-08-28T06:50:28.938-07:00How To Do Laundry Without HeatWe use an energy efficient washer that does not have hot water connected to it, and no dryer at all. I decided not to connect the hot water because I felt that if the hot water was connected, I would eventually find a reason to use it. There are good reasons to use hot water, for instance, when someone gets poison ivy. Hot water could also be good for greasy/oily clothes, but my washer says not to put that stuff in it anyway. That reasoning also applies to the dryer. If I had one I would definitely use it - cold weather, rain, pressed for time.<br />
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I don't have a standard clothesline yet, just a piece of thin rope tied between two posts on the outbuilding. I also have an awesome drying rack that I usually set up outside, but I can put it in the garage/upstairs in inclement weather. I am not interested in putting a clothesline up indoors as we currently live in a very small apartment above our garage, but as we expand our living quarters, I would like to put a retractable line in. I would also like one of those built-in cubby clothes racks that you put above your washer. Lehman's has them.<br />
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To wash clothes in an efficient washer, I've read that liquid detergents should not be used as they contain animal fats that build up in the washer. I'm writing this, but it's so hypocritical of me at this point - I'm trying to use up the liquid detergent we got when we had to do our clothes at the laundrymat. I have, however, purchased a bar of Zote, washing soda, borax, and liquid bluing. I don't have any white vinegar yet, but I will buy some as soon as I can remember. We always have Ivory soap or homemade soap available.<br />
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There are many recommendations for mixing Ivory, washing soda, and borax to make washing powders all over the internet. Vinegar is put in the rinse cycle to make clothes softer and clean out the machine. I cannot put bleach in my clothes because of the type of septic that I have, but bleach is often used to get whites whiter. I would have to put out clothes in a dishpan in a bleach solution and empty it out in the yard. Fortunately, I have very few whites, so I haven't even had to try the bluing yet. When using bleach, borax, and vinegar, be aware that the pH levels of these chemicals can react to each other. Only put vinegar in the rinse cycle - it will react with borax in the wash cycle.<br />
<ul>
<li>To add vinegar for softening, fill the softener cup with it, or add 1 to 2 cups in the rinse cycle.</li>
<li>Washing powder - one bar finely grated soap, one cup soda, one cup borax. Add one heaping Tablespoon to wash in efficient machine. Adjust levels and use amount to suit your needs. UPDATE: I have been using homemade soap since this post, and it has worked as well as the liquid detergent. I have had no problem with the bad smells in my washer that others have reported from use of liquid detergents.</li>
</ul>
<b>How to Sort Clothes:</b><br />
Who cares about colors? Put all the colors together (as long as you wash new clothes with similar or darker colors a couple of times) EXCEPT real whites or very light colors. They might not pick up color from other articles, but they will pick up lint.<br />
Lint control is the real key to sorting clothes. Here are the load types:<br />
<ul>
<li>High Lint - Socks, unhemmed rags, and towels. Wash socks separately from towels if you have enough of them. </li>
<li>Moderate lint - Jeans, flannel, fleece, sweaters, sweatshirts. Wash sweatshirts separately if you have enough. Sweatshirts deposit lint, but they also attract it. You may end up buying a lint roller. This category will likely take you a few laundry days to perfect.</li>
<li>Light lint - T-shirts and lightweight knits like polos can be washed together. Also good for cotton underpants and long underpants.</li>
<li>Very light lint - fine woven fabrics like cotton and synthetics - shirts and slacks, cotton sheets.</li>
<li>(We don't own many synthetics, so I don't have any special instructions.)</li>
</ul>
<b>Special washing tips: </b><br />
<ul>
<li>Put a microfiber cloth (available at automotive supply) in with the laundry. It will pick up lint.</li>
<li>It is usually best to put in laundry detergent before you put in the clothes.</li>
<li>Always check all pockets!</li>
</ul>
<b>How to dry clothes:</b><br />
Don't let them sit around. The wrinkles will set up very quickly.<br />
As you take them out of the washer, give each piece a quick shake and lie it flat in the basket, working as quickly as possible. The weight of the clothes on top will work out some of the wrinkles from washing. To "Snap" clothes, hold each article at the top, hold it above your head, and "snap" it downward quickly.<br />
<ul>
<li>Jeans: Zip and button, put pockets in. Snap four times, hang on clothesline. </li>
<li>T-Shirts, Polos, sweatshirts, other jersey-type knits: Button any buttons, zip any zippers, pockets in. Snap twice, hang on hanger. Button any buttons you needed to have open to get the thing on the hanger, arrange it so the shoulder seams match up with the hanger, arrange all collars the way you want them to look when dry.</li>
<li>Socks, long underpants, and underpants: Smack against something a few times, your leg is fine. Otherwise, snap. Hang on dryer.</li>
<li>Button-ups and lightweight cotton: Special care needed. Put on hanger. Button everything, arrange collars, snap twice, then pull each seam and section at the longest point of the garment to make it as wrinkle-free as possible. (Example - shoulder in one hand, cuff in the other. Pull.) Hang on line between clothespins. If you pull seams well, you can almost eliminate ironing.</li>
<li>Towels: Towels are special. Want the softest towels you can get without a dryer? Find a post (or similar) with neither rust not splinters that has a hard edge. Grasp the long ends of the towels, one end in each hand, and run the towel across the hard edge. The way cartoon characters dry themselves after a bath. This will loosen the nap. If the nap is down and wrinkled, they will look the same after drying, except they will be hard and stiff.</li>
</ul>
Most clothes will look the same when you hang them up as when you take them down, so take care. Also, if you can get to clothes, especially jeans and towels, when they are half-dry, give them a couple of snaps, and hang them up in reverse, you will get better results. Snap clothes again a couple of times when taking down to take out any stiffness that may be left. Any wrinkles left in jeans should lie down when folded and put in the drawer.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13758563547271718267noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5028018431710894418.post-43216035306160942332012-10-09T05:08:00.000-07:002013-05-10T06:39:06.101-07:00Prepping: Fire Kit<br />
To prep a fire kit, consider your circumstances carefully. And don't forget to MAKE A PLAN. None of the things in a fire kit will do you any good if you don't know how or when to use them. Do a drill at least once. If you have a wood stove, also plan what you would do in the case of a chimney fire.<br />
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Our fire kit:<br />
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Smoke hoods<br />
Wool blanket<br />
Fire extinguishers - one for second floor, one for loft<br />
Fire/carbon monoxide alarm<br />
Window ladder<br />
Crowbar<br />
Flashlight<br />
Cell phone<br />
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Our house has a garage on the first floor and a loft apartment on the second (and above.) There is only one entrance to the apartment. The apartment has a wood heater. It is likely that the windows could serve as an exit in emergency on the second floor and result in nothing worse than a broken leg, but the bed is in the loft on the third floor. In the event of a fire, the heat and smoke will rise to the loft. The loft ladder is very close to the wood stove.<br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13758563547271718267noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5028018431710894418.post-80256759077277641552012-10-05T15:52:00.000-07:002013-05-10T06:40:28.658-07:00Prepping: The 72-Hour Bag Making a 72-Hour bag is one of the first stages of being a prepper. The idea is to make a kit that can sustain you for three days in an emergency, and is usually kept in your car. Some preppers see these kits as the resource that will help them to survive while they hike to their "bug-out location" - the place they will go when society, the government, the economy, whatever collapses.<br />
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We have 72-hour bags in case we need to evacuate our house or are away from home and cannot return, or have to squat in our woods, most notably in case of a major fire or a tornado. I am also comforted by the idea that Son of Caveman has one in his car in case he is out driving on icy roads with steep drop-offs at night in winter, as he often has. It's also allows some impromptu hiking and camping.<br />
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All-in-all, I think most of the things in a 72-hour kit are rather alarmist, but in the bag's defense, we have actually used things from our bags for emergencies already. Many websites have suggestions for 72-hour bags, so I'm just going to tell you what's in my bag. It weighs, in total, about 8 pounds, and has tons of extra space for clothes or food or whatever.<br />
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<ul>
<li>Multi-tool</li>
<li>30 feet snare wire</li>
<li>30 feet fishing line, 4 hooks, 4 weights, 2 bobbers, 2 lures</li>
<li>30 feet nylon cord</li>
<li>Spool dental thread</li>
<li>Various rubber bands, safety pins </li>
<li>Carabiner</li>
<li>Metal cup and canteen, dining utensils</li>
<li>Water purifier bottle</li>
<li>5 plastic Ziplock bags</li>
<li>Windup flashlight and radio</li>
<li>Magnesium flint and standard lighter</li>
<li>Small container with cotton balls soaked in petroleum jelly to start fires</li>
<li>6'X8' tarp</li>
<li>Sleeping bag(tied onto the backpack straps)</li>
<li>Poncho </li>
<li>Sunglasses, sunscreen, insect repellant, extra pair prescription glasses </li>
<li>1 large roll duct tape</li>
<li>5 large T-shirt cloth squares, 1 bandana</li>
<li>Leather work gloves</li>
<li>Oklahoma map</li>
<li>Compass</li>
<li>Whistle</li>
<li>Mirror</li>
<li>Sewing kit - two needles, one bobbin of white standard thread, one bobbin heavy-duty thread</li>
<li>First aid kit - alcohol wipes, antibiotic wipes, gauze, sterile pads/tape, band-aids, Ace bandage </li>
<li>ID card with important names and numbers, allergies. We should also carry pictures of each other.</li>
</ul>
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SOC's bag also has:<br />
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<ul>
<li>Small survival guide </li>
<li>Hatchet</li>
<li>Wind-up watch</li>
<li>Hand-heater packs</li>
<li>Mini-camp stove</li>
<li>Soap</li>
<li>Folding knife</li>
<li>He also has a bivvy, but makes his pack cumbersome, and it's too much to fit behind the seat of his truck.</li>
</ul>
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I carried (and have had to use) a clothes bag in case I got stranded long before I started prepping which contains:<br />
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<ul>
<li>2 pairs warm socks</li>
<li>Hat with earflaps</li>
<li>Scarf</li>
<li>1 pair long underpants</li>
<li>1 pair warm gloves</li>
<li>Sweater</li>
<li>Umbrella</li>
</ul>
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And of course, a food and water bin that contains 1-2 gallons of water and some foods we like so we will rotate them often. We choose a couple of things from the following food list:<br />
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<ul>
<li>Dried fruit </li>
<li>Nuts </li>
<li>Granola/breakfast/cereal-type bars </li>
<li>Sandwich crackers </li>
<li>Vienna sausage </li>
<li>Beef jerky </li>
<li>Sesame snacks</li>
</ul>
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And of course, I carry my phone, bank card, photo ID and bits of cash wherever I go because they are in my satchel.<br />
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This is fine for us, because we have our own cars, but I find it hard to imagine a family cramming and storing all this malarkey in the family car. And I know that it's hard to stop yourself from grabbing useful things in the pack, but you mustn't. You know and I know that you won't put it back.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13758563547271718267noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5028018431710894418.post-91517291146633221342012-10-05T10:06:00.000-07:002013-05-10T06:41:57.137-07:00How to Buy American<b>Buying American </b>doesn't simply mean buying American goods, it means not buying foreign goods, especially Asian goods. And it's harder than it looks. Here are some tips to keep your money at home - you may even save a little money.<br />
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<b>1. Plan ahead and buy the best quality you can afford.</b> You will be less likely to find a pair of American Wolverines or Red Wings if you already have a hole in your boot. Buy on the internet if you can't find local shops selling American. Try <a href="http://www.stillmadeinusa.com/">www.stillmadeinusa.com/</a> for a start. Walmart seems to be making a serious effort to carry American, especially online.<br />
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<b>2. Research.</b> The internet offers myriad methods of finding American made goods. Make sure that the individual item you purchase is manufactured or assembled in the United States. You might be surprised what you can find - Igloo makes refrigerators here and Element electronics is currently assembling some models of televisions in the United States. They list models and stores on their Twitter account. <a href="https://twitter.com/american_goods">https://twitter.com/american_goods</a><br />
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<b>3. Avoid impulse buys and stupid things. </b>You don't need silk leaves in Fall colors. You don't need wrapping paper. You don't need Koozies. Besides, the internet can teach you to make all of those things (I love <a href="http://www.instructables.com/">www.instructables.com</a> People are amazing.)<br />
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<b>4. Buy local </b>when you can. Find out what's available in your area. We have a Roundhouse jeans factory and Shawnee Mills, and purchase their products whenever possible. We have a farmers market. Buying local saves shipping costs and keeps your money in your neighborhood for a little bit longer. Most quilts are made in China, but local markets and fairs will often offer locally made, high-quality goods of this sort.<br />
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<b>5. Can't find American?</b> Buy Canadian. They get good wages, produce quality products, and they don't have to be shipped very far. Still can't find it? Try European goods - good wages, quality products. Can find it there either? Try Central American goods. Fair products, fair wages, and fair shipping costs. Oklahomans who have a problem with Hispanic immigrants in our state should know that immigrants would stay home if more good manufacturing jobs were available in their countries. Avoid Asian goods. Asians aren't the problem - factory conditions, poor wages, and foreign oil transportation costs are the problems, and they are mostly caused by American outsourcing companies.<br />
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<b>6. </b>Still can't find it?<b> Buy it secondhand. </b>Buy from Craigslist, the Goodwill, or a thrift store. Buying from American secondhand stores provides 100% profit to American businesses. Buying secondhand keeps goods out of landfills, preserves resources, and reduces pollution. You would be shocked at how many items at Austin Goodwills still have the original tags - a sad commentary on conspicuous consumption, but a boon for cheap people. Many foreign clothes aren't very well made (even the expensive ones,) so if you are looking for quality, find an American company. The U.S. Military has goods produced by American manufacturers with American goods whenever possible, so buy from surplus stores, and we buy American twice. Military goods are usually of outstanding quality.<br />
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<b>7. Make do with what you have.</b> Your television still works. You don't need a new cell phone. Take better care of your car. Most of the things Americans want to buy seem to be things we don't produce many of.<br />
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<b>8. Make your own.</b> Start a garden. Speaking of quilts, make your own. Don't throw things away unless you can't use them (but don't hoard.) Again, the internet is an invaluable resource when it comes to finding out how to make things, upcycle, and recycle. You grandmother washed out old bread bags and used them instead of Ziplocks, and you can too.<br />
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<b>9. Spend more and buy less.</b> High quality American goods can last a lifetime. Don't buy cheap furniture and refurnish your house every 5-10 years. Buy an antique sofa on the cheap and pay and American upholsterer to recover it. Buy things that are "classic" rather than "fashionable." Americans have made some of the best power tools - find them. If you don't spend your money on cheap foreign goods, you have more available for quality American goods.<br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13758563547271718267noreply@blogger.com0