Power Outage in December

 A few days ago our power went out at midnight due to heavy rain and wind. That is not a good omen really, what will happen if and when we get a heavy, wet snow? 

 I woke up at 0500 hours and noticed the night light in the bathroom was out and it was a bit chilly in the house. At that point, I did not know how long the power had been out but I figured it had been a couple hours.

 First order of business was to get some light so I could move around the house to get other stuff done. 

 We have an all-electric house and so  emergency lighting is critical. We have a number of battery-powered lamps in a bathroom closet as well as an oil lamp. There are flashlights stashed a round the house so we can grab a light no matter where we are when the power goes out. I have a light hanging from the headboard of my bed, for example.

 Next, get some heat going. We have a woodstove insert in our living room and I got a good fire going. The wood stove has a blower than moves air around the firebox and then blows it out into the room, but that needs electricity.

I bought this from Northern Tools almost twenty years ago. It will heat my entire house and keep it above 60 degrees as long as I can run some fans to move the air around.

 

 I bought am Ecoflow Delta 1,300 "Solar Generator" a few years ago and this was the first time we really needed to use it for back-up power. It was charged to 100% using the four 100-watt solar panels that came with it. The battery capacity is 1.3 kilo watts and it can power anything up to 3,000 watts.

 I hooked up the wood stove fan, a second fan at the end of the room to move heat out into the rest of the house, a recliner, and we charged our phones using this Ecoflow unit. The two fans ran continuously for five hours and ran the unit down to 85%. At that rate, I could easily run the fans for a bit more than 30 hours without a recharge. That would normally be enough for downed power lines. But I do have the ability to recharge the batteries via solar panels or with my gas generator. The generator will charge the system to 100% in 30 minutes. Solar charging is 100% dependent on how much sun there is.

 I have a larger Ecoflow Delta Pro system in the basement that has a capacity of 7.2 kilowatt hours. It will eventually be wired into my home's circuits through a transfer panel. But for this outage, I had to run an extension cord upstairs. I connected the refrigerator and the modem/WiFi router to have internet. After five hours I used 10% of the available power so I could potentially go for just under 50 hours if needed without recharging. I will have 1,800 watts of solar panels set up soon to recharge the system and I can also hook up the gas generator if needed.

You can buy a refurbished system for $1,999. They are repaired at the factory. This single unit is a 3.6 kilowatt hours system. I added an additional battery to bump it up to 7.2 kilowatt hours.

 

 We keep 20 gallons of water in Jerry cans at all times so cooking and flushing toilets is covered. We also generally have a case of bottled water on hand.

 This outage was only ten and a half hours and it was a good drill to practice our preparations and tweak anything that needs to be altered. But, truthfully, everything went as planned so other than getting my larger solar generator wired into the house's circuits, I don't see anything that needs to change. 

Spend a little money to ensure your safety and comfort.

Winter Composting Update

 I have been monitoring my two compost bins to see how well they retain their heat now that we are at the end of December and it goes down into the 20s at night. For the past three weeks the piles are holding at 60 - 65 degrees, which is great. 

 I am still adding small amounts of coffee grounds, obtained from the break room at work. I bring home about a quart of grounds per week, so it isn't much. I do scratch them into the top of the pile but I cannot imagine that they are adding much to the biology of the pile.

 I could turn the pile and possibly generate more heat but the last time I did that I noticed a lot of worms have moved up into the pile and I don't really want to disturb them again. If the pile stays above freezing, the worms will stay active and do as much work as the bacteria would do. The added benefit of the worms is that they produce additional fertilizer through their castings.

 This is the best compost setup I have had and I will get a lot of finished compost by summer, it would appear. I will need it since I built three new beds and will want to add copious amounts of compost to them in the spring.

Getting Organized to Save Resources

 I grew up with a dad that was pretty close to actual genius intellect coupled with an almost eidetic memory. Yet, he never knew where any of his tools, hardware, or other stuff was. Why is that? Partly, because he had the attention span of a gnat and since his brain was always thinking about the next project, trip, or event, his mind was rarely focused on what he was doing at the time. He left most projects 80% done, never to be finished. But the trait that this entry is about was his inability to know where his stuff was. He never put anything away. Typically, his tools would be left wherever they were last used or they were in a bucket or box that he used to carry them back to our shop in the barn

 I was the only boy in the family so I was often assigned projects by my dad, such as repairing a piece of farm equipment or building a cold frame for the garden. Or, quite frequently, I was asked by my mom to complete one of my dad's half-finished projects. Fine, I was good at this. The problem was I could never find the tools or hardware I needed. 

 Every winter, after the hunting and trapping seasons were over, I would go over to our shop, get a good fire going in the potbelly stove, turn the radio on, and get to work organizing the tools and hardware. And every winter I would find the "lost" tools stashed in a box or bucket out in the barn having never made it back to the shop. When I eventually got everything back in its place I would find that we now had two, three, or sometimes four of many tools, extra packets of screws, boxes of nails, packs of wire nuts, etc. etc. These were all new things he bought because he couldn't find what he already had.

 I won't lie, I have a genetic predisposition to be as lackadaisical as my dad but I am fully aware of this trait and so I continue my child and teen year's drive to frequently organize. My biggest hurdle is that I have acquired more "stuff" than I have room for. But I do get my storage and work spaces returned to a reasonable degree of orderliness.

 If you are a long time reader, you might remember that while in the Army I had access to dumpsters and worksites where way too much brand new hardware was simply thrown away to avoid re-shelving it back at their shops.  Consequently, I have loads of misc. nuts, bolts, nails, and other small hardware items. I had them in various large boxes, Tupperware, cans, bags, etc. But it was hard to know what I had when I needed something for a construction project or a repair. Last year I decided to fix that.

 I used some scrap 2x4s and one inch plywood pieces from an old entertainment system cabinet I took apart for the wood to build this shelf unit for my hardware parts trays. The top two shelves are for purchased boxes of screws and some catch-all bins for misc. pieces. Behind me, when I took this picture, is an old jelly cabinet I hung on the wall, which has dozens of peanut and coffee cans full of bulk nuts and bolts, hose clamps, etc. (It is astounding the stuff that gets thrown away at construction sites and by the Army maintenance workers.)

 I used to keep my hunting, fishing, and camping gear in the basement but two years ago my wife emptied some shelves that are in the hallway between my house and our attached apartment. I brought up the fishing and kayaking gear that I use the most so that I wasn't going up and down the stairs so much. After a season of grabbing stuff and then hastily putting it back at the end of a weekend, this area was in a sad state of disarray. Yesterday, I fixed that. 

 I have a couple pieces of salvaged peg-board in my basement workshop and I wanted to be able to hang a few items for a grab and go. The grey cabinet came from a local firehouse that was renovated two years ago. I mounted the peg-board to that shelf with some salvaged oak I got at a cabinet factory. The hangers for the peg-board were salvaged from behind a retail store many years ago. Now I can see the items that I need for certain weather conditions or the type of fishing trip I will do.

  The two brown shelf units were part of a German Schrank (living room cabinet unit) we had when I was in the Army. The other parts of the Schrank eventually broke or became unsightly but these two pieces are still solid. I spent two hours sorting all my lures and putting them into trays by type or by the location they will be used. I have one tray that is just for use on a certain river I fish in New York and I have another tray that is lures I use on the Lehigh River in my state. These lures are those that work best at those locations and this way I can just grab that one tray when I go fishing at those places.

 I have two larger lure boxes that hold components for building lures; plastics, creatures, hooks, weights, spoons, etc. I build most of my own weedless lures and like to have all the components easy to have on hand. I now have a well-lite work space to do that kind of work.

 So, final thoughts. Having all this stuff organized generally prevents me from buying components and parts (hardware especially) unnecessarily. I can see what I have quite easily. When I get low in something, I put it on my shopping list and pick it up whenever it is convenient. I can make my own repairs, saving thousands of dollars a year, or I can build things I need at a fraction of the cost of buying the item new. These are good skills for an uncertain future and the money saved can go towards securing food security and buying other necessities.

Recycling Pickle Juice

 This is something I have been doing for a couple decades. I was in the Army for 36 years and have worked for the Army another seven years as a civilian. I move around a lot. As I move from place to place I try the local foods and the local commercial brands of all sorts of stuff. 

 I like pickles. I don't care for some flavors, but in general I do like pickles. It always seemed a shame to pour the leftover pickle brine down the drain once the pickles were gone and I always thought that other vegetables, like onions, peppers, and cauliflower would taste good pickled in that flavor brine. So, I started experimenting with reusing the pickle juice.

 It is a simple, basic process. There is usually enough juice left to make a pint of something else and I have a couple pint-size canning jars. I make sure the jar is spotlessly clean and I always wash the one-time use lid and the reusable sealing ring. I run hot water from the tap into the jar to pre-warm the glass. At the same time, I put the pickle juice in a pan and bring it to a boil. The vegetable I am going to use has already been washed and cut to size to fit in the pint jar. Then, I blanch the vegetable in boiling water for three minutes.

 Next, I empty the warm water from the jar, pack it with the vegetable and then pour the boiling pickle juice in to fill the jar up to one quarter inch below the rim. (Note: You must leave an air pocket in the jar to get a vacuum seal.) I wipe off the rim and lay the lid, rubber seal side down, on the jar and then screw the ring on, snug but not tight.

 The filled jar now goes into a pot of boiling water for five minutes then taken out and set on a cooling rack to cool down. As it starts cooling, it forms a vacuum seal and you will hear a loud, sharp "pop", when the canning jar lid gets sucked tight and slightly indents. 

 Let the jar cool to room temperature and set the jar on a shelf in a cool, dark place and leave it be for a month or two. By then, the vegetable will have absorbed the flavors of the pickle juice and you now have a delicious treat. 

 It takes very little work, costs next to nothing if you are using vegetables from your garden, and it provides long-lasting food for the future. I am currently eating pickled green beans ("dilly beans" some folks call them) that I picked from my garden three months ago. I used leftover brine from a gallon jar of German pickles. This is a good way to utilize excess fresh produce. Pickled onions and peppers are great in a salad, on sandwiches, or just eating by themselves. You retain all the nutrition of the vegetable and add the health benefits of vinegar. 

 

Staying Warm When the Power goes Out

  Modern home heating is effective, efficient, and comfortable. But what happens when the power goes out? All modern heating systems require electricity to operate. My house is 100% electric so when the power goes out the heating system doesn't work. Natural gas and home heating oil burners are also controlled by electrical components. No electricity and they don't operate either.

  One solution is to have a battery back-up or a generator to provide that needed power. It won't work on a 100% electric house like mine, the power requirements are too high, I would require a very powerful, whole-house back-up generator set-up. Those are quite expensive. But if you have coal, oil, or natural gas as your heat source, you can get by with a fairly small amount of battery back-up.

  Gas and oil furnaces need some electric, but not much. You can operate them off of a car battery, the battery from your boat's trolling motor, even the battery from your lawn tractor. Click on this link to see how easy it is to do. (88) Did You Know You Can Heat Your Home With A Car Battery? - YouTube

  You need three things: 1. A 12-volt battery. 2. A DC (Direct Current) to AC (Alternating Current) inverter. 3. An electric cord rated for the amps of your furnace.

  Notes: The bigger the battery, as measured in amp-hours or watt-hours, the better. You will want a DC to AC inverter of at least 600 watts (I would go with 800 watts as a minimum, but they get more and more expensive as they get bigger. Check the label on your furnace to see how many watts and amps it draws.). You probably don't need to buy an electric cord; most likely you have some un-used ones laying around from broken appliances or computers. But they need to be thick, heavy duty cords.

  If you live in an area where the power might be out for extended periods of time, you'll need a means to recharge your battery every two or three days. The best way is to have two batteries so that you can use one while the other is being charged. To recharge your battery, re-install it in your car and run the car for 20-30 minutes. This presumes that you didn't totally discharge the battery to where it won't crank your car engine. If you recharge it every other day, it shouldn't be a problem. 

  Alternately, you can buy and install a small 12-volt solar panel to charge the battery. I keep a tractor, with a snowplow mounted on it in the winter, out in a shed. On very cold days, the battery has a hard time starting the diesel motor. To keep it fully charged, I bought a 15-watt solar panel that has alligator clamps that connects directly to the battery. No charge controller is required for a low-wattage panel such as this. In direct sun, this panel will charge a nearly dead battery in three hours. If you have an access point, you could run the cable inside from outside and continuously charge the battery as it is being used.

  Above is a small selection from Amazon but these panels are sold in lots of places such as Northern Tools and Harbor Freight. For the purpose of emergency backup power, I would go with a minimum of 30-watts since winter days are short and you never know how much sun will be available.

  So, the above information is how to power your furnace. But what do you do if you have electric heat, like I do? It would take a very expensive to buy, and access to a lot of fuel to run, whole-house generator to operate the electric heating elements. For these houses, you will need to have some sort of a combustion heat source. In my case, I installed a wood-burning stove in my living room. I had an existing fireplace, but they are next to worthless for providing heat, Better than nothing, to be sure, but very inefficient. I bought a small woodstove, with an internal blower, and inserted it into the fireplace opening. It will heat the room without the blower operating but it is most effective and efficient with the blower operating; that requires electricity.

  Several years ago, we lost power during a snowstorm and the power was out for five days. Outside temperatures were well below freezing. I got the trolling motor battery out of my dad's boat, connected a 400-watt inverter, and ran my woodstove's blower fan for five days (off and on, not continuously). We were also able to run a box fan at the hallway entrance to the living room to move warm air into the rest of the house. We were able to maintain the house at 65 degrees the whole time with this simple set-up.

  After that experience, I decided to buy an Ecoflow solar generator with 400-watts of solar panels to keep it charged. There are many companies making these solar generators now. Do your own market research and buy the best system you can afford. My unit has a 1,300 watt-hours of power storage capacity and with the panels I can keep it charged indefinitely. My emergency essential power needs are fairly low but yours might be higher. These systems come in all sizes and price ranges. Watch for sales. I recently bought a 7,200-watt hours system at 55% off the normal list price. That is enough power to keep my home going for many days, even without recharging. But I will buy some used solar panels to keep it charged.

  Worst case scenario: You have no power, and you have no means to generate power and you don't have a fireplace or woodstove, how can you keep warm? The best way is to select the smallest room in your house or apartment and congregate there. Human bodies generate heat and getting all your heat into one smaller space will help to warm it up. Bring all your blankets to that room, maybe also enough mattresses so everyone can lie down to sleep and not be on the cold floor. If you don't have a small space (think open floor plans), you can divide off a smaller space with excess blankets, tarps, drop cloths, whatever you have. Remember making forts inside the house when you were a kid? Now that experience can save your life. Use a tent if you have one. Set it up and get everyone inside. Unscented candles are a great source of warmth for small spaces. Place one inside a can or cook pot or something to prevent it from being blown out or coming in contact with people or things that burn. An upside-down terra cotta flowerpot works well so long as there is a wide drain hole on the bottom for air.

CLAY POT HEATER TEST | Does It Actually Work?! (youtube.com)

 NEVER use more than one candle at a time. WARNING OF FLOWER POT CANDLE HEATERS FLASHPOINTS! - (Saving Lives & Saving You Money) (youtube.com)

  There are also indoors safe propane heaters such as the "Mr. Buddy Heater". You should still crack a window to reduce the buildup of carbon monoxide. They work nice, but they go through a lot of fuel.

  Gather your supplies BEFORE you need them. Store them in a convenient place. Inspect them every year.

Recycling Lead

 One of my many hobbies is metal detecting and we find a lot of lead. Lead bullets, lead fishing weights, lead used in plumbing. (The Latin word for lead is "Plumbum", which is where "Plumbing" comes from. The symbol for lead on the Periodic Table is Pb.) Lead has a low melting point, only 621.5 degrees f, which means it can be melted on a simple fire or over hot wood coals. Because of this, lead was used in the old days to make repairs in lots of things. You could melt it and pour it into a cracked pipe to seal it, for example. Thus, lead spills are found on almost every farm.

 

 

 Common sources of lead, for metal detectors, are shown above. At the top are large caliber lead musket balls, each one is about an ounce of lead. In the middle are .22 caliber rimfire bullets, these typically weigh 40 grains (there are 428 grains to the ounce). At the bottom is lead that was spilled onto the ground. I have also found lead pipes, lead toys (they didn't know that lead was toxic back then), lead figurines, and even lead buttons.

 

 Until recently, a good source of used lead, if you needed it, was at the local car repair shop. The weights used to balance a wheel were made from lead. The normal practice was to remove all the weights before rebalancing the wheels and they rarely re-used the ld wheel weights. Yesterday, I picked up over 50 pounds of used wheel weights from a local garage.

 

 Because lead is toxic, many states have banned the use of lead wheel weights (California, Minnesota, Illinois, Maine, New York, Vermont, Washington, New Jersey and Maryland). In those states (and most others) you will find wheel weights made from zinc, steel, or copper alloys. Zinc and steel are the more common forms. Zinc melts at 787 degrees f, so you would need forced air over coals to reach that temperature to melt it for recycling. You are not going to be able to melt the steel weights, but you could fill buckets with them and take them to an iron recycling center.

 Last year, I had more bits of lead than I had space to store it so I decided to melt it down, clean off the dirt/waste materials, and pour the lead into easy to store ingots. To do this, I went to a local antique market and walked through until I found heavy-duty, cast iron ladles, and a cast iron muffin pan. Then all I needed was a hot bed of coals.

 The two ladles I bought worked fine for small batches. This year I bought a much larger one that holds five times as much scrap material.I use the iron rod to stir the melted lead to get the dirt and waste material to float to the top so it can be skimmed off. Lead is very dense so almost any other material in the ladle with float on top of the lead, making it easy to remove.

 Then all you need is a hot bed of coals. I make a fire in my fire pit with hard wood and let it burn down to a deep bed of coals. I then fill the ladle with the scrap lead and place the bowl onto the hot coals. In less that five minutes, the lead melts and sinks to the bottom of the ladle. I use the spoon to skim off the floating waste and dirt and drop that into the can for later disposal. I cannot emphasize enough that lead is toxic. Only do this outdoors when there is a breeze blowing the fumes away from you. Do not spill any lead or the waste material you skim off the melted lead (it is called "dross" and rhymes with "gross") on the ground. If you do, that soil is contaminated and needs to be dug up and disposed of in the trash.

 The ladle and the spoon will get VERY hot. You can use welder's gloves if you have them, to protect your hands. I have a pair of fire fighter's gloves that work great for this task.

 Once you clean the lead, return it to the coals for another minute or two to get hot again. I often times scrape the inside of the ladle to make sure no dirt or foreign material is stuck to the sides. It will float to the top and you can do a final cleaning. Then pour the molten lead CAREFULLY into the muffin pan to the top of each cup. It is a good idea to warm up the muffin pan until it is too hot to touch. This ensures there is no moisture in the cup (pouring molten lead onto moisture will cause a steam explosion) and prevents the pan from cracking due to an extreme temperature change.

 What you end up with is purified lead (probably 90-95% pure) in an easy to stack and store shape. Bars would be better, but I have never seen a bar-shaped cast iron mold though you can purchase bar-shaped ingot molds on the internet. Each one of my lead "muffins" weighs 1/2 pound. I currently have twenty of them safely stored in my basement.

 Now what? That depends on your thoughts about the state of the world I suppose. Lead has many uses for repairs, casting bullets, casting fishing weights, etc. You could sell the lead via online marketplaces. Or, you could hold onto an amount of lead for future bartering.

Chef 5 Minute Meals Ration Taste Test

 

I bought this ration pack a year or two ago for a kayak camping trip but I didn't eat it. It has been stored in my basement since then. Last weekend I consolidated all my camping rations into one large tuff box that I got for free. Someone had placed it out at the curb to be thrown away. These boxes go for anywhere from $79.99 to $119.99, depending where you buy them. What a great save for me.

As I was going through the various freeze-dried foods, cans, and pouches, I came across this 5 Minute Chef meal. I checked the date and the "Best By" date was in August 2023. I am no stickler for these dates, which more often than not are just marketing ploys designed to entice you to either throw food away or quickly eat it and but more. In my cool, dry, dark basement, this meal packet would still be good to eat years from now. BUT, it was the only meal of this type I had on hand and I decided to eat it for lunch at work this past week.

I decided to heat it in the microwave and keep the chemical heater for later use. That is a very small portion, 9 ounces is what the label says. But I took along some naan bread, carrots, radishes, scallions, and a slice of pie for dessert so it ended up being a good meal. By itself it is basically a child's or a small woman's portion though. A full sized adult doing some physical work, such as hiking, would be very hungry afterwards

I give it two thumbs up for taste, texture, and appearance. I very much enjoyed it. It only has 210 calories, making it little more than a snack. It does have 15 grams of protein, which is pretty high for only 210 calories. It had a surprising amount of meat in the sauce. The little oblong meatballs are a perfect size for eating the meal with a spoon. Sodium is not too high, compared to most foods of this type. Sugars and carbs are low, which is one reason why the total calories are so low. Most people would probably want to shake some hot sauce on it to spice up the flavor.

It comes with a chemical heater, which has detailed instructions printed on it. I presume the idea behind the name is that it can be heated in five minutes. These chemical heaters can get very hot and can give off gases that are unpleasant, so it is best to use these outdoors.

It also comes with a plastic spoon and paper napkin. The spoon is way too short, you would never be able to get at the last of the meal without getting sauce all over your fingers. I always carry my own Army MRE spoon with me (several actually), because they are extra long and very sturdy.

This short "spork" is way too small. Oh, the meal pouch does not come open easily, I had to use the scissors of my Swiss Army knife to cut both the main bag that everything came in, and the pouch with the food in it. 

Final Grade: A for flavor and edibility, C for ease of use and serving size, F for long term storage.

These sell for $6.99 and I would consider that a good price for what you get. But you really should only consider it as the entree portion, you will need to add other items to make it a satisfactory meal.

Cash on the Side

 I work out of state and am only home two and a half days a week. But when I fully retire there are some opportunities to earn some cash on the side.

Today, I removed the flail mower from my biggest tractor and hauled it from my farm to my residence, three miles down the road. When I bought this tractor, a Kubota, it was advertised as including a five foot wide underbelly mower. What also came with it, and was not mentioned in the ad at all, was a five foot wide, front mounted snow blower. What it didn't come with was an operator's manual. But I grew up on a farm using 1950s tractors and equipment and our family built and ran a campground, which also had some equipment. As the only boy in the family of seven, it was up to me to do most of the farming and maintenance at the campground (from age nine until I left home at 18). Result" I'm pretty handy and mechanically inclined. I figured out how to mount and operate the snow blower.

The first year I owned it we had significant snow (32 inches in October) and I was in between jobs. I went around my village and volunteered to clear neighbors' driveways and parking lots. Some accepted the free offer and some declined. Some that accepted offered me money after I was done, I hadn't asked for any. Some of the offerings I accepted and some I declined. I know the relative economic standing of most of my neighbors. If I knew they could afford to give me ten dollars, I took it (fuel costs money).

I didn't go far, just immediate neighbors of my small village. But, when I retire, I will go around and offer my services, for a fee, as a sideline business. There are a couple people that I won't charge, like the lady whose grass I have been cutting for two years. She is on a rather small fixed income.

I already have the equipment, do all my own maintenance on it (I replaced all the blowers' bearings two years ago), and enjoy doing the work. In a winter that we actually get enough snow that my services would be needed, I could probably make enough to pay for all my grass cutting gas and diesel fuel requirements for the year. 

I also have unlimited supplies of standing dead trees and bundled firewood sells for $7.50 a bundle in my area. I used to cut and bundle five to six hundred bundles of wood to sell at our campground every year. We sold it for 50 cents a bundle and my parents gave me five cents a bundle. It was a lot of work for $25 a summer but in the early 1970s, that money went a long way. If I sold just one hundred bundles of wood a year, I could make $750. The trees need to be cut and cleared out off my land or it gets impossible to drive through and I need to cut three cords of firewood each year for my home heating. I need to keep my woods healthy, open enough to drive through, and maintain a low risk of forest fires by reducing the dead wood on the ground.

A few people have suggested that I hire myself out as a river guide for canoe and kayak trips. There are three major rivers within an hour of my house; The Lehigh (ten minutes away), the Schuylkill (thirty minutes away), and the Susquehanna (an hour away). I am familiar with all of them and could do this one on one with one or two guests. I know the full histories of the miles that I routinely paddle so if they are interested in learning, I have the knowledge. That could be fun.

What are your skills and what resources do you have at hand that you can parlay into a little bit of a side income? Extra income means extra food security.