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Month: August 2016

Saturday, 13 August 2016

10:31 – Barbara is off to the wellness center to volunteer for a day-long event for the library reading program. She’s picking up take-out for dinner on her way home.

We made an apple crisp yesterday for our dessert/snack, using apples from the tree in our back yard. We kind of combined two or three different recipes, and it turned out well.

I read Locker Nine: A Novel of Societal Collapse, Franklin Horton’s latest, last night. Unlike most self-published PA novels, Horton’s are well-written and well-edited. He does a professional job all around. This book follows his three-part Borrowed World series, which is also excellent. Amazingly, he writes these things on his lunch hour at his regular job. He’s smart enough to pay for professional editing, layout/formatting, and covers. It shows. His books are indistinguishable from traditionally published books. Of course, none of that would matter if the content wasn’t also professionally done, which it is. This boy can write.

Email overnight from another newbie prepper. I’ll call this one Jason. He’s 33 and his wife, Jessica, is 31. They have a toddler, and another child on the way. They both work, and have a decent middle-class income. They bought a house five years ago, just before his wife found out she was pregnant with their first child. They have a mortgage, two car payments, child-care expenses, and all the other financial commitments typical for a young married couple, but they live within their means. Their home is in a nice suburb of a mid-size city in a metro area of just over 100,000 population. Like most people, they follow the news, and they’re both getting extremely concerned about what’s going on in this country.

A couple weeks ago, they decided to start getting prepared for whatever is coming down the road. They made a Sam’s Club run and stocked up on cases of canned goods and lots of bottled water. Jason and Jessica have both been spending a lot of time browsing prepping sites, and are overwhelmed by the amount of stuff they need to think about, buy, and do, and the decisions they need to make. Jason said his top priority at the moment was to buy a gun because they have no means of defending themselves. Neither of them have any experience with guns, and Jason wanted my advice about what to buy.

As is my habit, I answered his direct question first. Since they’re prepping on a budget, I told him that the best and most economical choice for him (and his wife, if he wants a gun for her as well) was a short-barreled pump-action tactical shotgun. For anyone large enough to stand the significant recoil, I said the Best-Buy award in my opinion went to the Mossberg Maverick 88 tactical shotgun in 12 gauge, which can be purchased for under $200. Jason said Jess is “five-foot nothing and 95 pounds dripping wet.” I told him in that case a 12 gauge with heavy buckshot loads is much too much gun for her. The alternatives would be to buy a 20-gauge Remington 870 or Mossberg 500/590 for Jess (or both of them) or to buy reduced power 12-gauge buckshot loads for the Maverick 88. The advantage to both of them using 20 gauge is ammunition commonality. The disadvantage of the Remington 870 or Mossberg 500/590 is that they cost $150 to $250 more than the Maverick 88.

I suggested to Jason that no matter how many and which shotguns they buy, they should buy 100 to 250 rounds of mixed buckshot and rifled slugs for them, along with a bunch of #7-1/2 birdshot rounds that they can use at their local sporting clays range to achieve basic competence with a shotgun. I also suggested that they fire at least a dozen or so rounds of the serious stuff to get accustomed to the difference in recoil between light birdshot rounds and serious defensive rounds.

Other than that, I suggested that their top priority should be securing a reliable long-term supply of water, getting their food stocks built up (including powdered baby formula) and the means to cook that food, and making some provision for staying warm in winter. Jason has been following this blog for several months and Jessica has started reading it, so I’m sure they’ll pick up a lot by osmosis.

Back to science kit stuff. I’m going to make up solutions while Barbara is gone today.

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Friday, 12 August 2016

09:35 – Barbara is off to the gym and supermarket. She spent the night last night at Bonnie’s our 88-year-old neighbor. Bonnie fell a few weeks ago and fractured her hip. Her local family are trying to keep someone with her 24 hours a day until she’s fully recovered, but providing 24-hour coverage isn’t easy for people who have their own responsibilities. So Barbara and Vickie, our neighbor on the other side, are doing what they can to help out. When she returned home this morning, Barbara said that Bonnie was doing well, and she thinks she’ll be okay by herself now. Bonnie does have a fell-and-can’t-get-up pendant, so she can summon help if necessary.

We made dinner again last night from only LTS food. Baked spaghetti, and we made up enough for at least two meals and probably three for the two of us. Baked spaghetti, which we made up in vegetarian form. It was quite good, even without any meat. After dinner, Barbara cooked up a pound of ground beef and added it to the leftovers before freezing them in two portions. I’ll be interested in seeing what it’s like with meat in it.

The recipe called for a jar of Cheez-Whiz or similar, so we made up some cheese dip with the Augason Farms Cheese Blend Powder. It tasted fine, but it needed more water. AF provides a recipe to make up cheese sauce and another to make up cheese dip. The latter specifies equal amounts of the cheese powder and water, and the former uses a higher proportion of water. I used 1.5 cups of the powder with 1.5 cups of water to make up two cups of cheese dip because I figured the cheese dip recipe would more closely resemble the Cheez-Whiz stuff. As it turned out, a 1:1 ratio is way too much cheese powder even for a dip. The next time we use the cheese powder, I’ll be mixing it with more water.

Prepping stuff from walmart.com and costco.com is starting to stack up in the foyer. In the last week, I’ve ordered and/or received a 26-pound bucket of Augason Farms Brown Rice, several #10 cans of Augason Farms Potato Shreds, another can of AF Cheese Blend Powder to replace the one we just opened, several different kinds of canned mushrooms to test, some spices we don’t currently stock, two 24-can cases of Costco canned chicken, two dozen quart wide-mouth Ball jars, a Victorio apple corer/peeler/slicer, a Lodge 8-quart deep cast-iron camping dutch oven with lid lifter, and a partridge in a pear tree.

On our next trip down to Costco, I want to restock a lot of items we’ve been using for the last year or so without replacing. Stuff like spaghetti sauce, applesauce, canned vegetables, and so on, as well as more bulk staples–bags of flour, sugar, rice, oats, etc.

So, what did you guys do to prep this week?

Back to work on science kits.



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Thursday, 11 August 2016

09:09 – I opened the test can of Augason Farms Potato Shreds for dinner last night. I weighed out 100 grams of them and rehydrated them in boiling water. After I removed as much of the water as possible by draining and pressing them, they weighed 530 grams, which was a bit more than I expected. So, one $8.24 #10 can of the potato shreds does indeed reconstitute to the equivalent of 6.5+ pounds of raw potatoes, at a price per pound lower than buying the frozen Ore-Ida hash browns.

Barbara fried them up in lard. We both concluded that they were indistinguishable from the Ore-Ida hash browns, which we have frequently as a side dish with dinners. Tastes at least as good, 25-year shelf life, doesn’t require any freezer space, and cheaper to boot. What’s not to like? I plan to order six or eight cans to keep in the pantry. From now on, instead of reconstituting them in boiling water, we’ll just soak them in water overnight, so that we can just drain them and fry them without further ado.

Eric from Blue Ridge Electric Co-op showed up yesterday to give us a quote on installing a propane tank and lines. As it turns out, he’s a prepper who’s just starting out. He just bought a Colt AR-15 and a thousand rounds for himself, and he’s having his father-in-law, a retired gunsmith, build a second AR for his wife, using an 80% lower. They just put their house on the market yesterday. It’s in a typical development, with small lots and homes close together. He wants to build a home on some acreage, where they’ll have some separation from neighbors and room to grow some crops. As a young married couple, their problem is money. He and his wife both see bad things coming and want to get prepared as best they can. He said if they could afford it, he’d build a bunker for them. I told him he didn’t need a bunker. What he needs to do is assure a water supply and get a lot of LTS food stored in their pantry. I’m sure I’ll be talking with Eric again.

My advice to any beginning prepper is the same. Don’t focus on one thing; cover all the bases equally and incrementally. Too many beginning preppers have tunnel vision. I frequently exchange email with people who have a slew of guns and ammunition but no food or water put by, and the converse. As I tell them, one can’t eat or drink guns and ammo, and one can’t defend oneself very well by throwing cans of vegetables. The trick is to buy some of each thing you need when starting out, and then gradually expand all categories until you’re where you want to be.





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Wednesday, 10 August 2016

09:56 – More work on science kits today.

Dave Hardy posted this query in yesterday’s comments, and I thought I’d answer it here.

The latest Woodpile Report:

http://www.woodpilereport.com/html/index-438.htm

Chock-full of good stuff, as usual. He first mentions using his FoodSaver and storing a bunch of stuff in quart Mason jars. Anyone else here do this and/or recommend it? How long does the process take to, say, fill a dozen jars with whatever, flour or baking mix, for instance?

One of the selling points he brought up was how much space is saved once it’s all outta the boxes and bags.

Far be it from me to second-guess any prepper, but I don’t think this is a good solution for most people. To the plus, canning jars are rodent-proof. But the minuses far outweigh the pluses for almost anyone. As it happens, I just had two dozen quart wide-mouth Ball jars delivered from Walmart yesterday. I bought them at the best price around, and they were still $0.75 each. One pound, give or take, will fit in each quart jar. That’s pretty expensive storage for bulk staples. Compare that to recycled PET bottles at $0.00 per pound, or even the one-gallon 7-mil foil-laminate Mylar bags from LDS on-line at about $0.40 each. A one-gallon bag stores at least four pounds and often five or six pounds of a bulk staples. That translates to $0.10 per pound or less.

As to using storage space more efficiently, I’m not sure how he arrived at that conclusion. I just measured a case of 12 one-quart Ball jars. It’s 16.5″x12.5″x7.5″, or about 0.9 cubic feet. Call it 6.7 gallons. So, 12 quart jars, three gallons’ worth, occupies more than twice that amount of cubic. If he’s storing 10 cases, that’s 67 gallons of cubic to store 30 gallons of product. In that same 67 gallons of cubic, I’m sure I could fit 60 gallons of product in Mylar bags. I’m sure the problem is that the Mason jars are round, which wastes cubic. So perhaps he’s talking about a lot of stuff that was originally packed in even more cubic-wasteful containers.

On my most recent walmart.com order, I received a #10 can of Augason Farms potato shreds. It cost $8.24, and includes 23 ounces of the product, which comes to $5.73 per pound. That’s a lot for potatoes, but remember they’re dehydrated. I’m going to test them by rehydrating 100 grams of the product in the refrigerator overnight and then weighing the rehydrated result. My guess is that the 100 grams of dehydrated product will rehydrate to 400 or 500 grams. Call it a pound. If so, that 23 ounces would reconstitute to about 6.5 pounds of raw potatoes, at about $0.88 per pound. That compares favorably with products like Ore-Ida frozen hashbrowns, at about $1.50 per pound.

I also pulled a can of Augason Farms Cheese Blend Powder out of the freezer and put it in the kitchen with the potato shreds. At $16.57 for a 52-ounce (1.47 kilo) can, its price also compares pretty favorably with similar processed cheese products like Cheez-Whiz, at $4.00 for a 15-ounce jar. The 10.75 cups of powder in that #10 can reconstitute to about 14 cups of cheese dip, roughly equivalent to seven 15-ounce jars of Cheez-Whiz. Using less of the powder, you can instead make about 21.5 cups of cheese sauce for casseroles, pasta, and so on.

I got an interesting email yesterday from someone who thought it was stupid that, if things got really bad, I planned to share our stored food with Colin. Apparently, this guy had read One Second After, where the protagonist lets his dog starve to death, and thought this was a fine idea. The guy also pointed out that every pound of food we fed to our dog would be one less pound we’d have for ourselves, and asked if I’d really let starving children die while giving food to a dog.

I told the guy he was a speciesist, and that dogs had as much right to eat as people do, which is to say none. But we feed ourselves and family first, and Colin is part of our family. If nothing else, he’s an essential part of our planning. So we plan to feed the three of us, Barbara’s sister and brother-in-law if they show up, and my brother and sister-in-law if they show up. Some random starving child doesn’t affect our priorities. There may be lots of those, and we can’t feed them all.

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Tuesday, 9 August 2016

10:00 – Barbara is down in Winston today for a follow-up appointment with her doctor and to run some errands. Colin and I are working on administrative stuff. Kit sales continue strong for early August, but we’re in pretty good shape on finished-goods inventory for now.

Jen and Brittany started CC’ing me on a private email discussion they’ve been having. I think they’ve been reading too many post-apocalyptic novels. In those, there’s often a trigger event that causes cities to empty out as urban residents seek the perceived safety of the surrounding rural areas. Those areas are overwhelmed by this “Golden Horde”, and gun battles between rural residents and these urban refugees ensue. I don’t think this is likely to happen, for several reasons.

First, people are likely to leave their urban and suburban homes only as an absolutely last resort. In a catastrophic emergency, government aid will focus on large population concentrations. Food and other critical supplies will go to large urban concentrations, and to rural areas last, if at all. The same is true of things like restoring electric power, water and sewer services, and medical and emergency services. Most residents of high population-density areas will (correctly) think that they’re better off where they are.

Second, even if a mass exodus from cities occurred, the mess would be awesome. Look what a simple snow storm did in Atlanta a couple years ago, and there was only an inch or so accumulation. Interstates became parking lots, literally. Not even emergency vehicles could move. In a SHTF scenario, it would be orders of magnitude worse. I mentioned some time ago the concept of tenth-value distances, the number of miles that would cut the number of people getting that far to 10% of the number who’d originally set out. That TV distance varies depending on a lot of factors. For us in Sparta, I estimate it at 10 miles. That is, if 100,000 people set out from Winston-Salem heading northwest, by the time you get 10 miles outside the city limits that number would be down to 10,000 people because of wrecks, disabled cars, road blockages, fights with local residents at roadblocks, and so on. By the time you get 20 miles outside Winston, the number would be down to 10% of that, or 1,000. At 30 miles, it’d be down to 100, at 40 miles down to 10, and at 50 miles down to 1. By the time you extend the ring to 60 miles, which is Sparta’s distance from Winston, you’re down to a tenth of a person. Call it an arm wiggling in the middle of the road.

Obviously, this is a SWAG on my part. The true tenth-value distance may be more than 10 miles, but it also could be much less. The point is, it’s non-trivial to get to Sparta even under normal circumstances. Lots of curvy two-lane mountain roads. In a catastrophic emergency, the difficulty would increase by orders of magnitude. Just a few big trees dropped across the roads at strategic points would suffice to stymie most refugees. So, although I don’t expect the cities to empty out and Golden Hordes go looting and pillaging through the countryside, if that did happen I don’t think Sparta is likely to see many invaders. And there are more than enough well-armed local Good Old Boys to mop up any that did make it this far. I told Jen and Brittany that they’re both far enough from major populations centers that I don’t think they need to worry, either.



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Monday, 8 August 2016

09:32 – I’m back up and running after losing several hours to a computer problem yesterday. Barbara got four dozen more small parts bags for chemistry kits built yesterday, among other things. We now have five dozen chemistry small parts bags and two dozen SPB’s for biology, so the next step is to build regulated and unregulated chemical bags for both and then get more kits built. That and related tasks will occupy us the rest of this week.

Email from Brittany overnight. They did a Marathon repackaging session over the weekend, and now have more than a year’s worth of bulk staples packaged for long-term storage, as well as a boatload of canned vegetables, meats, sauces, and so on, plenty of herbs and spices, and a bunch of Augason Farms dehydrated stuff. Brittany says that after they finish building the shelving and getting everything organized and put away, they’re going to take a break from prepping. And who can blame them? Like Jen, Brittany went from a pitiful state of preparedness to pretty much fully prepared in a matter of a few weeks. She’s planning to prepare a decent-size garden plot this autumn for planting next spring. She’s also considering getting set up to do pressure canning for preserving garden produce. I suggested she instead look into dehydrating. I’m not a big fan of home canning. It’s expensive to get set up, in terms of equipment and consumables as well as time and effort. For the same money, one can buy a ton of canned fruits and vegetables, literally, and the safety and shelf life of commercially-canned products is significantly better than that of home-canned products.






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Sunday, 7 August 2016

12:59 – I just spent the last five hours trying to recover from a boot failure on my main system. As it turned out, it wasn’t the hard drive; it was either the power cable or data cable to that drive, or the ATA interface itself. After trying other drives, I finally connected the “failed” drive to a different power cable and interface and it came up normally.

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Saturday, 6 August 2016

09:34 – We have a bunch of science kit stuff to get done this weekend, along with several tasks around the house. I need to replace the mechanism in the foyer toilet, so we’re heading over to Blevins sometime today to pick up a replacement flapper assembly, along with a pack or two of water sediment filters for our whole-house filter and another pack of Rid-X septic tank treatment. I also want to stop at the Dr. Grabow factory store, which is just down the road from us, and look at their pipes.

We went out to run some local errands yesterday. The first stop was the Blue Ridge Electric Co-op, where we talked to a nice young woman about getting propane installed. I told her we were thinking about fueling three appliances with propane: a cooktop in the kitchen, a radiant heater for upstairs, and eventually our generator. She said she’d have their installer call us to set up an appointment to give us a quote on running lines and so on. The smallest tank they carry is 120 gallons, which they fill to 100 gallons. The next size up is 250 gallons, which they fill to 200 gallons. I’m inclined to go for the latter. Anything much larger becomes a major hassle because it has to be buried. The deal is that there’s an annual tank rental fee, but they waive it if you use at least one tank’s worth per year. If we’re running only a cooktop, even the 120 gallon tank would easily be a year’s worth, so we’d probably end up paying tank rental on the larger tank.

Especially since we may not have the space heater installed. Compared to the electric heat pump, propane is very costly. We pay about ten cents per kWh of electricity to drive our heat pump. To heat with propane, it would have to sell for about $0.72 per gallon. It’s three times that much, so it makes sense for us to use propane only for the cooktop and perhaps the generator and just pay the tank rental if we don’t use enough propane to have the rental fee waived.

Propane yields about 91,600 BTU/gallon, versus roughly 135,000 BTU/gallon for fuel oild. But a gallon of propane weighs only about 4.2 pounds, versus about 8.2 pounds for fuel oil. In other words, for equal heat yield, propane would have to sell for just over half as much per gallon as fuel oil. But propane actually sells for more per gallon than fuel oil, so it’s a very expensive source of heat. For that reason, I’d prefer to have a big fuel oil tank installed, but fuel oil doesn’t burn nearly as cleanly as propane and you can’t run a cooktop with it. So we’ll probably end up with propane.

I just read an interesting article a couple weeks ago about the reliability of our electric power grid, or lack thereof. The powers that be define a major power outage as one that affects 20,000 or more homes. A dozen or so years ago, the US as a whole experienced less than one such outage per week, something like 45 major outages in 2004. Since then, the frequency has increased every year. In 2015, the US as a whole experienced nearly one major outage per DAY. That is not a good trend line. Our electric power infrastructure is obviously being degraded every year.

Our next stop was Southern States, which is basically a hardware/seed/feed store that caters to farmers. We just wanted to look the place over. While we were there, we met some of the staff. One of them introduced himself as Jerry Edwards. I asked him if he was the Jerry Edwards who used to live on Macedonia Church Road. He said he was, and I introduced myself and Barbara as the people who’d bought the house he used to own. I took the opportunity to ask him about details on the well (it was already there when they built the house), the location of the septic tank and drain field, and so on. He seemed like a nice enough guy.

Our final stops were the two dollar stores in town. Neither Barbara nor I found them at all impressive. They’re basically a combination of a small supermarket and a chain drugstore. Their prices weren’t all that good, either. But I wanted to check them out because, at age 63, I’d never been inside one before. That’s another thing I can check off my list, and now I know that there’s no point to going into one again.

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Friday, 5 August 2016

07:56 – Barbara is pretty much recovered from surgery, although I’m insisting that she take it easy until she’s back to 100%.

One of the two companies we contacted to get quotes about putting down concrete on our driveway delivered their quote while they were out here measuring on Tuesday. The second had measured last week and the guy stopped by Wednesday afternoon to deliver his quote. I liked both the guys, who seemed honest and competent. One company came in $4,000+ higher than the other, mainly because the first company quoted on putting in rebar on 3-foot centers. The second company said they didn’t recommend rebar because it was very costly and wasn’t needed. In the words of that guy, rebar doesn’t stop the concrete from cracking. All it does is hold the pieces together. That guy plans to use a lot of fiberglass fiber in the mix. It’s not like we’re going to have a lot of heavy trucks parking in our driveway. Barbara and I decided on the lower quote and told the guy to get us on his schedule.

We got a fair amount done yesterday on kit work. I spent much of the day creating POs for components we’re running short of. While I was doing orders for kit stuff, I also put in a couple orders for prepping stuff. I noticed that Costco was back in stock on their canned chicken, so I ordered two cases of the 12.5-ounce cans. I also put in a Walmart on-line order for another 26-pound bucket of Augason brown rice, a test #10 can of Augason potato shreds, two dozen wide-mouth quart Mason jars, and a Lodge 8 Quart Cast Iron Deep Camp Dutch Oven with a Lodge Lid Lifter.




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Thursday, 4 August 2016

09:56 – August is starting out faster than usual. We shipped seven kits Tuesday, three yesterday, and four today. We also have several more kits that we’re awaiting checks or POs on. We’re averaging four+ kits per day, which is fast for early August. Things should pick up even more in the next week or ten days. So we’re building more kits in anticipation, which means I need to get more components on order today and tomorrow.

Our climate isn’t quite a temperate rain forest, which requires 60 inches of rain annually, but at an average of 56 inches, we’re not far off. It’s raining as I write. In the last week, we’ve had about 5.5 inches (14 cm) of rain, with more in prospect. I think of July and August as dry months, which they’ve been everywhere I’ve lived, but not up here in Sparta. That’s good in several ways, not least that it makes rainwater harvesting a practical alternative for emergency water.

The other different thing about the climate up here is the earliest frost date. I think of September as a warm month, the end of summer, and October as a time of warm days and chilly nights. Up here, our earliest freeze date is in early September, only a month from now. We could go from temperatures near body temperature to freezing temperatures with snow and ice in only a month.



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