Category Archives: preparedness

My favorite kitchen tool

Posted by thetinfoilhatsociety in Economy, home, Independence Days, peak oil, preparedness, survivalist, sustainability

IMAG0038

Originally uploaded by susancoyotesfan

This is one of my favorite kitchen items. It is my Presto pressure cooker, circa sometime mid twentieth century. It belonged to my husband’s grandmother, and we inherited it when Oscar, my husband’s grandfather died at the ripe age of 97. Yes, it’s dirty on the top because it’s cooking our dinner.

This is a life saver for days like today, when we both were busy studying and taking tests for our on line classes. Neither of us came up for air or remembered about dinner until 6 pm; so, there’s a ham hock with veggies and rice in there cooking. In less than an hour we’ll have dinner (plus prep time, about 45 min).

Wow, you say. Nearly two hours to make dinner??? Well, it beats the hell out of a frozen meal, made with God only knows what for ingredient sources, and preservatives to boot. Everything came from our freezer or our storage. And it surely beats the hell out of spending money on a take out meal.

Believe it or not, a pressure cooker can use less power than a crockpot or regular cooking. That’s because the pressure makes the food cook faster. I could make it even more efficient by cooking on my rocket stove, or by bringing it to pressure and then putting it into my haybox cooker to finish coming back down to atmospheric pressure. In the summer this may well be cooking on my firepit outside, or on my campstove.

My haybox cooker is a wine case with styrofoam glued to the outside, and nested in a cardboard box.  I use an old felted wool blanket folded in it as the ‘hay’ because it’s neater and holds heat really well.

All in all, this has been a lifesaver for two college students trying to maintain honors gpa’s while still working. If only I could find a lifesaver that would help us out that much with laundry and housekeeping.

Jared is a trailbreaker.

Posted by thetinfoilhatsociety in Economy, preparedness, the dreaded politics, Uncategorized, work

All the news media regarding the shooting, and the salacious drama endlessly paraded by pundits, really misses the point.  Jared wasn’t alone, and isn’t alone.  Not in Arizona, and not in the world.  He merely chose to do something that would make him internationally known; most merely turn their rage and hopelessness on themselves or their families.

Some people simply don’t want to work, want the system to support them, and will do whatever it takes to manipulate the welfare system into supporting them.  These are not the people I am speaking of, nor do I wish to speak of them now.  They are another entity entirely.

I’ve blogged before about the crisis here in Arizona regarding psychiatric services and how that affects delivery of service via the emergency room.  I’ve explained about ‘psych holds’ and how they often spend days awaiting transfer to a psych facility.  Some of these are people already in the ‘system’ so to speak, who are clients of the contracted psychiatric services but many are new.  They were surviving, hanging on, until the economic crisis and stresses of it pushed them over the edge.  They lose their jobs then their marriages; a consequence of being a citizen of Arizona is that often there is no other family within five hundred miles, so the loss of spousal support means the loss of the only emotional support available.  These people are used to taking care of themselves.  The idea of needing help is foreign, and they don’t know how to navigate the system to get any sort of assistance, whether health care or psychiatric care. In the end they simply punish themselves for their own failure to ‘beat’ the system.

Another new thing is that domestic violence seems to be getting more violent; I could be wrong but it seems to me that we are seeing more cases of extreme violence coming to the emergency rooms (and morgues) as traumas — gunshot wounds, stabbings, beatings not just with fists but with bats. This too I attribute to the stresses of our present economic situation.

So what does that have to do with Jared?  Well, a lot, actually.  While I detest the thought of giving him any more notoriety, he is a symbol of what’s happening.  He is intelligent, perhaps beyond average.  He is well read and reads literature that provokes independent thought.  He challenges the ideas thrust upon us by media regarding the proper ways to think, behave, eat, consume.  He appears to have been a sensitive individual who did not have the emotional reserves to simply hunker down and try to fit in, to prostitute his psyche in exchange for a job and a paycheck.  He sees that the system is dreadfully broken.  All this is common to many of the people who come to the emergency room in emotional crisis.  They are perhaps less articulate than he was, but they share the same despair and frustration.  They simply turned it on themselves rather than others, and so remain invisible to our society at large; indeed, they may have even further damaged their chances at ‘beating’ the system because our society frowns on emotional weakness, which is still how psychiatric diagnoses are viewed, as though they are personal failings, and therefore are less likely to get a chance to get a leg up.

It is a measure of the broken-ness of our society that unmannered and violent yet attractive young women from New Jersey, with far too much money and far too little common sense, education, and decorum, are touted as models for our young people.  It is a measure of our broken-ness that Justin Bieber is a model for young people. In some ways I am reminded of Galadriel in Tolkein’s saga.  When Frodo offers her the ring of power, she considers the offer and what she will become.  She says that all will look on her beauty; they will love her and despair.  Perhaps the dedicated watchers of the New Jersey girls look on them and despair in the same way.

Beware, though.  Those that watch are also learning valuable lessons on how to break the rules to get what they want.  As people become more cognizant of the fact that what our society has fed them regarding their chances to make it big is nothing but lies, they’ll be less and less afraid to act out.  And in a world of twitter and facebook, they’ll not all turn it in.

What’s up lately?

Posted by thetinfoilhatsociety in common sense, Crafts, Economy, home, Independence Days, peak oil, preparedness

My husband commented the other day that my blog isn’t devoted to much of the Tin Foil Hat stuff any more.  I realized he is right.  And there’s really a simple reason for that.  I can comment on whatever’s going on, but it doesn’t change anything.  Or.  I can talk about what I’m doing to make the best of our situation, to make sure we’re ahead of the curve with declining resources, and making due with less.  I can post a long diatribe about the price of food commodities, or I can post what works in our area and climate, and how best to preserve that harvest so others can make use of the information.  I can basically be a cynic, a Cassandra, or I can talk about what I’m doing to work around the obstacles.

So, if you find weaving, spinning, canning, etc boring, I apologize.  They’re simply my answers to thorny problems with no simple solutions.  And I’m finding that with spinning, weaving, and the rest of the fiber arts/home maker arts that the quality is simply so superior to what I can buy (except from other fiber artists of course) that I would rather spend my time making towels, washcloths, clothing, rugs, yarn, and so on.  If the choice is that or spend my money, I’ll spend the time ninety nine times out of one hundred.

Am I as prepared as I would like to be?  Hell no.  But, we won’t starve and we won’t go without proper clothing.  Hopefully we won’t live in a tent but that’s one of those eventualities I simply can’t plan for.  So I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about it.  After all, there are literally hundreds of homes with more land than I have I can move into with little or no rent.  So why worry?

It’s summer

Posted by thetinfoilhatsociety in Economy, home, preparedness, sustainability

And that means I’m busy — canning, gardening, brewing, and still in school.  The good news is I may actually get a passing grade for Statistics.

12 jars of dilly beans put up today, about 5 pounds of blueberry jam to go.

The first part of this month I purchased and  processed 100 pounds of tomatoes and made paste, canned tomatoes, and spaghetti sauce.  I got a killer deal through Bountiful Baskets on the tomatoes; you should look into signing up if they’re available in your area.  They’re kind of like a CSA and coop combined.

That’s all, just taking a break for lunch (thanks Mr. TF!) and back to work on the jam.

National Field Day

Posted by thetinfoilhatsociety in preparedness

Well, I went to Field Day with my husband, an General class Ham.  (wow, that sounds like an insult…)

It was fun meeting new people, seeing all the faces I know from going to meetings with Jeff, and hearing on the morning radio nets.  It was fun having a massive barbeque.

What I didn’t get before I went, and still don’t get now, is the purpose for ‘contesting’.  Which consists of calling people on the radio on different frequencies, exchanging call signs and location codes, and…that’s it.  Logging the contact.  All the contacts get sent to the national radio center and you get recognition for making the most contacts.  Why, I don’t understand.  So your club gets points for being the most pushy, loud, and talkative?  Um…OK.

Now, the emergency preparedness aspect of it, I’m totally on board with.  The being able to have a conversation with anybody in the area who wants to jump in, I get.  The contesting, not so much.

And calling making a contact ‘working’ someone is just offensive to me.  I’m not a prostitute, you haven’t ‘worked’ me.  You’ve talked to me, and I’ve talked to you.  Mr. TF says I just don’t understand, and he’s right.

That’s my rant about Ham radio.

That said, I still plan on upgrading my license.  And learning morse code.  After all, there still are no strangers in this world, there are only people I haven’t had a conversation with yet.

One more step taken on my preparedness TSHTF list

Posted by thetinfoilhatsociety in Economy, peak oil, preparedness

I passed my Ham Technician test yesterday.

Those who are reading this blog, who know me in person, are probably incredulous right now that I did this, as I’m not a fan of the telephone.  I would literally rather drive miles to see someone in person rather than talk to them on the phone, even if that means waiting until I have other errands to run and making a marathon day out of it.

As I was studying, and indeed even as I was waiting in line (!) to pay my fee for testing, I was very much of two minds about this:  1. that this is an incredibly ‘geeky’ thing to do, which while I AM a geek, is not in my list of geeky things to accomplish.  I’m not tech savvy, my husband had to set up this blog site for me, and I still need his help on a regular basis for anything technology related.  And 2.  This is absolutely something I need to have and to upgrade, whether I want to or not, because the time is coming when I’ll need it.

Why will I need it?  Well, for one thing, I live in a part of the country with patchy cell phone coverage.  Mountains tend to disrupt cell signals pretty well it turns out.  Add to that the fact that I live less than 3 miles from my ‘home’ cell tower, I can see it from my living room, yet on most days I can’t get a steady signal from it, tells me that cell phone companies are having hard times too, and who knows how much longer my company will continue to invest in maintenance of every tower they have?  Especially the ones in the rural areas, as mine most definitely is?  In fact, if the economy gets worse as many are predicting, how much longer will my cell provider even be in business?

That is why I need to have a Ham license.  Whether or not the repeaters are running, there are, literally, Hams EVERYWHERE.  And nearly all of them have radios with them at all times.  Which means that even if the repeaters for the radio towers go down, there will still be relay of messages via line-of-site.  Which means I will be able to keep in contact with my spouse and loved ones if I get into trouble on the road or something.

National Field day, which is probably one of the biggest Ham events in the country, is at the end of this month.  Mr. TF and I plan to attend; him because he’s the president of the club and he loves Ham radio; me because I never pass up the chance to eat brats* with mustard — and it will be a good way to get practice with lots of other ‘geeks’ who know a LOT more than I do.  I will, however, also be bringing my folding chair and my spinning wheel with me….there’s only so much modern technology I can deal with in a day that I’m not working.

Surprisingly, there is a large contingent of Hams who also suspect things may be going in a …. not positive direction in our country, and who are aware of the potential for Ham to be a vital communications link.  And that contingent is growing by leaps and bounds — I don’t know statistics, but based on listening to the club members who are or have been examiners, I would have to say that the ‘hobby’ is growing in popularity spectacularly quickly these days.  There were eleven people who tested with me, and two of them drove for about 80 miles to test.  In a community that still is listed as a rural community according to the census, no less.

Next on the list is getting a small solar set up, and getting a bank of batteries together.  Doesn’t do much good to have radio capability in the ‘long emergency’ if one doesn’t have power for the radios.

*disclaimer* Brats are food of the gods.  I may go to hell, and I may die of cancer, but they are one of the few meats I eat without checking to see that they’re sustainably raised.  Especially when they’re provided as part of a potluck.

Crunchy’s Dry Humps Challenge 2010

Posted by thetinfoilhatsociety in Economy, home, preparedness, sustainability

Mm. Crunchy offers a challenge, with some background on the challenge at the link underlined.  I think this might be a good challenge for us to try (minus the garden watering).  I have been interested in a while in finding and implementing ways to reduce our water usage and maybe if I can do it hard core for two days, knowing lots of other people are also taking the challenge, then I can take what I learn from those two days and implement some of them regularly.

If you’re up to the challenge, comment and let me know, and be sure to sign up on Crunchy’s site as well!

Independence Days Update

Posted by thetinfoilhatsociety in Economy, home, Independence Days, preparedness, sustainability, work

Planted:

1.  tomatoes — Borghese, Ida gold, Black Krim, and Amish Candy Cherries. Also a mystery tomato plant I didn’t label.  I still have pomodoro to go in the ground; I ran out of steam before I ran out of tomatoes.

2.  peppers — California Wonder green peppers, Marconi reds.  Yeah, yeah, I know the CA wonders are hybrids…I had the seeds, and we use a LOT of peppers in a year.  I want to make sure we have enough without buying them when they’re on sale and freezing them like we have in years past.  And I’m hoping the Marconi’s will produce much better than they did last year (which is not at all).

3.  bunching onions

4.  collard greens

5.  yams

6.  mystery squash that sprouted in the compost (acorn?  butternut?  pumpkin?)

7.  lima beans, the cowpeas didn’t survive the late frost.

I had quite a scare when planting the peppers; I dug a hole with my hands and screamed bloody murder when a toad hopped out of the hole!  Gloves on and hand spade after that for this girl.

I planted garlic but the bulbs are old; they’re from what I got last spring.  I’ll give it a couple days and if they don’t sprout by Monday I’ll grab some from our harvest stores.

I built three new beds over the last two weeks; this was the first.  I built it while Mr. TF was napping  — our bedroom is above this bed and I am simply amazed he slept through the work! I would like to plant either chiles or tomatoes in this but I need to extend the fence around this part of the front yard first.  I’m not sharing any more of my stuff with javelinas, thank you!

Not a good picture due to the shade, but my little fig tree is LOVING being in the ground!  It’s leafing out like mad, and I hope it grows some as well.  It’s too young to hope for figs, but next year I hope to get a little crop.  I planted peas around the base, hoping they’ll give it a little nitrogen boost as they grow.

These are the other two new beds.  I built the farther one yesterday.  Mr. Tin Foil helped with putting soil and manure into it as it took me much longer than I had expected, due to needing to dig out weeds, fill in holes from the potatoes last year, and pull weeds.  The closer one has potatoes of various sorts, mystery squash, and collard greens.  The farther one has yams so far.  I am considering putting tomatoes in there as well; the yam vines will help retain moisture at the roots I am hoping.  The cut up barrels are what I grew potatoes in last year; I have volunteer potatoes in the closest one and I am considering using the others to grow strawberries maybe next year; I may also just move them closer to the fence and grow my cucumbers and zucchetta in them.  I have a ready made trellis in the fence, why not use it?

All of the new beds have weed cloth at the base, cardboard above that, manure, and soil mix.  I bought bags and bags of manure to compliment my compost because we simply don’t produce enough to replace what we use via the plants every year (yet).  I need to buy still more, and probably 8 or 10 bags more of soil for the further plans for expansion.  I think that was part of my problem last year; I didn’t have enough organic matter in the new beds and my harvest suffered as a result (like the peppers never growing, for instance).

Tomorrow is another weaving class, and a mandatory training session for work in the evening.  So this is my last day of vacation.  I ended up with eight days of consecutive time off, which is more than I’ve had in I think the last three years.  I’m not ready to go back, but I have had a chance to evaluate my source of discontent.  Part of it is, quite simply, I get no time to spend with my friends and family in spiritual communion or even just friendly togetherness.  I work on every coffee meet, I work most of our holidays, and I work most regular holidays too.  That and the fact that my weekend with three days in a row (Friday, Saturday, and Sunday) literally takes me two weeks to recover from because of how my schedule works.  I dread those weekends.  I need to either drop one of those days entirely or I need to reschedule one of them for a different day, if at all possible.  I have developed a greater and greater stress, frustration and exhaustion with my job since my schedule was changed to this schedule, when I was still working the mid shift, and it’s only continued to worsen even with changing to days.  Going back to school certainly hasn’t helped matters, either….

I have my yearly evaluation coming up probably as soon as I go back on Friday.  I’m not anticipating anything great, but at least now I have had time to meditate, and to meditate on my reasons for discontent, and to try to find solutions.

A completely gratuitous photo of my granddaughter; her parents came out to our campsite to visit while we were camping and we went on a short hike.  She’s a perfect little tree elf!

The creek and canyon across from our campsite.  There’s a cattle trail next to the creek, and we walked a little way along that with the kids and baby.  She really loved being outside!  She was fascinated by the water.

It was very good getting to basically spend the weekend with friends and family I don’t see nearly often enough.  I hope we’ll be able to do this more; I hope things work out for me at work so we can.

So, why is an English paper covering this but not any American outlets??

Posted by thetinfoilhatsociety in Economy, home, peak oil, preparedness, survivalist

The Guardian has this happy article posted that has been linked to by many in the Peak Oil movement.  I haven’t seen a single American news outlet cover this yet though.  Why not?  It’s research done by our own military, for cripes sake, and it affects national security in a big way!

What does this mean for me?  Well, for one thing I think it means I’m screwed no matter what I do.  Get out of debt?  Not a chance.

And I’m still fighting with Mr. Tin Foil about getting a wood stove.  He’s worried that putting the pipe through the roof might make it leak.  I’m worried that I might not be able to cook!  Let alone heat; we have done without central heating for two years now, but we do still use space heaters in places like the bathroom, and a heated mattress pad on the bed.  We are signed up for the program with our utility company that gives us 100% of our electricity from wind and solar, but if they have problems we’ll have no electricity regardless.

Water.  Still our biggest concern.  I don’t have nearly the storage capacity I need, nor do I have the solar pump or hand powered pump I need to use it.

I drive 60 miles one way to work; getting a job closer isn’t really an option at this time.  DH drives 75 miles one way.  We have a Prius, but only one of us can use it, and it still uses gas.  Big problem no matter how you look at it.  No gas = no money.  And no house ultimately.

It seems I’m always a day late and a dollar short, no matter what I do.  Guess I’ll go finish knitting my sock.  At least that I can accomplish.

Spring Garden Planner

Posted by thetinfoilhatsociety in home, Independence Days, preparedness, sustainability

Little House in the Suburbs has placed a link to a free Spring Garden Planner booklet for all of us to use and enjoy.  The post link says 2009, but don’t worry, it’s good for every year.  The directions for it are here.

The link they give for last frost dates are pretty vague, at least for me, so here is a link for a pdf of 90%, 50%, and 10% average frost dates for various places around the country.  It’s old but the 50%  at 32 degree ones are the ones I go by; it’s been pretty accurate for the last six years or so.

This is about the coolest gardening thing I’ve seen!