Tag: Self-sufficiency

Contemplating the Hardiness Zone Changes

Just in case you weren’t aware of it, the USDA has recently changes the hardiness zones for the United States. The hardiness zones help you understand what will grow in your area. Certain plants require warmer temperatures in order to grow and others require cooler temperatures. For example, if you want peaches, you need to be in a warmer zone. Our area has changed from 4B to 4A, which means that some types of trees that I couldn’t grow in the past will likely grow now. You can see an animation of how the hardiness zones have changed on the Arbor Day Foundation site.

Most people would agree that changes of this sort make global warming undeniable. Of course, it’s a misconception to strictly say that the effect is global warming, which is a misnomer. Yes, the planet has warmed up some, but a more correct assessment is that the weather is going to become increasingly chaotic. The point of this post is not to drag you into a discussion of precisely how global warming will affect the planet, what generalizations we can make about it, whether our scientists can define any long term trends about it, or anything of that sort. I’ll leave the discussion of how much man has contributed toward global warming to those with the credentials to make such statements. The point is that last year I was in Zone 4B and now I’m in Zone 4A. The long term weather changes have finally appeared in the form of new charts from the USDA, which after all, are only predictive and not infallible indicators of anything.

There are some practical considerations in all this and that’s what you need to think about when reading this post. The change in weather patterns means that you need to rethink your garden a bit. Not only do you need to consider the change in heat (the main emphasis of those hardiness zone charts), but also differences in moisture and even the effect on clouds. Little things are going to change as well. For example, have you considered the effect of increased lightning on the nitrogen levels in your soil? If not, you really should think about it. The weird science bandied about by those in the know has practical implications for those of us who raise food to eat after all.

Even if you aren’t into gardening at a very deep level, the changes in the hardiness zone chart has one practical implication that no one can escape. The literature on the back of those seed packets you buy from the store is going to be incorrect for this year as a minimum. The changes from the USDA came out after the seed packets were already printed. When everything else is said and done, the main reason for my post today is to help you understand that you can’t believe the seed package—at least, you can’t believe it this year. By next year the seed companies will have recovered and the documentation on your seed packets will be useful again.

Springtime is approaching. If you live anywhere near my area of the country, it seems as if we’re going to have an early spring indeed. I don’t normally need to trim the trees in the orchard until the end of March. This year I’ll trim my trees on March 1st, a lot earlier than normal and even then, I might be trimming a bit late. A few people in our area have already seen budding trees. So, if you’re used to waiting until April or May before you get out very much, it may be a good idea to take a walk around your property now to see if there are any changes that you need to know about.

Global warming is a reality. The effects it will have on your garden and orchard are also a reality. Just what those effects are and precisely what has caused them are still being debated by those in the know, but if you’re a gardener, you need to be aware that the garden you had last year may not work this year. Let me know about the global warning-related changes in your garden at [email protected].

 

Working from Home

I heard an interesting statistic on the radio this morning-most Americans would be willing to take a 5 percent pay cut in order to work from home. This is something that may intrigue entrepreneurs; not only could they save money on staff wages, but costs on renting an office space could be lowered. Although it may seem like there is no argument as to why businesses would want to be stationed at a rented office, many entrepreneurs still see the need for a professional and reputable office address to maintain the respect that business partners and customers have for the company. However, with virtual offices becoming ever more prevalent, which you can learn more about at https://www.fuer-gruender.de/blog/virtual-office-geschaeftsadresse/, it seems that working from home may grow even more over the next few years. I’ve been working from my home for 25 years now and must admit that I really wouldn’t want to work anywhere else. However, I started thinking about the whole concept of a pay cut after the radio announcer finished and thought that we’re looking at the issue from the wrong perspective. Sure, the 5 percent pay cut is real, but is it actually a pay cut? Let’s examine that for a moment. The 5 percent pay cut to work at home would result in the following savings:

  • Reduced driving needs, which means lower insurance
  • Less gas used
  • Less wear and tear on the car
  • Lower cost, more nutritional eat-at-home lunches
  • Less need for expensive clothing
  • No day care required
  • Less time wasted in travel (and time is money)


If you don’t already have a home office then you will need to make one. These means buying furniture such as a desk, office chair, drawers etc. and getting some tech like a laptop. Of course, this costs money. However, you can get some good office furniture at good prices from places like Office Monster and it’s a one-off cost and long term investment. I still think in the long run you would save money because from a financial perspective, both the employer and employee come out ahead. In short, the benefits of working at home only start here. This is just the tip of the iceberg. If you’re an employer, you want your employees working at home. According to Business News Daily and many other sources, employees who work at home are significantly more productive in the right circumstances. So the employer not only saves on the pay required for a work at home employee, but also gets more for the employee’s efforts (assuming that the employee is actually working and not getting distracted). Even if you are unsure whether your staff are being productive, you don’t need to bring them back into the office because there are ways of keeping track of it whilst they are working from home. A lot of companies use a survey for remote work for this. In addition, there are other financial benefits for the employer such as reduced absenteeism and reduced infrastructure requirements, such as desks and office space. Because working from home is becoming more of a reality for many Americans, a number of authors have taken a stab at making it work out better for everyone involved:


The one essential tidbit of information that you should glean from most of these posts is that you need some sort of schedule. In fact, a few of these sources actually draw you a picture of a schedule. Having goals that you want to meet each day is an essential part of the work at home experience.

There is no doubt that the effects of working at home extend well beyond the benefits that both employer and employee can obtain. Working at home can be better for the environment because the worker isn’t driving anywhere. However, whether the environment gains or not is really a matter of the environment in which the employee is working. A basement office using incandescent bulbs, a plug in heater, and old computer equipment is hardly energy efficient and could actually end up increasing the employee’s carbon footprint.

Although, there’s no doubt that the employer will have to upgrade the payroll system, as with employees working from home, the hours may vary. Recording these hours and calculating pay can take up a lot of time and energy for the employer, and can result in a lot of dissatisfied employees if done wrong. Luckily, the benefits of outsourcing payroll far outweigh doing payroll manually, and should definitely be considered if working from home is a reality for your business.

The health benefits of working from home are also well documented. Employees who work from home are less stressed, eat better, and spend more time doing something other than driving a car. The mental and physical benefits of working in a familiar, cozy environment make it possible for employees to live better lives. In addition, even when an employee does get sick, it’s often possible for the employee to work part of the day, rather than miss an entire day at work, so the employer gains as well.

I’m not a parent, so I have no personal experience with child rearing. However, in researching work at home statistics, I did run across a few articles that suggest work at home parents actually give their children a better chance of performing well later in life. I’d be interested in hearing from people who have significant experiences one way or the other-especially in situations where one child was raised at home and another in childcare.

Will working from home work for everyone? The answer is absolutely not. Certain professions require that employees still trudge to work. In these cases, working as close to home as possible will still save travel time, wear and tear on your car, reduce insurance payments, and still benefit the environment to some degree. Working close enough to walk to work or use public transportation is even better. However, some people will continue to go to work at a factory or office somewhere, no matter how much technology progresses.

If your employer doesn’t
offer work at home, create proposal that makes it more likely that the
employer will at least consider allowing you to do it. Everyone
benefits! Do you think you could perform your work at home? Are you doing it now? Let me know your thoughts on the whole work at home question at [email protected].

Arrival of the Seed Catalogs

A special event takes place each year around this time—the seed catalogs arrive on our doorstep. Nothing says springtime like the arrival of these glimpses into the future. Rebecca and I wait for them each year with bated breath and eagerly anticipate what they’ll contain. The two major catalogs for us come from Jung’s and Gurney’s. We do receive other catalogs, but don’t look at them in detail quite as often as we do these two. The main reason is that these two catalogs generally contain everything we want to grow (and then some).

I’m sure that a few of you are already rolling your eyes and thinking, “Just how antiquated can you get? Why not look online?” I’ve been finding that online catalogs work great when you have some idea of what you want. If I want to buy a specific piece of software or computer hardware, a repair part for Rebecca’s vacuum, clothing, CDs, DVDs, and so on, then an online catalog works great. In fact, using one can save time. Growing a garden is a little different. Often, you don’t know that you’re going to grow something until you see it in a catalog. In short, viewing the catalog provides something online catalogs don’t provide as well—a glimpse of what you didn’t know you wanted.

Before someone places this sort of purchase in the impulse buying category, it’s good to consider how seeing new items can really help the gardener. The following list is my favorite reasons for looking at new items, rather than simply sticking with the old favorites:

 

  • Growing new items can help improve the nutrition the grower receives from the produce.
  • Different items take different nutrients from the soil, so growing new items can help keep the nutrients in your garden more balanced.
  • No one wants to get bored growing their own food.
  • The new items may have different resistance to pests, making use of pesticides less necessary.


These reasons won’t be enough for some people to consider going back to the paper catalog after establishing an affinity for the online version. There are other good reasons to get a paper catalog:

 

  • Some paper catalogs come with discount coupons that you don’t receive with the online version.
  • You can’t take a usable computer screen with you to show friends what you plan to buy (viewing gardening items on an iPad just doesn’t make it in my book).
  • It’s even hard for two people to view the catalog in the same way by sharing a computer display.
  • Using the online catalog often requires that you open your computer to potential virus attack in order to use JavaScript and those fancy multimedia features.
  • Catalogs make it easy to compare what you thought you were going to get with what you actually see in the garden.
  • The paper catalog is a handy reminder that you really do need to start thinking about your garden, even though winter still has a firm grasp.


Whether you get a paper catalog or not is up to you, of course. Some people will say that we’re wasting trees by continuing to get paper catalogs (we do recycle every last piece of paper that enters the house). Whether you use paper or online catalogs though, it’s time to start thinking about that garden. What will you plant this year? Let me know about your gardening ideas at [email protected].

 

Appreciating Animal Qualities

Every one of the animals we have the pleasure to work with has unique qualities and we try to draw those traits out as much as is possible. For example, Bubba (a cat) is our champion mouser. I often find Bubba stalking the mice in our garage. In fact, we obtained the dogs we have now for the specific qualities that their breed has to offer. Shelby is the queen of the chickens and guards them quite fiercely. Reese guards the apple orchard and dispatches some of the larger intruders that sneak into our garage.

To be honest, our garage would probably be overrun with pests if it were not for our animals! You see, our garage door does not close properly and this provides a perfect opportunity for rats and mice to make their way into our garage. That being said, one of our friends that lives in Pennsylvania recently got his garage door repaired by a garage door repair company after researching professional garage door services in 19406. It is about time that we got our garage door fixed so once I have finished writing this article, I am going to see if there is anything I can do to repair our garage door.

However, this post isn’t really about our garage door, or our dogs, but rather our cat, Smucker.

RebeccaAndSmucker

You may have heard about animals that can detect certain medical conditions in humans. Many of us associate these traits with dogs, but apparently cats also possess this capability. Rebecca has diabetes and sometimes her blood sugar gets too low. This condition produces physiological changes that even humans can detect when it’s almost too late, but animals can detect them before it becomes an emergency. Smucker has this capability and we didn’t even train him for it-rather, he trained us.

Rebecca recently had a severe bout with low blood sugar over a period of days and Smucker was instrumental in helping me save her life. It turns out that he will aggressively pat Rebecca, lick her, bump against her, and yowl when he detects her blood sugar is low. In fact, he gets downright pesty about it and makes a real nuisance of himself. At first I attributed it to a cat loving his owner, but after a while I realized that he only does this when Rebecca’s blood sugar is low. He’s alerting us to a health condition that Rebecca has.

When Smucker woke me up on a Sunday morning by alerting to Rebecca’s low blood sugar, I knew just what to do. I took her blood sugar and found it at only 41. She was unresponsive for the most part, but still able to let me feed her. So, I fed Rebecca some pear sauce from our larder-problem solved. Her blood sugar came back up without a trip to emergency, as would have been necessary had I slept any longer.

This capability isn’t something we’ve tried to obtain from Smucker, he simply decided to provide it to us. Animals are like that. They often provide the most profound gifts if you’ll only let them. What have your experiences been with your pets? Let me know at [email protected].

 

Choosing Wood Carefully

All wood will burn eventually. There is no doubt about it. Create a hot enough fire and you can stick anything in the wood stove. It may not burn immediately or well, but it will burn eventually. However, if you’re heating your home with wood, you don’t want it to burn eventually, you want it to burn now. Burning the wrong sort of wood has these negative impacts.

 

  • The wood will burn inefficiently, which means you’ll need to cut more wood to obtain the desired number of calories to heat your home.
  • You’ll see additional soot accumulation, which could end up closing your chimney and causing carbon monoxide buildup in your home.
  • The wood stove will require additional costly maintenance because of the way wet wood doesn’t burn.
  • Wet wood tends to mildew, which isn’t particularly good for your health.
  • All of these factors tend to pollute the environment to a greater degree, increasing your carbon footprint.


The problem isn’t strictly confined to wet wood. Choosing the wrong wood can also cause all sorts of problems. For example, if you burn wood from conifer trees extensively, you’ll find that you use more wood and that your chimney tends to soot easily. The creosote produced by conifers is especially hard to remove from the chimney. Of all conifer trees, cedar tends to be the worst. However, even kiln dried construction lumber isn’t good for your wood stove. Although these woods smell wonderful as they burn, you’ll want to burn them with high heat hardwoods to reduce their negative impact. Never burn treated wood in your wood stove. The chemicals in treated wood are truly terrifying and you don’t want to pollute the air with them.

When obtaining hardwoods, make sure that the moisture content is low enough so that the wood will burn efficiently. If nothing else, use a moisture meter to check that the wood is in the 10 percent to 15 percent range before burning. Sometimes wood looks like it’s perfectly dry, yet contains a significant amount of moisture. One of the worst woods in this regard is oak. The wood can exhibit all of the characteristics of fully dried wood, yet contain enough moisture that it won’t burn well.

One of the questions you need to answer when looking for wood to cut is whether that wood is dry. Generally speaking, a tree is starting to dry out sufficiency when the bark comes off easily from the trunk. It should literally peel off in large pieces. Before that time, the tree is still quite green. If you get wood from someone else and that wood has tightly attached bark, make sure you check it with a moisture meter. The wood may be green and you’ll find that it won’t burn well. Some less reputable woodsmen will try to sell you green wood because they have run out of good dry wood to sell.

Cut and split the wood into the size chunks you want to use in your wood stove. Measure the moisture to determine whether additional drying is required. Some woods, such as black locust and most species of elm, are ready to use almost immediately after you cut up the trunk. The wood dries thoroughly without cutting it up. As mentioned earlier, oak always requires a drying period after you cut it up because the tree would rather rot, than dry, when in trunk form.

A few trees will burn acceptably at higher moisture content levels. Maple falls into this category. It doesn’t burn as well as fully dried wood, but it does burn well enough not to cause a creosote buildup on your chimney. Even so, you should never burn these woods with greater than 20 percent moisture content. Lower moisture content is always better.

Another way to tell if wood is properly seasoned is to look it over carefully. Wood that has been stacked for two or three years (the recommended drying time for most woods), is usually blackened on the ends. The cuts won’t look fresh. The wood itself will feel somewhat light; although, some woods, such as locust and oak, are heavy no matter how dry they get.

The weight of the wood is important. A heavier wood normally has more calories to offer when burned. Consequently, if you have two pieces of wood the same size and dried to 10 percent moisture content, the heavier piece is worth more from a heating perspective. Heavier woods tend to be hard to start, burn more like charcoal, and burn long. Maple, box elder, and other moderately light woods make good kindling for starting a fire based on these heavier woods. If nothing else, use some of that pine for starting your fire.

Some woods smell better than others do when burning. For example, oak and maple both smell wonderful. As previously mentioned, all conifers smell good, but there is a price to pay in this case for the good odor.

A few woods smell truly horrible when burning. For example, I’d rather not smell poplar or paper birch again. Fortunately, both of these woods tend to be light when dried, so they offer few calories than other wood types—making them good woods to avoid.

The best tests of the wood you cut yourself or obtain from a third party is seeing how it burns. A sample or two will tell you about the entire load in most cases. The wood should start relatively easy (keeping in mind that truly dense woods such as locust, hickory, and oak start harder than less dense woods such as maple). It should produce some amount of blue flame, along with the usual orange and yellow. The wood should leave little ash behind (less dense woods tend to produce more ash than denser woods).

The ultimate insult in getting wood from a third party is when they sell you punky (partially rotted) wood. This wood tends to be really light when fully dry. You can’t typically see the rings as well and the wood itself has a papery feel. The wood will start with extreme ease, burn brightly for an incredibly short time, produce little heat, and produce copious amounts of ash.

Sometimes you’ll find that wood sellers talk about a “load” of wood, as if that’s a precise measure of anything. Most places have statutes in place the define wood as being sold by the cord or measured faction (such as a half cord). A cord is 128 cubic feet and is typically stacked 4 feet high, 4 feet wide, and 8 feet long (although, any stack that measures 128 cubit feet is a cord). Beware of the seller with face cords. In this case, you’re only getting 64 cubic feet. When someone insists on selling you a load of wood, make sure you measure the tightly stacked load yourself and pay appropriately.

In short, if you thought all wood was the same, you’re quite wrong. Choosing the wood you use in a fireplace or wood stove carefully is extremely important. Don’t let someone sell you wood that’s wet, punky, or simply unfit for burning. Inspect the wood for insect infestations and make sure you know what kind of wood you’re getting. What sorts of experiences have you had obtaining wood in your area? Let me know at [email protected].

 

Preparing for the Storm

So far, our winter in this part of Wisconsin has been absurdly mild. In fact, we don’t have any snow on the ground. The temperatures have been up to 20 degrees above normal for most of the winter as well. All of these conditions might sound perfect to some people, but they had me worried. Over the years, I’ve learnt a lot about how to prepare our homestead for a harsh winter. I have had to learn which fuel is better for heating purposes, make sure we’ve got enough food supplies, and keep our land protected. However, I’ve also learnt when things are too good to be beneficial. The lack of snow means less moisture in the spring when we really need it to get annual plants going. The lack of a deep freeze could affect some of our perennial plants as well because they depend on the deep freeze. Consequently, despite the hardships that a storm will cause, I’m actually looking forward to the storm that will arrive on our doorstep tomorrow. The weather service is currently predicting temperatures in the teens (cool, but not quite cold yet), 7 to 9 inches of snow, and relatively high winds (which make for some dandy snow drifts). Of course, we won’t actually know what the weather will be until we see it.

The storm warnings are important, even if the weather service has missed the mark by a mile (they often do). Rebecca and I need to prepare for the storm because we could be snowed in for several days. Things have improved since we moved in here-we do get plowed out a bit earlier than in the past, but even so, we don’t take any chances. I have a checklist of things I do to prepare for a winter storm.

  • Test the snow blower
  • Test the generator
  • Check wood levels
  • Check gasoline levels
  • Check propane levels
  • Ensure we have enough salt and sand
  • Check perishables in the refrigerator
  • Check on pet food levels
  • Verify that we have fodder for the outside animals
  • Strap everything down


Our generator can run for about eight hours on a single tank of gas and we normally stock enough gas to fill it twice. We won’t run it continuously even if the power fails to ensure we have enough to maintain the refrigerator and freezer, and to pump water (we have our own well, so having electricity to run the pump is important). Of course, the septic system also requires electricity to run its pumps. I do run the electricity while working because naturally, computers require power. If you don’t have a back up electricty source, you may need to contact a local electrician melbourne cbd for example.

Fortunately, we don’t need electricity for quite a few other requirements. For example, because we use wood heat and don’t rely on a blower to distribute it, heating our home doesn’t require electricity. We also got rid of our electric stove, so we can cook food on our gas range without any electricity.

What does all this mean for you? Everyone should have a plan in place for storms, both summer and winter. You should create a checklist of items that you need to check before a storm hits. Take time to create one now–at a time when you have the time to think things through carefully. Maintain your list so that it remains pertinent to your requirements and to improve it so that there are fewer holes in your storm coverage. Consider issues for your particular situation. For example, I don’t need to store large quantities of water because I have my own personal well and my generator can supply power to it as needed. However, if you don’t have a well, then you need to consider storing water for use during a storm that knocks out the water supply. Because I live in a rural area and always need a good medical kit, I don’t have to check it as a separate item–this is something we’re constantly checking anyway. If you live in the city and rely on the availability of local health care, you very likely need to check your medical kit to ensure that nothing is outdated or missing. It’s worth noting down the details of a few contractors too, like https://seiroofing.com/, so you know who to call should your home sustain any serious damage.

Creating a checklist of this sort is an essential part of being self-sufficient. Self-sufficiency during and after a major storm is one of the few forms of self-sufficient living that everyone can and should participate in. What sorts of things do you consider for your storm needs? Let me know at [email protected].

Entering the New Year

Today is my first day back from vacation. I’ve been looking forward to telling you everything that has happened during my down time! In fact, unlike many people, I really look forward to getting back to work. Well, the crammed inbox is a bit of a pain, but even the e-mail surplus is a reminder to me that you’re finding the help in my books useful.

Vacation is a bit of a misnomer for me. Yes, I do unplug from the computer as described in my Learning to Unplug post, but there is plenty to do outside. One of the new experiences I had during vacation was working on a large tree. My uncle had an oak with a 44″ diameter trunk fall several years ago. It was time to cut it up this winter. I only have a 22″ bar on my chainsaw and a 22″ bar doesn’t quite reach 22″ into the trunk, so we had a bit of trouble getting the rounds cut from the trunk. Cutting as much as I could and then using wedges to do the rest worked fine. Moving pieces that large is also a problem because you can’t lift them (or barely budge them for that matter). I learned how to use a cant hook to move the large pieces of wood onto the splitter (my uncle has a hydraulic splitter attached to his tractor). I still use a 20 pound splitting maul and splitting wedge to hand split all of my wood. Most people use a lighter splitting maul, but the abundance of white and red elm, black locust, and hickory on my property makes a heavier maul a necessity. Lets just say that between helping my uncle and cutting a bit of my own wood, I didn’t lack for exercise during vacation .

This year we did get to spend quite a bit of time with family and friends, especially since the weather here is Wisconsin is unusually mild. We don’t have any snow on the ground to speak of at the moment and none is in the forecast. Of course, the lack of snow makes travel easy, but it’s also worrisome because our plants will miss the moisture come spring and we could experience problems due to the lack of cover. However, each winter is different and I’m sure we’ll get clobbered by a snowstorm or two before all is said and done.

Rebecca and I also spent time putting a puzzle together (a review will appear later this week) and we had some fun watching movies. Of course, the tea kettle received a workout as we spent time in front of the wood stove enjoying something good to read. Overall, a nice way to rest during vacation. We didn’t just stay at home though. The new Sherlock Holmes movie called to us, so we went to see it at our local theater. Of course, there were visits to Deli Bean (a local coffee shop) and Stone Hollow (our local restaurant), where we enjoyed some nice treats.

This was a lot of fun and it was made even better because of the time we got to spend together. This is something that doesn’t happen as often as we’d like, which is a shame. Of course, we would’ve loved to have taken an actual vacation during this time, and one place that always comes up in discussion is Iceland. After reading this article about the best things to do in this country – https://www.carsiceland.com/post/best-things-do-in-iceland – it became even more tempting because who wouldn’t want to explore all of their glaciers, waterfalls and to witness the Northern Lights? This is something that I definitely want to plan for the new year, and I really hope we get to visit. Perhaps I should look at some private jet pricing calculator as it appears that flights to certain Icelandic airports might be a hassle. But I should take things one step at a time, I’m just glad that we could fill our break with as much enjoyment and activities as possible.

The mild weather also made it possible for me to walk in the woods. During one of my visits to the woods, I kept track of a fox. Cody (see Many Hands Make Light Work) and I had spotted a dead raccoon near a den in the woods, so I perched a distance from the den to see if anything came out. The den had a fox in it last winter and it appears that the same fox is there this winter. So, I sat on my stump for a while and watched. I find nature amazing. The woods provides us with food, heat, and entertainment–what more could anyone ask?

However, in addition to these activities, I also worked on some ideas for upcoming books, which is one of the focuses of this post. I’m planning to write some books on self-sufficiency. The books will have the same focus as my blog posts. I want to make things simple and to demonstrate ways you can also receive a financial benefit from your activities. Self-sufficiency is great because you help the environment, improve your health, and get a better product. For many people, these reasons look attractive until you start considering the financial element of self-sufficiency. Surprisingly, many people are unaware of the fact that self-sufficiency saves considerable money-enough that you really need to consider it as a source of income, rather than as a money sink. My new book will emphasize what you get in exchange for your efforts and how to optimize the benefits you receive. If you have some ideas on what you’d like to see in my book, please be sure to write me at [email protected].

Vacation is a time for equipment maintenance as well. I was able to get a few necessary maintenance tasks done during vacation. Another week off would have been nice, but I did get the essentials done.

One of my favorite activities during vacation was baking cookies with Rebecca. She makes the most delightful cookies and it’s always a pleasure to give her a hand when I can. We made sugar cookies this time around, but next time we may do something a bit more exciting.

Today is the first in-office work day of the year for me. Please be patient if you’ve sent me an e-mail while I’ve been gone. I promise to answer every e-mail that I’ve received while I was gone, but with a little over 900 reader e-mails in my inbox, it takes a while to get the job done. In the meantime, I hope that you’ve had a great start to the new year and I’m looking forward to presenting you will all sorts of really neat posts this upcoming year on just about every topic imaginable!

Sharing and Swapping Food

One of the centerpieces of self-sufficiency is, surprisingly enough, sharing and swapping food with neighbors. Yes, it’s possible to grow everything you need yourself, but absolutely everyone has a bad year in something. In addition, your soil and gardening techniques may produce copious quantities of one item, but prove dangerous, or even fatal, to other items. Your neighbors will have similar luck with other items. Consequently, swapping items between neighbors is one of the hallmarks of a self-sufficient community. The community as a whole benefits in such a situation because everyone ends up with a greater variety of food to eat. So, while you can grow what you need, you’ll eat better when you swap with someone else.

It isn’t just the garden though. Just about everything is swapped at times. One person may have an abundance of chickens and trade a chicken or two for some beef. These swaps aren’t done on a strict accounting system. People tend not to get too caught up on the price of the food—they’re more interested in exchanging something they have in excess for something they need. Of course, no one would swap an entire cow for just one chicken either . While the swaps aren’t strictly fair, they’re reasonably so—no one tries to take advantage of someone else (otherwise, the community as a whole would stop swapping with them).

There are times when people simply share food, which is where the country ethic comes into play. We’ve shared wine, soap, or cookies with other people simply because we think they’re nice people and want them to enjoy something we’ve made. There is no other motive behind the act, other than seeing the smile on the other person’s face. It makes us feel good to see how others react when we do something nice for them—acts of kindness are their own reward.

People have also shared with us. One winter we were extremely low on wood and I wasn’t able to get out and cut any. Our neighbors sent three cords of wood our way—an extreme act of kindness that we’ll never forget. We recently received a nice buck from some friends for nothing more than a smile. It isn’t often that you can fill your freezer with venison because of the kindness of someone else. The 65 pounds of meat is nice, being able to use the tenderloin for Christmas dinner is even nicer. I’ll make some lovely venison medallions (with wine we’ve made no less). It will be an extremely special Christmas—one we’ll never forget.

Our swapping and sharing often extends outside our local village. Other good friends recently sent us a decadent cake that we’ll share with family and friends here. We’ll send a fruitcake their way later this week. I wish that our friends could have seen the smile on our faces when we received the cake—perhaps they felt the warmth of our feelings from afar (and certainly we’ve thanked them for their fine gift).

If you choose to become self-sufficient, don’t get the idea that you’re an island. No one is separate from the entire world. The more self-sufficient you become, the more you realize that the self-sufficiency of the community in which you live is important. It doesn’t matter if you live in the country, as we do, or in the city. The need to depend on others and also experience the joy of giving to those in need is possibly the best part of being self-sufficient.

Does your community swap and share? How are you experiencing the kindness of others during this holiday season? Have you done something kind, something totally unexpected for someone else? Let me know at [email protected].

Choosing an Appropriate Stove

I’m not here to recommend a particular stove or brand of stove. I’ve found over the years that a stove that works for one person, doesn’t work at all for someone else. We all have different ideas of precisely what makes the perfect stove. For example, some people prefer white stoves, while others think that colors are the way to go. Some prefer stoves that run on gas whereas others are keen on getting the best induction hob instead. The selection of stoves is also limited by local availability and the size of your pocketbook. I’m sure that there are some people reading this who will merrily spend $5,000.00 or more on a stove and never think twice about it. So, I’m not here to tell you that a particular stove is the end all invention of stoves because it probably isn’t true in your case. Stoves used for self-sufficiency purposes, especially canning, do have some features in common though and that’s the point of this post.

Glass top stoves are completely out of the question if you want to can. Even the vendors will tell you that placing a heavy canner on a glass-topped stove is doomed to failure (or at least breakage of the top). That said, I know of at least one person who uses their glass topped stove for canning, quite successfully I might add. Still, it’s probably not a very good idea and forget about any warranty work if the vendor discovers that your stove top broke from canning.

We tried an electric stove that was specifically designed for canning. The vendor even talked about canning in the manual. This stove came with some high wattage burners designed to heat the water more quickly. The problem is that the electric stove doesn’t get enough air flow to cool the burners (as odd as that might sound) when a big canner is sitting on top of the elements. I ended up replacing the burners almost every year because the metal holding the elements together would sag and eventually the pot ended up resting right on top of the stove (with the resultant fire hazard). After the stove burst into flames the second time (and I was looking at rewiring it yet again), I decided that electric wasn’t going to make it for us. That said, I know of more than a few people who do successfully use electric stoves for canning. Almost every one of them has removed the vendor-supplied burners and provided heavier duty canning burners. AP Wagner is one place that sells these burners-be prepared to pay an arm and a leg for one (a burner that normally runs around $30.00 will cost nearly $80.00 in canning burner form), if you can even find one to fit your stove.

That leaves gas stoves. Even here you can make some serious mistakes. Look for a gas stove that specifically mentions canning in the manual. Check out reviews from other people who use the stove for canning purposes. The grates should be quite heavy if you plan to use the stove for canning because a canner is quite heavy (especially when working with a pressure canner). Make sure the grates aren’t so high that they actually prevent good heat transfer to your canner. It’s a good idea to obtain a gas stove that has at least one power burner (more is better). Unfortunately, the power burner will also trash any sort of sauce you try to make with it, so a simmer burner is also a good idea. The stove we finally purchased has one standard burner, two power burners, and a simmer burner. We’re finding that it works extremely well for every task.

No matter which stove type you choose, make sure it has a porcelain finish and not a painted finish. Some vendors will try to pawn a painted finish off on you and the paint is guaranteed to peel from the heat generated from canning. Unless you like the idea of repainting your stove with high temperature paint (nasty stuff) on a regular basis, porcelain is the only way to go.

Another issue to consider is the size of the back panel. Many stoves have back panels that jut out as a fashion statement. Unfortunately, the back panel design also makes it impossible to use the back burners with anything larger than a small pan. This sort of stove is unlikely to work well for canning purposes (Rebecca and I know, we’ve tried). If nothing else, take your pans to the store and test fit them on the stove before you buy. You really don’t want to discover that your pans won’t fit after the stove is already installed in your home.

If you’re using your stove for canning like we do, then you’ll find that it takes a lot of abuse. We bought one with as few gizmos as possible because gizmos tend to break easily when you use them a lot. Simpler is better when it comes to canning. To help make the stove even more reliable, make sure you read the manual that comes with it and perform all of the vendor-recommended maintenance, including the required cleaning. For example, we found out that ammonia really does work better for cleaning the stove than other cleaners. (We tried it as part of the vendor-recommended maintenance.) The ammonia fumes are quite nasty, so we run the hood on high speed during cleaning to remove them.

Our results may vary from yours, but we’re also finding that gas is less expensive to can with than electric. I’m still trying to figure out precisely how much less, but my preliminary estimate shows that you save about 17% using gas over electric. In order to come up with a precise number, I’m going to have to figure out how many BTUs are required to perform a typical canning operation on each device, and then compare the per BTU costs of each fuel source. We’ve also discovered that canning with gas takes less time because the water heats more quickly. You should know though that we’re using propane and that could change the economics of canning. Choose carefully if you value long term costs as part of your purchasing decision.

What sorts of things have you found important when choosing a stove? Let me know at [email protected].

 

Considering the Inefficiency of a Global Economy

A lot of people have said a lot about the global economy—how it exists and is pretty much unstoppable. However, a recent article in ComputerWorld, amongst others, have highlighted problems with the global economy. In this case, flooding in Thailand has impacted the availability of hard drives—driving up the price that everyone pays. If manufacturing were decentralized, flooding in a single country wouldn’t have much of an effect. In short, the emphasis on cost of individual products instead of emphasizing the reliability of multiple sources of hard drives at an increased cost has proven a shortsighted strategy that inevitably hurt the world supply.

Some countries are using the global economy as a source of blackmail. According to the New York Times, China has consolidated its grip on rare earth metals used for everything from compact fluorescent lights to displays used in smartphones. The blackmail started after a disagreement with Japan. As a consequence, the price of any item that requires rare earths has gone up and will continue to increase. It’s another instance where price advantages offered by a global economy have come back to haunt us. In fact, this problem is so significant that the United States government is doing everything it can to create alternative sources, no matter the cost. Unfortunately, it will require nearly 15 years to fully develop those alternatives.

These two stories, and many more, only hint at the potential problems of a global economy. The problems are actually far more severe than you might initially think. When someone ships a hard drive all the way from Thailand to your home, the carbon footprint of that drive is quite large. It takes a lot of gas to move that hard drive. What the global economy does is it trades fossil fuel for price. The cost of the oil, plus the cost of the object (whatever it might be), is less than the cost of producing the object locally. The short term monetary gain takes priority over the cost to the environment and its eventual cleanup. In the long term, that hard drive will cost everyone a great deal more than if it had been purchased locally.

This blog has contained more than a few self-sufficiency posts (60 as of this post). You’ve seen discussions of how to grow your own food and reasonably recycle products instead of dumping them in a landfill. I even told you how to obtain CFLs for free (see CFLs for Free). All of these posts are practical—I’ve worked hard to write posts that demonstrate techniques that improve the condition of your wallet, decrease your health problems, and still help everyone around you by producing a greener environment. Even with these measures, I’m well aware that my carbon footprint is huge because a global economy forces me to buy articles from overseas. These items aren’t available locally and I can’t make them myself.

In the long run, it’s unlikely that we’ll be able to sustain a global economy unless the equation changes dramatically. Fossil fuels aren’t unlimited—we’ll eventually run out, so from a practical perspective, transportation of items from overseas must change or we won’t be able to transport them. However, long before that happens, the damage to our environment will take a dramatic toll on everyone. The question is why anyone would wait around to see it all happen? Is the world determined to wait until everyone is so sick and so without resources that we have no choice but to toe the line? Does no one think about the effect they’re having until it’s too late?

I ask these questions because the global economy is simply a bad idea. Producing goods locally is far more efficient, even when the initial price for the good is higher. Eating and using what you can produce locally is far better for everyone. You do have a choice. Even with the global economy in full swing, you can buy local goods—in fact, insist on them. Tell local stores that you’re willing to pay more for local goods that are good for the environment. Your money matters. When stores find that they can’t sell those overseas items at any price, they’ll buy locally. “Give the customer what they want” is a cliche, but it’s also a fact. Vote with your cash to bring down a global economy that is ill conceived and killing us all. Let me know your thoughts about the global economy at [email protected].