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Category: gardening

Fri. Jan. 15, 2021 – lots to say, brain running on empty

Cool and clear.  Sunny.  Should be nice.

My day today should involve pickups and drop offs that didn’t happen yesterday,  and some new ones.    I got some odd things and some good things this week.   In the odd but good overlap- packaged setup for a backup battery, charger/maintainer/ and sump pump…  I’ll just use the battery and maintainer.   Odd but useful, 50 pounds of Himalayan salt.   My wife prefers using it in the kitchen, and it was cheap.  Into a bucket you go!  I got a couple more battery chargers, and a nice big 13.8v power supply for my radios/ workbench, and another 12v tire inflater for the vehicles.   Since batteries and chargers are coming my way right now, I’ll keep stacking them.

I missed getting a load dropped off because I actually had an ebay sale that needed to pack and ship.   I took the opportunity to do some family pack and ship errands too.

I’ve got a lot of little things need doin’ today and this weekend too.  Putting together and stocking another two sections of FIFO can manager.  Putting stuff AWAY that’s been sitting out too long.  A grocery order would be prudent too.  No time for complete sentences!

My buddy tells me that most of the Home Depots should have their new garden seeds out and on the floor.   You might want to buy early this year.  Just sayin’.  Also any pesticides or treatments you need might end up in short supply, so you might want them too.  Rabbit wire/ hardware cloth was very hard to find locally this past year.  I’ve got a bunch now, but who would have thought that would run out?  Canning jars and lids are selling VERY well in the auctions, higher price than retail.  Hmm.  Maybe like ammo, people are laying in supplies wherever they find them?   Like guns and ammo if you shoot, if you can, you can never have enough jars…

I hope everyone is planning their garden, even if it is only salad greens in containers.  Get some practice.  And, some container gardening is good cover for much more extensive efforts in the back yard, where no one can see…

Short shrift today, because I’m really tired as I write this and my brain is slow.

Keep stacking.  You have holes in your preps.  Find them and fill them.

nick

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Tues. Dec. 29, 2020 – – – almost there….

Cool and possibly rainy.

Yesterday’s weather was really nice.  Very humid, but still nice.  Riding around with the windows down and the heater on at night nice.

Didn’t get as much done yesterday as I would have liked.  Did harvest 7 snap peas.  I’d forgotten the plant after it was the only survivor in the side garden.   That’s a first for me so I’ll definitely try again with those.  Also ate an orange off the tree.  I let it go a bit too long, but it’s still tasty.  Huge too.  I’ve got two more broccoli heads that are ready too.  Whoohoo.  I better get some more canned veg stacked…

Late in the day I went to my storage units and to my secondary.  I’ve got a huge amount of stuff to go through and get rid of.  Holy cow, 17 years accumulation at the secondary …  and a lot of it needs to go.  I need to get set up to have my own auctions or I’ll never get rid of this stuff in time.  The plan is forming, and small steps are being taken.  Getting rid of two huge shipping crates helped alot.  There’s just so much more to do.

And all the time the wheel turns.

Everything else needs attention too.

I think I need a grocery run. Maybe some more TP, that is always a good thing to have.

Pay attention to what’s going on around you, and keep stacking.

n

 

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Wed. Dec. 16, 2020 – I’m TNT, I’m dy-no-mite…

Cool, but no rain forecast.

Tuesday it rained.  All over town in varying degree.  Lots where I was.  Not so much at home.

I ran my errands.  Fixed the plumbing issue at my rent house.  Got it the first time, with the stuff I had with me, and didn’t have to do the second part after all….   that’s two miracles and a ‘nice save’…. I feel like a lotto winner.

Of course I also found out that my tenants are getting married in May.  Which means I’ll need new tenants when they get pregnant.  House is fine for two, too small for three.  And he had the ‘rona, but she never got it.  Locked in with him, and him with both symptoms (mild to ‘this sh!t sucks’) and a positive test, her with two negative tests.   Three whole weeks and she never got it.  Crazy.

Harvested two stalks of broccoli from the garden.  They are about fist sized heads.   Maybe they’ll be dinner tonight.

While sitting at my computer I’ve been ripping my way through the hundreds of CDs in the two binders I picked up.  The burned copies were all bad.  But I’ve been having good luck with the commercial disks.  Almost all have ripped, although some have taken a whole lot of re-reading and oversampling.  A couple just needed washing, and I polished 2 so far that I really wanted to rip.    I’ve done a couple hundred so far with the same left to go.  Then the physical media goes to storage.  I’m not the guy who rips his collection then sells all the disks…  anyway, I like owning physical media.  After this, I’ll have just about every Lynyrd Skynyrd disk ever released- something that wasn’t one of my life goals, but I’m a completist.   If I’m going to burn all the disks, I’ll burn ALL the disks.  Even 20 or more Skynyrd disks.  Le sigh.

Today I’m home with the student, so I’ll be doing home stuff.  There’s certainly plenty to do.

Perhaps I’ll get a chance to do some stacking…  Something I recommend to everyone 😉

nick

 

 

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Fri. Dec. 11, 2020 – week went by so fast I missed a day…

Cool, getting warmer, breezy and sunny.  Until the rain comes.

Got some stuff done yesterday.   Not what I was hoping but that’s the story of my life at the moment.

Today I’ve got a couple of pickups about as far apart as you can get in the metro area.  Conroe to League City.  And then I have to see my client out on the northwest side of town, at 290 and 99.  Lots of driving in my day.  I could slip one of the pickups to Saturday, but I’ve got my non-prepping hobby meeting and I feel like I really want to go.  I’m feeling healthy, and I’ll mask up.  I miss the guys and the technical sessions.

I have noticed that if I’m tired from not getting enough sleep, I rarely get done even half of what I hoped to.  I’m not as young as I was I guess.  I have trouble focusing too, when I’m tired.  Good reasons to head to bed earlier.

Physical condition is an often overlooked part of prepping.  I’ve been eating less, and I’ve gradually lost about 10 pounds since March.  I hover around 200 now.  At 190 I’m too thin and my skin hangs on my face.  It would be nice and prudent to convert some of the weight to muscle mass instead of spare tire.  Nice, but I haven’t got the interest in spending much time on it.  With the cooler temps, it’s easier to work outside and inside, so I’m hoping to firm up a bit while doing some work.  Either that or it will break me…

Dinner last night was canned beans, canned corn, leftover canned carrots and frozen pork chops on the grill.  As I was opening the cans, I had a thought.  You used to see a can opener as a primary appliance in every kitchen.  Most had some sort of electric opener, some were attached to cabinets, and there were many styles and models to choose from.  It suddenly struck me that was because our parents and grandparents ate a lot of canned food.  It was the only way to get fruit and veg out of season for most people.  Two sides per dinner meant opening two cans at least.  Soup for lunch, and pie for dessert meant a couple more cans.  Jar openers were common gadgets too.  They used enough cans that it made sense to have a faster and easier way to open them right there on the countertop.  Contrast that with our diets now, with any fruit or veg available fresh in any season due to rapid and cheap shipping and handling, and the global nature of our supply chain.

Prepping and the current emergency have shifted my family’s diet back toward canned… even though we get fresh veg and fruit with every grocery order.

If the supply chain faces further disruption, if the cheap peasant labor in far away lands should suffer a population decline or political strife that shuts down commerce, if energy became much more expensive, everyone would be forced to shift toward canned food.  Which would cause shortages.  One more reason to stock up now.   And to work on your gardening skills.

So stack the stuff you’ll need in the spring for your garden, and stack more canned goods in case your garden doesn’t grow.  In fact, keep stacking all the things…

 

nick

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Thur. Dec. 9, 2020 – if I were a rich man, deedle deedle deedle diedle dum..

Cool and windy.  Getting warmer later.  Basically nice.

Wednesday was cool to start but got to 84F in the sun.  Still pretty damp, there was water in the buckets from days ago, and condensation on the concrete.

I started my day with a fresh from the tree grapefruit.  Ruby red and sweet.   Success at last!  There are about a dozen more.  There are a couple of oranges on the other tree that I’m giving a bit more time.  The lemons are ready, but I leave them in place as long as I can.  Broccoli is doing ok, and I might harvest some spears in a couple of days.

I spent a good part of the day going through ebay/auction stuff, moving it from bin to bin and getting some ready for the next auction.  They stood me up on meeting to get my check and do my dropoff so I’ll have to reschedule.  Next week I’ll have stuff in 3 of the local auctions, and it still won’t have made much of a dent.

I didn’t get much else on my list done, so that all slips into today.  If I’m away from the keyboard, I’m working my list.

Interesting thought experiment, what would 2021 look like if there are aliens here?  They have been here for a while, they haven’t dropped rocks on us, they are either in a lifeboat or have some business with us.  What might it be?  What would the confirmed announcement do to current social issues?  I bet they’d get the blame for wuflu…  What the heck would they want?  Botanicals?  Slaves?  Food?  Fuel?  Colonization has always been about resource extraction for us, or later new markets, and cheap labor.  What would prepping look like for benign aliens instead of zombies?

My suspicion is that people would lose their shirt and we’d want to stay quietly at home for a while, just like a lot of other scenarios.  Couldn’t hurt to be prepped up.

Which raises another issue.  If you didn’t have to worry about budget, beyond some reasonable amount (no buying Yard Moose Mountain) what would a serious prepper look like and be stacking?  Vs an ‘ordinary’ prepper, or a beginning prepper?  What do you start stacking when you realize that 2 weeks while waiting for FEMA and the outside aid to get there isn’t going to be enough?

What makes one serious?  Is it building a “Rebuild society” library?  Or stocking fish meds?  A suture kit?  Injectable drugs?  Having a stocked root cellar?  Livestock? A garden measured in fractions of an acre?  Bushcraft knowledge?  Foraging for food?  Hunting/fishing/trapping?  Butchering your own food?  A pantry measured in “person-years”?  More than one gun safe?  Off grid power?  Off grid property?

I consider myself pretty serious, but there are things in that list I don’t even have plans for.    Ok that’s a lie.  But there are things in that list I don’t have serious plans for 😉

Get to work.  Stack something today.  Even if it’s just knowledge.

nick

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Mon. Nov. 30, 2020 – really counting down the year now

Cool but hopefully no rain.

We could use the chance to dry out now that we got all that rain.  The ground is squishy.

Yesterday I spent way too long monkey punching my linux install to get my NVR software running again.   Linux does some dumb things.  So does my NVR software.  Still, it’s orders of magnitude more stable than the windows version, and I don’t have Gates and Co.  messing with my computer every month or whenever they feel like it.  Still not something I’d put on a customer site unless they had a wild mix of cams that were not supported by hardware NVR or VMS (video management system).  With the ONVIF standard for IP cams, it’s getting to be rare that a camera isn’t supported by newer hardware.

I do feel a lot better with the cams recording to my NVR as well as internally.

The new range hood project should be finished today.  I’ve got to get the exhaust duct connected and supported, and Bog’s my carbuncle.

Christmas break is now only 3 weeks away.  I should get some decor out if the weather holds.   It was CHILLY yesterday, as well as damp.  I’ve got citrus still ripening on the trees, so I hope we aren’t going to get a frost for a while yet.  No fall garden, that’s clear now.  Except… my broccoli is putting out florets.  I’ll be happy to eat them, and the other dark leafy veg might be collards.  In any case, the leaves are looking edible to me…   But new veg?  Not happening.

So that means stacking some more cans of veg.  Because I won’t be feeding us from the garden.

Other supplies, especially defensive stuff has been very limited availability, and high price relative to last year.  Cheap compared to January, I think.   If I had money, and access to the stock, I’d buy a pallet of ammo.  But neither of those things are true.    If you are short of what you’d like, sign up for palmetto state armory’s enewsletter.  They are rumored to have one of the big manufacturers as a partner or owner, and while they are (in)famous for their inexpensive ARs, they also have been getting stock of defensive handguns, shotguns, and parts.  They’ve had more inventory than most of the other places I check.  AR500 armor had a sale on, if you think some body armor might be a good idea.  It takes a while to get your order fulfilled by them, so you might want to look around.  Their product seems good though, and their prices were low.  Ammo is hit or miss.  Rocky Brasss newsletter, or GrabAGun’s, or one of the linker sites like ammoseek.com is probably your best bet.  Expect to pay $1/rnd for 556/223, and 50c to $1/rnd for common pistol calibers, much more for anything fancy.  Airsoft or BB guns will let you work common problems without breaking the bank…

Think about what you will do if some restrictive laws do get passed, and DON’T tell anyone that you’ve decided on anything other than selling all your stuff quick before the laws take effect.  Make sure you have a bill of sale… even if it’s just to A. Random Patriot.  When bad things happen they tend to happen all at once, and very rapidly.

Times are going to get tough, no matter what happens with the election, or the wuflu.  Too many cans have been kicked down the road.  Too many things have become un-tethered from reality.  Far too many people aren’t able to hold a contrary thought in their heads, and react violently to the suggestion that they should.

It’s not too late to shore up some weak spots, but it will be soon.  How soon is yet to be seen.  The longer you wait the more it will cost and the harder it will be.

So keep stacking,

nick

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Mon. Oct. 26, 2020 – another week to fritter away

Cooler and overcast.  Maybe some rain.  Plenty of humidity I’m certain.

Did lots of little things around the house yesterday.  Actually cleaned up some things and put some stuff on shelves.  Doesn’t feel like  much and it wasn’t.

I cut the grass in the backyard.  Mower battery died after about 5 minutes.  Put it on the charger while I used the string trimmer, and even though it wasn’t fully charged it was good for the remainder of the yard.    Put it back on the charger when I finished.  Did some string trimming around the blueberry bushes.  I don’t let the lawn guys do that.  They used to just whack off the bushes too.   Cleaned the filter in the pond.  Water was still clear but flow to the aerator/waterfall was slow.   There was about a 1/4 inch of fine black silt on the top of the filter.  Flows good now…

Many ripe lemons, but the oranges and grapefruits are still a bit green.  I don’t want to wait too long, but I want tree ripened fruit!  I cleaned up the failed planting beds, and I’ll try some other seed packets tomorrow.

Plugged in lights for a couple more fake jack o lanterns in the yard.

And that was about that.  My wife spent the afternoon with her Brownie troop.  They did a couple of craft projects including making “sit upons” and decorating them.  Before heading out, my 9yo discovered the vinyl cutter.  Oh MY.  She’s turning out 3 and 4 color stacked stickers.  She’s using my wife’s Cricut cutter so she’s not drawing the shapes but she’s doing all the rest.  She’s doing a great job of making good looking vinyl too.   I might have to get her dialed in on Inkscape and my big cutter….

Today should be more of the same.  More cleanup, more auction, more wasting time on the internet with my friends…

And somehow, I’ll find time for more stacking.

nick

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Sat. Oct. 17, 2020 – non-prep hobby meets today…

Cooler and damp.

It was 58F when I went to bed last night, and it was about that cool most of the day.  Overcast and misty rain finally burned off late in the afternoon.

Most of what I picked up yesterday was household related.  Of the prepper stuff, the Dometic porta-jon was brand new in the box.  The RV inverter wasn’t.  It was the old 12v power supply module from whatever RV old boy updated later with the part that came in the box.  It looks intact and included a fused multi-circuit 12v distro panel.    It will make a great 12vdc power supply for my ham radios, whenever I get around to it.  Lemonade from lemons and all that…

I harvested an actual lemon from my lemon tree.  The other citrus is getting yellower every day.  I hope some is not woody and hard, but I’ll take a dozen fruits, even if they’re not great this year, and hope for better next year.  Planting trees is an act of faith that there will be a future.

No other visible sprouts, so I’ll try replanting with different seed packets.  My neighbor at my secondary location is getting a good fall garden, so it isn’t just a bad year in Houston, it’s me.  Try try again.  (And buy more canned food.)

Lots of articles out there about people bum rushing to rural housing, buying lots of guns and ammo, and stocking up.  The flip side is I’m seeing weird stuff in the amazon (and other store) returns auctions.   Most of the online and brick and mortar stores just take their returns and auction them off in bulk to wholesalers.  The wholesalers sometimes auction smaller bulk pallets, and sometimes auction individual lots.  That’s what I mean when I talk about ‘returns’ auctions.   Well, in the last couple of months, I’ve seen some interesting stuff.   Chicken coops (reviews were that they were too small.)  Chicken waterers.  Chicken nesting pads and nesting boxes (lots of people trying to grow chickens.)    Small animal nesting and bedding.   Farrier starter tool kits (several in this week’s auction.)  Farriers!  Moon cups (reusable menstrual supplies are a prepper staple.)  Solar panels.

Of course I’m seeing lots of other stuff that speaks of the lockdown, exercise equipment, bikes, and home reno bits and pieces, home decor too.

One puzzler is the TONS of child safety gates.  I mean TONS.  Every auction has dozens of lots.   And just general human debris, as summer ends a lot of yard tools are being returned.  Freaking thieves and returns fraud.  Tents and camping gear are being returned in bulk as well.

Firearms and ammo are showing up in the consignment and estate auctions.  Not much in the way of modern defensive arms, (except Hi-Point pistols- the modern ‘Saturday night special’.)  Most of what I’m seeing is single shot rifles, old single shot shotguns- unloved brown rifles in other words.  The ammo is usually sort of “cleaned out a drawer” quantities and a lot of non-defense calibers.  It all sells for high prices, and defensive ammo or modern defensive arms are bringing eye watering prices compared to a year ago.

Surprising me, there are a couple of campers/trailers in this week’s auction.  I figured people would hold on to them as a last resort living arrangement, but there must be folks who don’t expect to get to that point, who are looking to cash in on high demand.

On another note, I drove across all of Houston Friday, all the way to Baytown, and then up to IAH.  Today I’ll be going down to Dickenson and back up through Bellaire.  I crisscross Houston fairly regularly.  I’m seeing a LOT of empty commercial buildings.  I’m seeing a LOT of ‘For Lease’ signs.  I even saw two new ones a few blocks from my house.   The landslide has just started rumbling, a few pebbles are starting to roll down hill…  I’ve got a feeling that ‘we ain’t seen nothin’ yet.’  But not in a good way.

Keep stacking, and keep your eyes and mind open to opportunity.   There are always opportunities.

 

nick

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Thur. Oct. 15, 2020 – Home with the kids today

Cooler and mostly overcast.  Or raining.

Yesterday was fairly cool, and mostly overcast, but not unpleasant.  Even in the attic doing the last walkthrough with the roofer it was cool.

Knocked off a couple of little things, and did some meatspace relationship maintenance.  Today I’m home so I’ll be working my list.  If it’s cooler, it will make everything go that much easier.

I’d also like to get some more Halloween decor out, and get some of the house cleaned up.  I’m hoping that there won’t be any rain though as I also need to get my antennas back up.

I checked my gardens, and it’s been long enough I should be seeing sprouts if I’m going to get any.  I’m not seeing any.  So I’ll be replanting with a different seed packet.  It won’t take long but it’s another little thing on the list.

Mainly though, I need to get stuff out of the house.  That’s hardest because I’m relying on other people.  I may have to take some interim steps and move stuff twice, just to get it moving.

Meanwhile, out in the bigger world, it sure looks like Biden has a problem to address.    In a normal political cycle, he’d be toast at this point.  Certainly a republican would be falling on his sword and looking to ‘take more time with family’.   In the current bizarro world, I can’t even begin to make predictions other than ‘standard program of denial’ and ‘accuse the opposition of doing what they say I did.’

Every chop at the rule of law, every political prosecution, every new act of violence and I want MOAR!!!!!!11!!! .  More food, more guns, more ammo, more friends, more skills, and most of all, more time.

Work on what you can.  Keep stacking.

nick

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Tues. Oct. 13, 2020 – back to school

Another fairly hot and very humid day.  No rain forecast though.

Monday was so humid I was sweating just standing outside talking with the roofing contractor.  It got up into the low nineties too.  Hotter in the sun, I’m sure.  Roofing is one of those jobs that I would do just about anything to avoid.  Septic pumping is another.

I did my pickups.  Got my roof vents and the rest of my household stuff.  Not much for resale in these two auctions.

The roofers got the back side of the house and some of the garage done.  Today they’ll finish with the garage and do all of the front side.  The new color shingle looks great.  It really freshens up the look and I can’t wait to see it on the front from the street.  House will look good for the riots at least.

I really don’t like having the crew in my driveway and around the house in the back where all the good stuff is.  The generators and water tanks are pretty hard to miss if you are in the yard.  The food is a bit more undercover.  @paul would probably recognize what I’ve got going on.  I’ve used night shields (aluminized fabric set up like an old school movie screen) horizontally to cover my three sets of shelves where my canned goods are stored.  The night shields are normally used in a grocery store to cover the open face of reach in coolers and freezers at night.  I picked up three at some point.  They work great as retractable ‘doors’ in front of the metal shelves.

Hard to maintain OPSEC when you’ve got people crawling all over your house.

Once the roofers are done and gone, I’ll be able to get more Halloween decor out.  That gives me a sense of normality that I kind of need right now to counter my sense of dread for what I see coming.  Every one of these milestones I want to make as normal as possible for the kids, so if things do go pear shaped, they have that to remember.  And if they DON’T go pear shaped, all the better to have celebrated the small events, instead of skipping them.  On the other hand, I can be pretty sure we won’t be doing 4 Trunk or Treats this year.  As long as we get one Trick or Treat night I’ll be happy.

Ate one orange from my tree today.  A bit sour and woody.  Very disappointing.  I hope the others are better.  Daughter 2 wanted to make cookies, and used a box of mix Best By 2018.  It was pretty bad.  There is something bitter in there.  For everything that lasts well past its BB, there is something else that doesn’t.

On the other hand, I used a skillet flavor mix from 2018 to make chicken tacos last night and they were REALLY good.  Chicken from the freezer, ‘street truck’ one skillet flavor packet, and I made the tortillas from the big bucket o mix.  Just add water!  I’m getting the hang of it.  They aren’t round, but I’m getting them cooked more consistently and rolled out to a more consistent and thin thickness.  The dough really needs to be kneaded, and it really needs to rest.  After that it rolls out nicely.  The tortilla press was a failure again.  Operator error or just not needed, the press is going to Goodwill.  I don’t have a comal but the western rolling pin works just fine and I’ll keep trying.  Sometimes the simplest things are much harder than they might look.  That’s why we need to practice the skills.

And keep stacking.  So you have the resources to use with those skills…

 

nick

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