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Category: prepping

Sunday, 23 July 2017

09:15 – It was 72.5F (22.5C) when I took Colin out at 0645. More heads-down work on science kits today.

I’m very disappointed in the Netflix DVD service, which has become pretty much worthless. We were members for about a decade, ending in 2012. I kept a log of everything, including the date the shipped us a disc, when we received it, when we sent it back, when they received it, and when they shipped the replacement disc. Back then, Netflix operated seven days a week, and the USPS also worked with them every day of the week.

When Netflix got a disc back from us, they’d immediately ship the replacement disc, which would arrive the next day. We’d watch it and return it the following day. They’d receive it late that night or early the following morning, and immediately ship the replacement disc.

They no longer work that way. I signed up for the 2-discs-at-a-time plan at 0928 last Monday morning, the 17th, expecting them to ship the first two discs that afternoon. Instead, they didn’t ship them until 1350 the following day, Tuesday the 18th. We received them Wednesday morning, the 19th, watched them, and returned them Thursday morning the 20th. They emailed to acknowledge receipt at 1242 on Friday the 21st. I expected them to send the next two discs that afternoon, which we’d receive Saturday the 22nd. Nope. Not only didn’t they ship the replacement discs Friday afternoon, they STILL haven’t shipped them. So, assuming they get around to shipping them tomorrow, that means their cycle is about one set per week, or roughly 10 discs/month. At $12/month, that’s $1.20 per disc rental charge.

So I won’t be continuing the service once the free 30-day trial expires. In fact, I may just cancel it immediately. Until 2012, we had the 3-disc plan. It cost $15/month for 3 discs versus $12/month now for 2 discs. Looking at the 1,500 or so discs we rented over a decade, back then it was costing about $0.70/disc, so they’ve basically increased their prices by more than 70%.

I understand that Netflix would be operating at a loss without disc rental revenue. And they have only four million or so people on disc rental plans, a number that’s dropping fast. I don’t expect the service to last more than three or four more years before it loses critical mass. Oh, well. They just lost me.

Email from Kathy. They got a lot done Friday, working straight through. They got all of their bulk rice, oats, beans, and sugar packed in foil-laminate Mylar bags, sealed, labeled, and put on the shelves. More than a half a ton worth in total. They got partway through the flour and other bulk staples.

Mike got the second island shelf unit finished earlier in the week, and got all of the canned goods, herbs/spices, etc. moved onto the shelves, with the latest best-by dates toward the rear and bottom. Kathy was about 95% happy with how he’d done it, but made a few adjustments. She’s in charge of LTS food and cooking, so she needs things where she wants them and where she knows where they are.

Mike got the propane tank on order. It’s supposed to be installed and the lines run next week. They ended up with a 330-gallon tank like the one we have. Mike also ordered a propane space heater from the same company that’s installing the tank and lines. They didn’t carry cooktops. The propane gas cooktop is on order from Lowes, and is supposed to be delivered next week. Coincidentally, they ended up ordering exactly the same model we have other than color.

Mike got the upper and base cabinets and laminate countertop at the local building supply store, which delivered them. He’s installing those himself. Kathy talked with the Prepper Girls about pressure canning. She dithered about ordering a <$100 Presto pressure canner like the one we and several of the Prepper Girls use versus a $350 All-American unit. They talked it over and decided to order the All-American. She also has a bunch of canning jars on order with Walmart, as well as canning accessories.

She almost ordered a gross of wide-mouth reusable Tattler lids, but chickened out at the last moment. She (and several of the Prepper Girls) are concerned about them making good seals. Most reviewers give them glowing reviews, but more than a few report failures to seal, either during the canning process or weeks to months afterward. And some of those are people who have 20 or more years of canning experience.

So Kathy is debating with herself about ordering enough of those to match the number of canning jars she has, with a few spares, versus just ordering half a dozen one-use lids for each jar. The upside of the Tattler lids is that if she can get 10 uses from each, it’ll cost about half what it would to use reusable lids. The downside is that she’s afraid they might not work reliably.

Kathy also has a new Nesco dehydrator. She thought about buying an Excalibur, but decided the Nesco would do the same job at a third the price. So she picked up a Nesco on their shopping trip yesterday. They decided they didn’t need to make the 3-hour round trip run to Sam’s Club so instead they made the 90-minute round trip to the Walmart Super Center where they usually shop a couple times a month.

She decided to try out the dehydrator with some strawberries they picked up on the same trip. So after dinner yesterday she spent some time prepping and slicing the strawberries and loading up the trays to dry them overnight. One thing she hadn’t thought about is that their whole house now smells pleasantly of strawberries. She said she’d glad she didn’t decide to start by drying garlic. If she does stuff that smells bad, she plans to do it outside.

When they got up this morning, the strawberries were dry enough that they crumbled to powder. She made the mistake of letting Mike sample one, which he munched dry. He says they make a great snack. Kathy’s afraid she won’t have any left to store.

 

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Friday, 21 July 2017

08:33 – It was 69F (20.5C) when I took Colin out at 0645, sunny and clear.

The septic tank situation is resolved, in the sense that we can again flush toilets and use the sinks, washing machine, and so on. There’s still a big hole in the back yard. The guy is showing up this morning to pump out the tank, which he says most people have done every 7 to 10 years. The backhoe is still parked out there. After the tank is pumped out, the backhoe guy is supposed to be back to fill in the hole.

I drew a rough map of the tank location. The septic tank is easy enough to find now that we know where it is. From the SW corner of the house on the exact line of the side wall of the house, it’s 14 feet, 2 inches to the center of one of the hatches on the tank. That’s the near-side hatch of the divided tank, on the side where all the solids are supposed to accumulate.

It is a newish tank, which we finally found the records for. It was installed in May 2006. It did indeed have that damned filter, which was a bright yellow coiled thing that was entirely plugged. It’s lying on the ground. They’re going to wash it off and leave it for us, although I can’t imagine we’d ever want to re-install it.

After Larry had popped the hatch and cleared out enough of the mess to let water run again, he had us flush toilets and run water, which promptly backed up through the downstairs toilet. Obviously, we had a plug somewhere between the downstairs toilet and the septic tank. So he dug out more dirt toward the house until he located the main drain line and a buried access port. (He’s going to extend that up so that it pokes above ground level.) The water was flowing freely into the septic tank from that access port, so the problem was obviously under the concrete floor of the basement.

So Larry called Shaw and asked them to bring out an industrial size drain snake. I finally got to meet Elaine, after talking on the phone with her literally a hundred times or more, because she’s the one who brought out the snake. Not only that, but she helped Larry run it into the main pipe from the septic tank into the house to give it a straight shot. Elaine’s job as office manager obviously covers a lot of tasks.

I wasn’t out there while they were doing the snaking, but Barbara was. She says the snake cleared the plug and a flood of water came running into the septic tank, so it appears the clog is no more. At any rate, we’re operational again.

I hadn’t mentioned it, but Winston-Salem got nailed around 1730 Tuesday afternoon with extremely heavy storms–60 MPH (96 KPH) wind gusts, hail, and 2.5″ (6.4 cm) of rain in 20 minutes. Frances’ and Al’s house was in the middle of the worst-affected area. Their power was off until the following morning. Fortunately, they suffered no damage to their house or vehicles, although (I am not making this up) most of their tomatoes blew off the vines and went rolling across their yard and down the street.

Frances called Barbara soon after the power failed, and of course Barbara told them to come on up if they needed somewhere safe to shelter. They decided not to come up, although even if they had they might not have been able to. All of the traffic lights were out, there were millions of fallen trees blocking the roads, every intersection had become a parking lot, and so on. One friend of Frances said that her usual short drive home from work took her three hours.

As it turned out, of course, Frances and Al would have been no better off up here. When Barbara made the offer on Tuesday afternoon/evening, all was fine here. It was the following morning that the sewage backed up in the basement.

Email from Kathy. She decided to take a vacation day today to give her the long weekend to work on food repackaging and so on. If things go well and it looks like they’ll have time, they plan to make another Sam’s Club run tomorrow to stock up on more stuff, including toilet paper, paper towels, and similar stuff.

Kathy said she wished she’d been keeping track of toilet paper usage and asked if I had any ideas. I told her that, statistically and overall, an average American used about one roll per week, with women and girls, particularly those of menstrual age, averaging between two and three times as much as men and boys. Her guesstimate was that the four of them average maybe five rolls/week total, which sounds reasonable, so a year’s supply is roughly 250 rolls. She set her initial goal at 300 rolls, although it may take multiple trips to haul that much home.

Of course, all rolls are not the same. They vary in thickness, size, weight, and number of sheets per roll. I suggested that she go by weight because that’s the best indicator. People use roughly the same weight per usage, no matter how many sheets that totals. If it takes twice as many of the thinner, lighter sheets to make up the same weight, that’s what an average person will use.

For example, we’ve been using Costco toilet paper for ten or fifteen years, both the Signature (425 sheets/roll) and Ultra Soft (231 sheets/roll). Both cost about the same per roll, and also weigh about the same per roll, so there’s not a lot to choose between them. We buy whichever is on sale at the time.

Back in early May, I decided to check the recycled Georgia-Pacific Envision, so I ordered an 80-roll pack from Amazon. It’s bit smaller dimensionally, but not so’s you’d notice. Although they contain 550 sheets, the rolls are a bit lighter than the Costco Signature stuff. IIRC, those 80 rolls of GP Envision were equivalent to something like 72 rolls of the Costco product on a weight-to-weight basis. Barbara tried it and said it was fine with her. It didn’t feel like sandpaper or anything. And, at the time, it cost about $0.38/roll (about $0.43/roll on an equivalent weight basis), or roughly 60% of Costco’s non-sale price.

That doesn’t sound like a big difference but if you’re buying 250 or 300 rolls it’s maybe $80 less for the GP product. I was going to mention it to Kathy, but I checked prices first. When I bought a case in early May, Amazon charged about $31 delivered. When I checked yesterday, their price was up to $46. Walmart has it for the same price. Costco has it for $50. At that price, there’s just not enough difference to make it worth buying the recycled institutional-grade GP stuff.

I also suggested to Kathy that she buy a few dozen hotel-grade washcloths as personal cloths and some granular calcium hypochlorite (AKA HTH or Pool Shock) to sterilize them between uses. I keep an adequate supply of these, just in case the toilet paper ever runs out. Better than a handful of leaves.

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Thursday, 20 July 2017

08:15 – It was 66F (20C) when I took Colin out at 0630, sunny and clear.

We didn’t get much done yesterday after I posted. The electrician showed up mid-morning. When we walked downstairs, there was a pool of sewage from the downstairs toilet overflowing. Oddly, there was no strong odor. I couldn’t smell anything. Even Barbara, with her much more sensitive, non-smoking snout, said there was a very, very slight sewage odor, but nothing she noticed until she went downstairs. I called Shaw Brothers immediately to let them know we needed help.

The toilet had suffered a volcanic eruption, spraying sewage and toilet paper all over the bathroom floor and out into the den area, where it soaked the bottom books in the many stacks of books still on the floor. Barbara bagged all those up yesterday and took them to the dump.

At that point, we were hoping that it was just the drain for that toilet that was plugged up. We’d used a bunch of old towels to soak up the sewage on the floor, and I made the mistake of carrying them upstairs and putting them in the washer, with plenty of detergent and chlorine bleach. I soon realized my error, as Barbara shouted up that the bathtub and downstairs sink was backing up. So I killed the wash cycle.

To make a very long story short, a backhoe is to show up this morning to dig up the septic tank. No matter what the problem turns out to be, I want them to pump it out as long as they have it uncovered.

When we first moved up here, I was surprised that there were no pump-out pipes sticking up on any of the septic systems we saw. Back 40+ years ago, I had many friends up in Pennsylvania who lived on rural properties. Most of them had a pipe sticking up from the septic tank. Those few that didn’t turned out to have a metal hatch cover buried under only a few inches of soil. Down here, they bury the septic tanks, and they have to be dug out when they need to be pumped.

Let that be a lesson to me. A year or more ago, I’d just about convinced myself to preemptively pump out our septic tank. But I talked to several people, who all said the same thing. That a lot of people had septic tanks that had worked just fine for 30 or 40 years. But I want this pumped out now. We’re in our early 60’s, and I don’t want to be dealing with this 10 or 20 years from now.

Fortunately, part of being prepared for things in general means we’re also prepared for this. We got the bedside commode down from the attic and set it up in the master bathroom upstairs. We have thousands of those t-shirt/thank-you bags, which fit over the bucket in the potty chair.

We can’t run any water down the drains until the situation is resolved, so Barbara brought up three of the 3-gallon dishpans from downstairs. There’s now one in each side of the kitchen sink and one on the counter to the side, so we can now wash dishes if we need to. The water still runs, but even if it didn’t we have plenty of bottled water to hold us.

The upshot is that being prepared makes this situation a lot more bearable that it might have been. We still can’t take showers, but Barbara can shower at the gym if necessary. I’ll just sponge-bathe if it comes to that.

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Wednesday, 19 July 2017

08:45 – It was 68F (20C) when I took Colin out at 0700, sunny and clear.

I got a bunch of solutions made up yesterday for science kits. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be labeling and filling bottles–thousands of them–making up chemical bags, small parts bags and other subassemblies, and building finished kits. As usual this time of year, we’ll be hard-pressed finding places to stack the finished goods inventory.

Email overnight from long-time reader Paul Robichaux, with the subject line “You knew it all along I guess”, and a link to this article about the myth of drug expiration dates.

Yeah, I knew it all along, or at least back to the 70’s, when I did activity tests on long-expired antibiotics, many of them dating back 25 years or more, and found that all were at least 75% as potent as they’d been originally and in most cases close to 100%. And these had been stored at room temperature and in some cases without any climate control in barns and so forth. Most of them were agricultural antibiotics, including penicillin, tetracycline, erythromycin, and so on, although some were capsules or tablets intended for human use. Obviously, I could do no safety testing, but there was no reason to believe any of the drugs had degraded at all, let alone become unsafe.

I store our own stocks of antibiotics and other drugs in the freezer, which should quadruple or even octuple their real shelf-lives. In other words, they should be as good literally 100 years from now as they are today.

Red flag to a bull. I spotted this article yesterday, which claims that there are two correct solutions to this math puzzle, but only one in a thousand people will figure out both solutions. I assumed it’d take me about 15 seconds to get both. I was wrong. It took me 22 seconds. The problem was, there are not just two correct answers, but at least three. I say at least, because after getting three correct answers in 22 seconds, I stopped working on it. There are likely more correct answers, depending on how deeply you want to look for patterns.

Interestingly, I came up with the third solution–the one they don’t know about–first, the “difficult” solution second, and their “easy” solution third. (Hint: those solutions are, in that order, 52, 96, and 40.)

More email from Kathy. She works a normal year-round job, but as a teacher Mike gets summers off. After he finishes the second shelf-island, he intended to go to work on repackaging. Kathy asked him not to do that, because (a) she thinks it’ll go better with two people working on it–and she’s right about that, as we know from experience–and (b) she wants the experience of repackaging. She didn’t say so, but my guess is that (c) as would be many wives, she’s afraid he’ll somehow screw it up, or make a big mess, or something.

So they’ve agreed that he’ll instead devote time this week to getting all of the canned/bottled supplies unpacked and arranged on the shelves with the latest best-by dates toward the back, and those shelves labeled with sections for canned meats, soups, sauces, condiments, vegetables, fruits, cooking/baking essentials, herbs/spices, etc. etc. Mike intentionally left a fair amount of space on the island shelving units between the top shelves and the ceiling. He used 6-foot vertical posts, so they have a top shelf on each unit that’s about two feet from the ceiling. That space will be devoted to toilet paper, paper towels, and similar light but bulky items.

As it turns out, Mike isn’t yet finished building stuff in the basement. Kathy is now exchanging email with Jen, Brittany, Cassie, Jessica, Lisa, et alia. To make a long story short, to Mike’s surprise Kathy has decided she’s going to learn to pressure-can. She told him she wanted a heavy-duty built-in table on the wall next to the basement sink, on the other side of the washer-drier. Mike pointed out that she’d never pressure-canned anything in her life, but she pointed out that she now knew lots of women who did, and anyway she’s signed up for a pressure-canning course at the local ag extension office.

Mike pointed out that there’s no range/cooktop in the basement. No problem, Kathy said. She’d use a hot plate or two. That ain’t gonna work, Mike pointed out. You’ll need 220/240VAC to get enough watts/BTU’s to do pressure canning. So we’ll install a second-hand or inexpensive new electric cooktop, Kathy suggested. No room in the breaker panel for another 220/240VAC breaker, says Mike.

Not one to be beaten–something she has in common with Jen and the rest–Kathy then announced that in that case even though it’d cost more she wanted to install a propane cooktop and a large propane tank. That would not only be an excellent solution for pressure-canning, but would give them a completely off-grid solution for cooking and baking. Having been married for quite a few years, Mike knew he was beaten. So he suggested that rather than have him cobble together a working surface that he visit the local building supply store and pick up two or three inexpensive base cabinets, maybe a couple of upper cabinets, a laminate countertop, and a propane-capable gas cook top.

He’ll also call the local propane supplier and order a large propane tank to be installed as soon as possible, with lines run for the cooktop, a space heater, and one terminating near the rear basement door for a tri-fuel generator that they don’t have yet. In consultation with the Prepper Girls, Kathy will take care of ordering a pressure canner and canning supplies, jars, lids, etc. She also asked Mike about buying a dehydrator. As any husband who’s not a complete newbie would in that situation, he replied, “Why not?”

Kathy also mentioned something interesting that she hadn’t told me before. She gets three weeks of vacation, which she normally takes as one week over Christmas and two weeks in the summer, when they normally go on a vacation trip. This year, they decided to skip the vacation trip and devote the significant money that would have cost them to buying LTS food and other prepping supplies. They also cut way back on their monthly cable TV bill and signed up for Netflix streaming to replace the big cable TV package. The upshot is that they’ll be spending more than $100/month less on TV, all of which goes to buying prepping supplies. They have a couple of financially major projects in mind–including a small off-grid solar setup–and need to do a bunch of filling out on various categories including medical supplies, ammunition and perhaps another couple of gubs.

They’re both happy with their new, less expensive entertainment options. They already had Prime streaming, and with Netflix streaming added they are in great shape for stuff to watch. Mike is suffering sports withdrawal, but says he’ll get over it. No word from their kids.

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Monday, 17 July 2017

09:06 – It was 78.7F (26C) when I took Colin out at 0800, bright and partly cloudy. That’s the latest Colin has let me sleep in for at least several months.

Barbara spent all day yesterday doing a deep clean to get rid of the drywall dust, which was everywhere. I spent an hour or so wiping down the kitchen cabinets and counters. She’s satisfied now with the whole house, other than the LTS food room and unfinished basement area, which still need some work.

Speaking of LTS, Barbara made up a box of Kraft macaroni and cheese the other night. As she was making it, she commented that the best-by date was three years ago, in the summer of 2014, and asked if it would be okay. I told her it would be fine. As we were eating dinner, she commented that it tasted a bit “off” to her, and asked what I thought. I told her it tasted the same to me as it always had, which was to say not very good. I’ve never liked it. Their powdered cheese sauce sucks, especially compared with the similar Velveeta product, which is actual sauce in a foil packet.

She said she’d just pitch what we had left, which is probably a couple of dozen boxes. I told her the pasta was perfectly fine, but to go ahead and pitch the cheese sauce packets if she wanted to. So we’ll open the boxes, transfer the pasta to a #10 can or whatever, and discard the cheese packets.

Email overnight from Kathy. Still no Mylar bags or oxygen absorbers from LDS, so she decided to transfer as much of the cornmeal as they had 1-liter bottles for. It comes in paper sacks, so even without an oxygen absorber it’s better stored in PET bottles than paper. And they have a continuing supply of those 1-liter bottles and use cornmeal only a cup or two at a time, so one liter is a good size container for it.

10:06 – I just signed up for Netflix DVD’s, two-at-a-time plan. The last time we got DVD’s from Netflix was five years ago. Since then, we’ve used only Netflix and Amazon Prime streaming.

There’s not much left on Netflix streaming we want to watch, other than some of the series Barbara follows. Most of those are also available on DVD. There are some interesting exceptions. For example, she follows Blue Bloods, which is currently available through season 7 on streaming, but only season 6 on disc, presumably because S7 hasn’t yet been released on DVD. Also, Heartland (which I first discovered on Netflix DVD) now has zero seasons available on DVD. That doesn’t matter. I BT current episodes as they’re released, collect them to watch all at once when the season is complete, usually in April or May, and then buy the DVD set when it becomes available, usually in September.

There’s a ton of stuff we’d like to watch that’s on DVD but not available on NF or Amazon streaming, including all seasons of the Australian series A Place to Call Home and the New Zealand series The Brokenwood Mysteries. I also added one to our DVD queue that Barbara has been waiting to watch since the last time we were getting DVDs. It’s about Mist, a BC puppy. It’s currently listed as “very long wait”, so I put it at the top of our queue, assuming that as new members we’ll get preference in getting it shipped to us.

The last time I made caramel sauce, it was good but never really set up. That was fine, because I was using it on ice cream. Last night, we made up another batch to a different recipe. A cup of brown sugar (we actually used a cup of white sugar and a tablespoon of molasses), half a cup of butter (one stick), a quarter cup of milk. Bring to a boil, simmer for three or four minutes, turn off the heat, and add a teaspoon of vanilla extract.

Boy, did that one ever set up. It was still warm and flowed easily when I tried it on ice cream last night. As soon as it hit the ice cream, it solidified into a chewy mass. It tasted fine, but I prefer my caramel sauce a bit less solid.

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Sunday, 16 July 2017

11:06 – It was 70.0F (21C) when I took Colin out at 0720, sunny and cloudless.

Frances and Al came up Friday morning, stayed the night, and attended yesterday’s auction of Bonnie’s house and its contents. There were a lot of people at the auction, with cars parked up and down Macedonia Church Road, including along the front edge of our property.

The house and 0.6 acre it sits on sold for $67,000, which was more than I expected. (It’s tiny; more a cottage than a house.) Barbara called as they were auctioning the house itself. As I headed out our front door, I heard the auctioneer calling $67,000 for the final time. I walked on up to the house and greeted several of our neighbors and other local folks we know.

We’d been very concerned that the house would be bought by someone undesirable or, just as bad, someone who was buying it to rent out. We were hoping for a nice young couple, a nice retired couple, or perhaps weekenders from down in the Triad.

As it turned out, we couldn’t have hoped for better. It was bought by a couple who owns a cattle farm across US21 from us. They’re going to rent it, but that’s fine with us. The renter will be their niece (or daughter; Barbara heard daughter and I heard niece). She’ll probably be there indefinitely, and the new owners assured us that they’d never rent it to anyone undesirable. They no more want trash living in the neighborhood than we do. And Kim, the wife, assured us that the house would always look as good as it does now, if not better.

Our new neighbor is their daughter (or niece), Grace. She’s about 22 and just graduated from UNC/ECU in Greenville, where she’s kept her college apartment while looking for a job. She found a job, here, as a teacher at Sparta Elementary, and will be moving in in the next couple of weeks.

So now instead of referring to it as “Bonnie’s house” we’re training ourselves to refer to it as “Grace’s house”.

Email from Kathy overnight. While Mike was building shelves yesterday, she got started on repackaging the 400 pounds of flour they bought. The LDS foil-laminate bags and oxygen absorbers hadn’t arrived yet, so she decided to do a first-pass repackaging using her Foodsaver vacuum sealer. Once the LDS stuff arrives, she’ll enclose each of those inner bags in a Mylar bag with oxygen absorber. That’ll make the Mylar bagging go much, much faster, although flour will still make a mess with the vacuum sealer. Just less of a mess than trying to bag it directly into the Mylar bags.

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Saturday, 15 July 2017

08:58 – It was 69.6F (21C) when I took Colin out at 0700, overcast and drippy.

The basement den and master bath are both complete except for some punch-list items like re-installing vent grills and installing the ceiling light fixtures downstairs. We’ll stay off the ceramic tile in the master bath until tomorrow, by which time Justin says it’ll be fully set. We have all of the furniture in place in the downstairs den, although Barbara still has to re-shelve a whole bunch of books. The unfinished lab/work area is pretty much cleared out and the food storage room is in reasonably good shape.

We’re going to walk next door this morning, where Bonnie’s house and its contents are being auctioned. Barbara is very concerned about who will end up buying it. She afraid it’ll become a rent house. I’m not too concerned. Not all renters are undesirable neighbors. After all, we rented for the first four years after we were married. Ideally, we’d like to see a nice young couple buy it. Either that or weekenders from Winston or wherever. But we’ll deal with whatever happens. If worst comes to horrible, we’ll put up a tall hedge or similar barrier along the property line.

Email from Kathy, who says she’s all dressed up and nowhere to go. They’d planned to spend this weekend repackaging bulk food, but the foil-laminate Mylar bags and oxygen absorbers they ordered from LDS online haven’t arrived yet.

They don’t drink much that is sold in 2-liter bottles, but they do drink a lot of flavored sparkling water that comes in heavy 1-liter bottles, which they’ve been washing out and saving for the last couple of weeks. The only food they have that made sense to repackage in those was the case of twelve 4-pound boxes of Morton iodized table salt they got at Sam’s Club. So they transferred that yesterday afternoon. One box fits nicely in a 1-liter bottle and doesn’t need an oxygen absorber, so they now have a dozen or so neatly labeled bottles of table salt. As Kathy said, it isn’t much, but it’s a start.

10:27 – There are scores of cars parked up and down the street for the auction, which just started at 10:00. When I walked up to the house around 0930, there must have been 150 or 200 people there already. Barbara was looking around at the personal possessions, but I don’t think she’ll bid on anything. We agreed standing there that she won’t bid on the house.

More email from Kathy. Mike decided that since they couldn’t repackage their LTS bulk food this weekend he’d spend the weekend building more shelves. Their food-storage-room-to-be is in the basement, with concrete walls and floor. There are already solidly-built, foot-wide, floor-to-ceiling shelves around the perimeter of the room, but they agreed they were going to need more shelving. They have room for two eight-by-two foot islands in the middle of the room, so they decided to build them themselves rather than mess around with modular steel shelving. Four 2X4-foot steel units would have cost them around $400 at the local building supply place, and the plywood and lumber Mike needs to build them will probably cost at least as much, but Mike prefers to build them himself from US-sourced materials rather than buy Chinese-made stuff.

They’ll end up with more shelf space than they actually need for what they’ve bought and have on-order, but Kathy thinks one can never have enough shelf space. And she’s probably right.

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Friday, 14 July 2017

08:48 – It was 73.3F (23C) when I took Colin out at 0720, overcast and breezy.

Justin almost finished laying the ceramic tile in the master bathroom yesterday. He ended up one or two pieces short because he ran out of mortar. He’ll lay the remaining pieces this morning and then grout it. So we should have our bathroom usable again by Sunday, after everything has had a chance to dry and set.

While we were moving stuff out of the unfinished area yesterday, Barbara noticed water under the water heater. We’d just had the plumbers out a week or two ago to replace the feed lines, which were dripping. This time, it was the water heater itself. So they hauled a new water heater out here and installed it. I told Barbara I was thinking about disconnecting all our home plumbing and having an old-fashioned well with crank and bucket installed.

We started getting stuff moved back into the downstairs den yesterday. Most of the heavy stuff–bookshelves, sofa, love seat, corner table, and so on–is already in there, although not yet positioned. We’ll spend today getting stuff where it belongs. I’m really looking forward to the unfinished work area and the food storage room being accessible again.

Our busiest time of year for kit sales starts now. We’ve had four kit orders in the last 24 hours, and that will only accelerate as we move toward the crazy period in August and September. For the next two to three months we’ll be shipping kits as fast as we can make them. Mid-July is when homeschoolers start getting serious about getting ready for the autumn semester. After that, things will slow down a bit until mid- to late-November, when Christmas sales kick in along with people getting ready for the January semester.

11:47 – We now have almost all of the furniture cleaned and in place in the downstairs den. Things are starting to shape up. Next, we’ll be hauling books, thousands of them, out of the unfinished area and into the den to get onto the shelves. Barbara will have to spend some serious time getting them all organized and shelved. The only thing MIA so far is the remote control for the downstairs TV, but I’m sure we’ll uncover it as we continue moving stuff out of the food storage room.

I just talked to Justin. I said he must have noticed that we were preppers. He said, yeah, either that or serious couponers. I said I guessed that prepping was pretty common up here, and he agreed, but commented that there was a huge difference between the year-rounders and the part-timers. The former typically have basements chocked full of food and other supplies, while the part-timers seldom have any supplies at all. He commented that most of them go to the supermarket every day and keep literally no food in the house. He also said he’d talked to more than one of them who had no idea how to pump his own gas.

He said that he and his wife kept a couple months’ worth of LTS food on hand for them and their two kids, but that didn’t count their large and easily-expandable garden or his dad’s cattle farm and its 300 head of beef cattle. He said he figured if TSEDHTF they’d all be eating a lot of beef.

So if push comes to shove, the weekenders and summer people will be in a world of hurt. The full-time residents, not so much. So we have our own Golden Horde living a few miles down the road. Not to worry, though. Most of them would have no clue which end of a gun goes bang.

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Thursday, 13 July 2017

08:59 – Friday the 13th falls on a Thursday this month.

It was 75.1F (23C) when I took Colin out at 0715, cloudless and bright.

The downstairs is finished enough that we can get to work on getting stuff back where it belongs. Today and tomorrow we’ll work on the den, getting pictures hung and the furniture dusted, lemon-oiled, and back in position. Then the bedrooms. The guest room, which Frances and Al use when they’re here, won’t take much work, mainly just moving some boxes out. They could sleep in it tonight, if they were here. The food/prepping storage area is going to take more work. There’s still stuff stacked on the floor and every horizontal surface, although Barbara did manage to clear footpaths a few days ago. Still, it’ll be a massive amount of work to finish reorganizing that. There’s still stuff stacked in there that hasn’t been moved since we moved into the house in December, 2015. But we’ll get it all straightened up and organized.

Then there’s the unfinished area. A lot of that will be cleaned up automatically, as we move furniture, books, and boxes out of there and into the finished area. But there’ll still be a lot to be done.

I’ve commented on this before, but one thing that strikes me over and over again is that when a woman contacts me about prepping, she wants to talk mostly about food. When a guy contacts me, he generally wants to talk about guns.

It’s not exclusive either way, of course. Women also want to talk about guns and guys about food, but the difference in focus is pretty obvious. Again, as I’ve said before, everything comes down to biology. Women and men are both the products of a couple million years of evolution, which has adapted them for different tasks. Women, and there is nothing sexist about this statement, are gatherers, adapted to bear and raise children, care for the home, and establish social links with others in their family/clan/tribe/community. Men are hunters, adapted to track down and kill food and to defend their family/clan/tribe/community.

That’s not to say that each can’t do the other’s job, with obvious exceptions, and do it well. But the essence of a successful community is that all members focus on their own strengths, doing what they do best. Modern civilization hasn’t changed that underlying reality, nor the evolved instincts that support it.

So it’s not really surprising that women preppers tend to focus strongly on traditional women’s responsibilities and men preppers on traditional men’s responsibilities. The foundation of marriage is that a man and a woman combined are more than the sum of the parts.

What disturbs me is that, at age 64, I am no longer physically suited to take on the traditional male role, at least that for young men. I am, of course, suited to take on the traditional role for older men in the clan; serving as a font of knowledge and experience. That’s why older men and women have traditionally been highly valued by their clans. So that’s what I focus on. That, and food. Just like a girl.

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Wednesday, 12 July 2017

09:19 – It was 67.3F (19.5C) when I took Colin out at 0710, hazy and bright. Barbara is off to help the Friends of the Library haul a bunch of books.

Justin showed up yesterday morning to install the downstairs floor. He spent hours doing prep work and then hours more actually installing the floor. As with many jobs, the key is to prep well. He just showed up a couple of minutes ago to finish up downstairs and then get started on the master bathroom upstairs, where he’ll be laying ceramic tile.

Barbara will be delighted to hear that I’m going to start using most of our stock of 2-liter soft drink bottles to store water instead of food. I’m not sure how many we have on-hand, but it should be enough to store another few hundred liters of drinking water. I’ll continue using some 2-liter bottles to store sugar, rice, and other dry bulk foods that fit into them easily, but we’ll use most of them for water storage.

I debated between storing untreated well water, which of course we drink routinely now, and chlorinating the water as we fill the bottles. I’ll probably just store raw well water, since we’ll continue to store commercial bottled water as well. In a long-term emergency, we could drink the commercial bottled water and use the raw well water for flushing toilets (or, for that matter, in cooking where the water would be boiled). And if worse comes to horrible, we could chlorinate the raw well water for drinking.

I’ll fill the 2-liter bottles just full enough that they can freeze without bursting the bottles. That way, we could even store them under a tarp outdoors if we want to. A 2-liter bottle is just under 13″ (33 cm) tall and about 4″ (10 cm) in diameter, so a space 80″ (2 meters) square by 40″ (1 meter) tall would be enough space to store 1,200 2-liter bottles, holding 2,400 liters (600 gallons) of water. In terms of space efficiency that’d be 2,400/4,000 or 60% efficient. Pretty darned good.

Email from Kathy. She and Mike took some of the Nestle Nido that they’d made up according to instructions, which was too rich for them, and tried diluting it with more water. To make a long story short, they decided that using 1.5 times the amount of water specified (which yields five gallons per can of Nido) was pretty close to the 2% fresh milk they ordinarily use, perhaps a bit richer. It’s not homogenized, of course, so you have to give it a good shake, but it tastes fine.

With four of them, including two teenagers, they normally go through a couple of gallons per week. Call it 100 gallons per year. That’s 20 cans at the dilution they prefer. She’s still a bit concerned about best-by dates, so she decided to order five of the large cans–a three-month supply–as well as four of the small cans, which she’ll date and taste-test 12, 18, 24, and 36 months out to see how well they store. After they have some long-term experience drinking the stuff, assuming they’re still happy with it, she plans to order 20 more large cans to give them their year’s supply. But she’s reasonably satisfied that she’s found a solution to their LTS milk needs.

She also intends to do some testing with Nido to see if it will also satisfy their other dairy needs/wants. She plans to try using Nido to make up cream, buttermilk, yogurt, and possibly butter and cheese. She promises to keep me posted. I appreciate that, because I don’t have time to test everything I’d like to test.

And I sent Kathy’s email address to the Prepper Girls, so my guess is that they’ll be scheming together before long. In fact, they may end up doing a face-to-face meetup, since several of them live in Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia, and Kentucky, all within a couple or three hours’ drive of Kathy.

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