Category: prepping

08:08 – Barbara spent all day yesterday volunteering: 0800 through lunch helping with the move to their new quarters, a quick stop at home to shower, and all afternoon at the Friends of the Library bookstore. She’d intended to head home late-morning to meet the mattress delivery people, but she didn’t need to. About 1000, she called to tell me that Al was heading up from Winston and was about ten minutes out. He pulled in the drive about 90 seconds after her call. I hadn’t even had time to start a pot of coffee for him.

The mattress delivery truck pulled in our drive about 1130. The two guys made short work of hauling off the old one and hauling in the new one. It’s now in place, the bed is made, and everything is ready for Frances and Al’s next visit.

After Al headed home to Winston and Barbara to the FoL bookstore, I called the county ag extension office and spoke to a delightful young woman named Amy Lucas about volunteering for 4H. She told me I’d need to fill out an application, which I could find on the state site. It’s five pages long, but I understand they have to be very careful about allowing random adults to work with teens.

Amy said they would need to do a background check on me. It used to be required initially and then every five years, but now they’ve dropped that to every two years. Amy was born and raised here, and said it was embarrassing for her to have to explain to people she’s known all her life that by state law they had to undergo a detailed background check before they were allowed to volunteer.

I shouldn’t have any problem passing the background check. My most recent encounter with LE was about 30 years ago, when I got a ticket in Winston for going 40 in a 35 zone. I’ve never been arrested for, let alone convicted of, even a misdemeanor.

I had her on the phone, so I also asked Amy if they did pressure tests on pressure canners. She said they sure did, that anyone in the office was able to do those tests, and that it took about five minutes. All I need to do is bring in the lid. As it turns out, she’s a home canning enthusiast, as is her mother. She said the the county ag department had regular canning classes at the library and elsewhere and that they were also happy to do one-on-one lessons.

She asked what kind of pressure canner I had, and I told her a Presto 23-quart. She said Presto was good, as were Mirro and All-American. She said the only real difference between a $70 Presto and an All-American that sells for five times as much was that the Presto required replacing the gasket periodically while the AA didn’t use a gasket. I said that for one fifth the cost I could buy a lot of spare gaskets.

When Amy mentioned the library, I told her that Barbara had spent the morning helping move the books to the new library building and was spending the afternoon at the FoL bookstore. She said she’d stop in one day soon to meet Barbara. I mentioned that Barbara wasn’t yet sold on doing our own canning, but I wanted to can dark meat chicken and ground beef for LTS. Amy said she bet she could make Barbara a convert in short order.

08:37 – Barbara left at 0800 to head over to the library, where she’s volunteering to help with their move to a new location. They’ve been boxing up books and other materials, which they have to move over to the new building, unpack, and reshelve.

She’ll be back home in time to meet the mattress delivery people. Frances and Al decided buy a new mattress for our guest room bed and have it delivered here. Barbara put her foot down, and said they will be hauling away the old mattress. She knew I’d want to keep it and stick it up in the attic. The secret to a happy marriage is to let your spouse win such debates, particularly when they don’t really matter much to you. That way, you can save up credits for issues that really matter.

I read an interesting series of comments to an article I read yesterday. FTC:

I Am Screwed says:
Comment ID: 3641814
December 12, 2016 at 2:51 pm

It’s hard to read some of the comments because I am black and I am screwed no matter what. Why do I say that? Well, because I am a black female in my 40s, voted for Bush/Cheney way back when, was on the Republican Women’s Committee at one time in my state and did not and would not ever vote for Obama. He is/was against everything I believe in. I was a Ted Cruz supporter but voted for Trump when Cruz didn’t get the nomination. So, I often think about getting out of dodge. Cause my husband is white and I fear for him cause of all the racism and hate coming from black people. But then where to? Idaho was on the list but if you see me coming you are thinking I am the enemy. And I am not! I love America, believe in the right to carry, believe in the Constitution and I have a wonderful life! I was a Pharmaceutical Rep and left that career to be a stay-home, homeschooling Mom. I am raising my children to love our country and to learn about the Constitutional Republic that we are or were. I am sad that now I don’t feel safe anywhere anymore on either side. We have been looking for a BOL, but I don’t know where to go. I think people who really love the US and our constitution are the conservatives who would see me as a person. It’s the liberals that worry me. Anyway, sorry for the rant. Just wanted you to know there are some black people who don’t live in in the inner city, don’t want handouts, don’t like rap music (I prefer Christian), don’t like liberal policies, always vote conservative, don’t like the moral decline of our nation or the immigration issue and want a wall built and certainly I am upset about the refugee craziness and never thought I would ever see someone in a Birka at TJ Maxx and someone who thinks Reagan was one of the best Presidents ever. God bless everyone and be safe.

I can sympathize with her. Preppers tend to be white, male, and Christian, so anyone who doesn’t fit those norms may feel marginalized. On the other hand, preppers tend strongly towards a live-and-let-live outlook, happy to welcome anyone who shares their concerns. I’d be happy to have this woman and her family as neighbors, and I suspect that most preppers would feel the same.

10:16 – Barbara left at 0900 to pick up Bonnie Tedder, our next-door neighbor, and take her to run errands. Bonnie is almost 90 years old, and doesn’t get out much. Barbara said she’d probably be gone most of the day, taking Bonnie to two doctor appointments and various other errands.

In the wake of Trump’s election, a lot of preppers seem to be slacking off a bit on their efforts. Part of that may be relief that Trump is a lot less likely to get us into a nuclear war than Clinton would have been. Part of it, too, may be that many people were working so feverishly to get prepared in the run-up to the election that they’re now reasonably happy with where they stand preparedness-wise and are just taking a breather.

Obviously, in one sense, preparedness is a way of life rather than a discrete activity, but in another sense it’s quite reasonable to set preparedness goals, meet them, and then put further preparedness activities on the back burner. That latter is pretty much our situation at present. Sure, there are additional things I want to do, but at this point we’re better-prepared for any emergency than 99.9% of the US public. Probably even 99.99%.

Comfort level vary widely. I’ve gotten email from people who have three months’ worth of food and little else stored, but consider themselves well-prepared. Conversely, I’ve gotten email from people who have spent literally hundreds of thousands of dollars on preparations, have literally five years’ or more of food, dozens of guns and tens of thousands of rounds of ammunition, enough medical supplies to start a clinic, and large-scale solar power and water systems installed, and still consider their preparations inadequate. I think the first group are much too optimistic and the latter group much too pessimistic, but that’s just my take. How and to what degree people decide to prepare is their decision, but I love talking to other preppers regardless of their level of preparation. The more people who are prepared and the more they are prepared, the better. When (not if) something bad happens, it’s much better to be surrounded by a bunch of preppers than not.

09:52 – Eric from Blue Ridge Electric Co-op just called to say he’s on his way to install the propane tank and hook up our gas cooktop. Sadly, they are out of the 220-gallon propane tanks we ordered, so they’re going to install a 330-gallon (~ 1,250 L) tank instead. My heart is broken. Now we’re going to have 50% more propane stored than I thought. Call it 30,000,000 BTUs. Enough to run the large 15,000 BTU burner in our cooktop for 2,000 hours.

It was about 19F (-5C) with snow flurries when I took Colin out at 0700. There’s a strong breeze with gusts of 30+ MPH (~50 KPH), which takes the wind chill down well below 0F (-18C). And the really cold weather isn’t supposed to arrive until this evening and tomorrow. We’ll be staying indoors as much as possible.

I’ve seen a couple of articles lately talking about how the number of preppers is declining hugely because of Trump’s election. Sales of LTS food, guns, ammo, etc. are falling precipitously because a lot of folks supposedly think Trump is going to fix everything. I don’t doubt that the general mood of the country is more optimistic with Trump as President-elect, nor do I doubt that sales of those things are declining, but I don’t believe anything has changed significantly. Other, perhaps, than that Trump is much less likely to get us into a nuclear war than Clinton would have been. But all of the country’s vulnerabilities remain: a very fragile electric power infrastructure that could be severely damaged by any of several events; a transportation infrastructure that is wholly dependent on continuing supplies of fuel, which in turn are dependent on an aging and failing system of pipelines, which are themselves very vulnerable to terrorist attacks. A society divided in half, with each half literally hating the other half, one of those halves totally dependent on government handouts and the other, productive, half sick and tired of being exploited to benefit people they despise. And a financial infrastructure that is teetering on the edge of collapse. Keep prepping, because things are going to continue to get worse, even with Trump in charge.

14:58 – Our propane gas cooktop is installed, kind of, and working. The tank has only 200 gallons in it because the original work order called for installing a 250-gallon tank, which they fill to only 200 gallons (80%, presumably to allow sufficient expansion space), and they could fill the 330-gallon tank we got only with as much as was specified on the work order. The next time one of their propane tankers is out this way, they’ll stop and top up our tank.

I say “kind of” installed because the existing cutout in the granite counter top on our kitchen island was a bit larger than needed for this cooktop. There’s no gap around the cooktop, but it overlaps the hole in the counter by only a couple of millimeters on each edge. It’s in no danger of falling through the hole, but I’m still going to brace it underneath with a couple of 2X4’s under the base of the cooktop. Then we’ll use either black RTV silicone caulk or a thin black rubber pad to seal the edges.

Also, the only electric power in the space under the cooktop was the 240VAC connection for the former cooktop. This new cooktop has an ordinary 120VAC cord and plug, but no receptacle to plug it into. Which is okay for now. I’ve called an electrician to come out and install a standard receptacle, but for now we just ran an extension cord to a receptacle on the outside of the island. The auto-igniter works fine, as do all the burners.

Eric commented that they use a propane cooktop at home, and they very seldom use anything but the smallest burner. He says it heats pans very quickly, and that we probably won’t need to use the largest burner, other than perhaps for canning. He also said that their average customer who uses propane only for a cooktop and oven uses only 25 gallons of propane per year, so even if we do a lot of cooking a full tank should hold us for 10 or 12 years. Of course, once we get the generator set up to use propane, if we ever need to use it it’ll go through 0.5 to 2 gallons of propane per hour, depending on load.

We won’t get to try the new cooktop for dinner tonight. Barbara is volunteering at the historical society from 1330 to 1700, and we’re having leftover chicken Alfredo, reheated in the microwave.