Like having money in the bank

The weather has temporarily broken here in western New York. The power company has begun thier yearly tree trimming operations. I passed thier truck on the way to work yesterday. As I left work I backtracked my morning trip. Finding many of the wood piles still in place, I called ahead and told Pelenaka to be dressed to work and ready to go in 15 minutes. The days score was a trailer and a half of sugar maple and oak. coming home tonight I caught a tree trimmers truck at the gas station, it's been windy all day and thier are trees down. They told me the area they were heading. I'll head there in the morning, hoprfully there will be some left for the great scrounger.

That wood sure does feel like money in the bank.

Woods

Food Storage and Survival website giveaway

http://foodstorageandsurvival.com/?p=492

I just started following this blog a few weeks before the new website was started. I wanted to be sure before making a recomendation. Check it out. If you want in on the giveaway there is still a couple days.

Woods

A Big Thanks!

Last week there was a givaway over at The Sharpened Axe blog. I won the flint and steel. This steel is smaller than the one I already have. It's the perfect size to fit in an altoid tin fire starting kit. My stepdaughter often referred to here as "the sidekick" is turning into a pretty serious outdoors gal. She's old enough now that she can start hunting separate from me. This flint and steel is going into a kit I'm putting together for her. A big thanks to Mike Oscar Hotel at "The Sharpened Axe". Check out his blog, I'm sure all my followers will enjoy it.

Also, keep your eyes open. There is another blog moving to it's own website. They are having a big givaway too. I will post more info soon.

Woods

Keeping those home fires burning

The problem with living on our small city homestead is sometimes it's size. There isn't always enough room to stockpile the things you need. Like enough firewood to make it through a cold winter. I actually gave away a face cord and a half of partially seasoned sugar maple last fall. Just didn't have room to store it without stepping on the toes of nieghbors or worse the code enforcement guy. Last week we had a snap of sub zero temps. The wise decision was to fire the furnace rather than rely on the wood stove. Mainly because the woodstove isn't in the cellar where the soon to be frozen water lines are. Well, those four days of furnace running saved a little bit of wood. Which is good because we are down to just a hair over three face cords. Enough to get us to the end of february. But, the end of february isn't good enough. I've seen more than one easter weekend snow storm. So, how do we solve the problem without paying $85.00 for a face cord of firewood.

Working in a home center has a few advantages. Very few. However a few days ago a possible solution to our problem presented itself. Wood pellets, yup wood pellets. Everyone said you can't burn them in a regular wood stove. The reasons everyone gave. They won't burn right without a fan forcing air on them. They burn too fast. They won't burn without a special grate. etc. etc. etc.  Well all I have to say to all the experts were wrong, really wrong. A guy came into work and bought two skids of wood pellets. The skids are stacked together. The top four bags in the bottom skid are usually torn open. we usually replace them for the customer then mark down the torn bags to $1.00 each. So, I bought a bag to experiment with. If it didn't work I would have 40 lbs of cheap garden mulch.

You can see above my solution to the supposed problems of burning pellets in a conventional wood stove. The pellets burn just fine without a fan forcing air on them. They only burn up too fast if you throw them in the stove like you are feeding the chickens. Put them in a pile and they will burn just like regular wood. With a box stove like ours there is no special grate needed unless your stove has a grate above an ash compartment. In that case the pellets would just fall through into the ash pan. What I do is make an envelope out of news paper. A single sheet of newspaper folded and stapled then filled with pellets works great. By putting them in an envelope it's easy to get them in a compact pile quickly. The paper takes about half a minute to ignite.Then dumps the burning pellets into a pile. An envelope of pellets burns about 30 minutes. I figure 20-25 envelopes for a 40lb bag.  A days heat for a buck can't be beat in my book.

Hunter seems to approve. So, I must be doing something right.

Woods

Thoughts on preparedness

When this winter started I thought we were prepared for the worst of it. Then about six weeks ago a piece of firewood that was cut to the long side of what would fit in the firebox found it's way into the stove in the middle of the night.  Not a problem if the person loading the stove is fully awake and remembers the longest dimension inside a rectangular box is from corner to corner, not front to back. The other unfortunate factor is our stoves door has a glass window in it. Worse yet it happened the night before a major cold front blew in. Now the bad part of the story. Pelenaka calls me at work the next day to tell me there is a big crack in the stoves window. She already called the local jotul dealer and they don't have one in stock and it will take a week to get one. No problem I tell her. call them back and see if they will sell us the one out of thier display stove. An hour later she calls me back to tell me they don't have a display of our stove, it was sold. My poor wife is now getting frantic. I have her call the dealer back and get the phone numbers for all the nearest jotul dealers. By the time she finds one, I'm out of work. I come home too exhausted to drive, just as it starts snowing. She hops in the car and drives seventy miles to the nearest dealer that will sell us the window from a display stove. By the time she gets home You can barely see the house three doors away, it's snowing so hard. Withing fifteen minutes the window was replaced and the stove fired up. Due to the temps outside being in the low teens, it took all night for the house to get to a comfortable temperature. We now have a spare window and set of gaskets stashed away in the attic. But, this all got me asking questions. What if the widow got broke during the brunt of a storm? During this incident, I could have walked over to the thermostat and just fired the furnace up. But, what if the power were out as often happens here during storms?

I took a walk through the house and started asking myself the What If? question as I went room to room. We no longer have a land line phone. My cell is older and is sometimes tempermental with battery life. What if somebody were hurt or the house was on fire during a storm and we couldn't call for help. I solved that problem. Pelenaka is a weather watcher to the extreme. She got a new Eaton weather radio for christmas. It features a USB charging port. Then I went and bought a universal phone charging kit that works off usb power. Now we can charge our phones or my stepdaughters ipods with the solar panel or crank on the radio. Last week one of my coworkers informed me, our store was closing out little power inverters that plug into a cars cigarette lighter. 90 watts of 120V AC current. Enough to charge the laptops, or even power small power tools or a sump pump. It too has a USB power port. I bought the last one for less than five bucks.

Yesterday at a local gun show, I picked up half a dozen P38 can openers. alot of what we store foodwise is in cans. It used to be, you bought a hand operated can opener and you were still using it ten years later. Now they are made in china and it seems we buy three or four a year. The P38's will be around in twenty if we don't lose them. That's the bad thing about thier size. Easy to lose. The good thing about thier size. There is one on every persons key ring that lives in this house.

My point to all this. We think to stockpile the firewood and the food. Shoot, we even have a full blown first aid kit we put together that even includes scalpels and sutures. However, we can't really call ourselves prepared until we've played out every possible scenario and prepared for those too. Tools aren't enough if we can't repair them when they fail. And they will fail right when we need them most.

Woods

Help needed from fellow history buffs

Last spring I picked up a new computer and lost a folder of links I was saving. Part of what I lost was all my links to mid 19th century suttlers. One place had authentic wheel caps for really reasonable prices. If anyone has links to suttlers they have done business with and have been happy, I would apreciate a link.

Thanks!

Woods

Merry Christmas and my best wishes for the new year

To all my loyal followers I want to wish a Merry Christmas and may the new year bring you success in whatever your endeavors may be.

Some of you may be visiting for the first time. Probably because I recently started following your blog. I spent several hours over the past few weeks looking at blogs of people who list similar interests in thier profiles. My purpose is to see what others are doing and learning what I can.

For those of you that are new reading here, here's the reason.

For years I attempted to get where I'm heading by working multiple jobs, and trying to do the homestead thing at the same time. I thought I could abuse myself for a time and get far enough ahead to be able to homestead full time. What I ended up doing is making myself sick enough to nearly kill the homestead dream entirely. You see when you work constantly you end up getting in situations where you are spending more than you make with the extra job. Then there is the damage you do to yourself in the process. Bad diet also became a factor in my case. Always being on the verge of exhaustion, I tried to solve the problem with caffiene, sugar and nicotine. Stimulants are OK, until you seriously hurt yourself. Now I find myself 47 years old, with diabetes, asthma, and arthritus in both legs.

Even though I meet the criteria to be considered legally disabled, I won't give up the homestead dream until the undertaker pats my face with his shovel. I also refuse to stop working, not yet at least. Odds are those of you most recently added to my list of followed blogs write about foraging wild foods, homemade old fashioned foods or natural herbal remedies. I've been ruminating on a new plan recently. More is to follow soon. So, if your stopping by for the first time, stop back now and again. We might just be in the same frame of mind.

Woods