Survival Harvesting

Survival Water Harvesting – Purification

Woman feeding water to a young distressed girl — We all need water

Clearly, access to water is critical for your survival. Even short-term emergencies (1 – 3 days) can become a major concern if you have taken no preparations or given no thought to “what do we do for water if the power goes out?”

There are a couple of different scenarios that can lead from momentary discomfort all the way to health or life-threatening circumstances. If you are traveling, you don’t have access to your normal resources and you can find yourself in a precarious situation. Given how quickly even mild dehydration can occur, along with a reduction in energy, mental clarity etc., it makes sense to always have at least one bottle of water for each person when you are on a trip.

In most cases, no matter where you are, you will almost always have access to a body of water, whether a stream, pond, lake or even water collected in a rain barrel or a roadside ditch. The question you must answer is “Can I drink or use that water?” Determining whether you can use or drink from any particular water source is not a topic that can easily be covered in a single post. Aside from worrying about bacterial or viral contamination, you need to determine if there is likely to be any toxic chemical contamination etc.

I found a 30-page online document that you can download for free that covers purifying water using chlorine, iodine, and javel as well as different methods of boiling water. It covers finding water in different environments, how to search for water using various natural clues and when to dig for water and much, much more.

You also need to have an understanding of what your body will require to maintain proper hydration. Fortunately, the US Military has done a mountain of research into just this topic. They have a free online document you can download as well. Try the link below:

Water Requirements and Soldier Hydration

Just a few things to think about if you don’t have any water supplies put away.

Cases of water bottles are cheap, pick up a couple and make sure you keep some in the car.
Gallon jugs of water are cheap but if you happen to buy large containers of soda, you can rinse them out and refill with tap water. Change every six months.
Get a 3-foot length of tubing that will fit over the faucet end of the tap at the bottom of your hot water heater. (Remember it will be hot for the first couple of hours after a power outage). The water above the faucet will force the water in the tank out until it is almost empty. You could have as much as 50 gallons in there.
If you open a downstairs faucet (like in a laundry tub or a basement sink) the existing water in your house plumbing will flow out the lower tap. Could be several gallons. Put a container under the tap and open it up.
If you are in an apartment building, in a lower level apartment, water will flow out of the piping above you. Fill whatever containers you have.
If you are in your own house and have kids, and a wading pool, and in an urban area, push the pool under your outside faucet (or run some garden hose to wherever the pool is) and start filling it up as soon as you lose power. Residual pressure in the municipality’s water supply system (depending on where you are located relative to the water supply) will push some water out of the water pipes running past your house. And if your area is supplied by a water tower, or you are at a lower elevation than other parts of town, you can collect a lot of water. This will also work if you want to fill your bathtub. I wouldn’t drink the wading pool water without treating it. Before filling the bathtub with water you might want to clean it up with dish soap and rinse it well first.
An inground or aboveground swimming pool is a tremendous source of water. It is not safe to drink. There are a couple of issues. The level of chlorine may have been broken down by the sun (good for drinking) to a low enough level that bacteria have started to grow in the pool (bad to drink). In addition, pool or spa water main contain conditioners, anti-foam solutions, and stabilizers that are NOT good to drink. But it is absolutely okay to use this water for washing, using it to flush your toilet, launder clothes etc.
Use rain barrels under your eavestrough downspouts. Of course, you can’t do this in some municipalities. If you don’t have rain barrels, anything that will hold water will provide you with more than you have if you don’t try and catch the rainwater.
If it is or is about to rain, by positioning a large tarp on a slight slope (either a natural slope or one you created), you can direct a large amount of water into a collection container. Of course, rainwater is generally safe to drink assuming the rain is not falling through a chemical plume and the tarp is clean.

Just as I completed this post I ran across this nifty build. It will cost you a few bucks but can filter up to 5 gallons of drinkable water in a 24 hour period. Check it out.

DIY Water Filter 1: http://www.perimeterpermaculture.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/DIY-Water-Filter.pdf

Harvesting Forest Grown Mushrooms – Shiitake

Shiitake mushrooms from a spawn innoculated log can produce for 3-4 years

As a result of a bit of a wind storm, I am about to leap into log production of Shiitake mushrooms. Shiitake mushrooms can be more efficiently produced using bags of sawdust, but that method requires the growth medium the being kept indoors in a controlled climate. Something I don’t have the time or money for.

Shiitake mushroom log production is far simpler and it all happens outdoors. We have a couple of acres, mostly bush, and because of the storm we now have some logs.

I am going to try this on some smaller diameter birch, and some larger diameter poplar. According to what I have read, it is better to do this with the top branches because the heartwood contains chemicals that suppress fungi growth. Since

Since this is going to be my first run at this, I am not expecting tremendous results. I want to experiment a little to find out what works best with the mix of trees and conditions we have here on our property.

I was lucky enough to find a local producer of sawdust impregnated spawn, Summer Green Farm. He has both oyster and shiitake spawn on hand. I haven’t yet decided for sure if I will try both, but I am kind of leaning that way.

The logs have to be cut before the tree leafs out in the spring, or after leaves drop in the fall. It is suggested that the inoculating occur four to eight weeks after the logs are cut. This provides time for the tree’s fungus fighting abilities have stopped being present. There is a bit of an issue here. If you wait too long, other naturally occurring fungi may contaminate the logs. I am going to inoculate over a stretch of time and compare results. A walk through the bush in the back of the property certainly provides evidence of naturally occurring fungi.

My research says white oak is numero uno for shiitake mushrooms. Other hardwoods that give good results include the rest of the oak family, beech, birch, alder, sugar maple, red maple, balsam poplar, trembling aspen, willow and hickories. So my birch and poplar will be a useful test case.

The process itself is straightforward: cut your tree material into 4 foot long logs (for ease of handling). Drill holes in the log in rows, following the axis of the log, about five inches apart. The rows should be separated by 3 inches.

Holes are drilled 5 inches apart in rows and the rows are spaced 3 inches apart around the log — Holes must be drilled in your Shiitake mushroom log to receive the spawn impregnated sawdust plugs

A measured amount of the spawn product is inserted into each hole (about a thimble full) and the holes are sealed with wax. An alternative to wax is “backer rod,” a polyfoam product that is used to save caulking. It is available at hardware stores.

Shiitake logs can be leaned against a horizontal support. The log ends may be coated with wax to prevent infection with undesired fungi

The finished logs can be stacked in the shade, in a log cabin or crib style, or they may be leaned against a horizontal pole as in a lean-to. This allows rain to moisten the logs moderately without them becoming sodden.

Coating the shiitake log ends with wax will help prevent the infection of the logs with undesirable fungi. This will also help prevent the log from prematurely drying out.

The site the logs are placed in should receive 60 to 85 % shade.

Logs inoculated in the spring may produce some fruiting in the fall. The full bloom will not occur till the next year. Oak logs will fruit for up to five years. Other species will produce for fewer years.

I will be reporting in on this effort when there is news to report. It is not expensive to jump into this. Two pounds of spawn impregnated sawdust costs $27.00. You could do this in your backyard if you provide some shade, and provide sufficient moisture to prevent the logs from drying out to fast. You can experiment with different arrangements of logs, different amounts of supplemental moisture and different tree species. Get in touch with local tree trimmers and let them know you are looking for oak branches about 5 inches in diameter. Or maple, or hickory or beech.

My attitude is, spend a few bucks and the worst that can happen is I will wind up with some gourmet mushrooms. The best that can happen is I may wind up with some gourmet mushrooms and a highly desirable product I can sell at my local farmers market. or even to high end restaurants in my area.

Any gourmet restaurant is a potential buyer of surplus shiitake mushrooms

Ice Storm Preps April 2018

We have come through the most significant ice storm of 2018 for our area. I thought this would be a good chance to review what we did to prepare and what we could have done better. This storm was hardly an inconvenience for us but was a major pain for thousands. A total of 400,000 people lost their power in Southern Ontario and, as of Tuesday morning, 36,000 were still waiting for power to be restored according to the CBC.

Some folks in the Peterborough area apparently will have to wait for the weekend for full power restoration.

We had a full couple of days warning for this one, thanks to current weather forecasting capabilities. There is not much excuse if you were caught unawares. If you are a reader of this blog, you probably are at least part of the way along with being able to deal with this kind of weather-related emergency. I posted the following on a Facebook group I belong to Ontario homesteaders, preppers, foragers and off the grid living!

How many people in the way of the ice storm took any special precautions? We filled a couple of tub/totes with water for general cleanup etc. We have about 150 gallons of potable in our system. Moved a propane tank from the RV to the garage, along with a portable BBQ and adapter hose for the tank. Cooked up a pot of soup so it was ready. We can heat it on the freestanding woodstove by removing a grill on the flat top. Not much else was necessary that I could think of.

I got some great responses. A lot of people’s actions were different because of their circumstances, but I collected all the suggestions and made a list. I have reproduced it below. There were a few things that I didn’t think to do that I should have. I have grouped some of the suggestions into categories. Let’s take a look.

Water

Filled Rubbermaid totes with water and located in each bathroom
Filled bathtub with water
Topped up water supply for animals inside and outside the house
Checked cases of water
Take showers before potential power loss
Do laundry before potential power loss

These are pretty much automatic for anyone who has read even the most basic literature on emergency preparedness. A number of people in the FB group had off-grid or rural situations and had their own water supply (some with hand pump capability or electrical supply (battery bank or generator to run pumps).

A lot of people are aware that their water tank holds potable water and can be accessed through the drain valve. Remember to shut off power to the water tank if you are draining down the water to prevent problems when the power comes back on. If you are in a two-story home with running water in the upper floor, there can be a surprising amount of water just in your homes water pipes. Easy to access by turning on a tap at the lowest level.

Anyone with a hot tub or indoor pool also has access to a lot of water that is fine for washing or flushing toilets. Of course, with snow on the ground, you can access water for hygienic purposes by melting it, assuming you have enough fuel for cooking and melting. If snow is melting, putting containers under the downspouts of your eavestroughs can provide a lot of water relatively quickly. This goes double for rain in the warmer months.

At our place, we have a couple of 250 gallon totes to collect rainwater for the garden (amazing what a long hard dry spell one summer will prompt you to do). We also have a couple of rain barrels to collect water off of the garden shed roof. Having too much water isn’t much of a problem. Having not enough sure is.

Here is a one-page chlorination guide you should print out and stick in a binder.

Cooking/Food

A simple one burner stove fueled with a portable propane bottle will make more than a dozen one-pot meals.

Moved a propane tank into a sheltered area with portable BBQ grill and adapter line for 20lb tank
Moved single burner (portable propane bottle fueled) camp stove into a sunroom/porch/overhang
Precooked a pot of soup (or any other easy to deal with meal) – easy warmup on a flat-top woodstove
Have snacks on hand (apples or other fresh fruit, bread for sandwiches, etc.) for a quick energy boost
Turn the refrigerator and freezer temps down to their coldest level, so they start any power outage as cold as possible

Different times I have moved our barbecue into the garage when we planned a grilled meal and the weather tried to interfere. Of course, I always make sure the cooking space is ventilated. I don’t mind cooking outside, even in the rain, but a stiff breeze makes it difficult to control heat levels. If you are planning to possibly put up with no power for a few days, spending five minutes or less to move the ‘cue is time well spent.

Energy

Battery powered night lights or closet lights come in pucks or strips. Batteries will last a long time.

Check wireless LED push/touch on strips of pucks (bedside table or closet style)
Check LED camp lanterns
Checked power packs for cell phones
Checked battery supply
Made sure flashlights were available
Checked candles and matches supply
Checked oil lamps available and fueled
Topped up gas in vehicles (most second vehicles/ATV’s etc are a handy place to store extra gasoline if you have a transfer siphon
Checked spare gas cans
Checked fuel supply in emergency generator
Checked location of the inverter for the vehicle
Brought in extra firewood
Picked up bioethanol for ethanol fire pit

We have 3 or 4 little push button LED units as spotlighting for our closets. Our last house had an automatic light come on when you open closet doors. That kind of spoils you. Portable stick on units aren’t as good but are waaaay better than no light. Ours don’t stick on. They have bases that are mounted and then the units themselves are held on with magnets, so are easily moved to another location. However you choose to go, units like these are available for under ten bucks in packs of two. Lie them on their back on a flat surface and they provide useable area light during an outage.

You can check an earlier post on this site under the category of “Survival Harvesting Purchases” to see our purchasing philosophy. There is virtually never a need to check battery supplies around here. Modern batteries can be stored for years with virtually no power loss. Duracells claim no drop off for seven years, guaranteed. So we always have a 3-4 year supply on hand. When we drop down to 3 years, we buy another pack or two when the next sale comes up.

The cell phones get charged every night as a matter of course, but I also have three different size portable battery packs. One stays in the family auto and gets plugged into the DC power socket for any drive of more than a couple of hours. One stays plugged into my desktop and one is small enough to fit in a side pocket of my shoulder bag when I go out.

This past storm we forgot to top up the gas tanks in the truck and SUV. Both were at the quarter tank mark, so due for fill-ups. Our bad. We did have a couple of five gallon containers with spare gas on hand.

There are lots of flashlights around the place. We do have several sets of headlamps. They are so inexpensive now, and so handy when you have to work on something in a cramped space, or are walking through the property at night that I bought extra to ensure the vehicles always had at least one onboard.

Able to provide some heat and useful for decorative purposes in a non-emergency.

Just a word about bio-ethanol fire pits or fireplaces. I don’t own one but am familiar with them. They provide around 2000BTUs/hour per burner. Don’t expect them to heat your home, but they can take the chill off a room and remove dampness in the air. They are not meant for continuous use or to heat food. Essentially they are meant to be decorative and provide ambiance, but there is no discounting the fact that they do provide some heat.

I looked up their emissions just to be sure. I knew that the by-products of perfect ethanol combustion should be CO2 and water but checking twice is never bad. The International Society for Environmental Epidemiology says that in testing, ethanol burners released as much as 2000 ppm of CO2 as actually measured in an emissions chamber. NO2 levels reached 350 µg/m³, which would require anyone with a respiratory condition, children, and older people to limit their exertion.

The US Navy operates their submarines in levels of CO2 that reach 8,000 ppm. That tells you something about the dangers of CO2 in the 2K ppm range. The NO2 measurements in an emissions chamber were just at the threshold were human effects could be measured in a lab for people with chronic conditions who were exercising.

Use your own judgment. I wouldn’t be concerned in a situation where I had no heat. Elderly people are at risk when exposed to cold. And I don’t think the average house is equivalent to an emissions chamber. Having said that, I am not an environmental epidemiologist.

Communications

Checked portable radio was available
Checked family was on Zello
Checked Two Way radios had batteries

Zello gives you push to talk functionality on your smartphone

Zello is a free app for your smartphone that provides the utility of two-way radios as long as the cell service is available. That would be about five days in a power outage after the various upgrades that were put in place after the NE Power outage of 2003 and the Katrina fiasco of 2005. It allows you to broadcast your message to a group or to an individual. very useful.

The little portable and inexpensive two-way radios broadcasting on public channels are handy if you have to venture outside in bad weather. You can keep in touch with the people in the house while you are in the yard. Also excellent for car-to-car communication. It forces structured conversations since you have to wait for the other person to be finished. And then they are waiting for your response.

Hygiene and First Aid

Checked pack of baby wipes available
Check stock of diapers
Checked prescriptions filled
Checked first aid supplies

If travel is disrupted for a few days, you don’t want to be running short of prescription medications, even if their lack doesn’t put you in a life-threatening condition. Having to deal with the stress of no power for a few days, AND a very irritating rash is not necessary

Miscellaneous

Checked security of loose items in high winds
Checked supply of salt and sand in a handy container
Took measure to protect young fruit trees
Removed glass tops from growing beds
Arranged for activities for children (and adults)

Of all of the above checks, after food, water and heat, I think making sure you have something to occupy young minds is probably the most important survival action you can take. It could turn a few days of misery into an adventure. And that is what you want, ideally.

When you go down this list, you can pretty much see that getting ready for a winter storm is going to get you and your family 80% of the way to being ready for almost anything. As the level of emergency goes up, you pretty much only need to extend your stock of expendables. Even if you have to relocate, you will have most of what you need on hand. We will cover evacuation in another post.

I’d like to thank the members of the “Ontario homesteaders, preppers, foragers and off-grid living” Facebook page who responded to my original post asking about their preps. I should mention that I have expanded on the suggestions that were made, provided links to some background information and added additional explanations. If you have additional suggestions, don’t hesitate to contact me.

If you would like to download a PDF version of this post, you can get it here.

Garden Spot Harvesting – Sack Farming

No Topsoil, No Problem

A couple of posts ago I wrote a post about “straw bail” gardening. Straw bales can be conditioned to induce faster organic breakdown than they would normally undergo by feeding the microbes that break down the

Several plants are growing out of a straw bale — Vegetables growing in a conditioned straw bale

straw, giving the process a boost. Then the bales themselves can be used as the growing media.

The straw bales can overcome the problem of shallow or infertile soil. At the end of the growing season, the straw can be turned in to the compost pile, used as mulch or simply spread out where it is to help build up the soil in that spot. The bales have a more or less one to one ratio of the area that would be used in a normal garden.

Sack Farming

If the prospective grower has a lack of growing space (and/or problem soil) there is another alternative; sack farming. Sack farming is exactly what it sounds like. A large bag is stood on its end and filled with growing medium consisting of compost manure and soil. A central vertical path is provided for water by forming a column of stones up the center of the bag using a can with no lid or bottom. The can is slid up the interior of the bag as the soil/compost mixture rises, leaving behind the small stones that filled it. Holes are cut into the side of the bag in five rows of eight holes. Three to four week old transplants are put in place.

Sack s are prepared for transplants by filling them with growing medium and creating a vertical collum of stones in the middle of the sack for water dispersal. — Image Credit: “Multi-Storey Gardening Training Manual 2008”

The sacks can be reused for up to three years until the composted manure loses its fertility. At that time, the sack can be tipped over and new composted manure mixed with the soil and it can be reused.

In tests described in the “Sack Farming Innovation” PDF download below, they discuss an alternative to the central stone column that used PVC pipe with holes drilled in it. The PVC didn’t perform as well as the column of small stones. I had similar problems with a strawberry barrel I made using a PVC watering pipe. I like the idea of using small stones. I may give this a shot.

I want to say something about the “Sack Farming” PDF. It is available at a location called ResearchGate. You need to join to get access to this paper. It will be worth it. No cost. Free downloads. They have a lot of scientific papers, technical papers and study reports such as the link I provide. There will be a bunch of information in this paper that you probably aren’t interested in. But what it does provide is detailed information on two case studies, photographic images clearly showing what needs to be done and a statement of results.

This is a technique that could easily be used on stony ground, on concrete, in an abandoned parking lot or virtually anywhere with solar exposure and access to water. And if you think about the productivity of a 3 ft. diameter sack, five feet high, planted with 30 – 40 plants, compared to an equivalent garden plot, it is very space efficient.

I will leave it there. The downloads can explain it in more detail. I have provided several because this type of farming is being done slightly differently in different places. These downloads vary in length, but they all have additional insights. One of the downloads is a promotional piece from a company showing how their drip irrigation system could be used with Sack gardens. I thought it was instructional enough to include.

I hope you found this useful. I plan on giving this a try beside one of my raised beds this spring.

Sack Farming Downloads

Multi-Story Gardening

Garden in a Sack

Vertical Bag Farms Drip Irrigation

Sack Farming Innovation for Land Scarcity Farmers in Kenya and Ghana

Survival Energy Harvesting – Root Cellar

Staying with the energy theme, building and using your own root cellar will definitely free you from dependence on electricity for a significant portion of your food storage. In addition to showing plans and various stages of construction, the links at the bottom of this post also show some rough and ready root cellar substitutes that basically involve storing the veggies in the garden, with some enhanced protection.

Abrick facing frames the wooden door to a root cellar dug into a hill — Moderated by the earth, the temperature in the root cellar can keep vegetables fresh for months

Root cellars, or their equivalent, have been around for thousands of years. They were probably first constructed in the Middle East. The peoples of those lands would have discovered early on the coolness of the earth only a few feet below the surface of the ground. Lower temperatures in caverns would have provided a significant clue to the benefits of underground storage and the cool refreshing water drawn up from wells were an everyday example of natural refrigeration.

There are definite examples of recognizable root cellars in Europe dating back to the 1600’s. When Europeans came to the new world, they brought their knowledge with them. Root cellars became a staple of pioneer life in the New World.

How Cold Will It Get?

How cold your root cellar can get will depend on your climate, the type of soil you have built your cellar in and the level of humidity. The soil temperature below the frost line varies about 6 degrees C, over the year. A properly vented root cellar uses the colder fall and winter air to keep temperatures closer to ideal for vegetable storage. At night the cooler outside air flows into the root cellar, pushing the warmer air out. During the day, the heavier cold air stays in place, keep your stored produce cold. The warmth of the earth at 6-10 feet below the surface will keep your vented root cellar from freezing. In addition, a dirt floor provides natural humidity control to help keep your vegetables in top shape.

Vegetables last for months because they are still alive while in storage. They are living off of the stored nutrients they have accumulated during the growing season. The cooler temperatures inside the cellar slow their metabolisms down, so the growth is minimal.

Storage Times for Various Vegetables

Vegetable	Ideal Storage Temperature (°F)	Relative Humidity (percentage)	Average Storage Life
Beets	32	95	1-3 months
Cabbage	32	90-95	3-4 months
Carrots	32	90-95	4-6 months
Celery	32	90-95	2-3 months
Garlic	32	65-70	6-7 months
Horseradish	30-32	90-95	10-12 months
Jerusalem artichoke	31-32	90-95	2-5 months
Onions	32	65-70	5-8 months
Parsnips	32	90-95	2-6 months
Potatoes	38-40	90	5-8 months
Pumpkins	50-55	70-75	2-3 months
Rutabaga	32	90-95	2-4 months
Sweet potato	55-60	85-90	4-6 months
Turnips	32	90-95	4-5 months
Winter squash	50-55	70-75	3-6 months

Here are some excellent links to instructions on building several different types of root cellars, both in the house and outside of it. Some of the PDFs include vegetable storage guidelines as well.

Constructing and Using Root Cellars

Vegetable Storage in Root Cellars

Handbook for Building a Root Cellar

A Small Root Cellar

Garden Spot Harvesting – Straw Bales

An Old Technique is New Again

Straw bale gardening has been around for several hundred years. Once farmers had figured out the utility of compost in growing vegetables and then stumbled across a pile of straw that was heating up because some high nitrogen product was added to it (livestock piss?), it is no surprise that they tried planting produce right in the pile. Today’s bound bales make the process so much neater and easier.

Straw bales are wetted down, have high nitrogen fertilizer added to them to feed the decomposition microbes, and are kept moist over the season. The microbes decompose the straw and the straw provides most of the nutrients plants need to grow. Your rocky soil, a slab of granite outcrop, a gravel pit (or driveway), any of them become a handy garden location.

Multiple straw bales with a variety of plants growing out of them. Usually two to three plants per straw bale — Straw bales make excellent growing locations for low or medium size plants.

Straw bales are preferred over hay, because of the large amount of weed seed typically incorporated in hay bales. Straw bales will be much less work. The bales require preconditioning before planting. So you need to acquire your bales a couple of weeks ahead of your planned plant date. Conditioning involves watering the bales daily for three days. You want to add enough water that it runs out the bottom of the bale. The bales will absorb a lot of the water, and retain it, so their weight will increase. Make sure you have them located where they will be staying for the season.

The Straw Bale Gardening Method

The bales should be oriented so that the stalk ends point up and down. That means the twine holding the bales together will be running parallel to the ground. It makes a lot of sense to run the bales in rows, one or two bales wide. This allows you to set strong stakes in the ground (if it’s not too rocky) and run lengths of wire or string from post to post, creating a trellis for support for your vines or tomatoes.

On the fourth day, you start adding high nitrogen fertilizer. Urea is a good choice. It has a ratio of 46-0-0. There is a method to follow. Over the next 6 days, follow this schedule. Day one, add a 1/2 cup of urea to each bale and add water until it is running out the bottom. Soak thoroughly on day two, but no urea. Day three 1/2 cup of urea again and water in. Then no urea on day four, just soak. Repeat this process for the next two day. For the next three days, add 1/4 cup of urea each day and soak thoroughly. On day ten, you should add a cup of granulated, balanced 10-10-10 fertilizer. Keep watering the bales for a few more days until the internal temperature falls to about body temperature. Now you are ready to plant.

This whole process is described in a popular book on the subject that is available on Amazon. You can find out more about the whole process at Straw Bale Gardens. Check out the pics and read his FAQ.

If you would like to download some free PDFs from agricultural extension services, that lay everything out, as well as provide planting and spacing details, try the links below.

Straw Bale Gardening – Clemson University

Straw Bale Gardening – Washington State University

Straw Bale Gardening – New Mexico Junior College

Gardening With Straw Bales – University of California

Straw bale gardening is definitely a solution when gardening soil is at a premium, or non-existent> It also provides you with a raised growing surface, minimizing bending. Because you are above the soil level, you are raised above many pests and your crops should suffer less from insect depredation. A huge bonus is that, at the end of the growing season, you are left with a big pile of composted organic matter which you can dump into a compost bed, spread around as mulch and generally, build up whatever soil you do have.

I’m going to experiment with this technique. The guides above provide direction as to which types of plants are most suited to this medium. You should give them a good read before you start. Try it yourself, then get back to me. You can email me here, just use the contact form, or visit my Facebook page, Survival Harvesting, and shoot me a PM or email.

Survival Energy Harvesting – Batteries

If you and yours are in a grid down situation, then it is likely you have lost your primary source of energy. I hope you can take care of heating and cooking. Those of us with access to wood stoves or even propane or natural gas will have that covered off. However there is no arguing with the contention that electricity makes so much of our lives easier.

There are a few options if you want to have electricity with no grid. Generators are affordable enough that you can have one available for emergencies. Give some consideration to dual fuel models if you have access to propane. Your limitation is then your fuel supply. Even with that limitation, you can do a lot by simply running the generator for limited periods of time per day. It is possible to run your generator intermittently, to power your freezer or refrigerator for a couple of hours (enough to keep things cool for 24 hours until the next run). While you are powering the freezer, you could also be charging up your portable electronic devices. Even better, you could be powering up portable power packs and batteries themselves to give you a degree of power portability and the ability to have power without the generator running.

Three outlets and 2000 watts of power using your car. $150.00 on Amazon.ca (Not and affiliate link)

I want to mention here that almost all of us have access to electric generators. We typically use them for transportation. That’s right. Your vehicle is capable of providing a large part of your electrical needs. All you need is a DC to AC power converter. Hook a couple of cables up to your car battery, start the engine and then let your vehicle idle while you power up the fridge, charge your portable devices, catch up on the news on your flat screen TV, run a water pump, whatever. You just need to make sure that the devices you are running don’t overdraw power through your inverter. I’m not going to go through the process of doing the calculations and the best way of hooking up your system. Steven Harris has already done that at his site. A ton of free, detailed information for you in his recorded interviews. He covers using an inverter to power your house and also talks about building battery banks and using solar cells. He also has books and videos that are well worth their cost.

Solar installations give you the option to charge batteries whenever the sun is shining

If you have access to solar panels or to a windmill powered generator then your life is somewhat simpler and certainly quieter. You are still going to have to do some work and some wiring. See the link above to the Steven Harris podcasts once again.

All of this info is good if you have the time and opportunity to prepare in advance. I have followed Steve’s instructions and am part way to where I want to be. The truth is there is a wide variety of solutions to the power problem. They aren’t easy, and they require technical know how. I really advise you to do a deep dive into Steven Harris’ material. He provides a ton of free info.

But what happens if we have a general breakdown before we can take advanced preparations. Or what if we are prepared, but our community isn’t or isn’t prepared enough. Or the supply chain is broken? What then?

Once again, your options may depend on how detailed a local area inventory you have done. This is the meat of this post. Wherever your original power is coming from, you are going to need batteries to store it. What are you going to do if you don’t have batteries?

If you are properly prepared in other areas, barter becomes a very real option. If you have already started on the homesteading lifestyle you may have vegetables, food animals like rabbit, cattle, poultry, goats or sheep etc., or other items. If your community is engaged in a widespread group effort, then arrangements may be made to allow credit to battery suppliers who can then draw on the community resources for their needs.

A system that charges batteries works best with deep cycle or marine batteries. Car batteries will break down far faster than deep cycle batteries. Having said that, for the short term, vehicle batteries may be more common and easier to acquire.

Let’s go down the list of potential suppliers. This is the result of my speculating and noting what I see as I drive around:

Individual vehicles
Automotive supply stores
Automobile dealers
Automobile rentals
Auto repair
Auto wreckers
Hardware stores
Golf cart dealers
Golf courses
Forklift sales and service
Equipment rental – manlifts, hi-lifts
RV Sales and Service
Marine Sales and Service
Marinas
Homeowners with RVs or boats
Portable solar powered sign rental places
Portable solar powered signs
Heavy equipment dealers, rentals
Airports

I could use some help here. These are just some ideas off the top of my head. I am not knowledgeable enough to know if all of them would work. I don’t know what voltage the solar powered sign battery standards are, as a for instance, nor the manlift type of equipment. Are snowmobile, airplane, or ATV batteries of any use here? What about UPS units for computers? They don’t stock a bunch of power. How long would they run a little 2 w night light?

It is my intention to do some interviews with people knowledgeable in all of these areas and then include the info in future posts or incorporate the information into downloadable reports, but I am still early in this process myself. If you think you could help, or would like to be interviewed, get in touch and let me know what you know. Maybe we can do something together.

I’ve found a couple of resources that you might find interesting, along with the Steven Harris stuff referenced above.

Here’s a link to “Solar Power 101 for Homeowners.”

Here’s a link to “Solar PV Standardized Training Manual.”

Survival Energy Harvesting – Ice House Refrigeration

I have posted this information under the “Survival Energy Harvesting” category because keeping stuff cold requires energy. Whether that is electrical energy to run a compressor for refrigeration or whether that is manual energy to harvest ice is a mute point. I have dealt with this topic in my “Survival Fish Harvesting” book so instead of reinventing the wheel I am going to simply reprint what I wrote there.

I am currently looking around online for a good set of plants for an ice house and also for root cellar construction. When I finally select a couple I will post links at the bottom of this post. I hope you enjoy the info below and this peek inside my book.

Freezing was not much of an option before artificial refrigeration, at least in temperate climates, though ice houses/wells were a common way of extending the “best before date” of food. Refrigeration as a method of preserving food dates back to at least the ancient Roman and Chinese empires. Caves in which underground water freezes through the winter and then lasts well into the spring and summer were no doubt used by peoples in prehistoric times. In my younger days I remember discovering caves along the bank of a creek my friends and I used to explore. Ice would last in the cave, which had a low west facing entrance, well into the late spring.

Refrigeration will keep fresh fish safe to eat for 3-4 days, if the storage temperature is 40⁰ F. Shellfish is more like 12 – 24 hours if fresh and twice that if cooked. Freezing extends lean fish like cod or flounder for 6 months and fatty fish like salmon two months. Modern processing methods involving vacuum packing will keep fish good for up to two years.

Before electrically powered refrigerators, people cut thick blocks of ice in the winter time and transported them to insulated warehouses where the blocks were stacked and then further covered with straw. I remember the “ice man” delivering blocks of ice to our house in St. Catharines, Ontario, when I was very young. The ice block fit into a compartment in the “ice box” and kept milk and food cool as it slowly melted. Every few days the ice man would be back with another block.

On my grandfather’s farm in Saskatchewan they had an “Ice house.” This was a small building with thick walls filled with sawdust that straddled a well that might have been 12 feet deep. There was trap door in the middle of the floor that opened to reveal the well. In the wooden sill around the opening various hooks were set.

In the winter time they would cut blocks of ice (I don’t know where they came from…probably a pond on the farm) and fill the well about half full. In the warm weather, milk pails, hams, chunks of beef, and mesh bags full of whatever you wanted to keep cold would be secured to ropes and then hung from the hooks in the well. I have no clue what the temperature was, but I have no doubt it was cold. This technique has been used for a long time. A cuneiform tablet from c. 1780 BC records the construction of an icehouse in the northern Mesopotamian town of Terqa (Wikipedia). That’s almost 4,000 years ago.

Links to Reference Material

What is an Ice House

An Examination of an Ice House at Old Town Plantation

Ice Houses

Survival Harvesting of Frozen Food

I was thinking about an upcoming article on survival energy harvesting and came across some recommendations at Food Safety.gov the US federal government’s portal for all things food safety wise. One suggestion in particular caught my eye. That is to keep a small thermometer in your fridge and/or freezer. This allows you to monitor the temperatures to give you an idea as to the safety of the stored food. Basically anything at 40 degrees fahrenheit or 4.5 degrees celsius is still safe. Once temperature gets above that level, bacteria can start multiplying and the food becomes progressively less safe to eat.

Of course, it depends what kind of food we are talking about. Maybe you are keeping peanut butter in your fridge to ensure the oils don’t turn rancid, because you don’t go through a jar of peanut butter in 3-4 months. Well, you can safely take the peanut butter out of the fridge and put it on a shelf in the pantry for the above mentioned three months. Similarly eggs recently bought can happily sit on your kitchen counter for a week or more. The suggestion to throw out cooked or cut produce if it is held above 40 degrees for more than two hours seems a little extreme. Now I’m not a food safety expert, so I advise you to use your own judgement after taking in consideration the advice of professionals.

Additionally I found out that a full freezer will keep foods below 40 degrees F for four days if you only open the door once a day for a minute or two. Full being the key. A half full freezer will only last two days. And a fridge will keep food at 40 degrees F for four hours. This is a great argument for keeping plastic juice containers or two litre (64 oz.) bottles full of water in your freezer when there is space. They fill up empty space, you can take a couple of bottles out to keep your refrigerator or a large cooler cold, and you have water that is safe to drink. If you can buys frozen blocks of ice, do so. Blocks of dry ice will maintain a freezer at a safe temperature for up to four days on their own.

In addition, over top of your fridge or freezer is an excellent place to keep sleeping bags or comforters when they are not being used during a power outage. In cold winter weather, put containers of water outside overnight to freeze. You can continue to do this as long as you have freezing temperatures. Be careful about putting containers of food outside if you have wildlife nearby.

Check your own fridge or freezer, or those of others (Not an affiliate link)

In a post I put up just the other day I talked about doing a local community inventory. I mentioned that you could have food processing plants of food warehousing establishments nearby. Even if you don’t have local food processing plants or facilities, there are lots of places that might have frozen food. Everything from retailers to your neighbours who are off vacationing in Europe when the grid goes down. Your neighbours who are home could have frozen food. Maybe you want to consolidate all of the frozen items from both refrigerators into just one to fill up space. Having a small lightweight thermometer that you can take with you to check cold storage temperatures could come in pretty handy when you are assessing available food sources. At Amazon.ca the non-digital versions start at about $3.50 for add on items and there is good choice around $8-9.00. No excuses.

Here’s a link to some search results I got for “power outages and frozen food” at the US Food Safety government site.

Survival Harvesting Local Resource Inventory

The premise of this site is that survival in groups is preferable to survival as a lone wolf. A highly skilled and prepared lone wolf may very well have an excellent chance at getting through a very bad time, though I question what kind of an existence that would be. A highly skilled and prepared group has a better chance, I would maintain, simply because of the range of skills and abilities available. Medical knowledge, mechanical knowledge, knowledge of crop raising, hunting, animal husbandry, fishing, and organizational skills, as well as security knowledge and skills, are going to be higher in a community group than in a single individual in most cases.

What Do You Need

Thinking in terms of a community means much larger requirements for food, energy, water, everything. Unless you have formed a group of likeminded preparedness oriented people, the only way you get a community is if you bring your existing community along with you. You aren’t going to be able to take care of all of those people’s needs. Therefore you need to look to the community for internal resources.

In a large scale disaster, you are going to need to know where local resources are available

I am going to engage in a mental exercise and I am going to start with what I consider to be the best circumstances. The process I am describing in this article will be much easier to accomplish in a small rural community than in the middle of a big city. It will be more applicable to smaller satellite towns that provide workers for the city. I DO believe you can take these principles and apply them to almost any situation, but there is no doubt that things will get hairy in a large urban area

Very few of us really know our own community in terms of survival resources. We probably know a few folks that live around us, but we don’t know much about most of our neighbours, most of the businesses or even our own municipal organization.

Resources Are All Around You

Let me tell you a personal experience from this past winter. I arrived at our local Civic Centre for a presentation I was delivering about 6:00 pm, just as it was getting dark. The town I was entering has a population of about 1200. I pulled up to the door of the centre, got out, entered the building and realized there was a noisy engine running outside. The maintenance guy who was there and who let me in told me it was the facility’s generator, which had kicked on automatically when the power outage struck. It was just starting to get dark, so I hadn’t noticed the lack of lights in the houses as I entered town. It turns out that this Civic Centre was also the emergency resource centre for the town in a disaster. There were a certain number of supplies stockpiled there and the generator had enough fuel for three days of continuous use. The generator could power the lights, the kitchen facility, and the library upstairs with its computer stations and internet hook up etc. Used just four hours a day, the fuel supply would be good for 3 weeks and that would be enough for hygienic purposes, food preparation and to provide relatively comfortable shelter purposes for a lot of people. The town had a large water tower so the water supply would be available through gravity feed until the tank emptied.

I didn’t know that the Civic Centre had this secondary function even though I had lived in the area for 10 years. This experience got me to wondering what else I didn’t know about my community.

Local Community Resource Inventory

As I said before, the area I live in is rural, so here is a list of things I think I should know about:

Cattle farms, dairy farms, chicken/poultry operations, pork operations, sheep operations, cash crop operations, market gardeners, orchards, grain storage facilities, game farms, apiarys, antique/vintage agricultural equipment museums or clubs or collectors, fuel depots, farm supply stores, farmers co-ops or feed stores, firewood suppliers, feedlots, abattoirs, refrigerated storage capabilities, food processing operations, metalworking or repair shops, gun clubs or firing ranges, firearms or ammo retailers or suppliers, greenhouses, fish hatcheries, outdoor adventure tour operators, RV parks, public or government land, parks or woodlots, solar cell arrays etc.

I could go on for quite a bit, but you can probably understand where I am coming from. My small community probably has everything it needs to take care of the local community for over a year but also enough extra for a large influx of people. One small beef operation might have 30 animals. An average 1200 pound steer will provide about 500 pounds of boneless meat. But in an emergency situation, you wouldn’t be throwing out the bones. A lot of them would wind up being cooked up in soups or to make broth. Let’s ignore that for now though. Thirty animals would yield 15,000 pounds of meat. A sedentary man needs 56 grams of protein a day. He can get that from about 1.2 pounds of beef. Using the sedentary man requirements as representative of our population as a whole, men, women, and children, those cattle meet the protein requirements of the whole town for about 10 days.

Well, that’s not much help, is it? The truth is, not many people meet all of their requirements for protein from eating nothing but beef. In an emergency, beef could be used to make other sources of protein more palatable. Checking on livestrong.com, we find this:

“Black beans and rice served together form a powerful nutritional team. A 1-cup serving of cooked, long-grain brown rice contains 5 grams of protein, 45 carbohydrate grams, 2 grams of fat and 216 calories. The same serving size of cooked black beans without salt has approximately 15 grams of protein, which is 30 percent of the daily value set by the FDA based on a 2,000 calories per day diet, 41 grams of carbohydrate, less than 1 gram of fat and 227 calories.”

Two Cups of Rice and Two Cups of Beans

So a cup of beans and a cup of rice will provide over a third of our required daily protein. With two cups of rice and two cups of beans a day, that small herd of cattle is suddenly good for a month. And that ignores everything else that might be available in peoples pantries, freezers, refrigerators, root cellars, or available from other sources. Think back to that list I compiled at the top of the last page; in addition to beef operations, I listed dairy farms, chicken/poultry operations, pork operations, sheep operations, cash crop operations, market gardeners, orchards, and grain storage facilities along with numerous others. It’s not a lack of resources that is the big problem. It’s coordinated action involving the resources that are available.

In my local area, there are a pile of agricultural operations that could wind up in dire need in a grid down situation. Not only would they need feed and water, but with no or limited access to electricity, they will need labour and cooperation to continue operating.

In a truly widespread disaster, when it takes people a while to get organized, and when the scope of the disaster isn’t recognized, many of the possibly useful resources in many of these locations could be wasted or ruined. Most agricultural operations are going to have power and fuel for several days at least. Whether they have large portable generators or depend on PTO driven units they can hook their tractors up to, they can power ventilation units in their poultry barns or run the machinery for their dairy operations for a while at least. But in a situation in which distribution channels are tangled or stopped completely, a lot of nutrition could go to waste at the same time a lot of people are going hungry. An organized list of resources on the one hand, and needs on the other, could go a long way to solving a lot of problems.

Recognize, I am not suggesting creating a list of places that are targets for looting in a disaster. I AM suggesting we all need to look further than our downstairs pantry to find our way out of a serious grid-down situation. This is especially true if we are located within a weeks walking distance or a two-hour drive from a major urban area. If you aren’t thinking in terms of a major disaster will create refugees, you aren’t thinking ahead enough. We have had years of the Syrian conflict and also years of having to deal with Syrian refugees Europe as a partial example.

Admittedly, for most of us, I am talking about a low probability event. But what if an incident is widespread enough and lasts a couple of week or more? Think of the Northeastern blackout of 2003 that affected 55 million people for two days, because of a tree branch rubbing on power lines. What if it had been caused by hackers who selectively targeted hard to replace high voltage transformers? You aren’t replacing high voltage transformers in two days; weeks or months are more likely. The fact that it is low probability doesn’t mean we shouldn’t think about it. But we should consider it in terms of an extension of our existing preps. And simply because it would affect so many people, it makes sense to think of a community response.

Let me know what YOU think. Use the contact form to send me your thoughts, or get in touch with the Survival Harvesting Facebook page.

Resources

All Hazards Preparedness for Rural Communities: https://www.cfba.org/images/resources/all-hazards-preparedness-for-rural-communities-book.pdf

Farm Planning: Emergency PReparedness on Farms:http://wvats.cedwvu.org/media/1560/emergency-preparedness.pdf

Planning for and Responding to Disaster in Canada, An Approach for Farmers: http://www.ablamb.ca/images/documents/resources/planningforandrespondingtodisastersincanada.pdf