Month: March 2018

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:

  1. Individual vehicles
  2.  Automotive supply stores
  3. Automobile dealers
  4. Automobile rentals
  5. Auto repair
  6. Auto wreckers
  7. Hardware stores
  8. Golf cart dealers
  9. Golf courses
  10. Forklift sales and service
  11. Equipment rental – manlifts, hi-lifts
  12. RV Sales and Service
  13. Marine Sales and Service
  14. Marinas
  15. Homeowners with RVs or boats
  16. Portable solar powered sign rental places
  17. Portable solar powered signs
  18. Heavy equipment dealers, rentals
  19. 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