Posted on 02/02/2008 5:48:19 PM PST by justa-hairyape
I should have been born 50 years earlier than I was - what you describe on the farm sounds great to me....and yes, we could survive several weeks without going to a store...and we live in a condo.
But every chance they get, they'll slip in commie propaganda - global warming etc.
But seeing so many of their listeners snowed in, they've stopped using 'global warming' and now "Greenhouse gasses" is the Republican villain.
Oh well, we've always been at war with Eurasia ...
If it swallows all that water, it will regorgetate?
1984. The problem in todays world is that a serious episode of Global Cooling can quickly cause global conflict. For example, the Chinese just lost their winter crops and hundreds of thousands of their live stock to Global Cooling. They have over a billion mouths to feed. This is just the first year of Global Cooling and lucky for us the Chinese are cash rich or bond rich. They can buy the food they need. What will happen on the second or third year of Global Cooling when the Chinese no longer have a surplus of cash ?
Snow is building up to some pretty high levels in the coast range too. Highways have been closed off & on last week. Snow chains required when its open now. I see no slow melt for that much snow in the coast range. I was talking to a dairy farmer tonight. The enviro nazi controlled state politicians & army corps of engineers are dead set against dredging the mouths of the silted in rivers here. That will be 3 years in a row with 500 year flooding.
Then to top it off the state is mandating a percentage of bio-diesel be mixed in with regular diesel (along with the ethanol crap in gasoline). The farmer found that out from the mechanic when his freightliner crapped out due to bio-diesel contamination.
I don't think there's an offset anywhere else in the world?
Thus I'm pinging our resident farmer ;^)
Here at the ranch, we still have a ‘functioning’ 2-holer ‘out back’.
The antique, but fully functional wood range ...which is heating part of the house right now... is still in the kitchen, opposite the new gas range, connected to a 500 gallon propane tank. Wood stove to heat when the kitchen one isn’t enough by itself, saves a bundle on heating costs. One can...and we have...melted more than enough snow on wood range to take a hot bath, when necessary.
1000 gallon cistern in the sub-cellar. Two 8.5KW generators, and a 5KW. 100 gallons of gasoline storage; 140 gallon transfer tank & pump for diesel in the pickup; a small bulldozer to clear the road.
One Coleman white gas stove & one Coleman dual-fuel white gas/unleaded stove stored away. The propane crab boiler/turkey fryer, and the big smoker/BBQ, and the small grill, with plenty of charcoal & wood for both.
Two Coleman gas lanterns, three or four kerosene lamps, and an Aladdin lamp stored away. There's even a new hand sink-pump in the basement, that the previous owners left behind, when they abandoned the place 25-30 years before we bought it...and I saved the good, working one off the sink, when we remodeled the kitchen, before moving in.
Three old, but functional, with a little cleaning & maintenance, wood stoves in the barn.
About two-three month’s worth of canned & boxed foods & staples; several pounds of coffee, teas, & cocoa; bulk potatoes & onions, plus the full freezer.
Plenty of 'boarder repeller' equipment, too.
Oddly enough, we have had more & longer outages in suburban SoCal & Oregon areas, than we have here in the SD woods, miles from nowhere.
Better to have it, and never need it, than wish you had it.
hee hee - I'm a white-haired ole granny - gotta get my 'concealed' renewed, which means, with new rules, gotta take a safety course. got it scheduled for spring.
South Dakota has always intrigued me - from every thing I've seen/read - real people, beautiful land...
I have Lee Pitts, the columnist with Tri-State Livestock News bookmarked...really like his stuff. (I'm a long time columnist back here - Nostalgia, mostly, about the 'old days/ways.)
I'm going to send your post to one of my sons - a long-hauler - saving up with goal that will fit your post to a T.
I thinking, myself, of going back up to the Ridge - where I grew up...never be bothered by developers or any other city type folk looking to make a buck and change the status quo. Heck, most folk wouldn't find it on a map...although my son wants to set me up in a small cabin on his land, wherever it ends up to be, with the self-sufficiancy - still with my hot water tap, computer and all - but able to get along just fine without, should the need arise.
I did put a hand pump on my well the summer after the ice storm - but it's innards need replacing now. Really need a more expensive one that can take the winters better - and another generator - had to sell mine a few years ago.
Thing is, nowadays, people are trapped into working for someone else long hours to pay other people to do things they could do for themselves if they didn't have to work such long hours. Talk about the ultimate Catch-22.
The prevalent lifestyle of Americans today is equivalent to the housing market - a bubble that will one day burst.
That's going to be a good time to be set up like you are.
what part of the country?
Just takes a little smarts and foresight
High Sierra mountain region of north eastern California.
That was the area I was going to go when I left California (I lived 5 years in Santa Barbara Cnty and 5 in Monterey Cnty) but just as I was about ready, my aunt back home here in Maine, called and needed help.
So back home t'Maine it was...
but I still research places in your neck of the woods. (Wouldn't move back to lower Calif. for love nor money)
In that case, if it really works, why don't they dump some of the snow over Tibet?
Time will tell.
It took me 14 years to work my way back out of the SoCal maelstrom, after moving there for the 'high pay', just in time for a recession. Just got going decently again, when I got Jimmy Cartered. What finally did it for us was going to work, not long after RR was elected, for the county hospital, and putting everything I could afford at first, and 100% of all raises into my personal retirement account, which was matched 50% by the employer, and deducted before taxes. Not an IRA, a type of deferred compensation, and payable on leaving. Once that was vested at the end of three years, we had enough to draw it out, and move to Oregon & a waiting, better job.
I'm a white-haired ole granny - gotta get my 'concealed' renewed, which means, with new rules, gotta take a safety course.
We're both products (American made, by American workers, and proud of it!) of the mid-late 1940s...the REAL 'baby-boom'. Both with our licenses; good for 5 years, and renewals no problem.
with the self-sufficiancy - still with my hot water tap, computer and all - but able to get along just fine without, should the need arise.
That's us. High speed Internet; phone & power, both co-ops; and good to go with or without. With is MUCH better. LOL
I did put a hand pump on my well the summer after the ice storm - but it's innards need replacing now.
On, literally, 'the back 40', there is a large, hand dug well, about 5' square & 20-25 feet deep. It still has an ancient LARGE hand pump on it, but it, too needs new innards. The neighbor who leases our pasturage hauls a generator & small submersible pump to when he has the stock in here, and pumps into a large stock tank, that he placed an old orchard heater in to keep the water thawed.
From the explanations I have seen, what has caused this unusually heavy snow in China, is an Arctic mass unusually moved down from the north and settled in at low altitudes. Then a warm and wet front moved up from the south and settled above the cold. This is similar to what happens in the US Midwest. Canadian Arctic air meets tropically wet systems. I think I read that the arctic air is usually stopped from entering China due to a northern mountain range. Do not know how much the Tibet plateau was involved. Here is a recent post about Chinas weather control capabilities.
Nothing beats real independence
I laughed at your "Jimmy Cartered" - although it wasn't funny at the time, was it!
I ran a day care and had a big old Vista Cruiser Wagon for traipsing the little ones off to places like Big or Little Sur, beaches, forests etc - and along comes his contrived gas shortage...and THEN he wants to fine people with BIG cars, talking about people should buy 'economy' cars.
I couldn't fit half the kids in an "economy car' for one thing, and my 'economy' wouldn't stretch to buy a new car.
And I remember him saying people would just have to tighten their belts and buy cheaper cuts of meats.
I had already gotten down to ox-tails instead of short ribs for soups, my meatloaf was more crackers than meat, etc...that's when I made plans to get outta dodge. My income had fallen behind the outgo...
I've never missed California for one minute -
The small animal auction kept us fed. Buy molting chickens from the egg farm, feed them scrounged feed until new feathers grew out, then put an egg in the cage with them at the auction.
Buy a pregnant doe or some bunnies; put some on the table; keep a good doe to breed, then resell the friers for enough to pay for it all.
Neighbors on one side had me build two pig pens in their back yard for both of us to raise a weaner pig each; neighbor on the other side had me build a steer pen in their back yard, and we went halves on a calf. Our back yard had the chicken coop, rabbit hutches, worm bed, and garden. It took all of us working together to survive.
Our car was a 63 Comet, that a tree had fallen on, so the previous owner had turned it into a 'pickup', and built a 'camper shell' on the back. It finally died. That left a moped; then finally, when I had to get from Riverside to San Bernardino daily for work, an old Honda 180 motorcycle...$75...that lasted long enough to get me few pay checks, and a Chevy Vega.
When we went to Oregon, we never looked back, either.
Great story.
reminds me of a wonderful book I have had for over 30 years (can that be!) Can't think of the title, actually - there are two books - both stories of people who left the city and went to northern Calif, (really should be a separate state!) and lived much the way you did = one was illustrated with beautiful photos, the other with line illustrations.
Real people doing real work, providing for themselves, building, makeing, growing, breeding...LIFE!
If a major disaster hit the country, it's the rural folk who would know how to survive. (And the meek...?)
The city folk always have it the hardest in disasters/wars. Choices.
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