Remote Work Can Thrive in Remote Places. https://vigilante.tv/

This weekly Snippets column is a collection of short items: responses to posted articles, practical self-sufficiency items, how-tos, lessons learned, tips and tricks, and news items — both from readers and from SurvivalBlog’s editors. Note that we may select some long e-mails for posting as separate letters.

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Remote Work Can Thrive in Remote Places. JWR’s Comment: It is interesting seeing that article posted at a website where the stock answers to nearly every question are either: “More government”, or “We should create a [taxpayer-funded] program to…”

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Over at WND: Tesla won’t start after driving in rain, owner speechless when stuck with $21,000 bill.

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Video from Mark Dice: We’re Being ManipuIated in Ways Most People Can’t Even Imagine! JWR’s Comments: Watch this, and you’ll understand one of the reasons why we discontinued the Reader Comments on posts at SurvivalBlog. (Yes, we DID detect comments being posted by sockpuppets.)

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Please pray for those who lost loved ones: Death Toll Rises, At Least 158 Vehicles Involved In Massive Pileup On I-55 In Louisiana.

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Reader L.E. offered this:

“I am an egg lover from way back, love them scrambled, fried, hard boiled. It occurred to me that I do not know of any fresh egg sellers in my immediate area and I wanted a way to have a small supply of egg product on hand in case the power went off for more than a few days or the stores were out of eggs (this actually happened yesterday, the Winco in my area was completely out of eggs ( I think teenagers were buying them to throw at houses for Halloween) except in cartons of 18 and being single I could not use 18 eggs before they went bad–unless, and I went online and discovered that yes you can actually freeze raw egg mixture. I made a test batch of 6 raw jumbo eggs, a third of a cup of water, a few shakes of salt and rosemary powder, a half spoonful of sugar, and stirred it up thoroughly but not til it was foamy, then carefully poured the mix into a gallon size seal a meal bag and sealed it and laid it flat to freeze, then tucked it down the side of my apartment size fridge freezer compartment.

Also, I know from personal experience that “really” hard boiled eggs (boiled at medium high covered with water, for 20 minutes then immediately cooled in cold water and popped in the fridge) if the shells are uncracked, will keep in the fridge for up to 2 weeks.

Also, if you are worried about not being able to access fresh citrus/vitamin C in an emergency situation, the little squeeze bottles of lemon juice and lime juice can be stored indefinitely, I use lime juice almost daily in my yoghurt-fresh strawberry-lime fruit smoothies.

And one last tip–I am sure some of your readers have already discovered this (it took me a while before the light bulb came on over my head) but you can re-use the Foodsaver and Seal a Meal plastic bags several times, once whatever you had in them is thawed and ready to use, just very carefully cut the bag open as close to the original seal as possible, in a straight line, then wash the bag in hot water and soap and tent them over a drinking glass and let them air dry. Then roll them up and store them (do not fold as this leads to cracking and tears in the plastic). This way I have been able to re-use each bag at least twice more until the bag was to short to obtain a good re-seal.”

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L.E. also had this comment:

Yes – That! I have been accumulating books for decades, along with “never or rarely seen on TV” DVDs. My books are as follows, hope they may help some of your readers (being female I have not included any books for boys except for the obvious adventure ones):

Cases of ruled composition notebooks, reams of high-grade copy paper, dozens of scratchpads, colored markers and highlighters, boxes of pencils and sharpeners. Crayons, simple Bic type inkpens. Watercolor paintbox sets. Large sheets of construction paper. Scotch Tape. Tacks and Stickpins, Modeling clay. Chalk and erasers. Counting blocks and beads. Sheets of cork for corkboards.

1950s and 1960s era (up to about 1962) High school textbooks for English Lit, English Grammar and Composition, American History, World Geography, Civics, Science, and Home Economics. The Home Ec ones are very rare but show us a gentler more civil society. Who knew place settings had 4 forks? Arithmetic books for third grade through 6th grade which would give the average student a good ability to add subtract multiply and divide, also to calculate percentages, fractions, and compound interest. A little calculus of the simpler kind to figure angles, planes etc. Rulers, yardsticks, abacus, protractors.

Any 1950s era Little Golden Books. For girls, the Little House on the Prairie series, and the Beany Malone series by Lenora Mattingly Weber. The four-book autobiography by Helen Forester. For boys, the standard Treasure Island, Jules Verne Books and the Hardy Boys series. Books on how to use knives for woodcarving. Books on how to make bows and arrows and spears. Books on simple tactics for stalking game, ambushing enemies, surviving in the woods.

All the Miss Silver mysteries by Patricia Wentworth. All the Moray Dalton mysteries. All the Agatha Christie and Dorothy L Sayers mysteries.

Classic books like Gone With The Wind, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, anything by Edna Ferber, Paul Gallico, O. Henry, etc.

All the Reminisce and Good Old Days hardbacked picture books on specialty subjects like Christmas, Depression Era Cooking, Fun on the Farm, School Days etc. They have lots of pictures and first person stories.

Books on how to clean and cook small game and deer. Books on how to make and use vinegar and how to can and bottle jams jellies and pickled fermented foods.

Books on manners and etiquette.

Books on baby and child care. Books on how to assist pregnant women and those in labor.

Bibles and Bible story books.

Dictionaries and Thesauruses

Gardening books on when to plant and how to read weather signs. Books on how to harvest and store vegetables and grains. Books on how to smoke meats for storage when there is no refrigeration.

Simple to understand books on home construction (without electrical or plumbing).

Books on how to care for and train horses.”

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SaraSue sent us this snippet:

“It’s been a very busy week. Two of my milk cows are spoken for but needed to be bred, and confirmed bred, before leaving. I found a new A.I. tech (wonderful person who manages a local dairy). He came over and serviced both cows. I’m sure we had the timing right on one of them, but may be off a day on the other. In 21 days I’ll know who is bred and who isn’t. I’m hoping to have them sold and off to their new homes before winter. This will give me a milking break, and reduce feed costs, until my other cows calve in the Spring.

I’ve started calling my two piglets “hellions”. I installed more electric fencing this week, but they found a way around it and are still getting loose. They took off down the long driveway when the main gate was left open and went off down the road. A bucket of grain and some coaxing got them back to the back pasture where they belong. However, before that, they took the opportunity to get into the garage where I store buckets of clabber (fermented milk that turns into cheese for feeding pigs with excess milk). They dumped out the buckets all over the garage and made a huge mess while I was out tending to cows. That was an enormous job to clean up with a power washer, but it is done. I am in process of setting up a farrowing barn for my sows who will birth next month. I don’t want the boar to impregnate my feeder pigs before they reach butcher age in the Spring, so am setting up a separate electrified fenced in area for them. I need 3 separate areas for periods of time: the feeder pigs, the sows, and the boar and barrow. I’m learning to raise pigs, so lots of mistakes!

I sold half my meat bird chicks to lessen the load, and moved the remaining meat bird chicks out of the brooders and into a locked coop in the main chicken run. Only a clever predator will be able to get to them. I’m hopeful I can get these birds to butcher weight in about 6 weeks. My next step is installing electric fencing around the main chicken run area so when I let the meat bird chicks out to forage, they will be protected.

I decided to go with raised garden beds for next year’s garden and have “a plan”. And you know, the best laid plans of mice and men… I ordered a number of powder coated steel raised beds and they all arrived this past week. They are huge. I have learned that plowing the garden area in the Spring only brings up every native seed in the county, which quickly overgrows the area. Instead, I’m not going to plow, but skim the entire garden (via skid steer), lay down ground covering, have a dump truck load or two of wood chips dumped on top to hold down the ground cover, in hopes of killing every wild seed over winter. The garden beds are tall, so I will fill them halfway with rotted wood from an old wood pile, then fresh dirt and compost for the remaining half-hugelkultur style. The reason for the tall beds is that there are so many wild rabbits here. Last spring, after babying my sweet potato slips for months, I planted several rows, only to wake up and find that the rabbits ate all the tops off. The large garden is already fenced to deter the deer, and the ground cover will deter voles, but I may put hardware cloth in the bottoms just to ensure they can’t get in.

And I guess you could call it “panic buying”, but I decided to upgrade my personal defense strategy. Scaring off coyotes and other wild critters is completely different than being able to drop intruding two-legged creatures quickly. I consulted my law enforcement and military family members on my purchases. I will need to train with the new equipment. I also upgraded my EDC ability with a better shoulder holster so I can carry while working on the farm and not worry about something getting knocked off of me. I am most vulnerable when I am out working on the farm, although my German Shepherds are with me constantly day and night. Lots more work to do, which keeps my mind off the world’s insanity. I am hoping to rest over the holidays, but it’s not looking likely. I remind myself that this is what growing food looks like. I could just dispense with the farm and go to a grocery store, eh? I believe this farm was a gift from the Lord and I believe it will feed my large family in hard times. So, here I am. I do so enjoy the learning!”

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Greg wrote this update:

“LBRY the video platform still exists in the form of https://odysee.com/ Your LBRY tokens are still good there. But LBRY the company is gone.

Some folks might be interested in https://vigilante.tv/ Many of the channels that are banned on YouTube are found there.”