Jim’s Quote of the Day:

“But thou shalt say unto them, This is a nation that obeyeth not the voice of the LORD their God, nor receiveth correction: from their mouth.” – Jeremiah 7:28 (KJV)

Note from JWR:

Today I’m catching up on posting some of the torrent of recent e-mails in response to some recent posts.

Six Letters Re: Hurricane Irene Lessons Learned

Dear Mr. Rawles:
We’ve been without power for 3-1/2 days and Internet even longer, so I’m late in writing, but I wanted to say that the grace of God and deep preps won the day, here as hurricane Irene blew through.

When the power went out, we went to our generator, so we had water for ourselves and less prepared neighbors.  Those votive lights, the ones in the tall glass containers that often have saints’ picture on them were perfect for our windowless bathrooms, and they’re fairly cheap.  They burned safely almost the whole time and there’s still a day left, I’d say, in each one.  That was a SurvivalBlog idea I picked up on – thanks.

When our old stove died, I went through a lot of hassle to get one with pilot lights instead of those newfangled glow plugs.  Few companies make them – mine was by ‘Summit’.  We had to do part of the installation ourselves because the gas guys weren’t used to dealing with such old-fashioned stoves, although one old-timer did give us some good hints so we were able to set the flames.  But…this mean that as long as we had propane we could cook anything, bake whatever we wanted.  The Summit stove is very efficient (as is our generator) so it needs no preheat time for the oven.   It also has no timers, lights, etc., which is okay by me.  I have the old-fashioned wind up timer and find I don’t really need an oven light now that I’m used to not having one.

We froze a lot of water ahead and also got some bagged ice.  Running the generator 4 – 6 hours a day kept the freezer at 12F or less during the night, covered with quilts. 

It was eerie how the whole thing played out exactly according to the disaster scenarios.  Not only were we isolated – a tree blocked one road and floods another, but when people did get out, they found they had to drive a long way to find stores with power (they were lucky there were any).  In town there was no gas, of course, because no power, and cash only, because no computers.  The local banks were closed, of course, and grocery stores in all directions.  Some people were miffed that the power wasn’t restored instantly and didn’t seem to understand that there are no guarantees.  Also, the local power companies admitted on the radio that they’ve cut back on crews, partly because of government regulations, trying to ease their bottom lines.  There were also people who were just plain in denial there was going to be a hurricane.  It read just like a novel.

While we didn’t have any security issues, we were armed, having gotten the permits and the weapons and spent range time when the sun shone.  The whole time we were grateful it was ‘only’ a hurricane and not an EMP or nuclear attack, or some other systemic meltdown.  Having read the survival literature, we knew this was just a bump, a chance to test our preps.

Thanks so much for your site, and for those who write in. – An old farmer in Connecticut

Dear James, 
Hurricane Irene taught me a valuable lesson.   At 4 a.m. on Sunday morning, the alarm on my septic tank went off.  The storm was raging outside and the rainwater had  filled the septic tank.   I went down to the basement to check things out.   The laundry tub has a pump that sends the water up to the soil pipe.  Water was running down to the pump from the overfull septic tank and soil pipe, and the pump would dutifully pump it back up to the soil pipe.  Up, back down, up, back down.   I realized that if the tank got any fuller, the pump would run continuously.   If the electricity went down and the pump stopped working, the waste would have started backing up into the house.   I prayed that the situation would not worsen.   Eventually the rain tapered off, the tank drained off some,  and at 8 am the alarm went off.
 
Up until now, I figured I needed backup power for the well pump and lighting.   It never crossed my mind that the laundry tub pump was a weak point in my preps. I am looking at ways to solve this problem.   I thank the Lord that we did not have a hurricane and a power outage. – L.C. in Pennsylvania

 

Dear Rawles Family,
I started reading your blog about six years ago (shortly after the birth of my first child, motherhood will do that to you) and am grateful everyday because you confirmed the mindset my Grandma gave me and helped me move forward. I hope this gives some marriages some hope.

Last Tuesday I was shopping with my three children. I got out of our vehicle, and noticed people pouring out of the store. I received a text message from my husband to call him immediately and was unable to. (Gee, those handheld radios I keep trying to get him to buy would have come in handy). People were running around saying this was another 9-11. I asked what was going on and was told “earthquake“. I have actually lived in places where earthquakes were a common occurrence so the hysteria was a bit funny, but it was dangerous because people were freaking. Kind of like when people down south can’t drive when it flurries. Accidents that should never happen do happen. I finally made contact with my husband and was able to assure him that not only were we fine, but if we were unable to make it home I had supplies with me.

This is important because he hated that I am a prepper. He took stuff out of the car that I put in. He removed supplies when I am not looking from bags I have packed and has gotten into heated arguments with me when I try to get him to buy one extra can of meat at the store. He will not, under any circumstances allow me to store water. He would rather sock money away, I would rather sock supplies away. For the first time, he was glad I was a prepper. I warned him that if he took anything out of our vehicle without telling me and we needed it on the way home that I was going to kill him. We were fine.

Less then two days later we were told the Mother of all storms was headed directly for us. This is the first time my husband has taken a storm seriously. He ran around clearing the yard of all items and what stopped him cold was when I calmly asked him what he planned to do about the whole week long, at least, power outage. He looked worried for the first time. See, we have wells powered by electricity. My pleas for a generator and solar power were ignored. My attempts for storing water were mocked and forbidden. So I just calmly reminded him of that. He freaked out.

Now I knew I had a Berkey (my Christmas gift one year) and a swimming pool. And that equaled drinking water. I had several large bathtubs and that equaled flushing and washing water. I knew that I had stashed oil lamps (which had precipitated a massive verbal fight in Wal-Mart over me buying “clutter”) and two lanterns. I knew I had three battery powered radios  and the batteries to run them. But he didn’t. He rushed out to stores and found…nothing. I let him. I wanted him to see that reality and feel that for once. Then when he got home I calmly took him through my plans. He was then called into work with only an hour to respond.

While he was upstairs dressing to spend an untold period of time away from us while during a massive storm (something he has told me I do not need to prep for–because it would never happen), I calmly pulled together a BOB kit for him. See I had already packed one for him, several times, and he removed them from his vehicle and warned me to never put them in his car again. So I waited for him to get dressed and was able to run down a list in my head and pull from various sources (you see my husband will not prep for an emergency, but he will “prep” for spontaneous hospitality…so we had junk food and drinks, extra bedding and towels, first aid kit et cetera for guests. There are ways to work with reluctant spouses 🙂 and had his car packed in less then the 15 minutes it took for him to get dressed. He was very worried and begging me to prep away. I was praying, calm and had a plan.

I prepped as fast as I could for the storm. I made sleeping quarters in the basement. Put the children to bed after full baths, fully clothed. I was putting batteries in my radio when the power went down and the storm hit. Yes, I could have been really mad because I should have had everything in place if I didn’t have to prep in secret but I have to spread my supplies around so I don’t look like I am doing “that stupid prepping again”, but I had the stuff.

I had ten minutes before tornado warnings started blaring on the radio. I calmly woke the kids up, got them to the basement with the dogs and barricaded them down there while I ran around to all my stashes getting supplies we would need to survive the aftermath. I made it back down with one minute to spare and got us in the closet. Thank God that I had “prepped” for a birthday party with glow in the dark jewlery–which is a great way to lighten the mood for small children locked in a closet during tornados.

My formerly anti-prepper husband then spent the whole time trying to reach us through the cell phone. See he has always refused to install the land line I wanted for emergencies. So we were at the mercy of the cell phones, which didn’t work well or lost power quickly because they are “smart” phones”. He came home to us safe, but the power down for “one week to three weeks” according to the power company.

However, I had talked him into keeping extra gas on hand for all his power tools. He bartered that (because there was no gas to be found) and one of my radios and batteries to hook up to a generator. So we didn’t lose all the food. But we came close.

Needless to say, my husband just purchased our first generator, is calling about a land line and hasn’t said a word about the water bottles I have begun storing since the power came back up.

The most profound thing that happened is that it shook him from his “it will never happen” sleep. Thank God, and not a moment too soon. So for any of you spouses out there dealing with this. Pray and don’t stop. God is much better at waking people up and changing hearts then we are, And being willing to take the heat and prep within the parameters still works. Thanks for all the work you do Mr. Rawles and Family. – Mrs. L.B.

 

Dear JWR:
My husband and I read SurvivalBlog  regularly and want to share with other readers a way to keep insulin cool during periods without electricity. My husband has been a Type I diabetic for 43 years (44 this coming Thanksgiving) so I am always reading magazines, etc. about diabetes. A couple of years ago I came across an article about Frio insulin cooling wallets. I immediately ordered one but we had not used it until Hurricane Irene came through eastern North Carolina last weekend.

Thankfully our power was restored after 25 hours, but many people in other parts of the region may be without power for up to a week. If this had been the case, my husband’s life-saving insulin would have been available without our worrying about it being denatured by high temperatures.

The Frio wallet contains crystals activated by immersion in cold water and maintains its low temperature (77-to-79 degrees Fahrenheit) for a minimum of 45 hours through the evaporation of the water. After 45 hours, the wallet can be reactivated by simply immersing in  more cold water! The wallet also works in cold temperatures to keep insulin from being frozen.

The Frio wallets come in several sizes from the mini, which holds one vial of insulin, to the extra large that can hold eight vials of insulin. The wallets can be bought directly from the manufacturer. Or, depending on size of the wallet and the vendor, often less expensively through Amazon.com. – Brenda W.

James;
We live in Southern Vermont and have weathered Tropical Storm Irene rather well.  Our preparations included filling up our vehicles with gasoline, making one last run to the grocery store, bracing the chicken coop, and clearing up all the recent construction bits and bobs.  We just completed replacing our steel roof and we had put in a  new deck so there were a lot of small items that needed to be either thrown on the burn pile or put away for use later.  Outdoor furniture was placed in the barn, in the house, or tied down.
 
The recently completed chicken coop was certainly a target for high winds.  It would need bracing it to prevent the coop from being tipped over during the expected high winds.  I drove 2 four foot pieces (2x4s) into the ground on the downhill side of the coop.   The bottom of those 2×4 stakes were then attached to the top of the chicken coop with two 2x4s.  This effectively increases the width of the chicken coop and any strong breeze to either side of the chicken coop would have to work against those braces. 

Two eye hooks that were screwed into the top of the chicken coop on the other side of the braces.  A piece of polypropylene rope was tied off using those two eye hooks to a conveniently located apple tree and tightened down hard.  This created tension from the tree, through the coop framing, to the ground stakes.   My wife always complained about how I loved to tie my knots, but they certainly came in handy in securing our chicken’s home.
 
We tested the generator and manual transfer switch.  We expected heavy rains and some flooding so any elements located in the barn that would be damaged by flooding were placed up on wooden skids.  The pond is drained by two four-inch pieces of PVC.  Their grates were cleaned and replaced.  All fruit and veggies were harvested as much as possible from the garden and the hoop house.
 
The hoop house (green house) was tied down internally by using the remnants to the polypro rope to two five gallon buckets loaded with stone.  Two cinder blocks This anchored the hoop house on each end, yet allowed a little flexibility depending on the amount of wind being delivered by Irene.
 
These are all the preparations that were in addition to the regular activities and items that we had already performed as a normal course of ‘just being prepared.’  Gasoline and propane stored and ready to go; water stored in the basement with a gravity-fed water source into the house; food frozen, food canned, food in the fridge; backup generator filled and ready to rock; BOBs loaded and ready to run if necessary; full med kits filled out for ‘most any emergency.’ 
 
Everything was looking just fine for Irene’s visit.
 
We watched Hurricane Irene as she tracked her way through New Jersey and into New York City.  Her forecasted track did not change very much at all.  As she progressed up through New England we watched as she come across Connecticut dropping in severity to a tropical storm, and dropping significant amounts of rain.  As it approached our home, the rain starting to come down filling the storm drains on our property and on the road at the end of the driveway.  Our early estimate was that the rain fall was an inch per hour.  Two hours later we were experiencing 2 inches an hour.  That is when things started to get interesting.
 
The property was saturated.  The storm drains over flowed.  Our pond over flowed.  The drainage along the road started to over flow and began to cover our driveway.   And our basement started to flood.  My wife announced that we had two inches in the basement.  I had expected some seepage into the basement, but no more than two inches.  There was a monsoon occurring in New England and it wasn’t likely to stop anytime soon. 
 
There was a drain just to the uphill side on the road that was supposed to direct the water into a drainage pipe.  The DOT team had performed some pre-emptive grass cutting a week ago.  I had expected that the drain may end up getting clogged and prepared for it.  I grabbed my rake, hat and slicker and headed out to the road to address the problem.  I was in luck.  The grate was obviously clogged, but the water had risen significantly to over three foot in depth.  I had to use the rake handle as a walking stick to get down closer to the grate with unforgiving, slick footing.  I wished I had a safety line on and my wife on the other end.  If I slipped, the suction of the rushing water could have pinned me underwater.  As soon as I felt the grate under the rake handle I stopped, reversing the rake, I dragged the business end of the rake across the grate removing the long grass, sticks, and twigs that had created a mat of vegetation blocking the flow of water.   It didn’t take much to clear that grate; maybe four or five passes with the rake.  I then reversed my way out of that stream to the road surface.
 
To make sure that both ends of the pipe were clear, I also walked the 100 yards to the other end of the drainage pipe and ensured that was flowing clear and that there were no obstructions.
 
Once that was taken care of I headed up to our pond.  The volume of water off the mountain had created a small stream that was flowing from the back of my property, through the pumpkin patch into the pond.  The two four-inch drainage pipes from the pond were partially clogged by the grass carried down by the stream.  Water was flowing over the earthen dam and if left unchecked would have eroded and cause the pond to empty down into the barn below and end up in the road.  Again, using the rack handle I walked gingerly into the pond checking my footing along the way.  We had previously placed quarter-inch square rabbit wire around the ends of the 4-inch pipes in order to prevent the grass and leaves from clogging the pond drains.  However, with the large volume of water flowing into the pond, those drains were now insufficient to prevent the pond over flow.  I had to remove those wire filters that were partially clogged to ensure that the water would flow through the drains and not over the earthen top of the pond.  Once that was accomplished, I figured I would allow nature take its course at the pond.  The pond water was merrily flowing into and out of the barn taking with it all manner of dirt, sawdust and manure.  From the pond and barn I had to return to the house and examine the basement.
 
The water had continued to rise in the basement.  It was where our long term food supplies were stored both in five gallon buckets and on shelves canned and prepped for future use.  We couldn’t allow the water to rise much higher or it would ruin the freezer, the furnace, or the hot water heater.  My wife started to panic with that.  She grabbed a bucket and started to bail, carrying the water out the rear access door.  I rigged a small pump, a real small pump, to a garden hose and let that do some the work.   I assumed that with a small pump plus the drain in the floor working we could hold our own and not need to use a five gallon bucket. 
 
Big mistake! The floor drain, which worked so well taking the output from my dehumidifier, was clogged!  The water continued to rise.  We were now at five inches.  In a moment of inspiration, I decided to use the house pump.  I didn’t even need to rewire it, but I did have to disconnect the pump from the water from our spring.  I turned off the pump circuit breaker for safety sake.  After all, I was up to my ankles in water and therefore well grounded!  Closing a few valves stopped the spring water entering the house and also closed off the pump output from the house plumbing.  The 1 ½ inch hard plastic hose was quickly disconnected and redirected into the high water.   I turned on the pump at the circuit breaker and relaxed.  Away the pump ran, starting to drain the water out through a suitable garden hose and out the onto the backyard grass. 
 
All was well in the world.  Once again I had proved myself to the wife in coming up with a brilliant solution to a major issue.  Definitely a MacGyver moment.  I ruled!  Then the power failed.  I was crushed.  Needless to say, I was exhausted and soaking wet from the rain.  Having the little swim in the pond and the drainage ditch didn’t help.  Those are my excuses and I am sticking to them.
 
So I figured that I need to get more output from the small pump… Obviously!  I decided to add a garden hose T-connector to the small garden hose to increase the volume.  Obviously not thinking straight really.  The small pump had a limited volume.  You cannot get more water out of a small pump by having two, three or four garden hoses.  If it can pump 20 gallons per minute out of a garden hose, two garden hoses do not get you 40 gallons per minute!  It was obvious that this was not working and my patient wife, who was still bailing was under impressed with my efforts so far. 
 
I decided to run to the hardware store and buy another pump!  A great idea, but so flawed.  By this time we had been under the influence of Irene for over 16 hours with the last four hours of significant rainfall.  Needless to say, off I went into the 4×4 pickup and down the road heading to Brattleboro.  I believe that all your readers by now are intimately familiar with Brattleboro courtesy of the national news services.  I made it down two miles or so when I ran into massive road wash that made the road impassable.  Not to worry, off to the other town in Southern Vermont.  Wilmington!  Well I never made it to Wilmington either.  Water had washed out the road.   Two small trees, approx 80 foot in length, had collapsed across the road at approximately the same location as the same stream had washed away the roots.  In short, I wasn’t going to make it into Wilmington.  Dover was out of the question as well as the bridges on those roads were simply gone.
 
In record time, I returned home completely deflated.  My wife was exhausted upon my arrival.  I told her to stop for a break and I briefed her on the lack of a second pump.  ‘Why don’t you turn on the generator and plug in the pump?’   Now you know why I married her…  I realized that I had to rewire the pump, I needed a plug, which I didn’t have.  But I did have plenty of extension cords…  So the plan was set and I fired up the generator, which I should have done an hour ago.  I ran out to the barn where I had a smaller appliance grade extension cord only 10 foot in length.   Cut in half I could use the male plug to wire in and replace the 12 gauge wire running into the pump. 
 
You see, we had a gravity fed water supply to the house.  We added the pump to provide a stronger water pressure in the house (45 psi vs 17 psi from gravity) as the pump wasn’t required for TEOTWAWKI I hadn’t wired it into the transfer switch to the generator.  So the immediate and safest solution was to wire it to this male plug end of the extension cord and then plug it into a ‘hot’ plug in the basement.  Where the water was…  Where I was standing.
 
So the re-wiring was straight forward.  Even running the extension cord was simple, when  I heard my wife say, ‘You don’t mind if I leave the basement when you plug that in do you?  Just give me a head’s up before you do something stupid!’
 
So, the two of us left the basement and cheated death from Irene.  We plugged the cord into a suitable plug located in the kitchen.  The pump began to whirr, spin and drain the basement.
 
Currently we are still isolated in the interior of Vermont.  The road crews started work on sorting out some of the roads that may provide drive routes to towns with supplied grocery stores.  Well-built bridges will be required to carry commercial loads of food and supplies.  I understand Wilmington has issues with sewage, septic, water, food, and structural issues.  Vermont highways and bridges are washed out or down all over the place.  But we do have shelter, water, food, electricity, phone, and even an Internet connection.  In about a week there may be some convoluted solutions to get to a local grocery.
 
Lessons learned? Plenty!  Once I catch a breath, I am going to wire that pump into the transfer switch and I am going to buy another pump.  Maybe something like a large capacity marine pump that will run on DC.  I will also plumb that existing pump up with a garden hose fitting as an option to simplify using the house pump in case of an emergency of this nature. 
 
“One hundred year storms” don’t know how to read a calendar.  Another Hurricane just like Irene (or worse) could arrive next month or next year.
 
Stay safe from Southern Vermont – J.A.

James:
In the wake of hurricane Irene, many of your faithful readers are probably re-assessing their emergency preps.  As I will explain, it would be prudent to do so immediately.  I live in central Florida and experienced hurricane conditions three times in a period of six weeks during 2004 (Charlie, Frances and Jeane).  During that time, I observed an interesting reaction to the storms.  For the first storm, most people were under prepared, unaware of the potential difficulties, and took minimal precautions at the last minute. 

The second storm was an entirely different matter.  As soon as the forecast threatened the area, people were out in droves filling gas tanks and cans, buying supplies, and buying out storm prep items from store shelves.  People who were not prepared before the storm forecast was announced ended up being inconvenienced, or out of luck, if they needed to go out and get anything.  This is an important point for your readers in the areas affected by Irene: final preparations will probably be more difficult if another storm is forecast to hit your area.  If you need to tweak your hurricane preps, do it now before another storm comes along.  Observe how public officials have reacted to Irene with an early robust response in light of what happened with Hurricane Katrina.  The general public will do the same for the next storm, even if it is not for another year or two. 

Finally, when the third storm came, most people had their preps ready from the previous storms and everyone knew the drill.  It has been several years since the last storm hit, so I would not be surprised if the cycle repeated.  It is hard to appreciate the intensity of a hurricane if you haven’t experienced one, but the learning curve is steep.  I can see one potential benefit of hurricane Irene:  It will probably motivate many people to become better prepared and learn form great resources like your SurvivalBlog.  – John in Florida

Six Letters Re: Experiences of a Novice Gardener

Dear Editor:
J.B.’s article his was very interesting to read and it sounded a lot like what we went through 4 years ago when my wife and I started gardening.  Many people are still stuck in that “growing in the ground in rows” mentality.  If you do not have a large amount of land (an acre or more) then you should stick to container gardening.  Our second year of gardening we started with Earthboxes and we had a very successful harvest that year and every year thereafter.  The concept is very simple to where you can even manufacture your own (see Global Buckets).  If you do not like watering plants daily then you may even look into the Autopot system that has a valve that will open and close when the plant needs water from the reservoir.  The other option available is called Square Foot Gardening. (See the book All New Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew.)

I wouldn’t give up on gardening and anyone can do it with container gardening.  Planting in rows should be left to those who have large plots of land and the time and energy to do it.  The other thing we have learned is to grow your plants from seeds.  The seedlings from stores tend to be too old for the plants to reach their full potential, but you may want to use seedlings for the first year or two to get used to the process.  I hope this will help you and others in your gardening experience. – KJP

 

James Wesley:
I’m sure you’ll get more than a few e-mails on this, but I just had to make some comments on J.B.’s experiences as a Novice Gardener:
1)        Don’t get discouraged! It gets easier the more experience you gain.
2)        Search for “soil blocks” for starting your seeds. Easiest, most cost effective method.
3)        Light: is everything for seedlings. Make sure you use a full spectrum fluorescent lamp no more than 1 inch away from the plants. Some may even touch the lamps.
4)        There’s not much you can do about amending clay soil besides removing it and bringing in clean, loamy topsoil. Consider raised beds. Deep soil is important to plant resilience. In a perfect world there should be nothing by loam to a depth of at least 3 feet. Soil, soil, soil – remember: You are not growing plants. You are growing soil – the plants are a side effect letting you know you’re growing good soil.
5)        Plant spacing is the most critical element of a successful garden. I suggest the book “Gardening When It Counts” by Steve Solomon. Plant spacing impacts everything: water requirements, light requirements, disease/insect resistance, yield. In theory (and I’ve come close) with proper spacing you should never have to water your garden. I have a section of my garden designated as the “No Water” section. It is planted per Solomon’s “Extensive” spacing guidelines. I’ve successfully grown squash, pumpkins, melons, potatoes, and corn with absolutely no watering besides that provided by Mother Nature for an entire season. YMMV depending on your climate.
6)        Proper fertilization is important. There can be “too much of a good thing”. Over-fertilization leads to unnatural, “steroid-induced” growth that is highly susceptible to disease and insects.
7)        Heirloom corn is not going to look “supermarket perfect”. Also, what you probably experienced was incomplete pollination. Every strand of silk equals a corn kernel, and every silk requires a single grain of pollen. Corn is planted in huge fields because it is pollinated by the wind. The center of the field is usually well-pollinated, but the edges of the field are not, and are usually discarded by growers. Small, home corn patches are usually pollinated by hand if you have less than 50 plants. Search for “hand pollinating corn”.
8)        Staying ahead of weeds is important, and the proper tools make the job easier. I recommend a good stirrup hoe and a collinear (“coleman”) hoe. Buy the best quality you can afford. I weed once a week. Period. I rarely pull anything by hand unless it’s too close to the plant for me to carefully hoe.
9)        Cracked tomatoes are a sign of *too much* water. Tomato plants will wilt both when they have too much and too little water. Dig down 6” next to a tomato plant and gather a handful of soil. Squeeze it into a clump hard with your fist. If water squeezes out between your fingers: too much water. If it doesn’t hold together: too little water. If it holds together, then busts apart when you press it with your thumb: perfect. The key is 6” down – the top few inches of soil will look like a desert, which is a popular conundrum for new gardeners. But under that dry soil is where all the moisture is and that’s what matters to deep-rooted plants. The only place your garden shouldn’t look like a desert is anywhere you have shallow rooted produce like lettuce. YMMV because of clay content.
10)    Blueberries must establish a root system and might not produce the first year or two. They also require good pollination from neighboring plants. If they haven’t established themselves, they may bloom at different times, thus little or no pollination, and thus, no berries.
11)    If you think a garden is hard (it’s not), steel yourself if you want to plant fruit trees.
 
I have to respectfully disagree: With experience, patience, knowledge, and the right tools, growing food is neither hard, sweaty, nor toilsome. It should be pleasing, and dare-I-say, spiritual. Eventually, over time, it will also be cost effective. Take this winter to get yourself on the right track next year by reading these key references:

Gardening When It Counts: Growing Food in Hard Times, Steve Solomon
The Vegetable Gardener’s Bible, Ed Smith
All books by Carol Deppe, especially The Resilient Gardener
All books by Eliot Coleman, such as The New Organic Grower and The Winter Harvest Handbook
Seed to Seed, Suzanne Ashworth (gives perspective on how plants grow)

Regards, – E. Koala Tea

 

Hey–
I just wanted to thank you for J.B.’s novice gardener post. I laughed and laughed! Okay– I know I shouldn’t have, but veggie gardening is hard sometimes, even for a non-novice gardener. 

I hope JB tries again next year. There is nothing quite as satisfying as never having to buy tomatoes because you’ve put up enough of your own to last a full year. But you don’t get to that state over night. 

Regarding some of JB’s specific issues… . 

This fall rake up your leaves and if you have a blower/leaf sucker-upper suck them up and then spread them on your garden plot. Rake or till them in if you can along with some lime. Adding organic matter this fall will loosen up the clay. Your soil will be much easier to work with next spring. I have Mississippi clay. I get it.

The “mutated” corn had common smut, a fungal disease that persists in the soil. If you plant corn again next year, don’t plant it in the same place. It’s a good idea to rotate crops around the garden from year to year. (By the way, I’ve read that Mexicans consider the fungus a delicacy. Yuck.) The squash had powdery mildew, and you’re right– better air circulation around the plants is the most effective way to keep it at bay. But in my experience, it will happen no matter what you do. 

No need to start anything except tomatoes, peppers, eggplant inside. Your squash, corn, cukes, melons, etc. seed can be sown directly in the garden about two weeks after the last frost date. Off the top of my head I’d say that would be about May 15th or so in Kentucky. But you can check on that at the Kentucky Ag Extension web site.

Good luck, J.B.! And thanks again for the post. – Marica

 

Jim:
I also started my first garden this year, and had a few newbie mistakes. After tilling about 1,500 sq. ft of clay soiled lawn, my first mistake was not amending the soil generously with manure and/or compost. The soil was either waterlogged (in the spring) or bone dry (in late summer). All of my plants grew stunted (one foot tall tobacco plants, beets with four small leaves, beans producing 2 pods a plant) from lack of fertilizing. What I did manage to get was due to fertilizing with urine, and allowing a short layer of bermuda grass to grow to keep in moisture. I started all the plants from seed, even the tomatoes(plant in bottom of container, add soil around stem as it grows), which netted savings and experience. The rabbits ate all of my lettuce, swiss chard, and spinach. I would make sure the fence is covered with soil/rocks on the bottom next year to keep them out. The bugs didn’t bother my plants too much (I did not use any pesticide or herbicide), though I would plant more flowers in the future to attract predators. Lastly I am practicing saving seed from all survivors to build my own seed vault. My sense of security WTSHTF revolves around having enough to eat, and even though this year or probably next I won’t reap bountiful harvest, I hope to when it really counts..

As a side note, plants I grew: Pink beans, Snap peas, Pole beans, Roma tomatoes, Hot peppers, Spanish onions, garlic, Bibb lettuce, spinach, swiss chard, parsnips, carrots, beets, cucumbers, winter squash, pumpkins, Mammoth sunflowers, sorghum, flax, sesame, grain amaranth, pearl millet. Some plants failed to set fruit/seed, so next year will have to retry. – J.M.

 

James:
Here is my message for J.B:
s
Howdy and welcome to the garden world.

So your first year didn’t do well as your soil sucks. That’s okay, most soil in America, especially in housing subdivisions, suck. My land used to be a grass farm. Highly fertilized monoculture at it’s worst. My first garden was pretty much like yours. One big plot with poor yields. I had to add lots of amendments to raise the soil quality. My garden is now three times as large and mostly raised beds that I can walk around and tend. This year I had my best yields ever! The point is that it didn’t happen overnight. Keep it up, plan, and learn more. Read Better Homes and Gardens books. Buy the Mother Earth books and get their all issues CD-ROMs. Get the Square Foot Gardening book. Plan to do a lot of reading over the winter.

Look carefully at the big box store plants. Many are not suited for your area. I too have blue berry bushes. As this was their first year I didn’t expect many berries. I was correct. They need to grow some first. Lowe’s and home depot had several varieties. Only two varieties were compatible with my area! My citrus trees will need a couple more years of growing before I expect good yields. Lots of folks bought raspberries. They don’t grow here at all! My blackberries, of a suitable variety did great, now in their second year. Make sure that you used two different varieties of blueberries.

Your just starting on this road. Expect bumps along this road. As I said my crop was great this year. That was my first crop of the season. Here in southeast Texas we have a long growing season. My second garden of the year is a disaster. Record 100 degree + days have been a killer. If we get the promised rain soon I will start my third crop. It takes planning, experience, some luck, and the will to keep going.

This is a skill that will be with you for life. If it all goes to heck in a hand basket you will have the ability to grow your own food to survive. If it doesn’t you will have a great hobby and you will be bringing in extra produce to the envy of your friends. Maybe you will inspire them to get healthier too with the garden bug. I hate exercise machines and lifting weights. If you want me to run you better have a gun. I’ll work outside in the garden all day. Bring it on! – Sasquatch

 

Mr. Rawles,
I have a few suggestions for J.B. regarding his first attempt at growing a garden. I strongly suggest that rather than staking his tomatoes, he should cage them. If he uses a cage that stands 4-5 feet above the ground, his tomatoes will stay up off the ground. It is a good idea to support the cages with wooden stakes or twine tied to some tent stakes at 3 or 4 points around the cage (like the ropes around the edge of a circus tent). Otherwise, a top-heavy tomato plant or a strong thunderstorm can knock the whole thing over, which is very bad for the plant.

Those “flat little bugs” he mentioned are probably squash bugs. I have learned the hard way that those things will kill a squash plant in a matter of a few days. They will also attack other cucurbits, such as cantaloupe. They are tough to control, and you must be aggressive in finding and eliminating them if you want to get any squash before the bugs kill the plants.

The tall, lanky seedlings are caused by insufficient light. The young plants are trying desperately to reach the light because they need more, so they grow as tall as they can as fast as they can. J.B. needs more light, probably both in terms of intensity and area. A bright point source of light will still cause the plants to grow toward it. It is best to surround the seedlings with light from all directions. The lighting area should be larger than the area containing the seed trays.

One more bit of advice regarding watering: try as much as possible to avoid watering the leaves of plants, especially tomatoes. Water the ground, not the plant. This will reduce the likelihood of problems with fungus, to which tomatoes are particularly susceptible. Soaker hoses are an excellent way to accomplish this with the added bonus that you do not have to stand outside and get eaten alive by mosquitoes while you water. Just hook up the hose, turn it on, go back inside, and come back out in an hour or two to turn it off.

I hope J.B. tries his hand at gardening again next year. Once he learns the tricks and gains some experience, he will get better at it. It will always be hard work, but it is very rewarding. – N.B. in Indiana

 

Mr. J.B.:
Okay, you have had a rough first year.   If at First You Don’t Succeed…., Practice Makes Perfect,     A Journey of a Thousand Li Begins With a Single Step ,   Experience is the Greatest Teacher.
Now that we are done with the platitudes, let’s look at what you learned.  First,  you need to get a few books.   My first suggestion is Five Acres and Independence: A Handbook for Small Farm Management,by Maurice G. Kains.   This will give you a lot of knowledge in between two covers.   You will find yourself reading it again and again.  Order it right now!

Right now you should begin making plans for next year, based on what you learned this year! Get the seeds you want, and the planting pots,  tools, and everything else you think you will need.  Stakes.  Twine.  Right now, with the summer ending, this stuff is all on sale.   Then get to work.

Let us start with the soil.   You say you have Kentucky clay.   Fine.  What you need is Sand.  That’s right, sand.   Clay is a dense soil of tiny particles, packed together.   Sand will increase the average size of the particles, and give you better drainage.   Sit down right now, and work out how big you want to make your garden next year.   I suggest you triple your current size (to 30′ x 10′ )  and work out how many yards of soil you have when you  go down 6 inches.   ( 30 x 10 x .5 ) + 150 cubic feet.  150 Cubic feet divided by 27 is about 6 cubic yards.   So, you need 6 cubic yards of Sand.  Call up a Garden supply place, and arrange to have 6 cubic yards of their lowest priced, unwashed sand, delivered to your home.    Have it delivered to your driveway, and start wheelbarrowing.  If don’t already have a wheelbarrow, then get one!  And a good, large square ended shovel for shoveling the sand.   Dump  the sand on top of the soil, and work it in with your mattock.

Oh yeah, you need a tool:   A ‘Cutter Mattock‘ (Look it up on the Internet, get a good American-made one at the hardware store.)   This will allow you to work soil three or four times as fast as a shovel.   You will be amazed at how fast a mattock goes through dirt. 

Once you have worked the sand into the clay, you will now find you have a more ‘loamy’ soil, more suited for gardening.   To this you need to add amendments.  Your lawn clippings and your kitchen waste.   You live where the leaves drop in the fall.  Try to get as many tons of leaves as you can.  Ask your  neighbors if you can rake their lawns for them.   They will love you.   Just keep piling all of the leaves, grass clippings, and kitchen waste on your garden plot.  Keep adding to it all fall and winter.   The bigger  the piles,  the better.   Let the piles stew all winter.   Keep adding kitchen scraps.   At this point, you can consider purchasing a dozen bags of Steer Manure, and adding them to the pile.  They will pay off in the long run.   

Next spring, as soon as the ground begins to thaw, start tearing down the compost piles with your mattock, and work them into the soil.   Go about 4-6 inches deep.    Start out slowly, work a few square yards a day for a few weeks.   You will avoid blisters.    And your muscles will love you.    If you want, after you have worked through all of the piles,  you could rent that Roto-Tiller for an afternoon,  and really rip it up to a depth of about 8 inches.   This may bring some more of that Kentucky clay to the surface.  Fine, just buy a few more bags of Sand, and work it in.  And, at this point, you could also work in a few bags of chemical fertilizer, just for this year only.   After this, you will be recycling everything, and it will be unnecessary.

In March is the time get a yourself a few thousand earthworms.    You can buy  about 2,000 Red Wigglers (little ones ) and 500 European Nightcrawlers ( big ones) for about $120 by mail.  Add them to the soil.   Worms will do the great job of aerating and manuring your soil.    The only problem is that they might crawl away.  So keep amending  the soil each year to encourage them to stay put.   Oh, yeah;   did I mention that that worms breed?

Now is the time for crop selection.   I’m sorry, but Sweet Corn is a bad choice.  The reason you had so many weird, mutated ears is because corn is wind pollinated, and requires a lot of corn to ensure that it gets properly pollinated.   10×10 isn’t enough.   About  1 acre is enough.  You don’t have an acre.   So don’t waste your time.

Blueberries are also  a bad choice.   They require acid soil, and are hard to grow.   Take them out, and replace them with Raspberries and Blackberries.   Plant them along your fence lines, then let them grow up along trellised vine supports, and you will have a nice, thorny fence that will keep out trespassers.    And give you nice fruit in summer.   Just keep them trimmed back in winter to keep them from taking over the universe.
You said the Zucchini did well.   All four plants.  Here is a rule of thumb:  One Zucchini plant will die,  giving  you  Zero Zucchini.  Two plants will thrive, and each one will give you a metric  ton of Zucchini.   It just works that way.   So plant three, and give them to your neighbors who let you rake their lawns.   They will love you.

And since the Zucchini did well, follow their lead!   Plant other plants similar to Zucchini.   Eggplants.  Cucumbers.   Hubbard Squash.  Acorn Squash.   Pumpkins.   And, since you live in Kentucky, watermelons!   And those Breakfast  Melons!   You  have a lot of choices, and  all of these should do well in your climate.  And give you nice things to eat in summer and autumn.    

Time for the Tomatoes.   Try different varieties.   Start with Cherry or Berry Tomatoes, and Romas.   Add a few plants of table varieties for BLTs  (Pick the smaller fruited ones.  They mature faster, and give the pests less time to damage them).      Remember:  have the stakes and the twine ready to tie them up and keep them from sagging.   You will learn how.   And learn to find the Tomato Hornworms lurking in your garden.   They strip the branches, and leave little piles of droppings on the ground.  You know what to do.

What about Peppers?  A dozen Pepper plants ( Bells, Chilis, Jalapenos, etc. )   Start out buying the plants at Wal-Mart,  and the following year, try starting some Hybrid seeds.  
And Onions.    And Garlic.   Green onions grow fast.   

Try planting some different types of Lettuce, a few Cabbages, some Radishes, perhaps some different types of Beans.  Fresh Green Beans from the garden, cooked Al-Dente, with butter and salt. Always try something new each year, and record how it did.   Each experiment will give you knowledge for the next year.

Get a head start, starting in March, by planting your seeds in small  pots.  Each pot should be about a cup in size, minimum.   Try making your own newspaper planting pots- there are web sites that tell you how.   They will disintegrate in the soil, making transplanting easier.    Try mixing your own potting soil.  You can find recipes on the Internet.   Try several recipes, marking the pots as to which type is in each pot.   The following year, use only the best recipe.  
 
Put 2-3 seeds in each cup, and then weed out the weaker ones after a few weeks.   Water each day as required, sunlight, you know the drill.   Study up on ‘Hardening’ seedlings.   You can learn a bunch from ‘Five Acres…’    
When you start out growing seedlings, start with ‘store-bought’  Hybrid seeds.   As you progress, try various heirloom seeds.  These will be more difficult to grow, but  will have the advantage of making  you independent  of Seed companies.

You can plant both your own seedlings, as well as the plants you get from Wal-Mart, in competition with each other.   Initially the commercial stuff will grow better.  But, gradually, as you gain more experience, you will  plant only your own seedlings.   This will save you money, but cost you in time.   But it is worth it to gain  Independence.   Each year, begin saving some of the Heirloom seeds, and planting them  the next year.   Saving  and storing seeds is an art, and you will make mistakes.  The reward will be knowing that each generation  of your garden creates the next, with your labor being the only thing needed.    You can even grow plants for your neighbors as gifts.   Your neighbors  will love you.

Plant after the last frost, and mulch with straw or grass clippings around the plants.   Water as necessary, and keep checking them for insect pests.   Watch out for snails, slugs, bugs, and caterpillars.  Be aggressive.  It is them or you.  

Buy a single hen chicken.  Every evening, go into the garden looking for tomato worms, bugs, etc.  Feed them to the chicken.   She will love you.   She will reward you with eggs and manure. 

Get a Wire Box trap, and bait it for rabbits.   If you get a jackrabbit in the trap, kill it and bury it in the garden, about a foot deep.   If you get a Cottontail,  dress it and freeze it.  Re-bait the trap.   When you have 4-to-6 Cottontails in the freezer, you have Sunday Dinner for the Family.   Check the Internet for Rabbit Recipes.  Unfortunately, the rabbits will not love you.

Enlist your children.   They will hate it at first, but when the first crops come in, they will begin to understand that food is not created at the Supermarket, and that  freshness means flavor.   They will grow  to hate ‘store-bought’  tomatoes.   And that first Blackberry Cobbler of the season: Your children will love you.

To sum it up:  You have stuck your toe into the sea of Garden-Farming.   Right now is the time to get ready for next year. This Autumn and Winter you will prepare your soil for next spring.    Next  year, you will plant Wal-Mart plants and seedlings grown from Hybrid Seeds.   You will make mistakes, and learn from them.   With each passing year, you will plant more heirlooms, and more of your own seeds, and will plant with the confidence that you know what you are doing to ensure a bountiful harvest.  

Good luck.    Just keep planting, experimenting, and learning new things.  ‘Five Acres, and Independence’! Respectfully,- P.R.W.

JWR Adds: J.B.’s article also inspired this reply, posted to another blog: How not to set up a backyard garden.

Letter Re: My Home Energy Backup System

James,
The advice given by J.M. from Oklahoma regarding computer UPS systems could be dangerous if followed as cavalierly he/she laid out for charging and using batteries! UPS systems come in several flavors as it relates to how the batteries are used and charged. Using the wrong type or capacity of battery in a UPS system can lead to overcharging either through length of charge or how much power is sent during the charge cycle. This can cause batteries to swell, leak and explode!

J.M. is correct that UPS systems are often disposed of because the batteries have gone dead and the unit is depreciated so a new one is purchased. However you must use the correct type and size batteries for safety! This is not something to fool around with or “come close” in! For larger UPS systems of the kind used by corporations that J.M. is talking about, the “battery” is usually a sled with a number of smaller standard-size batteries wired together to provide the correct voltage and amperage to the system. The batteries can be purchased (relatively) inexpensively if you get the make/model from the batteries themselves and search online for an OEM/parts supplier rather than buy a “battery kit” from the maker of the UPS.

Additionally, corporate data center UPS systems are very intelligent and will protect the equipment plugged into their output at all costs so here again a battery supply used to power the device in a power outage must put out the correct power characteristics. If there’s a under/over volt, amperage drop or other power feed condition that makes the UPS think its supply is bad, it will try to bypass the battery (back to utility feed) or shut off the output jacks completely. If you want to use the UPS as an DC/AC interferer post-SHTF then buy enough of the correct batteries to make multiple sleds and charge the batteries properly using a different system (e.g. a solar charger) and rotate them through the UPS.

I really would not recommend using a UPS system in this way unless you are familiar with electronics, how these UPS devices operate and know how to operate this type of equipment in alternative configurations safely. – X. Vindex

Economics and Investing:

K.A.F. sent this: Awful August, Get Set for September

Over at Dr. Housing Bubble: Shadow Inventory Armageddon – Foreclosure timeline up to an average of 599 days with 798,000 mortgages having no payment made in over 1 year and no foreclosure process initiated. Shadow inventory grows to over 6,540,000 properties.

Making privacy a crime: U.S. aims to track ‘untraceable’ prepaid cash cards. (Thanks to Steve M. for the link.)

China’s sword of Damocles: “More Cow Bell!”. “More kowtow!”

Forget Irene: The Drought in Texas Is the Catastrophe That Could Really Hurt. (Kudos to Chris M. for sending the link.)

Items from The Economatrix:

Consumer Confidence Lowest in Two Years

How the Economy Quietly Entered a Recession on Friday, and Why the GDP Predicts a Sub-Zero Nonfarm Payroll Number

Financial Crisis is Too Big For Developed World to Cope

Gold Rises, Shrinking Weekly Loss as Bernanke Offers No Fed Plan

Odds ‘n Sods:

JRH Enterprises is running a Labor Day weekend sale on new 3rd Generation Pinnacle Autogated AN/PVS-14 night vision scopes for $2,695 for the standard model and their upgraded version with higher line pair specs now at just $2,995. I bought one of the latter from JRH several years ago, and I have been thrilled with its performance. Order yours, before the sale ends!

   o o o

Dan. M. sent this news article from Ohio: Cops Confiscate Lakewood Lady’s Arsenal; Motive Pending. JWR’s Comments: Since the guns were deemed “legal” we can conclude that the “Thompson sub-machine gun” was in fact either a lawfully registered Class 3 gun, or that it was a semi-auto only clone. It is sad that the guns were taken without cause in the first place and downright disgusting that the owner had to resort to the courts to have her property returned. This leads me to ask: What have they done to Ohio? My great-great-great-grandfather is doubtless rolling in his grave! (In 1801, John Rawles was an original “entryman” pioneer in the portion of the Northwest Territory that two years later became Pickaway County, Ohio.)

   o o o

The folks at Camping Survival have announced a Paracord Giveaway. Describe your favorite paracord project, or list some of your favorite uses for paracord and how you execute them, and you can win a 1,000 foot roll of top quality paracord. This contest will run through the end of September.

   o o o

A friend in Germany sent this: Pakistan to ban encryption software (and VPN tunneling, too. It is sad that the law-abiding suffer for the misdeeds of others.)

   o o o

A Trojan mouse? Clever, clever: Netragard’s Hacker Interface Device (HID). (Thanks to Pete for the link.)

Jim’s Quote of the Day:

"Political tags, such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth, are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire." – Robert A. Heinlein

Economics and Investing:

G.G. flagged this: Belarus Hyperinflation Update: Food Runs Out As Friendly Foreigners Take Advantage Of The “Favorable” Exchange Rate Arb

John R. sent this: Analysis: As debt maturities loom, U.S. needs to extend

Also from John: Fearing An Even Worse Inflationary Depression Ahead (Bob Chapman)

Reader Hal C. sent this link: John Williams of ShadowStats interviewed by Goldseek. He is predicting hyperinflation.

B.B. suggested: Maple Leaf sets silver record: 2010 bullion sales rise 74% from 2009

Items from The Economatrix:

After Bumpy August, Economy Shows Signs of Growth

Retailers Report Solid Gains For August

Carmakers Report Surprisingly Strong August Sales

25 Signs That the Financial World is About to Hit The Big, Red Panic Button

Investors are Down in August and Jittery as Ever

Note from JWR:

Today we present another entry for Round 36 of the SurvivalBlog non-fiction writing contest. The prizes for this round include:

First Prize: A.) A course certificate from onPoint Tactical. This certificate will be for the prize winner’s choice of three-day civilian courses. (Excluding those restricted for military or government teams.) Three day onPoint courses normally cost $795, and B.) Two cases of Mountain House freeze dried assorted entrees in #10 cans, courtesy of Ready Made Resources. (A $300 value.) C.) A 9-Tray Excalibur Food Dehydrator from Safecastle.com (a $275 value), D.) A $250 gift certificate from Sunflower Ammo, and E.) An M17 medical kit from JRH Enterprises (a $179.95 value).

Second Prize: A.) A Glock form factor SIRT laser training pistol. It is a $439 value courtesy of Next Level Training. B.) A “grab bag” of preparedness gear and books from Jim’s Amazing Secret Bunker of Redundant Redundancy (JASBORR) with a retail value of at least $300, C.) A $250 gift card from Emergency Essentials, and D.) two cases of Meals, Ready to Eat (MREs), courtesy of CampingSurvival.com (a $180 value).

Third Prize: A.) A Royal Berkey water filter, courtesy of Directive 21. (This filter system is a $275 value.), B.) Expanded sets of both washable feminine pads and liners, donated by Naturally Cozy. This is a $185 retail value, and C.) Two Super Survival Pack seed collections, a $150 value, courtesy of Seed for Security.

Round 36 ends on September 30th, so get busy writing and e-mail us your entry. Remember that articles that relate practical “how to” skills for survival have an advantage in the judging.

The Five Steps of OPSEC Assessment by Stone of Scone

Operational Security (OPSEC) which is the evaluation and control of any critical information that could be used against you by an adversary. The result of good OPSEC is the elimination or withholding of the most damaging information that your adversary has the ability to gather and understand how to use against you. OPSEC happens everyday. When you go on vacation and hold your mail and newspaper delivery, and use timers to turn your radio and lights on and off to make it appear that you are home, you are practicing good OPSEC.

Here is a another example of OPSEC. A business contact I had worked as the Information Systems Director for the Department of Corrections in a populous state in the US. When he was at his office near the State Capitol, he wore a tie, nice shoes, and a business suit. But when he had to travel to the prisons, he would dress in jeans, tennis shoes, a faded work shirt, and would drive a State vehicle to and from the prison. He did not want the prisoners to know his appearance, or information about his personal car or license plate number. The reason is that he had intelligence that certain criminals said they were going to kidnap the Information System Director, as they thought he had access to the computer system and could lower their sentences by altering the computer files. Even though the computer system was set so that no one person could change anyone’s sentence, the implications for this man and his family were the same. Some jobs, especially those dealing with criminals, require a lot of OPSEC in safeguarding your personal information. Once your information is compromised due to poor OPSEC, it is hard to ever regain it.

This last year I had the privilege to read my father-in-law’s letters to his wife while he was a sailor during WWII. Each letter was stamped as approved by a Navy censor, and never once did he reveal his location, or his ship’s location. He would state that the weather is better here, not as cold, the harbor is beautiful, but never so much as a hint of his location. Even the return address on the envelope was from a State-side mailing address, as the Navy made sure their ships could not be tracked. The Navy coined the term “Loose Lips – Sinks Ships”, and studying the US Military’s OPSEC procedures is a great exercise for anyone.

So how do we apply the military’s OPSEC principles to our personal situation? What is the process? The steps for developing our own OPSEC are:

Step 1. Make a list of any critical information you have that can be used by an adversary.

Step 2. Determine who your adversaries are.

Step 3. Look at all the ways your critical information can be compromised.

Step 4. Make an assessment and rate the items of information that are the most likely to be used by your adversary, and what countermeasures you can employ.

Step 5. Consistently employ your countermeasures and other security for your most vulnerable assets, in priority order from the results of step 4.

The First Step is to make a short list of critical information, which for my situation is:
(a) My name, SSN, and DOB (used for identity theft and other purposes).
(b) Bank and credit card information that could allow someone to fraudulently access my funds.
(c) My bank statements that show all of the purchases I have made, and any groups I fund or support.
(d) My garbage, which has old envelopes with their addresses still intact, and many personal items that reveal a wealth of information. (There was a group in Washington DC that would empty the garbage cans of powerful people, such as Henry Kissinger and others, and report the interesting items they found. Quite a find, and there are very few laws against taking someone’s garbage.) The correct OPSEC for garbage is to [shred or] burn it, or take it to the landfill, instead of leaving it on the curb awaiting pickup.
(e) My home address.
(f) Information on any real estate or other large assets I own.
(g) A picture of what I look like.
(h) The number of guns and ammo I own and where they are located.
(i) The amount of food and other survival gear I have accumulated, and where they are located.
(j) The interior layout of my home, and its contents.

The Second Step is to determine who are your adversaries. Everyone has different circumstances, but a general rule that would help identify your adversaries is to determine the types of controversy you are involved in. You may need someone else to look at you objectively and tell you what are the controversial areas of your life that make you visible to predators. For the more controversy you create the more visible you become, and your controversy will draw those that oppose you.

Some things that cause controversy are:
(1) Having more visible wealth than your neighbors or peers,
(2) Supporting and holding allegiance to various controversial groups in a public manner.
(3) The purchase, display and use of military style guns in a region where people do not understand the need for the 2nd Amendment.
(4) Openly using military grade equipment, such as dressing in fatigues or driving old Army trucks.
(5) Campaigning for election to a political office, or influencing the political process in a significant way.
(6) Having a national presence of some type, such as producing popular videos on YouTube, or having a popular radio talk show.
(7) Having a lifestyle that is unacceptable to other people. An example would be the polygamous marriages practiced by the Fundamental Latter Day Saints.

Just as your personal OPSEC assessment should always consider how your information is viewed at present, a good assessment should consider how your information may be used against you in the future. When you begin to engage in items of public controversy, the amount of public information you have revealed in the past will become critical. The best OPSEC is to keep amount of public information about you at the lowest possible level, as many people have so much information in the public domain that it is impossible to do anything about it once they become controversial. You should consider your public information and your potential adversaries before you become involved in a controversial area.

The Third Step in developing your OPSEC assessment is to look at all of the ways your critical information can be compromised and used by the adversaries identified in step two.
Using LinkedIn may be good for business, and having a FaceBook account may be good for friends, but they can be really bad OPSEC. What you look like, your views and outlooks, and a list of all of your friends and business contacts are available to anyone that can access your account. YouTube videos, web sites, and other Internet activity provide a tremendous amount of information that can direct attention to you and cause problems with your OPSEC.

A good example of how critical information is compromised on the Internet is the case of the Hutaree Militia, who put their paramilitary training videos on YouTube. This raised their profile, and is probably the reason the Hutarees were infiltrated by a government agent. I don’t think these people are more than talk, but their paramilitary training videos were very aggressive and probably frightened some people. The statements of the government infiltrator resulted with their arrests, even though they may have done nothing wrong. Paramilitary exercises are perfectly legal [in most jurisdictions], but should be done in secret as they can make you appear to be threatening to many people. You only have to “look” like you are dangerous to encounter problems, and good OPSEC should conceal all information of this type.

Another way your personal information is compromised to a potential adversary is through your property deed information, which is posted by your tax assessor’s office on the Internet. A lawyer or anyone else can look up your name, how many parcels of land you own and what they are worth, and what types of buildings or other improvements have been made. Not only can someone find out where you live but they can tell if your home is free and clear of all debts. Having a house that has a lot of equity can make you appear to be rich enough to be a target of a lawsuit. To protect yourself, you will need to obscure your public ownership information.

To do this, you will have put the ownership of your home into a trust or partnership that hides your name on the tax records. This is crucial to avoiding a lawsuit, as lawyers routinely use the property assessor’s tax records on the Internet to look for the assets of anyone their clients intend to sue. If you have a lot of known assets and the lawyer thinks he can win the case, the lawyer’s proposed fee for his client will be to split the proceeds of the lawsuit that will come from the court’s judgment against your assets. This way, it won’t cost his client a dime to sue you. But if the public records do not reveal any ownership of real estate and other assets, the lawyer will demand his fee “up front” from his client before he will press a lawsuit against you. This will stop 99% of all lawsuits from ever being brought against you. Lawsuits are hardly ever brought against those that appear to be insolvent, because the lawyers and their clients are not likely to be able to recover their lawyer fees.

A good example of real estate lost due to compromised OPSEC is the lawsuit brought against Operation Ranch Rescue, a controversial group that provided security to farmers along the Mexican border. One of the owners of Ranch Rescue had a large farm in Arizona, apparently listed in the owner’s name. Ranch Rescue was sued on the behalf of illegal immigrants by the SPLC, who set the damages slightly greater than the assessed value of the owner’s farm. Their lawsuit was successful, and the ranch was taken to satisfy the judgment the court laid on the owner. If the owner had practiced good OPSEC and had put his ranch in a trust, the outcome may have been different.

I have a friend that is a wealthy real estate appraiser, and is often involved in local politics concerning the properties that he owns. He has been sued by county developers and other rascals for ridiculous reasons. He did not want to put his home in an irrevocable trust, so to protect his home from lawyers, he had a good friend file a large lien at the courthouse against his home for more than the property is worth. His friend also gave him a signed and undated quitclaim deed to terminate the lien, which the appraiser keeps in his safe. This makes him appear to have no equity in the property. When the appraiser wants to sell his home, he can file the signed quitclaim deed at the courthouse which will void the lien against the property at any time. None of the appraiser’s vehicles are titled in his name, but are titled in his company’s name, which is not directly tied to him. His other assets are handled the same way. When a lawyer researches the appraiser’s assets, he appears to be insolvent, and so is protected from almost all lawsuits. Using a temporary lien would be one type of OPSEC when you cannot hide your ownership. Some of the best protection of your information from your adversaries is to obscure it with disinformation.

Another way your personal information can be compromised is when you don’t know the background of people who suddenly befriend you. This has been the downfall of many people. Randy Weaver had visited a controversial group, and his OPSEC should have been to give everyone there a nickname or something besides his correct name. His next problem in OPSEC was to make friends with a government agent who was trying to infiltrate the group. This agent convinced Weaver to saw off a shotgun for him down to the legal limit. The agent then accused Weaver of sawing the shotgun barrel too short to be legal. The government used this to pressure Weaver to spy on the controversial group or face jail, and Weaver would not spy on the group, or come down from his home when a arrest warrant was issued for sawing off the shotgun. The lapses of OPSEC of using his real name and not investigating his new friend (and almost everyone has made the same mistakes) led to the standoff where Weaver’s son and wife were killed by the government. Weaver was not at fault and won a civil judgment against the government, but that doesn’t change the outcome. If you are involved with a controversial group, or have new friends that want to involve you in firearms, the lesson for all of us in this time of universal corruption is that we need to increase or evaluate our OPSEC. It may be legal to own guns and participate in groups that are under government investigation, but this is a deadly combination

Even friends that you trust, combined with guns, can be deadly. Those who are friends today can be your enemies tomorrow, and report to others your level of gun ownership, which will compromise your OPSEC. Consider the Branch Davidians in Waco Texas, who were first brought to attention of law enforcement by the complaints of a former member. This was followed by a damaging series of articles written by the local newspaper. Another incident that raised their profile was their mail order gun parts business. One package they ordered by US Mail had dummy hand grenades and other firearm parts. The carton was somehow opened at the Post Office, and law enforcement was notified. This incident, as well as the large number of guns the Branch Davidians were legally purchasing, and the complaints from neighbors of the sound of guns being fired on their property, brought them to the attention of the ATF. The final lapse of OPSEC was purchasing the legal-to-own [and BATF-approved] “Hellfire” trigger, which made their semi-automatic guns sound like they are fully automatic. The legal basis for the ATF raid that ended with the death of the Branch Davidians was that they had “possibly” not paid a $200 license fee for having a unverified fully automatic weapon on their property. I don’t believe the Branch Davidians ever broke a law, but their OPSEC was terrible and is what made them the target of the ATF. Better OPSEC for the Branch Davidians would have been to rent a location for the gun parts business away from their compound, and to test fire their guns at a recognized rifle range. No outsider should ever have known that guns were on their property. If guns had not been involved, at most they would have been raided by Child Protective Services and not the ATF, and the outcome would have been much different.

Openly purchasing large amounts of guns and firing a lot of ammo on your property is perfectly legal, but a great way to compromise your OPSEC. No one, not even your closest friends, should know about all of your firearms. “Bump-firing” your semi-automatic rifle at fully automatic speeds is legal and a lot of fun, but who is listening to you shoot? What type of acoustic signature are you creating? Better yet, who are you making afraid? The neighbors that are afraid of you could be the “Human Intelligence” that law enforcement will use to investigate you. You need to appear harmless to everyone, especially your neighbors.

I know one person who claims to be a non-violent Mennonite to avoid any indication that he has a large gun collection. Any target practicing he does is just one shot at a time, to slowly zero in his “hunting” rifle. There is absolutely no need for anyone to rapidly fire a full 40 round magazine. It is just a waste of ammo, and reveals the size of the magazines that you have. Your best OPSEC is to never openly reveal the types or numbers of guns that you have through the sounds they make, or as some would say: “Never pull out a gun unless you are going to use it.” For once you make known to the world what types of guns you have, your adversaries will counter with something better that will neutralize your advantage.

Your OPSEC is compromised when you do things that attract attention to yourself, such as wearing camouflage fatigues outside of hunting season, painting your vehicle OD green or camouflage, or stringing up miles of concertina wire around your property. When I see the ultimate mondo security gate, I remember what Jeff Goldblum [as “Dr. Ian Malcolm”] asked about the massive gate at Jurassic Park: “What have they got in there, King Kong?” A large security gate will make your neighbors wonder what you are hiding up there. A better solution is to install steel cables or hardened steel chains to run behind each gate that are hidden when not in use, but can be pulled taut and locked as needed. Bulking up your home with visible guard towers, LP/OPs, trip wires and sand bags is such poor OPSEC as to destroy everything you are trying to do. Security items that are visible to others makes you more vulnerable because it raises your profile.

A good solution for your retreat security improvements is that they provide double duty, one that is perfectly acceptable and normal for today, and one that is meant for when the balloon goes up. For a LP/OP, consider building a kid’s “dream tree house”, complete with a “fun field telephone” system connected to the house for emergencies. Instead of concertina wire, put electrified barbed wire on top of your fences with a separate “100 mile fence charger” for each strand of wire. The amount of electricity is not obvious, at least until you touch it. For trip wires, consider using High Tensile Electric wires. Not only do they trip, they can shock the pee out of you, as well as keeping your goats and other animals in the right area. Raising animals gives you a good reason for a lot of fencing in various places. Our last line of electric fence surrounding our house may give us protection from intruders after TEOTWAWKI, but right now it keeps the sheep and cows off our back porch. And our Great Pyrenees dogs provide protection from coyotes, as well as handling people that walk by our property. I even got challenged by my 1,500 lb bull one night while I was walking back from the barn. Once he knew it was me, he left me alone, but I would feel sorry for anyone else that tried to run. Our retreat security preparations are natural and out in the open, yet good OPSEC is to not mention any dual purpose they may have, or say anything about them at all.

The correct OPSEC for your radio communication system (more precisely termed COMSEC) will require careful planning. I think it is important that you hide or make invisible the shortwave and other types of radio antennas on your property so they cannot be confiscated. If you use only passive radio receivers on your property and not transmitters, then you will not have to energize your antenna wires, and they will be safe for human contact. This opens a lot of possibilities. A bare wire insulated at both ends that secures a flag pole or windmill, or a wire between two buildings that supports bird house gourds, or perhaps a section of electric fencing that is never charged, these may be good camouflaged passive antennas.

Active radio transmitters are different, as their transmission location is compromised every time they are used. Good OPSEC requires that any radio transmitters be mobile and all transmissions are made in different places away from your residence. If for some reason shortwave and other types of radio transmitters are banned and you have been transmitting for some time from your home, it would be easy through radio detection and triangulation to pre-determine where all of the radio transmitters are located before the ban was made public. If you want to keep your transmitter, use it away from your home.

Project Echelon is a signals intelligence network operated by the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Echelon has the ability to monitor global communication, including cell phone conversations. Echelon may help identify the movements of people that the government has an interest in following, as it identifies certain types of spoken content. If your cell phone conversations frequently include words such as “jihad”, or “nuclear bomb”, you might end up on their list. Watch what you say on your cell phone, even in jest. No wireless communication is ever secure, and any information you release over a wireless transmitter should be considered compromised.

I don’t think I am enough of a target for Echelon to monitor me, but I have seen a demonstration of the Verizon GPS tracking service called “Field Force Manager” that Verizon offers its corporate customers. If a company issues their employees a Verizon cell phone, Verizon has a new service that allows the company to see on a map where these cell phones are being used. If the cell phone is turned on and you drive a long distance, the map will show your route, your speed, and where you were at each moment of the day. This information is stored, and the company can call up any previous day’s GPS locations and movements. It reminds me of a song: “There’s an eye, a-watching you…”. I don’t want Verizon or anyone to track my movements. I always leave my cell phone turned off except when I call out on it. To be perfectly safe, I would need to pull the battery out of the phone, or get rid of it entirely. We had a friend with a domestic situation, and he discovered that a private investigator had placed a cell phone in his car, apparently to track his movements. He gave this cell phone to someone he met at a truck stop going the other direction, and told him to make all of the calls he wanted. For his own use, he bought a “throw-away” cell phone with pre-paid phone card minutes, for which he paid cash at Walgreen’s. it is completely untraceable.

The Fourth Step of an OPSEC plan is to rate a list of the most damaging information I have that could be used by my adversaries. First on my list is anything that would get me killed, either before or after a collapse of society. The knowledge that your home has large number of guns or precious metals can invite a home invasion with deadly results. What would you tell a robber who has a gun at your wife’s temple when he asks you where your guns, gold, or survival food is stored? I would put my OPSEC for concealing information about my guns, precious metals, or survival items at the top of my list.

My next most valuable information would be my house and property. For this, you want to put your property into a trust, so that you do not show up as the owner when the property records are searched by a lawyer. I would also suggest an unlisted telephone number, as anyone can find your home address listed in the phone book. I had a Bible prison ministry for a while, and some of the prisoners would call me once they got out of jail. Some were saved, but most were not very repentant, and quite a few of them were dangerous. I finally realized that any of these former prisoners that knew I went to church on a regular basis could rob my house while I was at worship, but only if they knew my address. I unlisted my number, and have since moved to a new address. It is very wise not to have a listed phone number, as this is the number one way a criminal can determine your address.

Your home says a lot about you, and is your sanctuary and castle. You don’t want anyone that is a criminal to know the location of your home or its contents. One of the most successful WWII spies for the Allies in France survived because kept his address a secret. He was never caught by the Germans because he changed his appearance often, paid his rent in cash, and he never, ever brought anyone to his home or revealed where he lived. Likewise the information of the contents of your home should not be revealed. King Hezekiah in 2nd Kings 20:12-19 proudly displayed his treasures to the Babylonian diplomats, thinking they were harmless. Babylon later attacked Jerusalem, and took all of the gold and other treasures, probably because they knew how much wealth Hezekiah had. I have a friend that competes in mounted shooting, which is the sport of shooting from horseback for competition. During a short period of time while they were gone, someone stole all of their guns, even the ones that were somewhat hidden. Only someone that knew the contents of their home could have done this. A lack of OPSEC, such as opening up your home to large groups of people that you don’t know, can have negative results.
I don’t have to hide from the world to have good OPSEC. I have various friends that visit our home, and we worship at each other’s homes, but for strangers, we do not let them see the inside of our residence, as the layout and contents of our home is personal information.

The information that is last on my priority list is the “hard to get” information with less value that could only be a problem if something changed. For example if I decided to run for public office, or tried to get a high security clearance for a sensitive job, current records and associations, which are not a problem now, would be scrutinized. Changes to our legal system that might criminalize items in the future that are now legal (such as gun ownership, the possession of gold, using unpasteurized milk, etc) are good reasons to have a good OPSEC plan.

One item of information you should consider is your bank records. Any person or any government agency that can access your bank records can find everything you have purchased, and what groups or programs you support with your donations. Some people will deal purely in cash, but that also raises a red flag. The way I handle it is to buy all of the regular, “conformity” items with my debit card or by check. For anything that may in the future be a problem, such as buying raw milk from an unlicensed dairy (i.e. the farmer down the street), I always pay in cash. That way, I have a “public” persona that appears to be harmless, while my cash-based private life hides my secret consumption of various semi-legal dairy products. The benefits of raw milk are significant, and it should not be up to some bureaucrat to determine my health. But as time goes on, even the items that keep us healthy may be banned under Codex Alimentarius. Another item that may be banned in the future is the ownership of gold. In 1934, Franklin Roosevelt passed the Gold Reserve Act, which made the private ownership of gold [bullion and most coins] a criminal offense. It could happen again. If you are buying gold, guns, or anything that is legal now but may be a crime in the future, then it is critical that you use cash and not create any information “paper trail” concerning your purchases.

It is good to do an routine evaluation of how much compromised public information you have. On occasion, I try to “find myself” on the Internet to see how much information about me is out there. I go to Google and type in my full name surrounded by “double quotes”. This makes Google search for the exact string of words in quotes, and sometimes I find public records I did not know I had. Veromi.net is another way investigators find people. I also type in all or part of my street address inside the double quotes, and then leave the city and state outside the quotes. This loosens up the match on Google, and gives a better result. I do the same for my P.O. Boxes, and my unlisted land line phone number and my cell phone number. It is surprising when you find your unlisted phone numbers on the Internet.

The reason I check my name, address and phone information on the web is to make sure they are not compromised, or posted by some company that I do business with. A few years ago I developed some Internet software that became popular. On the Authorship page, I stupidly put my name and old home address, and there has been no way to get this information off the Internet, even now. At my job, I had to fire an unbalanced person, who has since kept tabs on me, and has easily found this old address. For good OPSEC, when I moved my family to our new address, I made sure no connection between the old and new address existed. I forwarded all of my street mail to a P.O. Box at my old location’s Post Office. I opened a new P.O. Box at my new location, and did not give a forwarding address. Next, I selectively notified friends, the electric company, and very few others of my new P.O. Box. Nothing else got forwarded. This also got rid of a lot of junk mail. And I did not get a street mailbox at my new home for two years.

The next item in building my OPSEC for my new home was to develop a bullet proof solution for having a street address. Various government agencies, such as our state’s driver’s license section, require that you have a valid “911” home street address and not a post office box. Some home deliveries and online purchases require a valid street address. Since we purchased raw land that did not have a residence, I had to tell the 911 section at our County where my new home would be located. I told the officials that we were building our house down the road near the paddock, past the barn. The 911office assigned our street number based on the distance from the beginning of the street to where they thought our house would be built. For example, if your 911 address is 1250 Jones Road, your house is located 1.25 miles from the beginning of Jones Road. Each address is based on the distance from the beginning of the road. Anyone using a GPS address locator to find your physical street address will go this exact distance down your road. So after I received my 911 address, I built a large shop building near the paddock, where we lived while we built our house. I put the 911 street number they assigned on the shop. Then I built my driveway about ¼ of a mile up the road from the barn, and put the house even further away up from the shop up on a hill where it is not easily visible. The result has been that whenever the census takers, the county appraiser, US Mail, UPS, FedEx or anyone that uses a GPS locator for my 911 address comes to my street address, they always go to the shop building. If they knock on the door at the shop, they think no one is at home. All deliveries and mail are left at the shop. I have never had anyone I did not know come to my real home, as my real home has no street address, only the shop does.

Your local 911 group will assign a latitude and longitude to your known street address, which Google uses to puts a pointer right on top of your home. Go to Google Maps, or you can download their Google Earth package. Enter in your complete street address, and Google will put a crosshair right on top of your home. The latitude and longitude coordinates for your home were also collected by the US Census Bureau. The only downside to not having a valid 911 address that points to your real home’s location is that when an ambulance is called, it will go to the wrong place. In this rare emergency I will just send someone to flag them down to go to the correct location.

The Last Step in my OPSEC Plan is to continuously employ countermeasures to safeguard the most valuable information I have that is most likely to be accessed by my adversaries. I have listed quite a few of our countermeasures already. One final countermeasure that everyone should have is to encrypt your computer’s wireless router, otherwise anyone that drives by your house with a laptop can access your computer system. Even with encryption, your emails, Google searches, and web sites that you visit are recorded as all of your Internet history is kept on file at your Internet Service Provider and can be used by a government agency at anytime. Good OPSEC would be to use the Tor Anonymity Network or other means to control the Internet information you create.

The final countermeasure is to go back through the five steps of OPSEC assessment on a regular basis, namely, identify your information, consider your adversaries or threats, analyze your vulnerabilities, assess or rate your risks from high to low, and employ countermeasures. As your situation changes, so will your OPSEC. Completing and acting on a regularly scheduled OPSEC assessment may save your life.

Letter Re: A Treasure-Hunting Prepper

Jim:
I would like to address a few of the insightful comments to my original submission: A Treasure Hunting Prepper.
 
Mr. Fitzy in Pennsylvania is correct about his instruction on filling in holes when metal detecting. It is true that some parks can become closed due to irresponsible detectorists, but I would assume that it is common sense amongst those born with it to not leave holes! That, unfortunately, is not always the case. For instance, a local park that a metal detecting club my dad and I belonged to decided to make it against the rules to metal detect on park grounds. That decision was made because some guys decided it was easier to use shovels to dig holes with, throw the large plugs of dirt into the back of a pick-up, and then leave a hundred large holes for the park grounds keeper to discover. It was only because of our (the club’s) patient demonstration of leaving the park grounds as beautiful as we found them while removing trash, that the officials were convinced that detecting could actually be beneficial.
 
A great solution to leaving your area untouched is carrying a handkerchief or similar article of cloth. After cutting a plug, I run it over the coil to determine if the metal object is in the plug or still in the ground. If it is still in the plug, I usually cut the base of the plug off just before the bulk of the grass roots, and dissect a portion of the removed dirt over the hole a piece at a time until the object is found. If it is in the top portion of the plug along with the grass roots, use careful probing with fingers or plastic pointed tool (so not to scratch coins) and find the object without losing too much of the dirt. If after lifting the plug the object is still deeper in the hole, I remove a fistful of dirt at a time after loosening it, run it over the coil, and then drop the dirt onto the handkerchief close to the hole. Once the treasure is found, simply dump the dirt from the handkerchief back into the hole, orient the plug onto the hole, and then stomp it back down. I am sometimes surprised to turn around and discover that I can’t even tell where I have just dug! A note of caution though, if too much dirt is removed from the plug top, the grass may temporarily turn yellow, but it will return green after a few rain showers. If it becomes too thin because most of the dirt came off the root plug, it can become light enough to be sucked up into lawnmower blades and destroyed into a cloud of dust. That is not the way to impress a land owner, and your chances of coming back for a second hunt are probably over. I will say that the probability of killing a grass plug is diminished in early spring when the winter snow has thawed and left the ground saturated with moisture. Getting permission to hunt the well groomed lawn of an 1800s homestead might need to be postponed until after the heat of summer has passed.
 
Mr. Fitzy was also nice enough to mention that cleaning up trash while treasure hunting leaves a great impression. That is just another reason to wear a large apron with pockets when hunting in public areas. When it comes to the digging, understand that many options exist. I carry a dull bladed knife with just the right amount of tempering to prevent bending the blades. Its blade is about 6 inches in length, and might seem intimidating to other while wandering around a public area. Metal scoops and even screw drivers can be an option, but neither usually cut a nice plug as well. An actual plug cutter can be used as well. If you decide to carry a large bladed knife, just understand it could draw unwanted attention. Make sure to keep it hidden in your apron or pocket. My blade is barely sharp enough to cut Styrofoam, so I keep it in my back pocket with my shirt tail covering it sometimes.
 
Mr. Fitzy also mentioned that having a headlamp entertains the option of detecting at night. I have done this myself, and that may be the best option to avoid unwanted attention, treasure hunting around work schedules, or just be able to avoid the daytime heat. If night hunting sounds attractive, and you want a detector with an LCD display, find out if your model of interest has a back lighted display. My White’s Eagle Spectrum model has this option, and affords the ability to turn it on/off and adjust the brightness. A downside to this option is that it can rob you of valuable battery power.
 
I thought that the Prepared Teacher’s comment about using a detector for finding brass was a good one. My original article referred to the use of a “discriminator” to eliminate trash. This is a great example of adjusting the settings to eliminate the bulk of signals and then scan for something more desirable. The only problem for myself though is that I really enjoy shooting .22 LR caliber firearms. The areas I shoot at are polluted with way too much .22 brass to use a detector in finding more expensive cases. Once the ground is saturated with junk brass, the possibility of separating it from the good stuff is long gone. If that is your intentions, maintaining a segregated area for .22’s might be a good idea. On detectors with programmable options, it can be possible to create a program that can actually discriminate nearly everything except brass! Ask about such programmable options when performing research on your metal detector purchase.
 
Lastly, Old Dog’s question about someone using a detector to find a cache is something I have been pondering since he asked the question. Depending on the detector being used, it might still be possible to “see” a picture of the ground’s contents. For instance, my White’s display indicates spikes on a graph scale from -100 to +100. If I were to detect a large object with spikes in the copper (your buried ammo) and or silver ranges (your container of pre-1965 silver coins), I would probably keep digging up and removing the chunks of trash until I was satisfied that there truly was no buried items of value. I would advise that you might consider burying your cache in a waterproof pvc container. I have purchased sections of 8” pipe at my local hardware store and made my own caches with watertight end caps. Such a container could then be stored inside a long metal  drainage pipe. The pipe would surround your goodies, and should all but eliminate the signature of your precious contents as being nothing but iron and fool even the most expensive detectors. If a four foot piece of drainage pipe is too expensive or heavy to lift, cheap metal wood stove pipe could serve the same purpose. After about three years, it would be heavily rotted, and produce a large iron signal. Even a curious dig would reveal  nothing bust rust and rotting steal. Burying your cache under the edge of a metal fence, metal shed or farm building, along a building under false plumbing or roof drainage is likely to mostly mask the signature, and definitely make it nearly impossible to segregate as something that is easy to dig or valuable.  Should you decide to utilize the scattered trash method, just make sure that an absolute ton of trash is used to mask the valuables below it. Don’t just throw around some nails, but also include some flattened  empty coffee cans, aluminum soda cans, misc. trash iron, etc. What is desirable here is what JWR refers to as “trash” should look like a dumping grounds for the local scrap yard! The key here is to discourage on a grand scale. Your life could depend on it.
 
Lastly, I wanted to add a neglected topic to this discussion. The metal detector has been in use for years in our military. Its invention was heavily implemented during the last world war to search for and clear land mines along ocean landings for our blessed Marines. Since then, and still today, it is widely used to detect land mines and various booby traps. Metal detectors can even be used to find the wires that might lead to dangerous devices and be able to disable them by disconnection from the tripping device. I would be interested in stories from our armed forces that have used or seen detectors used on the battlefield.
 
Happy digging (or caching)! – Greg R. in Indiana

Five Letters Re: My Home Energy Backup System

Sir:
As a solar power contractor/installer, I can tell you that David L.’s power plan is a solid one.
One thing he left out was the 30% Federal Tax Credit (not just a deduction) offered against the cost of residential renewable energy systems, including of course solar.

A synopsis of the Federal tax credit as well as all available state credits (some huge) is online at the Database of State Renewables & Efficiency (DSIRE).

Also, Eco Business Links keeps an updated listing of the lowest available prices on solar panels, inverters, and both on and off grid systems. 
230 Watt panels like David used can be had for less than $350 these days, thanks to a glut in the panel market. (There was no “Green Jobs” revolution [as had been promised]). – Bo in The Sunny South

 

Sir:
I thought that this was an excellent persuasive essay on sustaining power in bad situations, and in carefully budgeting critical items. 

My thoughts on scaling these ideas up or down are as follows:

If you work around computers, most companies throw away UPS systems, which can vary from 200 to 3,000 watts. The gel cell batteries inside are all that goes bad 95% of the time. By soldering extension leads to the battery wires, you can hook up external 12, 24, or 48 volt batteries as appropriate. You now have a battery charger that will keep your batteries from going bad (sulfating), and when power goes out, you have 120V.  Best of all, “free leads to redundant.” Make sure you can turn the UPS on with no 120V power applied. Real solar power inverters are much more efficient, but cost $2,000 and up.

Running an inexpensive inverter 24 hours a day will take a lot of your solar systems output. My $200 48V 3000W APC brand UPS takes 80W from the batteries with no load, so that would be 2 kwh over 24 hours. Instead, consider wiring your retreat with a 12V bus. For lighting. LED auto bulbs are inexpensive and widely available. This can also power your security DVR and monitor (new ones are 12V) and perhaps a 12V laptop and router. We use a 12V RV pump to feed domestic water from a tank as a well backup. Keep your loads light, with heavy loads close to the battery, and size your wiring and fuse everything appropriately. 12V DC refrigerator/ freezer  units are now available or $400 or so and are a good option, with mine pulling about 60 watts at 12V. You might be able to find good salvage yard 12V batteries and parallel them.

If you are in the hot humid south, I highly recommend mini-split air conditioners and heat pumps. They have energy efficiencies up into the 26 SEER range, are very quiet, and can air condition (and heat) the core of a home, much as a woodstove does in the wintertime. They rectify the incoming AC power to run an electronic variable speed compressor drive, so the compressor has low starting current and throttles back in operation. They are very quiet, inexpensive compared to central A/C, and easy to install. If you install one yourself, make sure you use a 2 stage vacuum pump, the R410A compressors seem picky. Carefully check for leaks, the high side pressure is 600 lbs/ sq. in. I look forward to 48 volt DC units which soon will be available.

I second the recommendation on the Outback FlexMax charge controller. I have tried the inexpensive Chinese controllers, they are not MPPT as advertised. The American controllers are the standard of the world, buy one, unless you are building a tiny system. When you buy solar panels, search for the lowest cost per watt. The range of prices is extreme, and you might want two sets–in case of EMP or hail damage. – J.M. in Oklahoma

 
JWR,
That was an excellent article by David L. on his backup power system. I run a very similar system but also have hydro power except in the summer. The hydro is set up to match the 48 volt 390 Amp Hour battery bank and connects directly to the batteries. The Outback will manage any excess power through a load dump. The Magnum inverter operates just like his setup and gives the ability to limit power available for battery charge vs. shore power. So I have no problem running the small Honda generator at the same time the charge controller is feeding photovoltaic (PV) panel power to the batteries. Hydro running at the same time is also not a problem.

I’d like to add that for those wanting a similar setup using made in USA products to look at Magnum Energy Inverters, and Midnight Solar Charge Controllers. I have no connection with either company other than as an end user. I believe Mastervolt is/was a Dutch Company bought out by a US company, but the Combi Inverters are made in China. They seem to have an excellent reputation in the Marine/Yacht market, but I don’t believe the Combi inverters are rated or UL listed for use in the US. It doesn’t mean much unless you are dealing with a code inspector. For those interested in escaping via sail power Mastervolt has some very interesting hybrid electric propulsion systems that charge batteries while you sail and give some limited propulsion when you are out of wind.

For long time system life I advise people to look into Edison type nickel iron batteries. They are reputed to last a long time and can be rebuilt easily. The main drawback seems to be higher internal resistance which may limit charge/discharge rates, but that may fit in well with the small generator/small load concept.  I have not tried them yet but intend to investigate further.

One other point. This should not come as a surprise to anyone, but here in the nanny state of Kalifornia, it is illegal to run your little Honda or Yamaha generator on propane. So is looking at a steelhead trout like he might taste good. Next they will outlaw flat sheets and double sided mattresses–wait they already did that. I can only say that the positives outweigh the negatives here. I have unlimited gravity fed water, abundant fish and game, the conveniences of the city at the front door, wilderness at the back door, fantastic soil and growing conditions, and I won’t need to chop much of the unlimited firewood for winter. The only problem here is that everything is illegal, unless you want to grow pot, then everything is ok and you won’t be bothered. The felons held in the Supermax prison at the fairly close Pelican Bay don’t bother as much as the ones held in Sacramento or DC.

Stepping off my soapbox, I’ll just mention that a nice upgrade to David L.’s system would be to spend perhaps another $1,200 to go up to the Honda 3000 with automatic electric/remote start capability. You can then add a module to the Outback charge controller or Magnum inverter to give you an automatic generator start capability. This capability fits in well if you are running off a large propane tank, but makes less sense if you run off a small fuel tank. Stand-alone automatic generator start modules are also available. – Chris B.

 

Jim, 
I read David L.’s well written paper on home power generation with considerable interest as it parallels our system/development/needs.  There are only two items I would question:  First – Why all the concern over an 11 cubic foot refrigerator running long term?  David does not share with us the total number of stomachs that might be sharing this refrigerator, but with just two people the freezer section (assuming a 2 to 1 refrigerator to freezer ratio) of only four cubic feet will be empty very soon.  This, and the fact that any vertical system designed to ‘made cold’ suffers a nearly 100% air exchange every time the door is opened.  Having lived through the Columbus Day Storm in Portland, Oregon and being without power in the heart of the city for over three weeks drives this point home with me, and probably dates me also! 

Our solution is to have two medium size chest freezer units.  One of them is about 13 cubic feet and the other is 16 cubic feet.  Both units are run packed as full as possible, even if we have to fill up unused space with gallon water jugs as air is one of the hardest things to [keep] cool.  Next, the units, which are normally set cold for veggies and very cold for meats, are both re-set to just veggie cold.  That will still keep the meat well frozen for several months.  It is just that freezer burn will happen sooner and, in a grid down situation this factor drops way down the list.  Being chest units we only loose around 10% of the cold air when we open a lid, and we only open one lid, and only once per day.  Our system is to re-distribute the meats and veggies more evenly for a grid-down.  We will only eat out of the smaller unit until it is empty, then re-fill it from the larger unit, replacing the cubic feet removed from the larger with the gallon water bottles (a good source of non-contaminated water if you filled them correctly in the first place.)  As you can see, with this system we will be running both units at first, then only running the small unit when the large one is emptied.  We still retain the ability to chill out large cuts of meat, as in elk hindquarters, etc. as they become available which in our area can be quite often. 

Second – David does not share with us his location.  We live in the Oregon High Desert area with the expected wide temperature swings from day to night.  While we have a couple of small window unit air conditioning units we are agreed they will not normally be run and reserved only for use at our medical teams’ discretion.  (Yes, I have verified our generating abilities include starting amp loads).  – CentOre

 

Hi Jim,
I just wanted to comment on David L.’s article on his energy back up system. He states that:

 “I don’t run the solar charge controller and the inverter/AC-charger at the same time so as to not cause a conflict between the two chargers. “

There should be no conflict when running the FlexMax charge controller and the inverter charger at the same time. I do it all the time with my system especially if it is very cloudy and I want more power or to charge the batteries. The charge controller and the inverter when charging produce DC power not AC where there would be synchronization problems to deal with. – Tim K.

Economics and Investing:

Reader J.B.G. recommended this by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: When debt levels turn cancerous

Douglas C. mentioned that FDIC’s aggregated list of bank closures is available. At the web site, you can sort by date and by location.

Troy H. sent this: Democratic Discontent, Black Swans, Constitutional Conventions, and Civil or Foreign Wars

Items from The Economatrix:

The American Working Man Slowly Fades Away

Housing Time Bomb Goes Tick Tock Tick Tock

Stocks Rise on Hopes for More Stimulus From Fed

Oil Rises as East Coast Refining Resumes

Odds ‘n Sods:

Dixie mentioned some fascinating interactive maps that might have bearing on your relocation plans: Mapping the 2010 U.S. Census. Be sure to click on the tabs to see the various maps.

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For anyone that feels priced out of the market by the often-touted Country Living grain mill, there is a now a low-cost alternative on the American market that is made in India: the Wonder Junior Deluxe Grain Mill. These have a cast body and carbide burrs. There is a drill motor attachment available. They can even make peanut butter! At $216, they are half the cost of the Country Living grain mill.

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From Steve H.: Vaccine Linked to ‘Bleeding Calf Syndrome’

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Over at the Standing Outside Looking In blog: The Great Salvation Army Raid. It appears that we are living in hard times. (A hat tip to K.A.F. for the link.)