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Happy Mother’s Day to you! I’m sitting here with ice in the back of my pants trying to recover from some yard work this morning. LOL But we’ve had good rain and it’s sunny today, the 3 1/2 week old chicklets are wandering the yard with Mother along with the other hens and I’m enjoying the peace of it.

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We built a system similar to what these guys did. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9-6259glPE

Just natural stuff and no modern parts or electricity. Although we used a plastic barrel and filled it with the gravel, charcoal, and sand. Not optimum (plastic) but it works.

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👍 Makes sense.

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I wish I could drive up that way and just give it to you. But I’m not likely to get up that way anytime soon. I love NH. Used to go to Franconia College back in the day.

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I absolutely agree that organizing and giving everything a place to live is about the only way I can keep some sense of the pantry and supplies around here. We haven’t had trash pick-up in the last 6 1/2 years we’ve lived in this house, because it’s not provided by the city and I didn’t want to pay for it. We only throw out less than a small grocery bag a week and I take it somewhere I’m spending money.

But I really wanted to clean up this place. Trash blows into our yard, etc. So I got three months of trash pick-up.

Yesterday I found my husband sorting through my trash bag and he takes out the lid and the bottom of a round jerky dehydrator I was given. The heat setting is too high for what I need so I used the racks to make a hanging air dryer to hang on the porch. I threw out the pieces I couldn’t use.

And he kept them. For. No. Reason.

How men and women think? If I have any indication I can use something for a project, I’ll keep it. If I never use it (6 months to a year), I’ll get rid of it.

He has a giant shed in the back and he just throws EVERYTHING in there. He grew up, his early years, in real poverty, so I get the “hey, this can be used for something” but if it isn’t, when is the cut-off for storing it and then losing it because there’s too much stuff?

That’s a rhetorical question because there simply is no answer to that apparently. 😄

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That’s really good advice! Too bad I didn’t move far enough away. But at the time it was as close as I could get to where my dad lived (that I could afford) so I could help take care of him before he passed and that was already an hour away. He used to live in the middle of nowhere with nothing but farms and a very small town. Now it’s all suburbs and congested rush hour traffic. Luckily they are three counties away so they can’t keep annexing any closer to me than they are now.

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I agree. My husband was born in Argentina and then moved as a young child to Australia, but he says because governments are so corrupt, people just live very much connected to community and family. They know how to do things, fix things. They can’t depend on outside sources. They don’t riot because when anything else is taken away, they just expect it and keep going.

But yes, there will be riots here. That’s why, after my dad died in 2019 and the C hit, we decided to stay in this rather impoverished small town. A lot of church-going folks and everyone is armed, but an armed society is a polite society. The meth heads will be the first to go because they have no sense and will end up on the wrong side of someone’s property line probably. What we have to worry about is folks from the city suburbs about an hour north.

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Good for you! I totally understand. With my house being all doors and windows, I am just as frustrated.

I bought a treadle sewing machine in amazing working condition for not much at all, but to be honest, I prefer to hand sew anyway. I wanted to sell or trade it to the local Amish and had originally thought that even if I didn’t use it, it would make a great barter item later. My husband wants me to keep it for that “later”.

But I need the wall space it takes up, and I’m also so tired of the lack of space to just breathe. So I let our local Amish know and they are very interested. Eventually, you just have to find your comfort zone.

I mean, yes, things are bad, but what if they don’t get THAT bad? Then you’ve crapped up your home and life now and can’t find much joy in your home. There’s something to be said for enjoying your own home now as much as putting by for later.

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I was just talking to one of the high school students yesterday. I had subbed in one of his classes for two months on an emergency long-term sub and got to know him pretty well.

He’s Mexican by birth and his family lives here in town and runs two businesses. He’s a junior and looking forward to apprenticing more in his uncle’s heating and cooling business so he can take it over one day. Along with the farm kids or the ones who need to earn the money to go to college (because they weren’t born with silver spoons), he’s the hardest working kid I know in this town.

Yesterday, he was saying the one thing he misses about living in Mexico is that parents teach their kids how to do things, fix things, make things, build things. And up here kids – and their parents – don’t know how to do anything. His parents are so busy working and things are so easy to buy, they don’t have to teach him how to do all that stuff. Plus the stuff we get in the US, he says, a lot of it can’t be fixed but is made to be thrown away when it breaks.

This is also something my husband has said over and over. He’s from Australia and sees the difference in goods here and what is being imported to Aus.

We’ve been sold a lie under the guise of it being the American dream. But being lazy and full of poisonous garbage food and a brain full of “buy, buy, buy” was never the American dream.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 7 months ago by  Redcap.

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I agree, but I fear most people will be lost without everything push-button and instant-on. Without a fridge, or phone, or TV, or Google, or thermostat…..they’re going to panic.

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Sounds like quite a job getting the new place into the kind of order you’d like so you can call it “home”. I wish you luck and happiness there.

As for pre-modern living, I couldn’t agree more and while I’m thrilled that folks are finding good alternatives now, I just keep thinking “but what if it fails? do you know how to live?” or “but what if you can’t replace those parts later? do you know how to live?” and it all kept coming down (for us anyway) to “do we know how to live?” and that’s how we got to where it could all go tomorrow and we know we are sheltered (assuming the house is still there LOL), clothed, and fed. Simply. And maybe barely some seasons, but humans have always had to ride the tides of seasonal weather and food source changes and we’re learning to do the same.

We’re going back to being humans, not consumers. I think that would sum it up for us.

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The animals do find a way to live with each other. Our chickens tolerate the squirrels and the squirrels come down and beg for pecans and acorns when we get a bunch out to crush for the chickens. We have so many good trees, they have never moved into our attic so we have had no problems. Except when we first moved in, a squirrel had chewed through our internet line, but now it’s buried underground anyway.

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🙏

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The only RO systems I am aware of end up wasting 30 gallons of water for every five gallons of filtered water stored. If there’s another way to do RO, I’d love to know.