Life goes on - Summer 2021

Easy enough to understand DanA.
“Cows make for cow flies”
“Chickens need chicken food. And chicken food attracts RATS! And we do not want rats in our community!”
These are quotes from the one year of community public meetings 1999-2000.
They banned riding a horse thru town too. ONLY if a parade permit was applied for. Paid for. And full town council approved.
I was initially astounded by these attitudes.
Then after first our own well water taken away; then the no-livestock-anymore-in-town I am no longer surprised. We are the very last hold-outs to actually live on true acres within the town boundaries.
They are lot-living, true, bought-in, living Urbans.
We remain the Rurals.
I am only surprised it took my Wife so very long to bow to the inevitability that we/us chicken loving, woodstoving, “smokers” are now out of step, and must move.
S.U.

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How much land will you have at your next place Steve?

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10 acres ours DonM.
Two sides wrapped in ~300+ acres of Weyerhaeuser commercial planted Red Alder forest. That next to thousands of acres of Weyerhaeuser Douglas Fir timber lands.
On the very end of a county road with 5 acre to 40 acre true Rural living.
Ha! And I only will be mowing at most ~1/2 acre to-be 5 foot high dogs fenced wrapping around the house, gardens, and chicken house/runs.
S.U.

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This is the mentality of people who think that milk and eggs come from the store. They move out of the city to get away and then put the same city rules and regulations in place where they now live. Soon you have the same place that they moved away from. NO freedom to live life more abundantly and to live in happiness growing your own foods.
They probably want to rule out ants and all the other creatures in the landscape too. Make it sterile and dead.
Bob

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I would have just laughed and told them to move back to the city where there are no chickens and thus clearly no rats…
Sorry it sucks but those are some dense city slickers who belong in a high rise apartment complex.

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Hard to laugh in the face of the Town Mayor, the Towns Public Works Manager, back up with their called out County Deputy Sherriff DanA.

My laughing has been the “impossible” mowing all of these years. I hand pushed power mowed for years until age caught up with me. Then powered drive wheel, walk-behind. Now adapted rough ground rider. Ass sitting up and over is MUCH safer from the spit-out rocks and mower flung out shed parts.
My laughing has been the very last man standing from the five us there, that day.
S.U.

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Did some chunking.

Used the splitter to break these red oak rounds apart and then chunked down with my hatchet. The hatched lives for another day due to it’s usefulness. One of these rounds will fill a feed bag. I cut down the core wood into jenga block cross sectioned pieces and the more pithy wood I kept bigger.


And I’ve still got this and this much left on this deadfall tree. It’s the closest one to the house.


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Yes Steve sometimes you just have to out live the idiots that govern, but what they are replaced with and what they all leave behind in regulations and laws has lasting effects on everyone in the future. So sad. Most of it is done for the love of money in their pockets.
Bob

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What the government has forever taken in power for “the greater good” or “temporary only” circumstances they have never given up or given back.
Power tends to corrupt, absolute power corrupts completely

Having a functioning brain and skilled hands capable of care for yourself your family and your community is to strip them of this power. They don’t allow it

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I had a run in with the town public works here. They wanted to cross my property with a sewer line literally running 12 miles and crossing the river twice when all they needed to do was go one mile in the middle of town to join the two systems. After taking the issue up with the state department of environmental services to no benefit I ended up hiring a lawyer and letting them know they would have to try to take my land in court. They knew they couldn’t win that argument and started construction in town within a month of that meeting with the lawyer.
I don’t think it helped the construction company that the town manager sent me an email from him assuring the town that they didn’t need to worry about the pipe leaking as it goes under the river because the aquifer here is so big no one would be able to trace the leak back to the town pipe. Somehow the head of the state department of environmental services didn’t agree with that assurance and told me in no uncertain terms the constitution company would find out how wrong they where.
But yes it is hard to fight city hall just amazing how flatlanders will move out to the country and think they can bring everything they left behind with them.
In my case the ploy was simple they wanted to force the other half of the town to have to hook up to city water and sewage. It has been a battle here for decades sofar we are winning.

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I honestly don’t think it will get to here, but I will never hook up my property to town sewage or water. My well water tastes awesome and has all the minerals I need. No chlorine or fluoride to ruin the taste just beautiful mountain water. I need to check and see if the old original well has perked water so I can hook up an emergency manual pump in case of severe power outages. I think the original well wasn’t dug deep enough and they re drilled right next to it.
Just don’t want to unhook anything from the current well.

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We are finally getting lots of rain and a big shot of wind
Power went out at 7:30 this morning and as of 6:40 PM is still not on.
I have been helping 2 neighbors with generators
One is in hospice and needs 24 hr power so my little 2000 watt HF gen is keeping her lights on. Seems to be burning about 1 gallon in 6 hrs

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Ours went out at 2:00 pm just after getting home from shooting trip. Hooked into backup solar at 6 and been whooping the kids and wife at go fish for a while. Generator on standby if needed, one night without heat isn’t a killer still 52 Fahrenheit now. Sweat pants and sweat shirt with thick blankets. Guess I need to work up a woodgas hookup for the generator

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You are a good neighbor MichealG.

We blew down here. Lost a lot of leaf’s. No limbs this time. And the PUD powers only flickered.

Marcus time to convince the Wife on a propane heating stove. Or a pellet stove you could battery/inverter operate.
Before you’d woodgas it propane convert your generator. You must work away. Wife and the kids at home need back up easy first.
Woodgas generator fueling has a steep learning curve.

Suns goona’ come up tomorrow. And this Pacific bomb cyclone will lose it’s energy.
Endure. Persevere.

Just-In-Case Steve Unruh

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I have a 3500 water generator that is propane powered nice and quiet. Problem for wifey user friendly: pull start only. The big 6500 same same with option for electric start I have not got around to converting. Both were given to me not running, but both still undersized for furnace operation. Have 4 space heaters on stand by for generator use while lights are provided by solar but the big generator takes all the juice to run them on low and drinks the gasoline, 5-7 gallons every 5 hours loud and obnoxious to run. Other problem I personally have with using the big generator is the amount of noise it makes it sets me up as a target to have generator stolen. I prefer my power supply to be silent. To upgrade battery bank on solar would takes a month of paychecks. One of the projects that is planned after fuel savings on woodgas is upgrade off grid systems to quite mode
Power back on at 4:00 this morning. Right before wife woke up to complain of being cold. Should have turned off bedroom light switch and she would have woke up warm and cozy with heating bill

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Good to hear you have power again Norman.
Hope it’s the same for MichealG and neighbors.

Yeah. I hear you about the Wife’s and starting up small engine systems. Ended up buying her her own smaller weed eater, Then chainsaw.
And THIS factor is what will help you sort out between the one-step-to-having - from one incident having nothing. Keep you from wasting time, money and efforts on an “Ideal” system.
Ha! Before I three months saved back and bought the Wife her own Honda suitcase 2000 Honda birthday unit I had:
a big 950 pound hopping/walking India Lister clone 12 hp single cylinder. Hand cranked. And could be heard mile and a half a way. (see. idea was so big nobody could steal it). Some did expensivly electric starting convert these.
Then I sold it and retained a much smaller more reasonable 7.5 hp Chinese Yanmar clone diesel. Hurrah! Came with electric staring. Wife could and would turn key start, run and operate it. Service parts?? Special order from China . . . .??? Chasing Idealism’s still . . . stupid of me, that too.
Then I bought brand new a 12.5 kw Miller brand welder-generator. Great. Turn key electric. Very woman runnable. Reasonably quiet even.
Yeah. A Number 1, “I will bring myself, my buddies and brother-in-laws and we will pack this off and steal this!!”
And same-same problem If I’d ever followed through and electrically generation converted her Pa’s 1980 JD/Yanmar tractor . . . giving the household 10-12 kW self-made power and they will use every single watt of it and ask for more!!
3/4 gallon gasoline and hour on the Miller at that loading.
1/2 gallon an hour of pump diesel on the JD 950 tractor at a 10kW loading.
Woodgas for 10-12 kW electrical gonna cost you 20-30 pounds of sized prepped and dries wood each and every single hour.

Nope. Nope. Nope. For those Grid spoiled/dependent just give them 450-2000 watts of easy starting quiet suitcase portable gasoline power. Honey-bunny make do from there.
Our Honda does 10 hours on .8 gallons at a 450 watt “Eco-RPM” loading.
Like Michael said load these down to 1600-1800 watts and and you’ll be 5-6 hours a gallon.
And this will be y her Instant NOW to 2,3,4 days system. Reasonable lights. Refrigeration. Run corded lower wattage cooking things. Run the washing machine. Power back up satellite systems.
Yeah. Yeah. Over paint it up looking beat up used and ugly and STILL hide it, chain it down!

And I am damn serious about changing every damn thing here over to Group 31 truck flooded lead acid batteries. These then can be the long term no-power battery bank. Screw batteries idealisms.
You want have it owned in-place NOW. Useable then for 2-3-4 years if ever needs-must.
Think Cascadia 9.0. Think neighbor Mt Rainier farting. Think Dear Leader N.K. trying to make a point.

Space heating will always be much better fuel-used having the fuels directly making the heat.
Yeah I know well. Long and skinny occupied structure heat distribute out poorly from a single source heating. A heating stove be better then nothing, though.
I also know well from being as a kid, Rural renter that old farm-house square boxy single stove in the center is always damn cold on the outer walls too.
We stumbled onto the best compromise in our small living room corner stove and then natural through rooms heat CW circulation.
Now actual bathing, cloths washing amounts of water heating that’d be for immediate and short term stand-in: propane.
I/we are certainly not perfectly set up. 27 years and I’ve yet to convince the wife to ahead of time set up propane for the kitchen cooking and hot water. Maybe even for the kitchen refrigerator. Set up ahead and with the big truck delivery tank then 6 month to a year to figure out an in-kitchen wood set up. With a separate summer kitchen wood stove.

Most all systems I have evolved into.
It will always be easiest to just buy-into what they want you to have.
Freedom. Independence will always be more expensive.

Regards
Steve Unruh

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Reminds me I need to make a frame for the Not A Honda 2000 suitcase. Yamaha engine, got it siezed and fixed it. Rings were rusted shut and oil was like sour crude.

The plastic suitcase body dry rotted from being in a truck bed to power an electric air compressor. I’ll never understand some people, why not just use a gas engine compressor?
Now it needs a new frame to hold everything together. I’ll probably bolt it down to the concrete and make a little house for it and just make it inverter charge my lead acid batts. Emphasis on bolting it down. If someone is willing to steal my 100lb floor jack and pressure washer they’ll steal a funky looking generator.

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OMG. Feeling all warm and fuzzy reading this. Always good to know that there are others that are foolish enough to think that outmoded tech is still the best plan for the idiots that believe they will have to provide for themselves in the future due to any number of catastrophic possibilities. I know how lead acid works. I have desulfinated it and gotten back output and have opened up the cases and nothing in there so mysterious I couldn’t rebuild one. I haven’t tried all the Youtube ways to renovate dead ones, yet, mostly because I used all my old dead car batteries as core exchanges for the gold cart batteries I built my back up power with.

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Yep. Yep.
Here’s the PLAN, TomH.
We have four drivable vehicles here; one small diesel tractor; and one V-twin rider lawnmower.
Every one of these has a voltage regulated charging system and needs a starting/running battery.
I have three now converted to Group 31 post types. One Group 31 bought; and out of the tractor pulled; and set aside on a maintainer charger.
The used running vehicles keep these batteries conditioned.
The gasoline fuel tanks are all sealed, vapor recovery types and kept at at least 3/4 filled. ~60-80 gallons just there.
SHTF then only one vehicle to be kept runnable.
The pulled batteries will be the bank for my older Trace 12vdc 2.5kW inverter and the Rediline 12vdc to 115vac motor-converters.
The in-vehicle fuels will run our small Honda and Yamaha inverter-generators for 1-2 months. By then be up to full woodgas capable.
Doing from new, scratch, of course I’d bank up to at least 24vdc or 48 vdc.

Yeah. Yeah. Too simple and direct.
Like a push-pull cable choke system. An any heat source coffee percolator pot.
Steve Unruh

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Now you’ve really got the hamsters spinning the wheel in my brain. Batteries Plus sells Duracell flooded Group 31 batts for 115 per, 930cca. I could buy one of these per month.

I’ve also been squirreling away all the jumper cables we take from Wholesale Auction cars. Have a few good feet of halfway decent cable now. Some M10 sized eyelets and I could make a formidable battery bank.

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