Bison Prepper: November 2015

Monday, November 30, 2015

black turkey

BLACK TURKEY

It seems that some folks are mistakenly seeing black swans which are actually just black turkey’s ( Black Friday and Turkey Day ). Yes, black turkey’s are highlighting how bad the economy is and no, Turkey is not provoking Russia into a war to distract their population. Starting wars to save the economy made plenty of sense eighty years ago prior to Peak Credit and Peak Oil and Peak Resources, but now all most folks can afford is War Lite which just costs a lot without any other benefit except internal control. For that you need a made up or even genuine if you have it terrorist element. Turkey has the Kurdish incursion as well as surrounding middlin level threats from other nation states. I’m not saying that the Russian plane being shot down wasn’t a provocation designed to get the Bear responding. What I am saying is that it probably wasn’t Turkey if that was the intent ( it could have just simply been an accident nobody wants to admit to. Keep in mind plenty of those occurred during the much hotter Cold War and we managed to avoid nuking each other ). If the current theory going the rounds was that Turkey is hurting economically so it started a war, why didn’t they do that countless times before during economic calamities? Turkey has been a basket case financially since during the Ottoman Empire ( some good periods followed by bad, but the mean seems to be bad rather than good ).

Everyone’s economy is doing poorly, even China ( we lost our industrial sector due to Peak Oil and China is losing theirs as the rest of the globe contracts financial. Less oil or less customers, a growth paradigm economy can’t handle anything other than growth )( and speaking of Peak Oil, to the minion enquiring about the book “Black Gold Stranglehold”, it was complete crap. The abiotic oil section was good enough but their case against Peak was only made by ignoring many facts. Such as they could only claim US production grew after Hubbert’s prediction by including Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico oil, which was specifically EXCLUDED by Hubbert himself. They also showed their asses on other areas such as playing the tired and patently false “America never was and certainly is not now an empire”. What a bunch of ignorant whores ). And you don’t see everyone rushing off to war.

Just because the US pulled its chestnuts out of the Depression fire by turning into a fascist state engaged in perpetual war and colonization ( prior to the Depression, colonization was started in the 1860’s for fun and profit. Come the Depression, war was necessary for the bankers and industrialists very survival ) does not mean every swinging dingus out there reverts to war in times of economic contraction.

As a side note on our economy, the local one seems to be stalling nicely. I noticed almost no traffic all morning Black Friday, no business was any busier than normal ( with most being far less than usual ) and nobody sold anything by staying open Thanksgiving morning. I filled up the truck with donations far in excess of a normal day. For instance, in one store the deli donations were equal to a full weeks worth. Obviously the humptards overstocked single meals thinking the losers without family or those forced to work would stop by to get a heat and eat meal. But it was everything that didn’t sell such as rolls and pies and cakes and crap. The overstocking points to desperation in the grocery retail sector and the lack of Black Friday activity spells out far less money being available ( and this is in a town doing better than most due to the mines. Granted, they have slowed down and a lot of contractors are cutting back on help, but when I first moved here the one independent coffee shop was put out of business by Starbucks. Now, besides two Starbucks, there are three independents. Yuppie Scum populations here have grown and you know how they love to spend money of stupid crap. For them not to be out shopping… ).

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Friday, November 27, 2015

cheap wheat 3

CHEAP WHEAT IS NEAT 3 of 3

Your third cheapest source for wheat kernels is the one 99 out of a hundred preppers have access to, a Wally World. I no longer have any love lost for Wal-Mart, but as we impatiently wait for their retarded asses to go bankrupt, they have some uses. Web order wheat kernels makes them marginally productive ( I try to avoid any purchases there, as I’m sure most of you do ). Go to www.walmart.com and look up under the search bar “Augusta Farms” and then “wheat” or “wheat kernels” or “bucket wheat”. Augusta Farms has a lot of products, like potato starch pellets in a #10 can ( a truly asinine product, grotesquely overpaying to put dehydrated mash potatoes that come in a box into a sealed can ), so you need to refine the search or you will be wading through page after page, screaming in rage and frustration as each one SLOWWWWWWLY loads due to pop up ads. After you put in your zip code, more than likely the page will tell you that your store not only doesn’t have it in stock, neither will you get free shipping on it ( sometimes items are free shipping if you order over $50 ). Do not despair! At first I was under the misunderstanding I couldn’t get the wheat, as the instructions are a bit confusing ( of course, to be fair, I’m usually on the Web before enough coffee or after an exhausting day at work ).

No, you merely are required to pay a token fee to get it shipped. If you can wait ten to fourteen days it is only $5 per order as a shipping fee. If you are ordering five buckets at a time, or 125 pounds for a total of $80, then your order becomes $85 after shipping. Or, 68 cents a pound after storage container ( remember, other methods require you to get your own containers ). If you called the Augusta Farms container the same price per pound held as a Home Depot orange bucket, they would be about $3 each. Subtract that cost and your Wal-Mart wheat becomes fifty-six cents a pound delivered. Verses twenty five cents a pound feed store wheat. Of course, your total cost includes a better bucket, but that is about the penalty you pay for not having a feed store near you-about double the cost buying retail rather than jobber. Buying small quantities rather than larger. Still, twice the price is still nice if the alternative is no wheat. Worse, nutrition-less white rice. At the Wal-Mart method, your total cost per person for a years food ( 400 pounds. One pound a day, 365 days, a bit left over for sprouting or spillage. 1500 calories a day which is barely adequate, but go back a month or so and read my series of articles: Wheat “Only” ) is $272. Compared to feed store and orange buckets of $152. Sticker shock, sure. Until you compare to mail order wheat ( to be fair, a semi truck worth might be cheaper, or the same cost per pound. I, for one, would rather not come up with that up front money even if I could use all the wheat ).

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Thursday, November 26, 2015

cheap wheat 2

CHEAP WHEAT IS NEAT 2 of 3

If “wheat cleanings” is unavailable to you ( and, you are NOT near a farmer willing to deal with your small time ass-a method so rare I don’t consider it as a forth procurement method in the cheap price category ) your next cheapest method is feed store wheat. Feed store wheat was taught to me ( and all his subscribers to his newspaper that published just a few issues in the late ‘80’s ) by Kurt Saxon, may his pea-picking heart be eternally blessed. You don’t find this taught in too many places because NOT making a profit is un-American and against most religious teachings in this country. If God loves you, you’d have money. Just ask Glenn, he’ll tell you ( he’ll also tell you the fracking boom will last for three hundred years and that only Democrats will hump you- I’ll assume the best of him and assert the devil himself is whispering in his ear and the poor dear is just confused to the origin of the deity ).

Even if feed store wheat is covered there will be stupid crap added as warnings to give you the illusion that it is a bad idea. Such as the belief you need “clean” wheat and only the official survival food purveyors can give you that ( whatever small bits of chaff are in the kernels is easily picked out or ground up, or just turn on your rotary fan or go outside on a windy day and have your lazy and fat children get a bit of exercise throwing the wheat up and having the chaff float away. When you find the odd corn kernel, pick it out. My goodness, are people completely helpless anymore, or just that willing to trade extra money to avoid any and all work? That should work out well for you come the collapse ). We’ve already covered the constant push towards expensive “pure white” buckets. Or, they’ll try to push Mylar bags on you. As if wheat will curl up and die on you at the faintest whiff of air. You merely need one cup of diatomaceous earth ( food grade ONLY!!! Don’t use swimming pool filter DE ) per five gallon bucket of kernels. Dump in, seal, roll and shake to distribute the DE on all the kernels in the bucket ( which is why I place 33.33333 pounds of wheat in each bucket rather than its maximum of 35 or 36, to more easily coat all the ingredients with DE-besides being easier to calculate in multiples of hundreds ). This will kill off insect infestation and eliminate the need to evacuate the oxygen inside. I would never EVER, never recommend the dry ice method as I believe you introduce moisture into the inside of the bucket that way. DE might seem expensive as you can’t always find it at your feed store and must pay a butt ton on shipping it in the mail, but it sure is cheaper than Mylar bags ( Mylar might be a good investment if you are worried about the toxicity of the bucket [ again, NEVER reuse a bucket of previously suspect non-food ingredients ] but other than that I call it an expensive solution in search of a problem ).

Next article, the Wal-Mart wheat.

END

Wednesday, November 25, 2015

cheap wheat is neat

CHEAP WHEAT IS NEAT 1 of 3

Throughout the years the number one comment, problem or complaint about the Redneck Irregular Deluxe Survival Plan was that there was never any feed stores near the reader and hence they could not stock as much cheap wheat as was needed. Today, we revisit one solution and present a new one. The old plan I covered last year was to buy wheat through Wal-Mart. Every swinging dingus out there has a Wal-Mart near them, or at least far closer than a feed store. It isn’t as cheap, but that is where the new plan comes in. It is even cheaper than feed store wheat but even harder to find.

( the feed store is where you must specify human consumption, non-treated [vet meds] whole wheat kernels. If the pimply teenager clerk fresh from his X-Box has no idea, ask the owner or manager. If your wheat is red, it is treated, but don’t rely on a mere visual )

So you now have three options, all cheaper than mail order wheat. Best price ( a quarter a pound with Home Depot orange containers ), good price ( feed store 37cents a pound with same container ) or Wally ( at 68 cents a pound in food grade buckets ). Mail order is usually $1.25 a pound after shipping at the better deals. For a comparison, if you bought white rice ( anyone who tells you to store brown rice for the apocalypse is a complete and utter moron, president of the Republic Of Dumbassness, Supreme Ruler For Life Of Idiot Ville ) and put them in orange buckets ( if kept out of sunlight, they don’t outgas. Not a guarantee of no toxic ingredients, but in the collapse, famine now because you didn’t store enough food is stupid compared to cancer in twenty years from a ‘maybe food grade’ bucket. Obviously, reused with chemical ingredients stored in the bucket is instant death, but bought new orange buckets are most likely okay, and a third the price of food grade buckets. Not all of us are lucky to get free used buckets, so I go with the cheapest new ones ), the cost would be 63 cents per pound in a container. A mere 5 cents a pound savings over a whole grain, with a crappy bucket to boot. If you can eat wheat, I’d buy the already stored Wally kernels instead of white rice.

The cheapest are hard to find, requiring research and luck. They are called “wheat cleanings” and are irregular sized kernels culled from regular feed wheat and sold as seed for planting the next crop. Search in the Yellow Pages or Internet equivalent under “seed” or “wheat seed” or “seed sellers” or something similar. You want a seed store product, not a feed store item. A minion came across this method, one I’d never heard of or considered. If you can find a source that sells these, you are back to pre-Y2K wheat prices, $12 per hundred pounds. In theory, with a source for free or $1 buckets ( say, from a BBQ joint, as everyone else is trying the bakeries. Five gallon buckets hold 33 pounds of wheat each so you need three per hundred pounds, with each year being 400 pounds you need 12 buckets per year ), your five years of food just cost $255. Anyone can afford that.

Continued Next Time

END

Tuesday, November 24, 2015

nerd apocalypse 2

NERD APOCALYPSE 2 of 2

*
Note:
"And my most excellent survivalist & post-apocalyptic novel, "Glasses, Pulleys and the End of Bread" which James hasn't reviewed yet, probably because he's still dazzled by its goodness :)" :
http://solsysbooks.blogspot.com/
This book is from Ave, one of my few European readers. I've reviewed this before but it was only half done ( it is now completed other than a middle chapter revision from what I understand ). This novel is huge. English is his second language but you can barely tell. Don't expect perfect American structure and flow, but really his English is better than mine or yours for the most part. I bring it up to limit the comments about the writing style. Read it for the story. I was impressed and look forward to finishing it.
*

When I was a wee lad of about thirteen or fourteen, not too long after I watched Star Wars in the theatres about four times and recorded that movie on an audio cassette player at the drive-in window speaker to listen to it another twenty times or so, until the cassettes wore down, Mom ( bless her heart who even though she was a bit of a grumpy gus having to deal with me every day still instilled a love of reading in me-perhaps self preservation?-and fed it voraciously which is a trend I’ve only denied a few times myself due to fierce budgetary constraints ) bought me the first boxed set of Dungeon & Dragons, the pioneer role playing game. I didn’t even have a clue how you were supposed to play it, it was so novel, and it took one of moms friends from work husbands, a geek which was also a novelty, to explain it was a game you talked out between players and referees. My dad was always competitive and animated during confrontations, a skill well suited to his sports playing and being a cop, but I was completely opposite and hated and avoided both people in general and confrontations in particular ( being a reclusive clown helping in that regard ). This was before the general public had been widely introduced to the concept of extroverts and introverts. Anyway, I took to non-competitive role playing games like a fish to water or a liberal to Hilary.

The late 70’s and early 80’s were the time of role playing games, killed later by computers and computer users who were also game players and who combined the two. Not killed as in role playing itself but killed as a medium. No longer were thick books compiled or consulted, no longer were referees asked to create worlds and oversee them. The computers did all the scut work and you just paid the cover price and enjoyed your solitary romp through a fantasy world, only interacting with other players online. Gone were groups gathering and socializing, to a large degree. Gone were paper books of rules, other than as computer program manuals. I didn’t particularly miss it, burning out on fantasy books and games, then starting to get laid so gathering with the boys for game night lost all importance, but in thinking about revising my habit as a source of future entertainment I started to research what was still available in non-digital form. To my chagrin, my old favorite games were hideously expensive, each manual twenty to thirty dollars ( and you needed more than one manual per game, such as Players, Game Masters, Monsters ), far more expensive than a lot of great reference books you need for rebuilding civilization after the collapse. No way was I going to shell out that kind of scratch.

There used to be a LOT of the games out there. Not just D&D but its competition like Tunnels & Trolls, and various other genres like Twilight2000 which was post nuclear war in a military unit or Traveller which was science fiction. There was espionage and post-apocalypse with mutants. I’m sure I had a western, but can’t remember clearly. Most disappeared with the advent of computers but a few popular ones were bought out by specialty companies and kept in print for old schoolers such as myself ( at boutique printer prices, even though now with Print-On-Demand most of the cost is profit for them ). But one original company still seems to be around at reasonable prices, Steve Jackson Games ( back in the day, popular for a nuclear war card playing game, if memory serves ). They have a reasonably priced book ( $10-$15, new, less used ) called GURPS ( available through Amazon ). Which is a universal role playing game using standard six sided dice ( a headache back then were finding and buying, although not using, bizarre dice like twenty sided ). You can make the world of your choice, fantasy or space opera or super hero’s or post-apocalypse mutants or zombies or whatever, while only buying one set of game rules ( all games back then were proprietary and fiercely independent. You went from fantasy to space, you learned a whole new set of rules. D&D was monster and magic heavy, while Traveller was high tech heavy with planets having different tech levels [ the Druid Dude would have been proud ] and the only thing approaching magic was psionics, which I never used as I wanted Star Wars, not Lord Of The Rings, by that time. Yes, Darth Vader was disturbed by the Imperial officers lack of faith and used psi to choke his ass, but that was one dude in the universe, not a common skill a group of traveling blue collar types would possess ).

Most folks refuse to be proud of being a nerd or geek, or avoid any activity that might get one classified as such, but you should still consider the allure of role playing games. You use your brain in a fun and creative way and for hours the real world disappears. You can relax your competitive nature and just enjoy the company of friends. It is escapism. But mentally challenging escapism, not mindless entertainment paid heavily for. TV turns off your brain, games stimulate it. Something to consider.

END

Monday, November 23, 2015

nerd apocalypse

NERD APOCALYPSE 1 of 2

The standard advice for entertaining oneself and cohorts for down times after the Apocalypse ( you are not going to go from cubicle warrior and couch potato one minute to working the fields dawn to dusk the next. The Petroleum Slaves will slowly die off and you will slowly add manual labor to replace them ) is to stock playing cards, board games and used paperback books. Easy enough, as Dollar Tree stocks ( or did-it’s been over a year since I’ve been in one ) two packs of cards for a buck and Family Dollar sells one pack for a buck ( where, meanwhile, back in the New Sears Formally Known As The Low Price Leader, packs start at over three bucks each, the thieving whoring rotten bastards ). You can usually find board games for a buck at a thrift store, even though there is inevitably a piece or three missing ( with Monopoly you always have, strangely, some of the yellow or orange draw cards missing, or one denomination of money. I usually waited for a thrift store special discount day, like “fill a bag for $5”, and bought a second set and combined the two ). Thrift stores don’t really discount books like they used to, even as their selection of 70’s violent soft porn men’s serials are replaced by today’s women authors talking about the feelings of serial killers or whatever it is they blather on about, definitely a trend of bad to worse writing. My local bookstore, smelling the inevitable over a decade ago, has half their store used books, with all the hardbacks $4 each-mimicking the penny plus shipping of a lot of Amazons stock. They also take used paperbacks of rough shape and too many copies and sell them non-returnable at a quarter apiece. When the planets align and all the gods, even Cassandra who wasn’t exactly a god but did have wicked if annoying powers, shine their benevolence upon me, ten for a dollar.

I’ve already stuffed one storage unit with used clothes, cans of coffee and bags full of used books, and I refuse to abandon a pack of cards until you can’t read them anymore, never to break into my Apocalypse card stash ( the girlfriend has great sport pantomiming great difficulty dealing sticky cards, making fun of this trend. She’s a good egg. We always have fun poking fun at each other all the time. She had four or five brothers and didn’t grow up as a princess, thank goodness ). However, as one knows by now or should because I make no attempt at hiding my quirks and in fact attempt to revel in them, I can’t stand by and be content with upholding the general consensus of the prepper/survivalist community and must try to show them up by one-upping them or disproving their notions or slaughtering their sacred cows and turning them into beef ribs ( which are oh so much more tasty than pork but try finding them even prior to the Texas drought and aquifer depletion ). It isn’t much, a pinprick of irritation at the milling crowd of conformists, but I’d like to add a forth pillar of entertainment. Most would deny rabidly, call me the kings jester and run away in denial, but I’d like you to consider paper book role playing games ( NOT the same as board games ). More next article.

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Saturday, November 21, 2015

guest article

GUEST ARTICLE

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A North Idaho, Off-Grid Water Storage Example

Disclaimer: Here's an article on how my family and I have managed our water system for the last 20 years on our North Idaho Homestead. This is not the only way to do a system. In fact, it's far from perfect. There are many other ways that are equal to or better than what we have done. Depending on where you live and your average precipitation, this might not work for you at all. This article is not about conservation or using less water. We strive to live a pretty "normal" life, whatever that means in this day and age. This is just what has worked for us over the years.

Background: Twenty years ago, my husband and I bought 10 acres in North Idaho, 2 miles from the nearest paved road. (Over the years, we've bought out our neighbors and now have a total of 50 acres.) Our property is fairly level, treed and bordering a 14 acre beaver pond that is shared among several neighbors. We get an average of 30 inches of rain a year. Some of that falls as snow during the winter months. July, August and September are usually dry. There were no buildings, utilities, well, etc. on our property when we bought it. Access is seasonal depending on how much snow we get. We use snowmobiles, ATV's, snowshoes, cross country ski's, to access our property during particularly bad winters. One winter, we didn't drive our car to our house for six months.

After we bought our property, we hired a company to construct a pole building shop. We used this for our home base as we came up only on weekends. There was a metal roof so we installed 12 feet of rain gutter and bought a 55 gallon, plastic barrel. Every weekend, we would come up and the water barrel would be filled. We used this water for bucket showers, washing dishes and watering the dogs. We hauled in our drinking water from home. What we discovered is that you don't really need very much potable water for drinking and cooking. Most water usage is for bathing and washing. So if that water is fairly clean but maybe not drinking quality, we'll that's okay.

It took us three years to make the move permanently to our backwoods homestead. During that time we built a woodshed, barn, and a couple of other small outbuildings. Each of these building was outfitted with gutters and rain barrels. After the move, we started building our cabin. Our cabin uses a SunMar Composting Toilet -- no water needed. Wells in the area run 600 feet deep and the cost is out of our budget so we've just made do and expanded our rainwater system as needed. Plus, you need a pretty big pump for that deep a well. Which also means you need a generator and gas. If the end of the world comes, how are you getting that water out of that deep hole? Deep well pitcher pumps don't draw 600 feet.

A quick word on barrels. We have found that the plastic 55 gallon barrels that have a large ring that allows you to remove the whole top works better for us -- much better than the barrels with two small bungs. Being able to remove the top allows us to clean the barrels easier. My husband installs a water faucet on the side, toward the bottom of the barrel. The faucets have a threaded pipe sticking out of it. The set up goes: faucet-washer-silicone-barrel-silicone-washer-nut. To keep bugs and debris out, we take off the lid and ring. Stretch the body of a panty hose over the top. (A knot is tied in the crotch area and the legs are cut off. Small size panty hose are not big enough. I can usually buy a bag of used panty hose from the local thrift store during their "buck-a-bag" sale.). The ring is screwed back on and the lid is saved in case we need it later. The barrels are placed on cinder blocks so that there is space to put a bucket under the faucet.

During our first winter, we moved a rain barrel into the house and put it on cinder blocks. We melted snow on the wood stove and poured the resulting water into the rain barrel. That way we always had 50 or so gallons on hand to wash dishes, take showers, water animals, etc.

For our drinking water, we are lucky in the fact that just 7 miles down the road from us is a fresh water spring that runs 24/7. Hundreds of folks in the area get their water from here. We prefer using the "Aqua-tainers" for hauling drinking water. They hold 7 gallons, have a built in faucet, and have a square bottom so they don't tip over in the car. We bought ours from WalMart for around $12. We have seven of these containers and that will last our family of 5 for a month. Though if needed for TSHTF, I have several different water purifiers so I can use the rain and pond water.

Water for the grass and my small garden came from the pond using a gasoline powered water pump. I started with a small Homelite gas water pump that could run only one garden hose but it sure beat hauling buckets of water to the garden. We have since upgraded to a Honda water pump that will allow me to run 7 impulse sprinklers at one time for the yard and (now much bigger) garden.

The second year in our house, we added a front porch and attached rain gutter. At this time, we had 5 barrels (275 gallons capacity) set up. Water was hauled into the house in plastic buckets. Poured into kettles and heated on the stove as needed. It worked but not too long after, I was pregnant and carrying buckets became less and less fun.

At this point, we used our tax return to buy a 1200 gallon, plastic cistern behind our house. We hired a friend with a backhoe to bury it for us. A cheap pitcher pump from Harbor Freight was installed on the counter next to the sink. We ran hoses from the barrels to fill up the cistern. However, we would only fill the cistern with rain collected during the spring and fall. During the summer there is too much dust and pollen in the air and on the roof. The summer water was still collected in the rain barrels but the hoses were put away and we would use this water for animals. Pollen water is NOT fun to shower with. It makes your hair yucky!

With a new baby, our water use increased. Due to lack of funds and wanting to be self-sufficient, we use cloth diapers. Twice a week, I would pump 50 gallons of water, heat it on the wood stove and wash the laundry in a wringer washer with two, side rinse tubs. Once the wash water became dirty, the rinse water became the wash water and new water was used for rinsing. It was rather labor intensive but it saved a lot of money. Clothes are hung outside during the summer and on wood racks by the wood stove during winter.

Three years later when baby #2 came along, I wasn't looking forward to pumping the 50 gallons of water, twice a week. I was using 5 gallon stainless steel kettles for heating the water and they weigh 40 pounds. My shoulders were starting to get injured moving the kettles. So we decided to install a 12 volt, RV-style water pump and instant on demand, propane water heater. Plumbing was installed using RV tubing (looks like garden hose). The system is only good for running one faucet at a time, but compared to pumping water, it's a big blessing. The Shur-flo water pump and propane water heater were purchased through Backwoods Solar in Sandpoint, Idaho. (You can find them online.) We retired the bucket shower and installed a regular shower head. A regular front-load washer was purchased. Though, we still hang up our clothes.

Over the years, we had baby #3, and added two 1200 gallon cisterns for backup. These are not connected to the main cistern and we use the gas water pump to transfer water or we could lower down a bucket if needed. That way in case one cistern gets contaminated for some reason, we still have two others. Drinking water is still hauled in from the spring. The pitcher pump is on the counter and is used every once in a while if the 12 volt water pump breaks down. (They need a new diaphragms every few years). One year, the intake line from the cistern froze to the 12 volt pump -and- the water pitcher line so we dragged in a 55 gallon barrel and had the kids collect the snow for us to melt :). Every time we upgrade a system, we leave the old system in place so if something happens we are still set up.

Side Notes:

All of our building have metal roofs. Rain gutters are plastic and are taken down and stored over winter. We get a LOT of snow and it will rip the gutters right off. We found some of our gutter material for free through Craigslist and Freecycle.

Sometimes we put our rain barrels away for winter but most of the time we don't. In twenty years, we have only lost 2 to freezing. One of these we just repaired the little split in the seam with silicone - still useable.

Hoses are a great prep item to stockpile. You can never have enough.

Water "totes" are very cost effective and fairly easy to find. They are used by food companies to haul juices and syrups. They are around 275 gallons. However, they are too big to fit through a regular door so don't expect to take them inside. They can't "officially" be buried but our neighbor dug a hole, lined it with scrap plywood and covered the hole with straw bales. You can clean them at the car wash using the high pressure hose - soapy water, then rinse.

Barrels are your friend and handy for so many things. If you find a good deal, stock up. Keep your eye open on Craigslist. In North Idaho, you can get barrels and totes from Eagle Peak Containers in Athol, Idaho. Remember if possible, buy the ones that have the whole lid you can remove. The barrels with just the two bung holes are hard to keep clean.

SunMar Composting Toilets are worth the money. We have been very happy with ours over the years.

Not all Shur-flo 12 volt pumps are the same. Cheaper is not always better. Make sure you note the model number when comparing prices.

Some of the "pool side" instant propane water heats look interesting. They are fairly inexpensive. I bought one for a little cabin I built but I haven't had a chance to try it yet.

Last but not least, Remember that all water does NOT need to be potable. "Good enough" water is fine for showers, washing clothes and dishes. Think about it, folks don't mind swimming in lakes and rivers even if they wouldn't drink the water....

Idaho Homesteader