Thursday, April 16, 2015

consuming to invest 23


CONSUMING TO INVEST 23

Sprouting Trays And Seeds

Now, before you skip over this section, mumbling about sprouts tasting like green dirt, stop and think how much your last garden salad ran you in Greenbacks.  Not cheap anymore, are they?  Not too long ago, you bought veggies several to the dollar.  Now, you are lucky to get each one under a buck each.  I’m not going to get into all the reasoning-just keep in mind a primary cause of all the contributing factors is drought, infertility in most soils and energy costs.  In short, we will never go back to “too cheap to meter” vegetables.  Worse days are here again, and we won’t go back to a cheap oil era with less population.  Before, if your twenty five cent cucumber stayed too long in the crisper drawer and started to mold, you tossed it out without a thought.  Today, it is cause for weeping and anguish.  If the price goes up too much more, it might be cause for spousal or child abuse.  Yes, of course, everyone should grow their own veggies ( which will NOT translate into post-collapse pantry planting.  You need a farm for that.  Gardens are for your fruits and vegetables, your vitamin foods.  Not your calorie foods.  If you read a post-apocalypse story wherein a garden feeds the family, throw your Kindle at the wall, then promptly pour carbolic acid in your brain to scour the information away as everything the story “taught” you was dis-information most likely from someone you should protect yourself against with aluminum foil hats ).  But veggies take time to grow, sometimes if you see one more of veggie X you over planted you will plant the wife under next years crops and a lot of time it is winter.  For all those times, sprouts are a good vegetable substitution.

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Now, you can eat sprouts.  Most people put all those crunchy bastards on a salad with some low fat ranch dressing, then chew their cud for twenty minutes consuming them.  I prefer to put some juice in the blender, then add sprouts, then run on “liquefy” for a minute or so.  OJ works best for me hiding the taste, but you can use V8 or whatever.  I’m not a huge vegetable eater, other than potatoes a couple of times a week.  I crave salad once or twice a month ( I take a multi-vitamin with dinner, and mega-dose on vitamin C twice a day ), and I believe that is for the enzymes rather than the vitamins.  Sprouts works just as well with that craving.  A lot of folks claim sprouts are “over sold” on their health benefits, then site very low vitamin content.  Do your own research, then try them out.  If you listen to your body and what it wants, you’ll be able to tell if they can work for you.  You can buy your own commercial trays, or make your own for almost nothing.  All you are doing is wetting the seeds once or twice a day, then allowing them to drain so as to stay moist but not wet, so a Mason glass jar with a ring and a screen of cheesecloth should work just as well as a store bought unit.  Do a little online searching for seed ( such as Alfalfa ) sales, sprout instructions and sprouter construction.  It is pretty straightforward.  If sprouting works for you, you can save money getting your vegetables, while staying nice and healthy.

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CONSUMING TO INVEST 24

Buried Tube Cooler A/C

I tried this method and failed miserably, but my neighbor did it the correct way and it works perfectly.  I only went four foot deep with four inch pipe.  Even though I stretched it out one hundred feet, and went uphill, that wasn’t good enough.  The neighbor only went fifty feet long on flat land, but he had a backhoe go down eight foot and installed the largest PVC pipe they had, the sewer pipe.  What you are doing is drawing air through the pipe into your home.  The temperature of the dirt at the lower pipe is what goes inside.  So, the summer blows in close to fifty degrees ( and you use a 12v fan from the auto parts store ).  A PV panel and a few back stock fans and you can have twenty years of air conditioning for just the digging and the pipe cost ( in a small yard, you can loop around in a circle to get the required length of pipe, but follow online instructions as you need X amount of dirt between pipes ).  Some folks recommend a black pipe vent at the tallest part of the house to act as a natural draw for the air, no motor needed.  Do sufficient research here, as a backhoe is an expensive investment and you want to do this correct the first time.  I’ve even read of a commercial greenhouse that used this in the winter, to pre-heat with fifty degrees for the cost of the fan alone, so it is a “thing”.  Just do due diligence.

END
 
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15 comments:

  1. We do sprouts all year round, got about 6 varieties going right now. My favorite way to consume them is to put a big handful on top of the inside ingredients of a sandwich, usually ham and cheese. Very nutritious (we use only the organic seeds), scour the pipes, and add some interest to an otherwise boring lunch. Also through them in the suppers salad too.

    Regarding the piped air. Cold air is not automatically *conditioned* air. Air conditioning removes the humidity, the stuff that makes a hot environment miserable. If you simply pump cold air in and ignore the humidity you are not doing yourself any favors and you are creating a major spore crisis that once started is not easy or inexpensive to correct. Same with them swamp cooler nightmares.

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    1. Sometimes I forget how the eastern half of the nation is a hothouse jungle

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    2. “Regarding the piped air. Cold air is not automatically *conditioned* air. Air conditioning removes the humidity, the stuff that makes a hot environment miserable.”

      I'm not an expert on this subject, so this must be verified? But here are my thoughts on this matter.

      Those living in hot humid areas will have to go with an extended system. As the hot, wet air travels through the long tube, it will eventually cool considerably, and condense, condensing the water molecules as they drop to the bottom of the tube. In my comment below I mention something about having the tube at a slight angle. This would be necessary to prevent standing water in the pipe. Another possible alternative (Again, must be verified) is to use a type of perforated drain pipe that allows the excess moisture to leach through the pipe.

      Some sort of filtration may be necessary, and is probably even recommended, but a compromise must be made for effectiveness of filtration, without heavily impeding air flow.

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    3. I acclimated to hot and humid. If you stay out of the sun, little problem. Other than Texas. The rest of the South, I was comfortable. But TX was just weirdly different. Ya'all go there and live with Glen Beck.

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  2. While sprouting may seem complex it is natures way of breaking down starch. Complex carbs are broke down into simple sugars and enzymes that are easier to digest . The body is able to extract more nutrition from the same amount of food .What most preppers store can be sprouted, wheat beans peas barley rye and corn. Distiller's sprout grain for the enzymes and simple sugars so yeast can convert them to alcohol. Your body converts them to caloric energy much faster and easier.

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    1. Do I remember correctly that sprouted wheat might be managed by gluten intolerant folks?

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  3. I started off thinking sprouts were the way to go also. Then I did a little checking and found the claims to be pretty hyped... check http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/cereal-grains-and-pasta/5750/2 .... compared to eating the wheat just plain cooked and it becomes a no brainer... I still eat them occasionally simply because I have a bunch of seeds that need to be used.. however, for vitamin supply, consider wheat grass. http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/custom/900675/2 and you already have a couple tons of it!!! just let it grow to about 3 or 4 inches in a wide pot. if you don't have a juicer, then they suggest a blender and strain the solids before drinking.. probably not more than 1 or 2 ounces up to 4 times a week is really needed ...

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    1. Wouldn't straining leave behind nutriants? Better to ingest all, right?

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  4. Your Lordship,

    For the potential benefit of you and your loyal minions, I'm going to turn you on to the absolute best resource for sprout related supplies on the planet.

    Whether anyone takes advantage of it is of course up to them. I can personally vouch for these folks as being great to deal with and literally having everything you could ever need or want regarding sprouting.

    http://sproutpeople.org/

    There, I've done my part.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Word of mouth advertising is priceless

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    2. Sprout people is where I did some of my initial research on sprouting. I bought my sprout kit from amazon but juct checked and seen the seller no longer sells it. The non-GMO, non-Hybrid seads I bought, (34 types of seeds for $21.95 - price increase since my purchase) is here: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003UA84FA/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

      Delete
  5. Totally agree on the earth tubes. Everything I have read has said, done right they are wonderful, done wrong they are a total waste. I disagree because done wrong you can still use them as a big pre dug cache. Sloping them for drainage of condensation, sufficient depth and length sufficiently placed away from other influences, an insulated watershed umbrella above them, and more all need to be considered and addressed when using them. Messing them up is easy. If you go with the cheap 4 inch tubes you need at least 4 of them 4 feet between each of them, so one 4 inch tube probably wont work right, also they need to feed into an airtight box and can use a solar powered fan to keep the circulation going when they are sloped incorrectly or thermal issues are working against them.

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  6. Perhaps I'm missing something important here? But I'm wondering how you would pull warm air through the pipe in winter time short of using a fan? Perhaps the pipe situated at a slight angle leading into the shelter will allow the warm air to rise properly? There must also be an optimal pipe length/diameter? Must look into this more?

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    Replies
    1. I think an angle up in your trench is a great idea, but I only did minimal research

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