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Off the grid memories... - 2/7/2016 11:02:41 PM   
MercTech


Posts: 3706
Joined: 7/4/2006
Status: offline 		A discussion of emergency preparedness and what to do if shit hits the fan but me thinking. Living off the grid need not be that complicated. I am actually enough of an old fart to remember people that actually never were on the grid.

Complicated isn't necessary for off the grid. For a given definition of "off the grid" that is.

Well, the "grid" didn't go to all the rural areas until the 1960s. I still remember being a child going to visit relatives that electric wires didn't reach at all. No phone line either. A few things I remember. The occasion was a family reunion. Now, in the deep south you are family out to 6th cousin. With my grandfather being one of nine kids and my grandmother one of 14 kids; I've seen family reunions that could populate a small town.

It was a large house supporting a large working dairy farm. Two houses actually. The "small house" (original farmhouse) was inhabited by the daughter and her husband. Cousin Enid and her husband lived in the big house. Enid was a CPA and her husband worked the cows.

Gas powered refrigerator and deep freezer. Yep, ammonia cycle refrigeration with propane tank truck coming out monthly. That got put in when the USDA started requiring milk to be refrigerated to <34 F within and hour of milking. I was too young to be allowed into the milking barn but I did see that the milking machine was run by an old diesel pony engine. I got to spin the flywheel! (open compression valve and spin up a heavy flywheel on the one cylinder diesel. Pop the compression valve closed and hope you had enough momentum to start the engine. I felt so proud I got it started on the second try. - was I 7 or 8 then?)

You had to bring the battery in from the barn to run the radio after dinner. It charged off the same power shaft that the milking machine used. (run by that antique one cylinder pony engine - said John Deere 1908 in the casting. Why did that memory stick?) Big, gigantic, multi-band radio in a fine wooden case. It was 5 feet high and attached to a wire antenna that ran between the house and the barn. I remember listening to chatter between Canberra Station and one of the space shots (one of the Gemini missions I think) broadcast by a station in Perth. That's in Australia, BTW. The grownups discussed whether it was worth the expense to get a television. Not worth it as they would have to get a generator that would only be useful for running that one thing. You could only get two stations on a television and the radio pulled in thousands. Why bother?

Kerosene lamps for light after dark. Flashlights were for emergencies only.

The wood burning stove in the outside kitchen still had a pony tank hot water heater. I thought that was so neat. The inside kitchen was propane and a propane hot water heater in the bathroom. Not so neat as it looked just like in town.

Inside and outside kitchens. You cooked in the house in cold weather to help heat the house and cooked outside in the hot Mississippi summer so the heat in the house would not become unbearable. Also the outside kitchen was a good place to feed hired hands without bringing them into the personal spaces of the family. Or feeding a battalion of relatives invading for a reunion.

A breezeway. The small house had a Breezeway - a long hallway running the length of a house with open doors at each end. The kitchen was on one side and the bedrooms and dining areas on the other. Passive convection cooling was the effect. (summer heat stress is more of an issue in the deep south than winter heating - at least before air conditioners) Oh yeah, no bowling allowed in the breezeway. Especially no bowling with glass beverage bottles and a softball. Nobody cares who said it would be ok.

The big house had a large covered porch that surrounded the house. Heat again. You can have ALL the windows open for air flow even during a horrendous downpour. You always latch the screen door to the porch. (this was where toddlers were given free rein to play - on the porch. Heaven help an older kid that forgot to latch the screen door and a toddler got out. They would be restricted to the porch to watch the toddlers for a WHOLE DAY)

In case of emergency; you fired three rifle shots, pause, and fired three more. At one time that was taught as a well established signal for "help needed" and a neighbor would arrive shortly. If you heard such a signal, you repeated the signal to pass it on and acknowledge you heard it. Summoning an ambulance or police took a 15-20 minute ride down the road to use the phone at the gas station.
I remember a tractor tip over incident. By the time the police and ambulance arrived; broken leg was splinted and the injured was enjoying a tumbler of whiskey for the pain while waiting for the ambulance to give him a lift to the hospital. The tractor had been righted, bent fender beaten back into shape, and was back at work with a different driver. The neighbor with the mule was enjoying lunch after getting a tractor pulled out of a swampy bit where it tipped over. I was feeding windfall apples with bad spots to the mule. I'd never seen a mule before. Big ass ears that would thwap you if you tickled them.

Well, that's my memory of "off the grid" early 1960s style. Put in a gas generator to replace the propane tank and you could work it the same way in a post apocalyptic scenario. Might want to practice making bio diesel if you want to keep the tractor running. Plant a chunk of acreage in peanuts or, if you had a sandy well drained area, plant olive trees. Get a mule. Mules are cool.
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RE: Off the grid memories... - 2/7/2016 11:23:56 PM   
MercTech


Posts: 3706
Joined: 7/4/2006
Status: offline 		Apologies for putting this in the wrong section. I thought I was in "off the grid".

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RE: Off the grid memories... - 2/8/2016 3:52:47 AM   
Cell


Posts: 409
Status: offline 		Nice memories. I don't really have any, but I would like to make some one day. I've always wanted to get into pressure canning. I've actually got the Ball "Blue Book" but haven't taken the plunge and bought a pressure canner yet.

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RE: Off the grid memories... - 2/8/2016 4:14:38 AM   
Cinnamongirl67


Posts: 854
Status: offline 		My parents have a huge garden at 83 yrs of age! It will probably be the last year sadly. My mother canned and froze just about everything! Always fresh produce in the summers. Fruit trees, berries etc. my step dad is an avid hunter, at one time they raised a few cattle. In the winter, a wood stove is always burning. It is the best heat!
Talk about a lot of work!!! This is their way of life though.
I miss our wood stove which came in very handy in power outages. We moved and now don't have the option to cut our own wood.
One winter we had an ice storm, no power for 4 days. Brutally cold. We cooked on the wood stove, stayed warm by it, melted snow to wash up. My kids were very young and they loved it! It was like a party for them.

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RE: Off the grid memories... - 2/8/2016 6:12:51 AM   
Greta75


Posts: 9968
Joined: 2/6/2011
Status: offline 		My friend keeps telling me to go sign up for jungle survival course with him. Survive on nothing for 1 week.

But to slaughter my own meat...., and from what I heard, we gotta eat snakes and frogs, ewwww, drink water from puddles of mud, and of course sleep in the jungle with no modern amenities or anything.

I'm a city girl. I enjoy the jungle when I get to go back to my modern amenities at the end of the day. Have a nice shower and a proper bed. But I think I will die without electricity, especially in this heat. All the food will go bad without refrigeration. Even fruits don't last long in room temperature in our weather. I don't know what we would do. I guess canned food. Eww! I never eat canned food ever!

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RE: Off the grid memories... - 2/8/2016 1:17:42 PM   
Kaliko


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Joined: 9/25/2010
Status: offline 		I don't have any off-grid memories, but reading yours was delightful.

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RE: Off the grid memories... - 2/8/2016 1:19:28 PM   
Kaliko


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quote:

ORIGINAL: Cell

Nice memories. I don't really have any, but I would like to make some one day. I've always wanted to get into pressure canning. I've actually got the Ball "Blue Book" but haven't taken the plunge and bought a pressure canner yet.



I just got rid of my Ball Blue Book yesterday. I'm too nervous about doing it wrong and the food being unsafe. I finally had to admit to myself that it is just never going to happen. We use the canning jars as drinking glasses.

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RE: Off the grid memories... - 2/8/2016 4:06:46 PM   
DocStrange


Posts: 1076
Joined: 6/10/2015
Status: offline 		I am not a prepper nor do I want to be. That is not to say I am not prepared. I am an avid outdoors person and have camping and hiking gear. I have a water filter that can purify 200 liters of water. Backpacking stove for cooking and boiling water. Multiple solar powered devices such as lights and radio. Fireplace and cutwood for heat. All that combined with a pantry full of canned foods I could easily live comfortably for a few weeks in the event of a natural disaster. That is about as long as I would want to prepare for.

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RE: Off the grid memories... - 2/8/2016 5:08:29 PM   
ResidentSadist


Posts: 12580
Joined: 2/11/2007
From: a mean old Daddy, but I like you - Joni Mitchell
Status: offline 		That is an awesome memory and a makes for a real nice read. I can picture the house with porch, the dairy farm, that old engine, sitting around listening to the radio . . . charming memories indeed. Bio diesel and a good stock of crop seeds would certainly make for sustainable homesteading indeed.

Living in Florida, emergency preparedness is a common thread for all of us as Mother Nature's SHTF frequently. For example, if you live in Miami, you have a 16% chance of getting hit by a hurricane. Have to be ready to 'dig in' or 'bug out' if we have to evacuate to a relief center. We have a generator, gas grill, 40 gallons drinking water and 3 weeks food supply. But we aren't prepared for homesteading if it's TEOTWAWKI and we don't have INCH bags.

It was the year-end, so I was replenishing the expired hurricane food & water supplies when I mentioned to the slave that NASA recently announced there is a 12% chance of Earth getting hit by a major solar storm in next 10 years. The last really big one in 1859 had telegraph offices sparking and one burned down. In 1989 a small solar storm took out Quebec's hydro electricity transmission system. A major solar storm would kill most vehicles w/computers (post 80s) and all other electronics. So if we had to get to a relief center, we might just be hoofing it and need some BOBs.

Now the slave is a math wiz, she started adding things up, 4% chance of inland storm, hurricane, tornado, space weather and we live very near to Disney World, a crowded American icon and likely terrorist target. Next thing you know, she is on a shopping spree for 'plan B' items (I confess, I helped a little). Here is what happened in the past 38 days since the first of the year.




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RE: Off the grid memories... - 2/9/2016 6:10:04 AM   
subinSouthend


Posts: 31
Joined: 4/18/2013
Status: offline 		We were what were known as Plot landers. When the war ended and my dad came home from the far east my family had been bombed out of the east end so he bought a plot of land in Essex where you built your own house, shed more like. There was no water, electricity, gas or any other amenities. It was an amazing place though and grew into quite a large community. Mind you wouldn't want to go back. People were a different breed then. My Dad built the house/shack we lived in, grew shot or trapped our food cast his own concrete fence posts, put in an army surplice generator so we had electric, even built an electric pump system from the well he'd dug so we had running water. and all while commuting to London every day to work.

Yep they were a different breed...

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RE: Off the grid memories... - 2/9/2016 9:41:48 AM   
peppermint


Posts: 5169
Joined: 10/18/2005
From: Montana
Status: offline 		I don't have any off the grid memories but your marvelous story reminded me of things from back in my childhood. Our milk was delivered to the house. Empty bottles were put outside and new milk was left in an insulated box by the milk man. Once a year the dairy would have an open house for all its customers. We'd go there and have a big picnic with lots of ham and corn on the cob. As kids we could peek into the buildings where the milking was done and see the cows that provided our milk in the pastures. Small dairies seem to be a thing of the past now. It was certainly nice to feel connected in a way to one of our food sources. It made the milk special as we knew where it came from.

One of the new trends now is having chickens in the suburbs and cities. My grandmother always had chickens in her yard. Yards were not to play in. Yards were for gardens and chickens. My grandfather had a big grinding wheel that he would turn to sharpen the knives that would some day process the chickens that stopped laying eggs.

As a young kid, maybe 4 years old, I was allowed to go down the sidewalk to the stop light on the west and where the sidewalk ended on the east. Must have been about 4 blocks of territory that all the kids in the neighbor roamed. Many of our games were made for sidewalks. We did jump rope and hop scotch a lot. No one had much of a yard to play in. One kid had an area that was flat and about 20 feet by 30 feet. That is where out nightly baseball games happened. Of course we had to modify the game to fit the space we had available.

In this day and age when parents get arrested for allowing their kids to walk to the local park, no wonder my grandson loves to visit us when we're in Montana. He's been doing it since he was 8. He gets our 26 acres to roam plus Gary's sister's 50 acres. He gets to do chores as kids in the past did. His day starts by letting the chickens, ducks, and geese out of the barn. Then it's time to feed and water the rabbits, toss some hay to the horses, collect eggs. I have never seen a child who is so thrilled to use a weed eater or mow the lawn on the riding lawnmower. He gets to drive the golf cart to haul stuff and just get around to the more distant areas. For 3 weeks he's one happy kid. Then he goes back home where he has to stay in the yard to play. Some day those will be his fondest memories of his childhood.

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Yes, I am crazy about feathered creatures. I have a dozen chickens, 3 ducks, 5 geese, and 2 parakeets.

Revise that number. Just got 14 new chicks and 5 turkeys.

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RE: Off the grid memories... - 2/10/2016 2:56:38 PM   
Kana


Posts: 6676
Joined: 10/24/2006
Status: offline 		My idea of Off The Grid was taking a Winnebago to Bonnaroo

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RE: Off the grid memories... - 2/12/2016 2:57:30 PM   
MercTech


Posts: 3706
Joined: 7/4/2006
Status: offline 		Recycling... 1950s, early 1960s style.

You washed and re-used the aluminum foil until it was worn and crinkled then hung strips of it in the fruit trees to annoy the effing crows that would take one bite out of every fruit on the tree.

All the "tin cans" would be washed and saved to top fence posts. Putting a can on top of a wooden fence post changes a 3-5 year functional life to a 10-15 year functional life. And you always have something for a little target practice in the back 40.

The "slops man" came once a week. You had a can with a lid buried in the yard for organic kitchen waste. Being buried kept it cooler so it didn't stink as much. This went away when hogs for human consumption could no longer be fed on slops according to the USDA. You could get a discount on ham, sausage, and bacon based on how much slops had been picked up from your house.

Newspapers and magazines were bundled and turned in for drives run by churches and the Boy Scouts. If you have pallet loads of paper goods; the paper mills will pay hard cash for it. Not a lot a lot of cash; but enough to fund things like an Easter picnic and egg hunt for a small community.

Glass jars were saved for home canning or "putting up" things that would be shared or gifted to neighbors.

Beverage bottles were returned to the store for a deposit and bottlers washed and re-used the bottles. This applied to gallon jugs of apple cider too. I paid for my first bicycle with money from returning deposit bottles picked up on roadsides and at picnic areas. ($25.00 for a refurbished bicycle)

The "trash man" came every other week because there wasn't enough to pick up more often.

The mid 1960s were the beginning of the throw away culture. Huge advertising campaigns to get you to pay a little bit more for "one way bottles". Restaurant food, fast food, coming in single use containers rather than dishes that would be washed.

The "reactionary old farts" that were around when I was little actually recycled. But, the hippy dippy tree hugger culture that evolved in the 1970s is just clueless about that little bit of history.

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RE: Off the grid memories... - 2/13/2016 7:49:10 PM   
Cell


Posts: 409
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: Kaliko


quote:

ORIGINAL: Cell

Nice memories. I don't really have any, but I would like to make some one day. I've always wanted to get into pressure canning. I've actually got the Ball "Blue Book" but haven't taken the plunge and bought a pressure canner yet.



I just got rid of my Ball Blue Book yesterday. I'm too nervous about doing it wrong and the food being unsafe. I finally had to admit to myself that it is just never going to happen. We use the canning jars as drinking glasses.

[Just stick to the instructions, I'm sure it'll be fine. Everytime something in my garden starts cropping I wish I had a canner... I waste so much produce!

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