Weather Cycles

The weather has been cycling between 1 to 3 inches of snow, to warm enough to melt and saturate the ground, to freeze hard. It's cycled 3 times now. The ground is highly saturated and frozen solid like a brick. We are starting a week that is supposed to have highs around 40F. This has already resulted in a lot of water that has nowhere to go. I'm considering building a bridge in the low spot in my driveway. I could just put in a culvert, but that is boring.

Economic Planning While Under a Failing Economic System

There are a lot of talking heads telling you where the economy is going these days. Many will listen to the ones telling them what they want to hear. If you want something else, if you want someone that has no vested interest in your liking what he has to say, no monetary incentive to lie, and a reasonably good track record, I believe the guy over at Vision Victory manifesto.com has a better grasp on what's going on than anything any of the network TV news has to say. The essence is: The economy is screwed. Don't make money based plans for more than about 10 to 15 years, because the value of US dollar will have tanked by then and enough economic chaos and change will have happened by then that you'll have to make new plans based on whatever economic system reconstitutes after the crash.

He and I share similar plans for the next 10 to 15 years, but there are differences. Here would be my recommended plan by order of importance:

#1: God. Religion is a controversial subject. Many don't believe in God. Regardless of this, I will unapologetically tell you that if you don't have Him on your side, every other thing you are doing is futile. Getting him on your side requires that you do your own homework. Don't assume that conventional wisdom is going to get the job done.

#2: Skills. Develop skill sets that make you a vital organ to society. Luxury items and skills intrinsic to them are the first to become useless.

#3: Basics. Warm Dry Shelter. Clean Water. Food. Work toward obtaining a low maintenance, energy efficient house on two to five acres of land that can be developed in to farm land. Learn to farm. Learn to harvest wild foods. If you can grow food, if you can walk into the wild and find shelter, water, and food with your bare hands or with simple tools, you will have an edge over the vast majority of people that in habit the US today. It's a simple skill you can develop now that nobody else is learning.

#4: Tools. Tools for building, tools for fixing, tools for your skill sets, these are obvious. Guns and knives may not be obvious to you. They are usually seen as weapon, not tools. While they can be weapons, and some are good for little else, the type of gun or knife you buy makes a difference. If you buy an assault riffle and a sword, you are pretty mush stuck with them being weapons. A K-bar and shotgun, on the other hand, are much better suited to being tools. There are a number of things that can be made with just a good hunting/ camping knife, and a shotgun can be used for both hunting and for shooting animals that would eat your livestock or crops. Think utilitarian, not commando and become familiar with your tools.

#5: People. Surround yourself with level headed like minded people that are pursuing a similar plan that can be trusted. The hive effect is a very potent force to be reckoned with. Make it work for you, not against you.

#6: Stockpile. A stockpile of food, water, ammunition, and other consumables is impervious to inflation, but not time, so don't go crazy. Ask yourself: What are the chances of you having to move it without a car? Will it rot before you can use it? Can you stand eating the food you are stocking? Is their enough variety in your stockpile to keep you healthy? Can the ammunition be used to do what you need it to do? More than a year's supply is probably excessive. After a year, you really need to have a developed an income strategy that doesn't rely on your stockpile. If you haven't, you are in a type of trouble no stockpile in the world is big enough to fix.

#7: Investing. So, you you have a small farm with a reliable well that is paid off. It has an energy efficient house on it that can operate off the electrical grid. You have it packed with a variety of canned foods. Enough to last you and your family for a year. You have a couple of utilitarian guns and you practice with them weekly. Yet you still have income you wish to invest. What do you do with it? Gold and silver are (mostly) inert minerals. As such, their long term real value is reasonably stable just like the ground is reasonably stable. The reason the price of gold has been rising for years is because the dollar has been loosing its real value to inflation. Gold and silver have had a significant value for several thousands of years. The bad news is that in a very small, primitive, crisis economy, gold and silver is frequently valueless for the obvious reasons. You can't eat it, you can't burn it, they're just an inert minerals. Energy on the other hand is always useful, though stored energy is more difficult to store and move. The nature of the stored energy you invest will matter a great deal in a crashed economy. Flammable gases require special containers and special equipment to store and use. Liquid fuels are more stable, but still require containers and some, like gasoline, have additives that will separate and foul the fuel, but with some effort they can still be used in machinery. Solid fuels don't serve well in machinery, but are the most stable and the easiest to store and use. Fire wood must be kept dry or it will rot. Coal it hated by environmentalists, but it is probably the most perfect fuel to stockpile. It is impervious to everything but fire, it won't leak or rot if you just dump it on the ground or bury it in a hole. It will sit around a wait for you longer than you will ever need it too. Governments and thieves will break in and steal gold and silver, but when was the last time you ever heard of someone breaking in and stealing coal? Sure it happens, but it's a much more difficult and desperate act. You will need a place to store it all though, and the amount of space it will take per dollar of investment will be much larger than gold or silver, and reconverting coal into cash could be an unreliable process. Moving your stockpile will be harder as well. Still, I would be far more comfortable stockpiling coal than gold.

First Snow and the Were-Llama Flu

The first snow has arrived today. It's not catastrophic, but it is on the early side and it's sticking. Snow tires aren't legal for another 3 days. Fortunately the snow is supposed to turn to rain by tonight. I'll be staying to let people re-learn how to drive in the snow. Still, I predict that El Nino will make this a warm and dry winter.

The flu has hit here again, but after 2 weeks, I think I may be getting better. I'm dubbing it the Were-Llama Flu.

The Ugly Sumer of 2009

Well it's become apparent that finances will not allow me to build even the foundation of my house this year. It just as well though, as I have decided to re-engineer the foundation to do double duty. I'll write more about that later.

The good news is my new business has be gun to transform holes in the ground into swimming pools. If it continues to bring me some work, then I may just have the money to lay that foundation come Spring. In the mean time, I will begin sharing images and tips on how we have built the current straw bale buildings and other useful projects we have going on.

Ignoring What "They" Say

So, do you remember the compost I put in the tires? I have an update. All 18 pea plants spouted and grew for me until I forgot to water them for a week while the daily highs were from the mid 90's to 104F and lows only down to 60F. Then the deer walked up to the house and chewed on the ones that survived. They say pea plants don't produce pods after it's above 70 degrees on a regular basis. I say peas eaten right off the vine that you've grown yourself beats anything the store sells.

Your House and Living Successfully: Part 4/4

Choosing Your House for Living Successfully:

Whether your income is of the Nomad Model or the Farmer Model, you can still build your own house and get something better than you can buy for the same price.

My brother, The Keeper of the Mountain, has built something that is very close to the ideal Nomad's house. Unlike the standard trailers you get, he has built it with the top of the line stuff. It is built to be lived in for an extended period of time, not just camped in for a few days of the year for a few years. Inside an hour, he could pack things so the don't fall about, hook it up to a truck and drive just about anywhere he needs to and would have his whole house and everything he owns right there with him. With less than 300 square feet, it will be cheap to heat or cool even with only R-13 insulation and harsh temperatures. Considering how close I came to doing more or less the same thing, I can't say the Idea is a bad one. My Idea involved a motor home optimized for my use and a small car I could tow behind it. The only issue I have with his house is I see a structure that will not tolerate extensive moving. I have seen sturdily built wooden framed constructs built on trucks and trailers, and I have seen them fail under the shaking, rocking, and torquing that they suffer while being moved. While the building was built well, I do not see holding up to a nomadic lifestyle because the wood itself will not tolerate the constant stress on the joints of the frame.

The house I am building is very much a Farmer Model house. It will probably end up weighing a hundred tons. It will be labor expensive and very immobile. This means I need a Farmer Model income. I have had the Idea of starting my own business for some time, and have been considering it more strongly since I became unemployed back in January, but now that I have been unemployed for 6 full months and have turned in over 75 resumes without a peep in response, I have gone and gotten my business license. Already I have jobs lined up. My home territory is probably limited to about 150 miles at this point, but with a job taking most of a week, I can see getting to the point where a home range of hundreds of mile could be justified with the proper equipment.

End.

Your House and Living Successfully: Part 3/4

The Hybrid Nomad Farmer Model:

People often like to think that hybrid systems would give you the advantages of both systems involved. My experience and observations indicate that the opposite is true. Hybrid systems suffer the limitations of both systems and fail to properly realize the advantages of either. The Nomad Farmer is no exception.

A Nomad Farmer arrives to find fresh fields and abundant wild herds and starts to build expensive Farmer Model living quarters and expensive Farmer Model embedded infrastructure, only to pick up and leave the most expensive parts when the local ground becomes exhausted and the wild herds migrate. More often than not, he leaves poorer than when he arrived.

There are no examples of successful Nomad Farmer Empires. The lifestyle is so wasteful, that the chances of success of any measure are sufficiently remote and improbable that Empire building by these people is never more than a dream.

I personally know two families who have spent their adult lives pursuing the Nomad Farmer Hybrid Model. Up and down the West Coast they went chasing work like modern Nomads, yet whether they rented or bought, their money was spent on housing and land that did not move with them. Stuff acquired would be tossed or stacked in epic loads on trailers and moved using great heroics. Unfortunately, I believe the biggest mistake lies in that they tried to live in these places like they were Farmers. They spent money on housing They couldn't pick up and move and acquired things they couldn't move. The result is they enjoy temporary benefits from the new location, but often ended up with less each time they moved. The severity of the problem actually increased with the increase of Nomad income, because that enabled the purchase of more Farmer type purchases.

The only success I have seen involved a couple that happened to move to California during a particularly rich time. While earning a Nomad's wage, they managed to pay two mortgages at once. This combined with selling the California house at one of the peaks of California real estate markets, was able to ultimately buy their current place outright. They have lived here for a record breaking 15 years in spite of sketchy employment. They were able to finally able to live in a full Farmer Model residence and have built the best they have ever had. The problem is, they didn't do it until they were 60 and nearly retired. Two others I know, have embraced self employment and the Farmer model early. They have suffered robbers. Boy howdy have they suffered robbers. Yet in this big economic crunch, they are doing better than the Nomad Farmers I know. They are not without their money problems, but yet they are financially better off because their Farmer Model income matches their Farmer Model acquisitions.

To be continued.