Discussions
Reply to: Incredibly beautiful bird !! Posted May 10, 2023
Reply to: Recommendations on .308 Bolt Gun Posted May 8, 2023
Reply to: Recommendations on .308 Bolt Gun Posted May 8, 2023
Reply to: Recommendations on .308 Bolt Gun Posted May 8, 2023
Reply to: Recommendations on .308 Bolt Gun Posted May 6, 2023

I have no experience with .308 but when younger I had a Remington 700 BDL 7mm magnum, and it was a really fine gun.  I had it too for long range shooting.  Problem was, I found out I wasn’t all that accurate at long range shooting.  🙂 I don’t know how experienced you are with suppressors but my experience is they don’t do a whole lot of good when shooting high velocity ammo.  There is a very big bang with such, plus you have the loud crack as the bullet goes supersonic.  Almost everything I shoot now is subsonic and that works perfectly with all my suppressors.  This is especially so when shooting my 15-22 but also with my 300 Blackout SBR.  With the 300 Blackout I keep both subsonic ammo and high velocity.  The subsonic is in 20 round magazines and the high velocity is in 30 round.  The gun is much quieter with subsonic.

Reply to: Incredibly beautiful bird !! Posted April 30, 2023
Incredibly beautiful bird !!
5
3
Posted April 30, 2023
Reply to: Garden Pics Posted April 28, 2023
Reply to: Garden Pics Posted April 27, 2023
Reply to: Garden Pics Posted April 25, 2023

My corn is starting to come up, even with the cooler temps.  Corn is one crop that you can start when it is cool out.  I try to get mine in as soon as possible, for two reasons.  First, the earlier I harvest, the less corn earworms I will have to worry about.  Those pests can get real bad when it is hot outside.  Once I have silks, I will treat those silks with either BT or Spinosad every week  or so.  I just take a pump sprayer and wet down just the silk area. Second reason is that it gives me time to plant a second crop.  I’m thinking this year I might install some mesh trellis on T posts and grow some additional yard long beans.  They should work fine I’m thinking, because they can handle the extreme summer heat. Note in the pic below that the old corn stalks from last year are still in the rows.  Once I harvest my corn, I take a machete and chop down the stalks and put those plants in my compost pile.  You don’t want to pull up the plants.  That would disturb the soil greatly and cause it harm.  Keep in mind, your soil is a living system, with all sorts of organisms living in harmony.  Once you have good soil, the last thing you want to do is disturb it greatly.  You don’t till it and you don’t yank up plants.  Those old roots from last year died off and have slowly started decomposing over the winter.  They also have left numerous tunnels running through the soil.  These new corn plants’ roots will take the path of least resistance, and grow in these tunnels.  These tunnels are also rich in nutrients, from the decomposing old roots.  Yank up a plant or till it in, and you just destroyed all this underground structure. Also note I just turned on my drip irrigation.  In this situation, I use tubing that already has drip emitters installed inside the tubing, every foot apart.  This IMO is perfect in garden beds, but not in an orchard setting.

Reply to: Garden Pics Posted April 25, 2023
Reply to: Garden Pics Posted April 17, 2023
Reply to: Garden Pics Posted April 14, 2023

My family started eating lots of vegetables, fruit and cooked from scratch when two of out kids had ADHD symptoms. It eliminated their problem (un-diagnosed) and improved our health. But it can be tough to ween ourselves from processed food, due to sugar content, IMO. I saw a report years back which showed the same thing.  Almost every single ADHD kid improved greatly, simply by removing processed food from their diet.  I’m 67 now and when I was in school, there was not a single case of ADHD.  Not one in my class nor one in the entire school.  But now, they state that around 5% of every school age kids have it.  That equals around 1 in every classroom.  My wife was a teacher, and she always had more than one in each class, plus autistic kids. When I was a kid, we didn’t have fast food in our town.  We didn’t get the first one until I was an adult.  Now I’m sure there are over 100 in town.  The only processed food you could get was TV dinners… and they were pretty nasty.   IMO, there is no doubt whatsoever that there is a correlation between all these mental disorders and the diet of today.  Cooking healthy isn’t hard and it tastes incredible.  Each dinner I cook has a lean meat, such as fish (normally salmon) or chicken or pork loin.  I always include a starch plus a fresh green vegetable.  My starch is almost always rice, including wild rice.  I don’t use potatoes much anymore because for me to enjoy them, they need too much salt and butter.  Sometimes my starch is a veggie, such as corn.  For example, tonight I’m cooking a small pork tenderloin, asparagus picked fresh from the garden & sweet corn from the freezer that was grown in my garden last year. For snacks and to handle my crave for sweets, I keep dried nuts and dried fruit on the counter.  I’m partial to dried cherries.  I also always have fresh oranges on the counter.  All of the above are extremely healthy and are powerful antioxidants.  

Reply to: Garden Pics Posted April 14, 2023

Keep in mind amaranth is a hot weather crop.  Your soil temp needs to be around 70 for the seeds to germinate.  Also don’t plant deep.  Maybe just sprinkle a little potting soil on top of them.  No deeper than 1/4″.  Many seeds can germinate just laying on top of the ground.  If you are not in a hot climate, you can start indoors.  Since the seeds are so tiny, plant lots of them.  The video below shows you how to plant the seeds.   Amaranth is a variety that handles crowding very well.  When you consider each plant will produce over 100,000 seeds, they are adapted to grow when crowded.  Then as the plants get taller, you can thin them out.  When small, the entire plant is edible and are used as micro greens. As far as recognition, every amaranth variety I’ve grown starts out with red seedlings… even the green leaf varieties.  So it has been easy for me to weed around them.  You can most certainly start the seeds indoors, if you want to get a jump on production and not have to worry about weeds.  This is especially helpful if you aren’t growing huge amounts and if you don’t live in a warm climate with a long, warm growing season.  I like to use peat pots to start plants.  That way you don’t disturb the plant or its roots.  You plant the whole pot as the peat breaks down in the soil. Here is a nice video of growing amaranth in containers.  I notice her seedlings are green.   This is a great way to grow amaranth if you just want to harvest the young tender leaves & shoots.  Just like you can do in your garden, she cuts the plants back during harvest but leaves part of the plant.  You harvest & eat the leaves and the plants quickly put out new growth.  I have done similar where when the plants get about 4 feet tall, I cut off and harvest about a foot or so of the stems & leaves… leaving the lower, older leaves.  Within a week, new leaves & shoots emerge.  This is a good technique to force the plant to get bushy with leaves & branches and not get so spindly.  Also a great way to harvest throughout the summer, if you have a long growing season.  If you aren’t sure, just test.  Cut back some of your plants but leave others alone.

Reply to: Garden Pics Posted April 13, 2023

Ha.  Somehow I bet with the right teacher, you could do a wonderful job of growing your own, but that being said, CSAs are a great way to go.  I personally believe many of the issues we face today are, at least in part, due to not eating enough FRESH vegetables & fresh meat.  The American diet today has too much processed food in it.  I get a kick out of food shopping… I love it.  However I notice a huge difference in my cart than those of 95% of fellow shoppers.  Mine is full of fresh veggies, fruits, fresh meat and dairy.  Theirs is full of junk food and already processed meals. I suggest you get as many fresh veggies as you can, and freeze the extra to last thru the winter months.  Save the money on gardening and purchase an extra chest freezer.  Most stores do offer some rather fresh veggies when in season.  Just load up and process for the freezer.  You might also find some farmer’s markets nearby for other fresh produce, breads and homemade jams/jellies. You can’t have too much fresh, healthy foods.  🙂

Garden Pics
13
3
Posted April 13, 2023
Reply to: I am new, advice? Posted April 12, 2023
Reply to: Test your gear and run scenarios in advance of a real emergency Posted April 3, 2023

I too have used multi-day power outages, some during freezing temps, as dress rehearsals.  I have learned & modified my preps from each event.  I’ve learned, you can’t have too many extension cords, especially if you use your generator at a house without a direct connector to the electric panel.  My house has such a connector, but I’ve also used my generator at my mother-in-law’s house, which doesn’t.  But even at my house, with the generator connection, I still need many extension cords.  This portable generator can’t power the whole house, so my generator panel has just a few electric outlets, maybe 1/3 of our lighting, all refrigerators & freezers, and our well.  I have marked the outlet covers of all outlets that are hot when on the generator.  Extension cords are run from these outlets. I personally don’t like to run a portable generator 24 hours a day for multiple days, so I was shutting mine down overnight when sleeping.  The first thing I learned was that I needed a separate heat source that ran off of LP gas, and purchased my Mr. Heater.  What a GREAT purchase!!  Just one can keep several rooms toasty warm and only run about 25% of the time.  One of my 40 lb LP tanks can run the heater for several days.  The LP heater allowed me to stay warm with the generator off.  During the off time, I used my solar generators to provide some lighting and to power some smaller appliances, such as my CPAP and coffee makers.  This is where I found the need for additional extension cords.  Also having multiple, small LED work lights, that use very little electricity, worked great here. My house has natural gas heat and during all these events, I never lost natural gas.  That sure helps in the kitchen too, with a gas cooktop.  The natural gas furnaces do require a small amount of electricity to power the blowers, and those blowers are on my generator panel… which allowed the home furnaces to operate while the generator runs.  But as I stated above, I shut my generator off while we sleep, so the bedrooms would get cold.  I had no problem sleeping in the den recliner, staying warm thanks to the Mr. Heater, but my stubborn wife chose to cover up & sleep in her bed. This last “dress rehearsal” outage prompted me to purchase another, identical Champion dual fuel generator.  Now, when I rest one generator, I will be able to start the other.  You might think that was a steep price to appease the wife, but one thing I’ve learned all these many years of marriage is, happy wife… happy life.  But also, obviously having a “spare” generator makes great prepper sense.  You never know when one might quit working.

Reply to: How often do you run your portable generator? Posted April 3, 2023
Reply to: Mr. Heater to the rescue again! Posted March 27, 2023
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Incredibly beautiful bird !!
5
3
Posted April 30, 2023
Garden Pics
13
3
Posted April 13, 2023
3 Billion less birds in North America since 1970!
6
3
Posted February 1, 2023
Mr. Heater to the rescue again!
20
5
Posted February 1, 2023
The dead of winter is a great time for pruning.
0
3
Posted January 14, 2023
Smoking some fish. Yum!
3
3
Posted December 17, 2022
I just love watching Canadian geese fly over!
9
6
Posted September 24, 2022
Late summer means it is muscadine picking time!
16
9
Posted September 6, 2022
Growing amaranth– Lodging
17
10
Posted August 14, 2022
Feeding catfish with an eagle watching
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8
Posted August 6, 2022
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Reply to: Incredibly beautiful bird !! Posted May 10, 2023
Reply to: Recommendations on .308 Bolt Gun Posted May 8, 2023
Reply to: Recommendations on .308 Bolt Gun Posted May 8, 2023
Reply to: Recommendations on .308 Bolt Gun Posted May 8, 2023
Reply to: Recommendations on .308 Bolt Gun Posted May 6, 2023

I have no experience with .308 but when younger I had a Remington 700 BDL 7mm magnum, and it was a really fine gun.  I had it too for long range shooting.  Problem was, I found out I wasn’t all that accurate at long range shooting.  🙂 I don’t know how experienced you are with suppressors but my experience is they don’t do a whole lot of good when shooting high velocity ammo.  There is a very big bang with such, plus you have the loud crack as the bullet goes supersonic.  Almost everything I shoot now is subsonic and that works perfectly with all my suppressors.  This is especially so when shooting my 15-22 but also with my 300 Blackout SBR.  With the 300 Blackout I keep both subsonic ammo and high velocity.  The subsonic is in 20 round magazines and the high velocity is in 30 round.  The gun is much quieter with subsonic.

Reply to: Incredibly beautiful bird !! Posted April 30, 2023
Reply to: Garden Pics Posted April 28, 2023
Reply to: Garden Pics Posted April 27, 2023
Reply to: Garden Pics Posted April 25, 2023

My corn is starting to come up, even with the cooler temps.  Corn is one crop that you can start when it is cool out.  I try to get mine in as soon as possible, for two reasons.  First, the earlier I harvest, the less corn earworms I will have to worry about.  Those pests can get real bad when it is hot outside.  Once I have silks, I will treat those silks with either BT or Spinosad every week  or so.  I just take a pump sprayer and wet down just the silk area. Second reason is that it gives me time to plant a second crop.  I’m thinking this year I might install some mesh trellis on T posts and grow some additional yard long beans.  They should work fine I’m thinking, because they can handle the extreme summer heat. Note in the pic below that the old corn stalks from last year are still in the rows.  Once I harvest my corn, I take a machete and chop down the stalks and put those plants in my compost pile.  You don’t want to pull up the plants.  That would disturb the soil greatly and cause it harm.  Keep in mind, your soil is a living system, with all sorts of organisms living in harmony.  Once you have good soil, the last thing you want to do is disturb it greatly.  You don’t till it and you don’t yank up plants.  Those old roots from last year died off and have slowly started decomposing over the winter.  They also have left numerous tunnels running through the soil.  These new corn plants’ roots will take the path of least resistance, and grow in these tunnels.  These tunnels are also rich in nutrients, from the decomposing old roots.  Yank up a plant or till it in, and you just destroyed all this underground structure. Also note I just turned on my drip irrigation.  In this situation, I use tubing that already has drip emitters installed inside the tubing, every foot apart.  This IMO is perfect in garden beds, but not in an orchard setting.

Reply to: Garden Pics Posted April 25, 2023
Reply to: Garden Pics Posted April 17, 2023
Reply to: Garden Pics Posted April 14, 2023

My family started eating lots of vegetables, fruit and cooked from scratch when two of out kids had ADHD symptoms. It eliminated their problem (un-diagnosed) and improved our health. But it can be tough to ween ourselves from processed food, due to sugar content, IMO. I saw a report years back which showed the same thing.  Almost every single ADHD kid improved greatly, simply by removing processed food from their diet.  I’m 67 now and when I was in school, there was not a single case of ADHD.  Not one in my class nor one in the entire school.  But now, they state that around 5% of every school age kids have it.  That equals around 1 in every classroom.  My wife was a teacher, and she always had more than one in each class, plus autistic kids. When I was a kid, we didn’t have fast food in our town.  We didn’t get the first one until I was an adult.  Now I’m sure there are over 100 in town.  The only processed food you could get was TV dinners… and they were pretty nasty.   IMO, there is no doubt whatsoever that there is a correlation between all these mental disorders and the diet of today.  Cooking healthy isn’t hard and it tastes incredible.  Each dinner I cook has a lean meat, such as fish (normally salmon) or chicken or pork loin.  I always include a starch plus a fresh green vegetable.  My starch is almost always rice, including wild rice.  I don’t use potatoes much anymore because for me to enjoy them, they need too much salt and butter.  Sometimes my starch is a veggie, such as corn.  For example, tonight I’m cooking a small pork tenderloin, asparagus picked fresh from the garden & sweet corn from the freezer that was grown in my garden last year. For snacks and to handle my crave for sweets, I keep dried nuts and dried fruit on the counter.  I’m partial to dried cherries.  I also always have fresh oranges on the counter.  All of the above are extremely healthy and are powerful antioxidants.  

Reply to: Garden Pics Posted April 14, 2023

Keep in mind amaranth is a hot weather crop.  Your soil temp needs to be around 70 for the seeds to germinate.  Also don’t plant deep.  Maybe just sprinkle a little potting soil on top of them.  No deeper than 1/4″.  Many seeds can germinate just laying on top of the ground.  If you are not in a hot climate, you can start indoors.  Since the seeds are so tiny, plant lots of them.  The video below shows you how to plant the seeds.   Amaranth is a variety that handles crowding very well.  When you consider each plant will produce over 100,000 seeds, they are adapted to grow when crowded.  Then as the plants get taller, you can thin them out.  When small, the entire plant is edible and are used as micro greens. As far as recognition, every amaranth variety I’ve grown starts out with red seedlings… even the green leaf varieties.  So it has been easy for me to weed around them.  You can most certainly start the seeds indoors, if you want to get a jump on production and not have to worry about weeds.  This is especially helpful if you aren’t growing huge amounts and if you don’t live in a warm climate with a long, warm growing season.  I like to use peat pots to start plants.  That way you don’t disturb the plant or its roots.  You plant the whole pot as the peat breaks down in the soil. Here is a nice video of growing amaranth in containers.  I notice her seedlings are green.   This is a great way to grow amaranth if you just want to harvest the young tender leaves & shoots.  Just like you can do in your garden, she cuts the plants back during harvest but leaves part of the plant.  You harvest & eat the leaves and the plants quickly put out new growth.  I have done similar where when the plants get about 4 feet tall, I cut off and harvest about a foot or so of the stems & leaves… leaving the lower, older leaves.  Within a week, new leaves & shoots emerge.  This is a good technique to force the plant to get bushy with leaves & branches and not get so spindly.  Also a great way to harvest throughout the summer, if you have a long growing season.  If you aren’t sure, just test.  Cut back some of your plants but leave others alone.

Reply to: Garden Pics Posted April 13, 2023

Ha.  Somehow I bet with the right teacher, you could do a wonderful job of growing your own, but that being said, CSAs are a great way to go.  I personally believe many of the issues we face today are, at least in part, due to not eating enough FRESH vegetables & fresh meat.  The American diet today has too much processed food in it.  I get a kick out of food shopping… I love it.  However I notice a huge difference in my cart than those of 95% of fellow shoppers.  Mine is full of fresh veggies, fruits, fresh meat and dairy.  Theirs is full of junk food and already processed meals. I suggest you get as many fresh veggies as you can, and freeze the extra to last thru the winter months.  Save the money on gardening and purchase an extra chest freezer.  Most stores do offer some rather fresh veggies when in season.  Just load up and process for the freezer.  You might also find some farmer’s markets nearby for other fresh produce, breads and homemade jams/jellies. You can’t have too much fresh, healthy foods.  🙂

Reply to: I am new, advice? Posted April 12, 2023
Reply to: Test your gear and run scenarios in advance of a real emergency Posted April 3, 2023

I too have used multi-day power outages, some during freezing temps, as dress rehearsals.  I have learned & modified my preps from each event.  I’ve learned, you can’t have too many extension cords, especially if you use your generator at a house without a direct connector to the electric panel.  My house has such a connector, but I’ve also used my generator at my mother-in-law’s house, which doesn’t.  But even at my house, with the generator connection, I still need many extension cords.  This portable generator can’t power the whole house, so my generator panel has just a few electric outlets, maybe 1/3 of our lighting, all refrigerators & freezers, and our well.  I have marked the outlet covers of all outlets that are hot when on the generator.  Extension cords are run from these outlets. I personally don’t like to run a portable generator 24 hours a day for multiple days, so I was shutting mine down overnight when sleeping.  The first thing I learned was that I needed a separate heat source that ran off of LP gas, and purchased my Mr. Heater.  What a GREAT purchase!!  Just one can keep several rooms toasty warm and only run about 25% of the time.  One of my 40 lb LP tanks can run the heater for several days.  The LP heater allowed me to stay warm with the generator off.  During the off time, I used my solar generators to provide some lighting and to power some smaller appliances, such as my CPAP and coffee makers.  This is where I found the need for additional extension cords.  Also having multiple, small LED work lights, that use very little electricity, worked great here. My house has natural gas heat and during all these events, I never lost natural gas.  That sure helps in the kitchen too, with a gas cooktop.  The natural gas furnaces do require a small amount of electricity to power the blowers, and those blowers are on my generator panel… which allowed the home furnaces to operate while the generator runs.  But as I stated above, I shut my generator off while we sleep, so the bedrooms would get cold.  I had no problem sleeping in the den recliner, staying warm thanks to the Mr. Heater, but my stubborn wife chose to cover up & sleep in her bed. This last “dress rehearsal” outage prompted me to purchase another, identical Champion dual fuel generator.  Now, when I rest one generator, I will be able to start the other.  You might think that was a steep price to appease the wife, but one thing I’ve learned all these many years of marriage is, happy wife… happy life.  But also, obviously having a “spare” generator makes great prepper sense.  You never know when one might quit working.

Reply to: How often do you run your portable generator? Posted April 3, 2023
Reply to: Mr. Heater to the rescue again! Posted March 27, 2023
Reply to: What are the best solar panel/generator brands? Posted March 10, 2023

Air conditioning pulls way too much power for any solar generator or small solar setup.  If your heat is gas, then such a system could power the fans on your central heat.  A refrigerator/freezer is also an energy hog. I use my solar generators to power some basic lights & small appliances… including my CPAP.  I use them to also recharge my rechargeable devices and tools.  I have a smallish RV freezer that a solar generator can easily power.  RV refrigerator freezers are designed to operate on low power. As for the well, I have a Grundfos flex well pump.  They are rather amazing.  They can operate equally well on AC power from the grid or DC power from  solar panels… no inverter (solar generator) required.  Also it does not get damaged by low voltage, as normal motors will.  The more voltage you give it, the more it pumps.  If you direct wire a solar panel to it, it starts pumping.  It’s that easy.  Well pumps can be energy hogs, so by dedicating a couple of my solar panels to it, it frees up my solar generators for other uses. Another item that can run directly off of a solar panel, with no inverter, is a heating element for a water heater.  You can purchase DC elements that you would swap out during a crisis.

Reply to: What dry dog and cat food would you recommend? Posted March 6, 2023

For my dogs, I have used Holistic Select for many years.  It has been good for my dogs.  I’ve had as many as 10 dogs but now we are down to 7.  They live in the house with us and have 24 hour access, thru a dog door, to the one acre fenced in backyard. The bags I get generally have a best by date of around 14 months or so from date I purchase.  I keep around a 3 month supply on hand at all times.  Each month, I purchase another month’s supply.  I rotate a normal 2 month supply, that I keep up at the house in two large containers.  I keep another month’s supply in my air conditioned prepper closet in my upper barn.  About every 6-8 months, when I bring in another supply, I put the new bags in the prepper closet and bring to the house the food that has been stored. If a crisis were to last longer than 3 months, the dogs would share in our food stores.

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