When I say "WOW!", I mean that we are less than a week away from the year 2013 CE, unbelievable!!
My first and earliest comprehension of the new year was at New Year's Eve of 1958, the first New Year' Eve I was allowed to stay up to watch the New Year being rung in. 2013 was so far away that I could not even conceive of its arrival, yet in about five days, it will be here.
Much has changed since that night: the United States now have 50 states instead of the 48 I was born under, Man has walked on the moon, the cyber age has dawned & matured, global warming is an irrefutable fact unless you are a Neanderthal Republican who believes the cash strapped few "scientists" who sold their souls and ethics to deny it..... in fact one of the very few things that has not changed since 1958, is that Elizabeth II is still Queen of the British Empire, or what remains of it.
WOW!
December 21st, 2012 has come and gone with not even a whisper of destruction. This is something we are relieved to see, not disappointed over!
But, with "Global Climate Change" a fact and a countdown for our way of life, much must be done, many must be educated and governments, including our own, must be compelled to adapt to.
Tonight, for some reason, I was reviewing some of the things about us that made the INTERNET, from the unfortunate comments of our gay and reclusive "neighbor", to several YOUTUBE postings from visitors here, to, of course, the episode of National Geographic Doomsday Preppers".
It appears that we have come a very long way, yet for the last week, I have suffered from severe depression over the LACK of progress! Something is coming, be it a real "apocolypse" a collapse of power, economics, or governments..... or, as we fear, the collapse of a major ice sheet from Greenland or Antarctica into the ocean and the chaos it would bring..... it is coming and in MY lifetime and remember that I am already in my 60th year!
My depression is due to the fact that we are not ready yet! As with most readers, money, CASH, has been the delay. We just order our first of four, custom made "forklift batteries". These batteries have the capacity to store three times our original power capacity, EACH! But I expected to have them in place months ago. Likewise our solar capacity. We now have 32, 130 watt panels in place. However, I had wanted to have all 48 in place before Fall of 2012. So things move slowly, but at least they move!
A new computer is still months away. Bad news for those hoping to see photos and video from us of our progress and innovations..... but since our safety, not publicity, comes first, the batteries and panels come first!
Today, the first day of full sun in over a week, I ran both air conditioning units. Although we lack two wind turbines and 16 solar panels, we still had to dump power from the solar panels into the hot water tanks, despite demanding over 50 amps AC from our inverters. So I guess our (individual) infrastructure is ready to support us in any event.
My "secret" tenaja, or water hole, has recharged itself and now has about 2000 gallons of fresh water in it. Our tanks are nearly full though and this water will have to stay in its hole for now, particularly with four days of rain predicted for next week.
Also, I have spent the last four days working on completing the three indoor walls of our dog's building in stone masonry. Perhaps this is where the depression comes from. Since this is now finish work, it moves slowly and demands a lot of thought to complete. One significant modification to the original design, is the addition of "Leuder's Stone" limestone to the design. If Leuder's Stone sounds familiar to you, it has been featured at length on HGTV in several million dollar homes and is the new IT surface for counters.
I have been lucky enough to meet the owners and buy many tons of damaged slabs of the stone to use here. We will be doing everything frome flagstones to countertops, to window sills, to masonry edging with this stone.
I am finishing the rock walls of the dog's building this week and decided to use some of the Leuder's Stone as edging to separate sheetrock from stone. THIS, requires some engineering, not to mention lots of rock cutting to get the edging right!
So maybe it in not so much depression as fatigue from handling the slabs, some of which weigh about 400 pounds.
But as a result of the introspection, I have decided to at least write about what we are working on, the devices we are using to complete our sustainability goals and the many new ideas I am getting from many sources that can help anyone build their own "Eco Ranch"!
A new computer is coming......sometime.... but in the meantime, I invite you to read what we are doing to develop the Eco-Ranch concept, ask questions and even visit if you are in the area!
So beginning on January 1st, 2013 (WOW) this blog will have regular posts relating to developing individual infrastructure ans sustainability.......... if you want spray painted glitch and media mediorcity, I can refer you to the LBGT individual who stays two point five miles to our south-south east... here there is just information!
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!
Thursday, December 27, 2012
Friday, November 16, 2012
"To Tell The Truth!"
Does anyone remember that game show form the early days of television? Just wondered.
But to really tell the truth, we only allowed National Geographic to come here and film us for one reason only: to show our publicity hunting freak of a "neighbor" that ANYONE who sets their mind to it, can get publicity...... unearned, as in his case, earned, as is the case with Hurricane Sandy victims, or quasi-earned, as in our case!
So, jackass, ANYONE WHO WANTS TO CAN GET THIER MUG ON TV. In fact, in this day and age, the less talent, the more exposure....... enough said!
No, Our appearance on Doomsday Preppers was not a lie, it was almost entirely the truth. The only stretch, a bow to the ratings goddess, was the too much time spent on killing and eating rattlesnakes! More on that in a moment.
I was told at a very early age, that "I was to be one those who would 'lead' the world during the 'Age Of Aquarius'..... the place where we all now find ourselves..... and that I would do this 'late in life'...." I guess 60 is rather late in life, though it doesn't feel very late to me!
Someone can interpret that in many ways, I truly never gave it a lot of thought, except that I tried to learn everything I could about living without the things we all take for granted and learning how to build & engineer my own conveniences.
Then we awakened to climate change, overpopulations and the depletion and/or domination of natural resources and determined that we would survive for the sake of surviving...... not become "moderate preppers", hermits, or eccentrics for the sake of a short blurb in a newspaper, magazine or TV show. We just want to survive in some comfort!
So, when I wrote to Doomsday Preppers, it was not for our egos, but to show the overwhelming majority of people out there that "prepping" does not belong to gun toting freaks who worship at the alter of Ted Nugent, or the sole domain of those with unlimited resources! Our purpose was to try to show that everyday "Joe and Jane Luncheboxes" could prepare for disaster as well as the 1%ers and gun-toting freakazoids we can all live without!
They did a fair job...... except for the rattlesnakes! Yes, you can eat a rattlesnake, kill something with its venom (with a proper delivery mechanism), and even drink its blood for nourishment...... in theory, though if that is all you have to drink, you're really already dead.
The truth is that in the three years we have lived here, we have not seen one rattlesnake on our property. If we did, it would have to die to protect the livestock, but not as food. Rattlesnakes have toxins throughout their meat and improper cooking & preparation, same as in Japanese Fugu, can hurt you!!!!!
The REAL truth and I learned this back in 1975 from the diary of an early Arctic explorer, is that if you have one ounce of shot, or a one ounce bullet, it is far more frugal to use that one ounce to kill a bear, deer, antelope, hog or feral (in the event of doomsday) steer, that will feed you for a month, than to waste it on one rattlesnake that will feed you for a meal. The field producer from National Geographic didn't see it that way and since she had paid a "wrangler", complete with her own snakes to come out here, for the sake of "good TV" we were obliged to do the scene.
We commented on that, our prodigious water supplies and food stores in our "follow-up" video...... which is why we did not have one, they did not like what we had to say!
However, both our points were made! 1) Jackass..... any moron can get publicity, we proved that, so stop thinking you are something special! 2) "Prepping" is for EVERYONE, not just the wealthy, gun-toting freaks who think George Bush and Ted Nugent are real American heros (someone please tell Nugent that! He was an asshole when we were growing up in Dearborn Heights [Kingswood Estates] and he remains one today, something all the money in the world cannot change!)
Preparing for the unexpected is good sense! Whether you have MREs, or hard wheat & honey like we do...... 50 guns with 10,000 rounds of ammo, or a remote location and kind hearts that offer food and hope to those unprepared, instead of idle threats from overly-armed Rambo wannabes...... "prepping" isn't about waving guns and high dollar "stuff", it is about being ready to rebuild order, civility, PROPER technology and PEACE (OK, with the means to enforce the peace if need be).
I have had an intimate relationship with guns, death and life-threatening experiences.... most from my own carelessness or lack of knowledge. One thing I have learned, at least as it applies to this discussion, is that when you finally fire a shot, you already lost the war. That is why we are here, that is why we prepare and that is why we will survive a Hell of a lot longer that the so-called "experts", a couple of Nugentesque Viet Nam veterans predict we will!
We hope there is no "doomsday" to prepare for! We hope mankind drops phrases like "clean coal", "peak oil", global warming THEORY, 45 MPG is good and so on and gets on with the business of preserving the planet.
Despite what the narrator with the smooth voice may say to marginalize us and the other "preppers", Greenland IS melting and melting at about 100 times what was predicted a few short years ago. With the breakup of several of the Antarctic ice shelves, Antarctica is not far behind. That is not George Noory stuff, that is real science!
Sea level rose one foot in the last century..... we all saw what Sandy did to the East Coast with that one foot! The next decade may bring as much as a 20 foot rise, enough to bring the beach to our old Suwannee River homestead and inundate Miami, NYC, Boston and of course New Orleans.
Will "we" be ready? Based on the number of people moving back under sea level in New Orleans, most won't be! But some, us among them, will be and WHEN, not if things go downhill, the collective "we" will work together to rebuild properly. No one will care about who got what publicity "back in the day", what will matter is what we can bring to the table to make right what went wrong! We all need to be "preppers"!
But to really tell the truth, we only allowed National Geographic to come here and film us for one reason only: to show our publicity hunting freak of a "neighbor" that ANYONE who sets their mind to it, can get publicity...... unearned, as in his case, earned, as is the case with Hurricane Sandy victims, or quasi-earned, as in our case!
So, jackass, ANYONE WHO WANTS TO CAN GET THIER MUG ON TV. In fact, in this day and age, the less talent, the more exposure....... enough said!
No, Our appearance on Doomsday Preppers was not a lie, it was almost entirely the truth. The only stretch, a bow to the ratings goddess, was the too much time spent on killing and eating rattlesnakes! More on that in a moment.
I was told at a very early age, that "I was to be one those who would 'lead' the world during the 'Age Of Aquarius'..... the place where we all now find ourselves..... and that I would do this 'late in life'...." I guess 60 is rather late in life, though it doesn't feel very late to me!
Someone can interpret that in many ways, I truly never gave it a lot of thought, except that I tried to learn everything I could about living without the things we all take for granted and learning how to build & engineer my own conveniences.
Then we awakened to climate change, overpopulations and the depletion and/or domination of natural resources and determined that we would survive for the sake of surviving...... not become "moderate preppers", hermits, or eccentrics for the sake of a short blurb in a newspaper, magazine or TV show. We just want to survive in some comfort!
So, when I wrote to Doomsday Preppers, it was not for our egos, but to show the overwhelming majority of people out there that "prepping" does not belong to gun toting freaks who worship at the alter of Ted Nugent, or the sole domain of those with unlimited resources! Our purpose was to try to show that everyday "Joe and Jane Luncheboxes" could prepare for disaster as well as the 1%ers and gun-toting freakazoids we can all live without!
They did a fair job...... except for the rattlesnakes! Yes, you can eat a rattlesnake, kill something with its venom (with a proper delivery mechanism), and even drink its blood for nourishment...... in theory, though if that is all you have to drink, you're really already dead.
The truth is that in the three years we have lived here, we have not seen one rattlesnake on our property. If we did, it would have to die to protect the livestock, but not as food. Rattlesnakes have toxins throughout their meat and improper cooking & preparation, same as in Japanese Fugu, can hurt you!!!!!
The REAL truth and I learned this back in 1975 from the diary of an early Arctic explorer, is that if you have one ounce of shot, or a one ounce bullet, it is far more frugal to use that one ounce to kill a bear, deer, antelope, hog or feral (in the event of doomsday) steer, that will feed you for a month, than to waste it on one rattlesnake that will feed you for a meal. The field producer from National Geographic didn't see it that way and since she had paid a "wrangler", complete with her own snakes to come out here, for the sake of "good TV" we were obliged to do the scene.
We commented on that, our prodigious water supplies and food stores in our "follow-up" video...... which is why we did not have one, they did not like what we had to say!
However, both our points were made! 1) Jackass..... any moron can get publicity, we proved that, so stop thinking you are something special! 2) "Prepping" is for EVERYONE, not just the wealthy, gun-toting freaks who think George Bush and Ted Nugent are real American heros (someone please tell Nugent that! He was an asshole when we were growing up in Dearborn Heights [Kingswood Estates] and he remains one today, something all the money in the world cannot change!)
Preparing for the unexpected is good sense! Whether you have MREs, or hard wheat & honey like we do...... 50 guns with 10,000 rounds of ammo, or a remote location and kind hearts that offer food and hope to those unprepared, instead of idle threats from overly-armed Rambo wannabes...... "prepping" isn't about waving guns and high dollar "stuff", it is about being ready to rebuild order, civility, PROPER technology and PEACE (OK, with the means to enforce the peace if need be).
I have had an intimate relationship with guns, death and life-threatening experiences.... most from my own carelessness or lack of knowledge. One thing I have learned, at least as it applies to this discussion, is that when you finally fire a shot, you already lost the war. That is why we are here, that is why we prepare and that is why we will survive a Hell of a lot longer that the so-called "experts", a couple of Nugentesque Viet Nam veterans predict we will!
We hope there is no "doomsday" to prepare for! We hope mankind drops phrases like "clean coal", "peak oil", global warming THEORY, 45 MPG is good and so on and gets on with the business of preserving the planet.
Despite what the narrator with the smooth voice may say to marginalize us and the other "preppers", Greenland IS melting and melting at about 100 times what was predicted a few short years ago. With the breakup of several of the Antarctic ice shelves, Antarctica is not far behind. That is not George Noory stuff, that is real science!
Sea level rose one foot in the last century..... we all saw what Sandy did to the East Coast with that one foot! The next decade may bring as much as a 20 foot rise, enough to bring the beach to our old Suwannee River homestead and inundate Miami, NYC, Boston and of course New Orleans.
Will "we" be ready? Based on the number of people moving back under sea level in New Orleans, most won't be! But some, us among them, will be and WHEN, not if things go downhill, the collective "we" will work together to rebuild properly. No one will care about who got what publicity "back in the day", what will matter is what we can bring to the table to make right what went wrong! We all need to be "preppers"!
Thursday, September 20, 2012
Posts coming, I promise!!!!!
Well, it has been about nine months since this blog was created...... time flies when you are having fun...... or preparing for "doomsday"!!!!
OK, we really believe that 12/21/12 will be just another day, but with all the hype, being somewhat prepared seemed like a good idea. After all, Narional Geographic came here to film our preparations for "Doomsday", so we needed to be prepared!
BUT...... in all the preparation for what probably will be another Y2K, we have not had extra money to replace our computer and other hardware, yet! So because of this, we have not wanted to just post text. Photos and video are much more fun to have in a blog, but since there may not be photos and video for a couple more months..... like just before 12/21/12, we decided to write some posts to let folks that know us know what we are up to and give folks that don't know us a chance to find out what we are about, doing and preaching! Perhaps the written word can stimulate folks to begin their own journey into individual infrastructure, reuse, recycling, repurposing, keeping it simple and keeping it cheap..... AND, MOST IMPORTANTLY, how to manage to live with dignity despite being fleeced by banksters, conspirators and other Republicans!
So stay tuned
OK, we really believe that 12/21/12 will be just another day, but with all the hype, being somewhat prepared seemed like a good idea. After all, Narional Geographic came here to film our preparations for "Doomsday", so we needed to be prepared!
BUT...... in all the preparation for what probably will be another Y2K, we have not had extra money to replace our computer and other hardware, yet! So because of this, we have not wanted to just post text. Photos and video are much more fun to have in a blog, but since there may not be photos and video for a couple more months..... like just before 12/21/12, we decided to write some posts to let folks that know us know what we are up to and give folks that don't know us a chance to find out what we are about, doing and preaching! Perhaps the written word can stimulate folks to begin their own journey into individual infrastructure, reuse, recycling, repurposing, keeping it simple and keeping it cheap..... AND, MOST IMPORTANTLY, how to manage to live with dignity despite being fleeced by banksters, conspirators and other Republicans!
So stay tuned
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Greetings!!
Hello and thank you for visiting this blog. This blog and our web site: http://Eco-ranch.us are designed to showcase green ideas, technologies, products and our approach to using them all. It is not designed to be the definitive word on these things or a sustainable lifestyle, but rather one voice among many that you can consider for your own life.
Nearly everything we write about here and on the web site is NOT new..... Someone else developed it and at best, we tweaked it a bit. Wherever possible, links will be provided in the text to the original source.
We are gearing this toward people with limited income and resources, as the recent world economy seems to have created a LOT of us as well as forcing millions who thought they would have a comfortable retirement to consider working for the remainder of their lives! Anyone can find information here though!
If you are someone who lives here in west Texas, in the Big Bend area consulting and design assistance is available for the asking. There is no charge for this. We also have many products available for sale, or to refer you to purchase. We only sell what we have used and find of great quality, which is an advantage when you are trying a system for the first time!
Join us on this continuing journey into self sufficiency and restored self esteem.
Since we are among the "walking wounded" of the World economy, money is tight and hard to come by. At the moment, our computer is out of service until we gather funds to replace it. This means that we are unable to post photos, videos and previously stored information..... For a while. Bear with us!
There will be some mention of politics ( we are Liberal and will remain so until the Rebublican Party heals itself from the damages of the "Family Values" zealots and their desire to make America a theistic society). There will be limited political commentary, as well as religious commentary, but there will be some! There will also be comments on some choices that people make, but no intentional individual comments.
In general, everything written here will be here to help guide people to a different lifestyle with less waste, less commercialism and less concern about how others you will NEVER meet, perceive you and drive your spending habits.
I, Robert will be your writer, when I say we, I mean my wife of 32 years, Debbie & I. We never had any children.
Thanks again for visiting!
Nearly everything we write about here and on the web site is NOT new..... Someone else developed it and at best, we tweaked it a bit. Wherever possible, links will be provided in the text to the original source.
We are gearing this toward people with limited income and resources, as the recent world economy seems to have created a LOT of us as well as forcing millions who thought they would have a comfortable retirement to consider working for the remainder of their lives! Anyone can find information here though!
If you are someone who lives here in west Texas, in the Big Bend area consulting and design assistance is available for the asking. There is no charge for this. We also have many products available for sale, or to refer you to purchase. We only sell what we have used and find of great quality, which is an advantage when you are trying a system for the first time!
Join us on this continuing journey into self sufficiency and restored self esteem.
Since we are among the "walking wounded" of the World economy, money is tight and hard to come by. At the moment, our computer is out of service until we gather funds to replace it. This means that we are unable to post photos, videos and previously stored information..... For a while. Bear with us!
There will be some mention of politics ( we are Liberal and will remain so until the Rebublican Party heals itself from the damages of the "Family Values" zealots and their desire to make America a theistic society). There will be limited political commentary, as well as religious commentary, but there will be some! There will also be comments on some choices that people make, but no intentional individual comments.
In general, everything written here will be here to help guide people to a different lifestyle with less waste, less commercialism and less concern about how others you will NEVER meet, perceive you and drive your spending habits.
I, Robert will be your writer, when I say we, I mean my wife of 32 years, Debbie & I. We never had any children.
Thanks again for visiting!
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