comrade simba

I’ll go into detail about why I want that spring water up at the house in another post, but here’s some general chatter just to get another post up…

A couple of years ago I spent two days online looking for a pump that would get water from a spring basin, up the ravine and to the house. I swear I could not find anything off the shelf that would do the job without a gas or electric motor. When I stumbled on this stupid little gif the clouds parted -

http://www.animatedsoftware.com/pumpglos/pistpump.htm

Off to the plumbing shop I went (local supply house, not gdamn Lowes), and bought, in regular pvc, a three inch tee, two 3 inch to 1 1/2 reducers, two threaded to slip joint couplings, etc, etc, and two 1 1/4 inch brass check valves. Built my own damn piston pump for 35 bucks. I need a better piston – I cobbled together a goofy rubber and sheet metal thingy that was good enough to send water 20 feet up a pipe to a barrel in the barn loft, but 40 or 45 pounds of head pressure is going to take something more elegant. The “cylinder” is 3 inch pvc pipe – anybody have any ideas on how to make a couple of plastic biscuits with a piece of leather in between or something else that will work?

The weird pumpjack thing I found in the barn has a six inch vertical stroke giving me about a quart per stroke. There is a metal wheel about 20 inches in diameter that runs the up and down thingy. Exercise bicycle bumped up against the metal wheel runs the deal. I gotta drag the camera out, charge some batteries and take some pics.

Windmills are high dollar, solar is a fool’s game, draft animals are for people who buy oats at the feed store. I basically operate under the premise that there isn’t a whole lot of technology between gas at 2.39 a gallon and hunter/gatherer. Over a lifetime, it would be less hassle to cob up a house down at the spring than bring the spring to the house… but we need some fuckin’ water right now that won’t stain our teeth and make the wife’s skin blistered sandpaper.

And no, there aren’t options other than a tractor – a real one, with a loader bucket on the front and a post hole auger on the back. There isn’t an intermediate technology between that and me with a wheelbarrow and rock bar to get wood up from the ravines and fenceposts set in this rocky ground. Screw four wheel drive ATVs, hand held gas auger toys and all the other “middle thingies” that cost just as much in the end and don’t get the job done. Collapse or Mahindra. End of story.

Four years ago we began to heat with wood full time. Took two years to optimize the stove configuration and another year to build a new chimney and install the Pioneer Maid cookstove. After eliminating a pesky ceiling and insulating the rafters, last winter was the first time we stayed barefoot and shirtsleeves – toasty warm with minimal wood usage. Once we figured out that wood was doable we yanked the propane central heat unit out and since it was pretty crappy took it to the scrapyard.

It’s a process, and we (because my wife isn’t as insane as I am) sorta test unconventional systems out before pitching the fire and forget factory technology out the window. “Heat” we got down, now “water” seems to be beckoning.

The spring is 85 feet downhill and 600 feet away from where the inlet for a gravity feed tank could go in our “garage” loft. I have 600 feet of 1 1/4 inch tubing, a homemade pump, a pumpjack, a stationary bicycle and a 9 year old kid. It is theoretically possible to fuck around and see if I can get that worked up. Perhaps first use some alternate tech – a couple years ago I got a gas powered transfer pump in case human power (and my contraption) had problems beyond quick and easy fixes.

Addressing the “rainwater catchment” et al theme, yes, we can get by on a whole lot less water than the typical suburban household. I can even run a washboard and plunger for laundry – in my world I can wear the same rancid overalls for a couple of weeks and keep skunks away by lifting my arms over my head, but I don’t wanna give the social workers an excuse to mess with my kid if the school… raises a concern, and the wife isn’t going to be teaching students looking like she spent a week with Survivorman. Food trucks are rolling into the grocery stores, gas is 2.39 a gallon and the electric lines are steadily pushing electrons. Bottom line – the household as it functions today requires a steady, reliable, tried and true well pump system as the alternate source develops itself.

Oh yeah – and if total collapse happens next Tuesday dealing with the marauding hordes sorta overshadows where we get a drink. Now on to where we stand on the well issue…

The water test from 2 1/2 years ago shows no bacteria or evil substances. Our water is pretty hard stuff – calcium deposits build up to the point of clogging the shower head once a month. A little iron bacteria in the toilet tank, but no gobs of slime or odor. It’s the rust in the system that is our problem so I’m tracking down the source.

First I ran the hydrant (right off the well head, not through the household plumbing or pressure tank) wide open to see how much water the well is producing – is the well shallow or not? Averaged 45 seconds to fill a five gallon bucket – 6.4 gallons per minute and the damn thing kept that flow up for over an hour until I said fuck it we got lots of water. The water was clear at the start, and clear all the way to the end of the test. If it had run dry I would have waited an hour and then ran it dry again to calculate the recharge rate. Being able to pump 500 gallons in one whack makes that issue moot. Depth of the well? Do the math: 450 gallons in a six inch cylinder is a column of 300 feet. The well is either not that shallow or I have an underground river recharging it.

Next up in the system is the well pipe itself. Galvanized pipe. The old plumbing pipe I have ripped out over the years hasn’t been in the best of shape – scale, corrosion, rust colored, and generally not what you’d drink out of if you had the choice. So I’m going to suppose that Changing out the old galvanized well pipe for pvc is the way to go – and might as well change out the pump while I’m at it – the last well service call on record at Tiff City Pump was back in ‘83 when a control panel fried.

Since the pressure tank is shot I’ll replace that with a fiberglass tank – maybe 100 bucks more than a steel tank but, hey, it won’t rust out. The whole system will be Plastic Fantastic and come in at a couple thousand tops… thereby keeping the tractor dream alive.

When the kitchen is done and the well is fixed I’ll probably get my leg caught in a machine…

“…suppose you were underwater and naked and running out of air, deep down where all the light’s gone, and you have to come up for air. And you spend every last precious ounce of your life’s energy in the effort to rise to the surface and take that badly needed breath, and just as your head breaks from the water you remember, too late, to your horror, that you are a fish.”

Quick recap for new viewers:
The rental house burns, insurance check too small to pay off the mortgage or cover farming out the rebuild to somebody else so I come out of “retirement” and do the whole thing myself. The money I save will buy me a desperately longed for tractor – after the wife gets a new kitchen. 14 months of shit labor, I get the check and start the kitchen remodel…

Drain the well system to fuck with plumbing as I gut the kitchen.
Pressure tank bladder pops Phoomp! – shit there’s 300 bucks…BFD.
Pull the 2 1/2 year old tank and see waaaay too much rust and corrosion.
Call my next door neighbor who is a well driller and he said I had well problems 10 years before we moved in – that he had been expecting this call for a looong time.
“How much?”
“‘Bout 10 grand”.

No tractor for me.

Re-read the opening paragraph.

Reminds me of a Beavis and Butthead episode where Butthead says
“This sucks worse than anything that has ever sucked before.”

I read “The Story of B”

and it talked about totalitarian agriculture as being a root problem that led to our current state of fucko bazzoo.
Interesting concept and one that it looks like I’m guilty of…

I cut down a dogwood to make room for apricot trees.
The goal of gardening is all food – no weeds.
The dog eliminates raccoons, and all coyotes must die.

In short, you eliminate everything except people food – plant only edible plants, drive off all predators, and deny anything the right to exist that interferes with the production of people food. Highly successful for the human, but a real bummer for the rest of the web of life.

See, I’m all groovy and cool, peace loving harmless homesteader – I let the chickens free range, the goats run pretty much wild, herbicide free and all that shit… but ultimately my goals have been the same as a Monsanto Monocropper on a 500 acre Iowan corn farmer – grow food for people. Even though the back 40 is a preserve for the woodland creatures it’s not like I’m living with them.

If I want to talk sustainability it looks like I’ll have to re-think a whole lot of my methodology. This is going to be a tough one…

…so I screwed up and headed for town at the time it would put me in the middle of the commuter rush to the little wage slave jobs the people seem to be hell bent on maintaining and way up ahead I saw Bambi and company bounding out of place being bulldozed for some huge new building (in an area filled with closed down businesses in huge buildings..). A whole series of brake lights come on, traffic stops, so it’s pretty easy to figure out what just happened. I limp along and get to where she is still twitching in the road in the right turn lane just in time to see a monster suv 4×4 with unmarred paint refuse to go an extra 20 feet out of the way to get into the turn lane beyond the deer, or simply hop the curb, but fucking runs over her face. There are reasons why I don’t carry firearms with me…

I got next to the deer and just stopped. Got out and tried to wrestle this deer into the back of my pickup… too heavy, too floppy for my puny ass. Some asshole kid in a zippy boom mini truck yells some shit at me until I gave him my psycho look and said “fuckin help me punk”. How to make people go away 101…

The guy behind me probably figures I’m not going anywhere until I get her loaded, thus he ain’t going anywhere either, so he grudgingly gets out with a pair of really nice high dollar leather yuppie gloves and helps me load her up. Right then a city of joplin maintenance truck pulls up and says “I’ll haul her off”. I’m psychotic at this point and half scream half froth “what – and toss her in a DUMP? That’s SICK, man – she deserves better than that!!!

I hate when I come unglued…

The plan for the day was to put in some more kitchen cabinets in the rental house so’s the renter guys can have more shelf space… change of plans. I pull in, get a paring knife out of the kitchen and gut her in the back yard, then drag her onto a piece of plastic sheeting in the back utility porch and get to work. About an hour later Don comes downstairs and I said “I brought breakfast..” What could be more natural than waking up in the morning, coming down for coffee and seeing the comrade covered in blood and a deer carcass in the laundry room?

The dog was happy to see me, ho ho!

We have deer steaks and stew bits in the freezer, a huge bowl of jerky on the table, and my primitive anarchist anti civ friends are smoking the neck and back at their place down the road. I gave them the hide to tan – my boy is getting a loincloth out of it. Everything else is in the compost heap to be turned into the garden.

We thank you, O Deer, and I’m wondering if there is a connection between us holding aside our woods as a sanctuary for deer to hide during hunting season – and being in the exact right place at exactly the right time.

Fourteen months – from tearing out lathe and plaster gutting that pig of a house all the way to screwing in mini blinds yesterday. 36 thousand bucks of materials and shit out of a 54K insurance check. Nice to figure I beat minimum wage.

Rented it out to some friends of ours that we have known since the earth began cooling for about a hundred and fifty bucks over the mortgage, insurance and taxes. Steady jobs and mellow lifestyles, should be a trouble free rental for the foreseeable future. Unless the meth house next door blows up and sets the fucker on fire again… if it does I’m walkin’ away – let Wells Fargo have it back – that was my last great hurrah strapin’ on the nailbag, I’m back in the turnip patch again.

It’s been a great day. No shoes. Quality time with the pig feeding her corn stalks and planting some green beans and cantaloupe. I’d much rather be slathered in garden soil and sweat than covered with paint. I have a future again – not just digging my way out of a hole. Sure, the neglected garden is six foot high in horseweeds but it’s just a really big compost heap in the works. I’ll look for the onions that I know are out there tomorrow. I’ve been running so fast for so long that I forgot how it feels to be unhurried. It’s not “what I didn’t get done today” but “what looks good for tomorrow”.

It’s also nice to be able to focus on total collapse once again. I’ve been in BAU mode – everything’s fine, blue pill mode. Doom? What doom? Back to shopping for beans and ammo rather than some crap to eat on the job.

I’ll talk tractor on the next post. Time to move the bunny cage onto new grass..

Missed you all…

Just ate a peach… from the first sapling planted when we moved here. That is huge – as significant as it gets. We are here, we have been here, and we will stay here.

Best damn peach I ever ate…

Part of a response I sent a Florida couple who saw my doomer wanted ad in the latoc classifieds…

Glad you wrote back. Even if your side of Florida doesn’t get a dose of goo… whatya gonna do about the other side showing up with… their “needs”?

It’s tough being a full on doomer. No bullshit, no rose colored glasses, no capacity for magical thinking. Knowing in my lifetime, and for sure my boy’s, the horse will be the primary mode of transportation down the state highway out front. Assuming I make it through the six months or so of society’s total breakdown when the entire country will be one big mass of migrating refugees – some more pleasant than others, but all in a state of desperation…

My hope is that the descent down the energy ladder will be as gentle as a series of shocks to different regions – much suffering (and many will die) but absorbable in the end. Some structure left to work with; people living in an agrarian balance within their environment and the rise of human labor with hand tools driving the engine of everyday living – rather than humans as cogs in a big corporate machine for the sake of the “Economy”. I think the gulf coast is the opening act in The Great Contraction and I’m looking closely at how it pans out. It’s no mystery to me why y’all are getting the jitters.

I have been busting my ass for the last 14 months rebuilding our rental house that somebody torched. I stripped it down to the framing lumber and re-did everything by myself while trying to keep the homestead functioning. I long to wrap it up this month and go back to “puttering” in the garden, and will at least have money to buy a tractor with the rest of the insurance money. It’s been too many years of hauling wood up from the ravines with a wheelbarrow and chipping fencepost holes through Missouri rocks with a bar and sledgehammer. The tractor will help with the heavy work around here, but even with that aid it’s still a tough go day after day. “Doomer Wanted” is a call for help with my heavy labor… I can do it by myself but if all my time is on the hard crap and the other guy soaks up all the putter in the garden it’s sorta a raw deal. Same with the wife’s side of things. Is her helper going to weed in the garden, knead bread, launder the clothes in a hand powered washer, keep the cookstove going, can, dry, sort seed, process herbs and feed critters including the humans?

That doesn’t even take into consideration the culture shock of no cell phone service, pizza delivery or dropping back from the 3bdr 2 bath with attached garage to a “cottage” featuring such novelties as the “Thunder Bucket” and quaint omissions of conveniences like a “thermostat”.

We eat well – that’s our claim to fame. The fact that we may eat at all in the future is our justification for this “voluntary agrarian landed peasant” standard of success. Imaging the sense of triumph when pedaling an exercise bicycle attached to a pumpjack and homemade pump for 15 minute sends a hundred gallons of water from the spring up to a water tank by the house. Staying cozy warm and well fed for a two week period when an ice storm kils the power lines and everybody else in the area is miserable.

It’s not a walk in the park, that’s for sure, but neither is it endless toil and hardship. My wife went to look at the progress I have made on the house – it’s trimmed out and ready for paint, cabinets and fixtures, and fell in love with the place. Spent the whole drive home trying to figure out how we could move back there without sacrificing too much. Garden the whole back yard, run a few chickens and rabbits etc, but the bottom line is it is just too satisfying being here where we are with the serenity and security that makes the homestead “home”.

I checked out the link for the homesteading university. clicked on the sample lesson and, well, harrumphed. Hydroponic growing tower. Complete with styrofoam containers. Do people even have a clue as to what we as a species are facing? Maybe solar panels and blueberry bushes are the answer. Me? I’m sticking with turnips and goats.

the comrade

Trim and paint, cabinets and fixtures and then one more coat of poly on the floors and I go find me a renter while hassling Wells Fargo for the last third of the insurance check. Looks like I’ll have this gut to the studs remodel job knocked out in time for the fall garden…

14 months ago I got The Call from the fire department. 14 months of one big pain in the ass. The thing that has kept me going is the full color brochure of the 16 Series Mahindra tractor taped to the fireplace mantle in the house. That way, when I’m slumped over tired to the bone on the stairwell “tractor” gets me back up for another round of fun. I probably moan out “Mahindra” in my sleep at night.

Somewhere along the line during this time period I’ve become completely indifferent (or maybe just totally disgusted with) to commerce and shopping and people and traffic – the general mayhem of civilized culture. 16 hours on a belt sander grinding and smoothing 1740 sq ft of tongue and groove flooring sucks a lot worse than the same time spent playing “find the vegetables” in the garden. The hour’s commute each way to the house is so seemingly pointless that I have taken to camping out there two nights a week to save the time wasted. Most people are shitty drivers at best, and now that the cell phone texting phenomenon has taken over it’s flat out dangerous on the road. I swear to god when this thing is over I’m never setting foot in a Lowe’s or Home Despot again. They can go on my Wal-Mart list… I simply can’t stand subjecting myself to being around that level of consumerism anymore.

14 months ago the insurance check was 3000 less than what I owed on the mortgage. some guy offered 5000 for the burned out carcass. I could walked with 2 grand in the pocket but noooo, I went for the 18 grand net profit. Never again. I’m going back into retirement in a month and never looking back. Out of the economy, peripheral involvement in commercial activity and back to leaving the homestead once a week to offload eggs and visit my mother. Hanging out until the power goes out, ho ho!

I miss being home. I missed the first goat kid of the season the other day. I know the wife is sick of all the critter chores since summer came and I’m on the job all day every day. I miss blogging – no time to sort out all the things in my head and say what I mean. I feel like I’ve lost 14 months of my life and wonder how in the hell people do most folks watch years and decades go by in the mill without going postal. I’ll get more than a tractor out of this deal… I got a good close up look at a culture choking on its own vomit.

Took a break from the internet for a number of reasons. First, lightning zorched my ethernet card and I hate using the wife’s laptop – or any other computer for that matter. Too busy to deal with getting a new part.

Another reason for being gone is that now that summer is here and my wife and son are home all day to take care of critters I’m working on the rental house rebuild all day every day – even camping out there a couple nights a week to save on commute time. The T&G flooring is all done (1700 sq ft of the shit), sheet rock hanging will be done after tomorrow’s festivities, so I’m down to trim, paint, cabinets and setting fixtures. Of course I’m too cheap to just go out and buy trim – I’m making it out of the old flooring I pulled up. Rip it on the table saw, cut it with the chop saw, router the edges and grind with the belt sander. It’ll hold paint anyway, and trim being way over a buck a foot that’s a pretty good chunk of change to convert into tractorage, ho ho!

As long as the hole in the gulf keeps burping up shit there’s no reason to do anything but ramp up for heavy economic jolts to ‘merica’s non negotiable way of life, so I bought my boy a single shot Daisy .22 rifle. Little twirp has a tighter 3 shot grouping at 20 yards than I do! We went to a Jake’s Day Field Event a couple of weeks ago and he shot 6 out of 6 targets on the .22 range – first time with a 22 so it was time to gun him up. Also, after one throw to get his distance he stuck the target every time with a Tomahawk. Proud father, eh?

Thanks for all the comments on the last post – I’m going back into the tunnel for a couple more weeks until I have to pay bills online again. Enjoy cheap gas courtesy of demand destruction while it lasts, and buy more beans, canning lids, ammo, seeds, and other doom stuff before the next wave of people wake up and say Folgers.