31 October, 2014 - New addition to the family. More of life on Mosquito Mountain.

The weather has closed in on us making us a little more frugal with our electrical usage.  We've been asked what we do about power when the weather is cloudy so now's an appropriate time to address that question!

First: we cut back on how much power we use.  That means when Scott watches his cartoons he uses his portable DVD player instead of the television and Blue Ray player.  It means we use only two, lower watt, lights at night.  We use one in the living area and one in Scott's room (where his porta- pottie resides).  We spend less time on computers and more time reading, playing cards or board games or doing other, non-electric things.  This includes more play time with Scott using his blocks, Legos and other non-electric toys.  We are normally pretty frugal in our electricity usage anyway but we cut out all non-essentials on cloudy days.  We've even been known to light up the kerosene lamps on extended spells of cloudy days.

Second: we run the generator if the batteries get too low.  It's not good for the batteries to be drawn down too deeply or to remain in a discharged state for long.  We'll use the generator to recharge the battery bank when it's low and the extended forecast is for more cloudy days.  If we can hit three hours of good sunlight during the day it's enough to completely recharge our battery bank.  Some days (especially in the spring and fall) we just don't get three hours of sunlight!  One gallon of gasoline gives us around five hours run time on the small (4000 watt) generator.  That's long enough to recharge the battery bank using the fast charger.

Third, we go to bed earlier and get up later!

Some of the things we really enjoy on low power nights are the hours Susan plays the piano (or her guitar or violin or my banjo).  This time she's playing Christmas hymns and songs.  It was great listening to her.

While she was doing that I had been doing some repairs on my camouflage hunting overalls.  I used my old Singer treadle sewing machine then when I finished with that Scott got to play with it.  I do the same with him that my grandmother used to do for us.  I removed the needle and all the thread and let him have fun.  We used to play with her machine for hours and he does the same with mine.  While he was doing that I had some buttons to sew on.

We had a bear come to visit early in the morning.  The dog heard it knock over the trash can then ran the bear off.  I had to clean up the mess!

Susan canned up some apple pie (the six jars on the left).  The details are in her Poverty Prepping blog.  They taste great.  The crust is like the crust on the bottom of the pie pan on a regular pie.

She also canned up some Baby Lima beans for me.

This is apple cobbler that she canned.  The canned deserts are for use when we travel or just want a fast snack.  It's a lot easier to just open a can than to bake a pie or cobbler from scratch.

Scott was hamming it up for the camera.

He hasn't been feeling too well the last couple of days.  It appears that he has a cold.  Susan and I had been outside working and when we came in to check on him he was sound asleep in his carefully arranged bed in a plastic crate near the wood stove.

The newest addition to our clan.  This is Scott's little brother, Benjamin.  Mom and baby are both doing fine.

For dinner Susan made buns to go with the canned hamburger patties.

I'm near completion on my next book, The Prepper's Guide to Alternative Weapons (One).  It will cover muzzle loading firearms, air guns, crossbows, and handheld bows and arrows.  The second book will cover the lesser known things like slings, boomerangs/throwing sticks, atlatls, etc.

This and the rest of the photos and drawings are sneak previews of what's in it.

Replica Remington 1858 revolver with target sights.

Close up view of the cylinder with safety notches.

Crosman Model 1322 pump type pellet pistol with shoulder stock.

Illustration of arrow angles on a non-center shot riser compared to a center shot riser.

Different angles of the arrow at different draw lengths with a non-center shot riser.

Photo showing how a center shot bow is designed.

Split tip on an aluminum arrow.

Arrow shortened, de-burred and ready for insert to make this into a crossbow bolt.

Modification to a broadhead insert in order to make it fit a nock made for a traditional arrow.  (In preparation to fletch the shaft.)

Nock glued to modified broadhead insert.

Modifying broken wood arrows for use in a crossbow.

The book is going to cover the four types of weapons listed with evaluations of each from a prepper's standpoint.  After months of working on it, it should be finished an less than two weeks.

5-10 March, 2012 - Crossbows and Bare Ground

We decided to take a break from the back woods and go somewhere the snow was gone.  After counting our money we determined that Southern Nevada wasn't an option so we drove into Eureka.  We had a great brunch at our favorite cafe then met up with our daughter-in-law and went walking ... in the mud.  Oh well, at least it felt like spring!

We made made a short walk along the river.  There's no ice and not much snow melting in the high-country so the water was clear and low.  In another month or two it'll be swollen and cloudy with run-off from the mountains.

We made a side trip to see our son at work.  He's working at a wood pellet mill during the winter.  He mainly drives the Bobcat to bring pallets of wood pellets to the crane so that they can be loaded onto the train cars.  The crane picks up the large bags of pellets and dangles them over the opening in the train car.  The guy on top of the car opens the chute in the bottom and the pellets fall into the car for transport.

This is our youngest son, his wife and Susan.  It was interesting to watch them at work.  We headed home soon afterwards, stopping at Fortine to fill water jugs on the way.  We had to chain up the Cherokee to make it up the hill a mile from our house.  We've had some warm weather and sunshine lately and it's beginning to melt the ice on the road.  The hill is a different story.  It has a lot of shade so the ice there is still thick and hard.  It also had water running down it which made it even slicker than normal.  We made it up about 20 feet in four-wheel-drive with studded tires then backed down and put the chains on.  No problem getting up after that!

Susan dug around in the toys stored in the shed and found this car for Scott to play on.  Of course the first thing he did was roll it on the side and play with the wheels.  He likes to watch them spin freely.  It's making us a little nervous.  We hope he gets over it by the time he can drive real cars.

The next thing he showed us was how he figured out how to get the suspenders loose on his overalls.  Great!  We already went through this once when he figured out how to take his diaper off by himself!

Scott's also learned a new way to help grandma wash diapers.  He likes pulling them through the wringer when she's finished washing them.  He's also big enough now to get into the wash tub from the chair.  Life just keeps getting more and more interesting around here.

One of our deep cycle batteries got dropped awhile back.  I've tested it and it still tests okay so I fixed the crack in the top and we're going to use it for the solar powered, electric fence charger.  We have one that needs a six volt battery.  Once this one is charged it should last all year.

I bought a knife at the thrift store for a dollar and thought I'd try cutting it down some for a camp knife.  I've heard so many people say a short knife blade is "best" so I thought I'd give it a try.  It's about 3 1/4 inches long now.    We'll see how I like it.

I'd already shortened this Old Hickory knife but I didn't like the curve at the tip.  While I was in the shop I went ahead and refiled the curve.  It looks about right now.  It's going to be my hunting knife for field dressing and skinning big game.  All I need now is a dead deer to try it out on.

Some of the kids were up on Friday.  It was a beautiful day so we went outside and shot the crossbows a while.  They traded off crossbows over the afternoon.  This is Stephen (Scott's dad) with the cheap one.  We paid about a hundred dollars for it new.  It has a lousy ... REALLY HARD ... trigger pull but shoots very accurately and is light weight.  The scope is an old scope made for an SKS.  It's a poor scope for a rifle but works great on the crossbow.

Victor has the newer, compound crossbow.  It's got a great trigger pull and is fast shooting.  It's accurate but on Saturday it had some problems.  After about ten shots the scope's cross hairs fell down inside the scope so it was kind of "point and shoot" after that.  The safety also has some issues.  If you have the safety on and try firing it the safety holds.  But when you push the safety to "fire" the crossbow shoots the bolt. The way to keep it from happening is to pull back on the string after you try firing it with the safety on.  Then it functions correctly.  I should probably contact the manufacturer about that.  The crossbow itself is fast but heavy.  I plan on doing some gopher hunting with them this summer.  I've found out that I can cut my broken or bent arrows and shoot them out of the crossbows.  It's a lot cheaper than buying new ones all the time.  Crossbows are kind of hard on bolts (arrows).

We've both been working on books this week.  We spent half a day going through old photos for my book.  I took the print photos and scanned them into the computer to use later. That took awhile.  There were over a hundred of them.  Susan has three of her short PAW books up on Kindle now.  She sold over twenty the first three days.  We're still learning how to post them and have had to make a couple of changes on the formats since she first put them up.  We think we've got it figured out now though. ... We hope!