We lit lis year’s first fire in our wood stove on October 21 and let it burn out in the middle of the night. Just ten days later, it is cold enough that we are burning both the big stove in the basement and have lit the fireplace insert upstairs. The chill in the air is bad enough, but it has been compounded by the 2-1/2 inches of rain we have had this week. The dampness makes it seem colder.
One morning, my wife said to me, “Did you see your tarp ripped in half?” I hadn’t. She laughed. “Go look at it.” The tarp really had ripped into two.
I was quite disappointed in the durability of this tarp, which I purchased at Harbor Freight. I have come to expect this poor performance from their cheap blue or camo tarps, which are only 4 or 5 mils thick. This was one of their silver 9-mil tarps, which are listed for “heavy-duty applications.” As you can see in the accompanying image, it is recommended for “permanent install application.” Well, this one didn’t last two years. And since I don’t use it year-round, I doubt it lasted through 12 months of use.
Maybe being strapped on top of firewood in a windy location is a demanding application, but I have never seen a tarp deteriorate to this extent. The woven reinforcement degraded until I could tear the tarp with my fingers. My best guess is that the UV rays in the sun hastened its degradation.
I put on another silver tarp because that’s what I have in stock. Good thing I bought them cheap. On the other hand, I guess I got what I paid for.
More Firewood Harvested
We drove up the mountain in our UTV, and I cut several small trees that were leaning over and blocking the road while my wife lopped off the branches and helped load the Polaris. The trees included both a cherry and a couple of small birches. I also harvested some logs from a larger cherry tree we had cut down this summer. I drove it all home, split it and stacked it. Our Polaris UTV is making this easy. I am also using it instead of my pickup truck to move wood from our many woodpiles into the house. Since a firewood stack can be 100 feet from the door, I toss the wood in the back of the UTV, back into the garage, and unload from there straight into the basement.
On Sunday afternoon, I went up the mountain again and cut up an 9-inch tree that was leaning over but had enough roots in the ground that it still had some leaves and green wood. Just an example of how life wants to keep living, hurricane-force winds or not. This tree was a tulip poplar, which is technically a hardwood, but dries light and burns fast. It’s great for starting a fire or making a hot one, but you don’t want to put them in the firebox overnight because they won’t last.
Now that the weather is cool, I want to cut and harvest more, but the rain has curtailed my activity. No argument from me, however, as we need the rain. The creeks and streams were as low as I have seen them. I have my eye on several other downed or dead trees close enough to the road that they should not be difficult to harvest for firewood.
Free Sugar for the Bees
I picked up 150 pounds of sugar from the tons of sugar donated to our bee club after Hurricane Helene. It is getting too late to feed them at this altitude, so I stored it in five 5-gallon pails. This should keep the ants and the mice out of it. I used two of the free buckets I got when for shopping at Harbor Freight. I guess that makes up a little for the crappy tarp. But only a little.
I am planning to use the sugar to make candy boards to put in the hives this winter. Expect a report on that in the future.
New preppers should take note: five-gallon pails are super useful. You can store stuff in them now and use them to haul water or your harvest after the SHTF. I use at least eight when I harvest honey, so I keep more than a dozen empty ones on hand. Don’t forget to buy some lids, too. The permanent ones you have to hammer on are best for long-term storage, but the thin, flexible lids are easier to get on and off and better for short-term use.
More on SNAP Benefits Ending
I covered the threat of rioting caused by nonpayment of SNAP benefits in detail this week and last, but it doesn’t seem like the situation has improved. On Thursday, the Democrats once again refused to vote for a clean resolution to reopen the government. Sadly, if we see violence, I expect the bulk of it will be in Democrat-run cities and states.
Governor Youngkin in Virginia declared a state of emergency and will use state funds to ensure SNAP benefits are paid. Good for him. It will be interesting to see if any other states join Virginia.
I am not in favor of halting food supplies to children, the elderly, or disabled, but I hope this episode will cause Congress and the state agencies who help administer SNAP to investigate who is getting benefits. Figures I’ve seen show 40 to 50 percent of illegal aliens are on SNAP. I don’t recall voting for that.
Nor would it surprise me if outbursts and angry videos from entitled welfare recipients encourage the government to look at how these programs are being administered. Taxpayers who buy their own food with their hard-earned cash were fine thinking that their tax dollars were going to help people down on their luck. After watching these videos, many think differently. Videos from people who refuse to “ever get a job” are not winning much sympathy.
My subtitle above said “More on SNAP,” but maybe it should have said “Moron.” People who post threats and call attention to themselves in this kind of scenario are self-entitled morons. It will serve them right if they get investigated or arrested when the stores or shoppers get robbed. From what I recall, that’s called evidence, and when a crime is premeditated, the penalties are usually harsher than for a similar crime of passion.
Grounded Flights
It turns out we need the government for something other than providing food stamps and related welfare programs: helping ensure our skies are safe. People may not notice if the FDA isn’t approving new drugs, but when their flight is canceled or delayed, they get pissed. Imagine how cranky they will be if the shutdown persists past Thanksgiving, the most heavily traveled day of the year.
I’m just glad I am not a gate agent. I expect they will take the brunt of the anger, just like cashiers will be the focus of anger when someone’s SNAP benefits are not on their EBT card.
Who will the parents of those 827,000 kids in Head Start blame when the daycares close and they find their lives disrupted as they are forced to take time off to provide childcare? And who wants the infants and their moms to stop getting their free eggs, milk and cheese when WIC runs out of money? Not me.
It’s like the government is a big reservoir into which money flows from multiple sources and then gets pushed back out to many more programs. We’ve got a temporary blockage in supply, but we all know it is temporary, even the Dems who are shutting off the pipe.
The question you should be asking is what will happen when the inflow ceases and there is no hope of the cistern ever getting full again? Because that day may loom a few years in our future.
You Need a Reserve Fund
An air traffic controller—the folks who are not showing up for work and are apparently responsible for flight delays—makes between $60,000 and $175,000 per year, plus overtime. So why don’t they have a couple of months of money in the bank or a few weeks’ worth of food in their pantry? Haven’t they heard of having a reserve fund?
The whole pandemic should have made it clear to anyone paying attention that we live in a complex yet fragile society. If one thing stops working, everything that follows it in the chain of events screeches to a halt. It might be an oil shortage, an internet outage, or a tree limb that shorts out a high-tension wire and causes a blackout. No one knows what will fail next, only that the odds are something will. That is why everyone should prep, even those living on government assistance.
If you live paycheck-to-paycheck, that’s a sign you need to do something different. Go on a spending freeze. Create a budget and determine where your money is going. Do something to reduce your expenditures or increase your income.
If you don’t want to stock months of food, I get it. Odds are, there will be outside resources brought in to feed you. And then the SNAP program shuts down, and people who go to grocery stores have to worry about being robbed in the parking lot or in their homes.
I also understand if you don’t want to move out of an urban area. I spent my entire adult life moving away from urban areas, but I understand there are reasons not to. If things end up getting messy in the coming weeks, you may want to reconsider your location. Consider this a test run.
Last-Minute Preps
My wife went grocery shopping on Thursday. I’m already eating Spam and eggs for breakfast. I guess we’re about as ready as we can be for what we hope is a non-event.
Even if nothing goes wrong or there are only problems in faraway places, this is why we prep. You should feel good about that, even if you don’t need your preps. As I said the other day: better safe than sorry.
