Summers Acres

Hand Crank and Solar Power Weather Radio

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Information is powerful. One problem with many emergencies is getting the right information or getting any information at all. Even a weather related emergency from a winter storm can cut a family off from all lines of communication. It is important to be able to hear news updates, weather alerts, and the current state of affairs so that you can make informed decisions.

We recently purchased the Discovery Expedition AM/FM/SW Weather Radio. We actually bought ours from Sears as we had some shop rewards to redeem. I can no longer find it on the Sears website so the link is to the same radio on amazon. This is a reasonably inexpensive small model that has AM/FM, shortwave, and NOAA Weather. It has a hand crank on the side and a solar panel on top that can charge the built in Ni-MH battery. It also has a handy USB port that can charge phones, ipods, or anything equipped with a USB charger.

Discovery Expedition D105X AM/FM/SW/NOAA Weather Radio - 5-Way Powered Flashlight USB Port

View of the box and hand crank

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Fire Extinguishers | Preparation for Home Fire

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There are many facets to being prepared. If you’re not careful it can become overwhelming because there is always something you should be doing. It is best to think about what are the likely situations that you and your family should prepare for. Natural disasters and severe weather vary depending on your location. Each type of natural disaster and severe weather requires specific ways to prepare. However, a home fire is a common threat that virtually all of us should prepare for. Fire statistics can be found at US Fire Administration.

Is your home prepared in the case of a fire? Up until recently we did not even have a fire extinguisher in our home. We did have the suggested number of smoke detectors. Most homeowner’s policies require them to be insured. But when is the last time you actually tested your smoke detector and changed the batteries? A common suggestion is to change them when the time changes in the fall and spring for daylight savings time.

We have been fortunate enough to never have a fire in our home, but I remember a kitchen fire at my parents’ house scared me to death. I was pregnant with my first child (who is now 19 years old) and no longer lived at home. I stopped by Mama’s to visit for a moment. We all lived nearby. My sister and I were out in the yard chatting and Mama came out and joined in. When Mama went back in the house the stove was on fire!

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Pantry Shelves

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When it comes to being prepared in the case of a disaster, storage space plays a key role. We have always been aware of our limited storage space, but when we began disaster prepping this limitation became a huge issue.

A quick look around the house lead us to the conclusion that there was only one area we could convert for a little of our storage needs. We have a walk in closet in the bedroom that has been converted into an office. This is the same closet we crammed a deep freeze in, but that is covered in another post.

The closet, which is now referred to as the pantry (Ann has always wanted a pantry) was pretty much a catch all for overflow of our extraneous crap. So we went through it all and got rid of anything we found less important than storage space for our families survival. Most of it got thrown out or given to Goodwill. Some of the important things got relocated.

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Pressure Canner From Outer Space

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Our first rows of beans/peas we planted (pintos, dragon tongues, and crowder peas) we picked and dried. This worked, but the drying process takes a while and I had cookie sheets with beans and peas all over the place.

I had already wanted to get a pressure canner, but originally thought I’d wait until next year. This was our first year having a garden. I didn’t need a pressure cooker just yet, did I? But as our first round of beans were winding down, we decided to pull them up and plant a couple of rows of bush green beans.

The days following planting them we started talking about how we needed a canner of some sort, preferably a pressure canner for the green beans. Although we may cook some fresh out of the garden, we would need to either freeze or can the rest as they are not preferred dried.

Even though I had not canned anything since I was about 19 years old I had decided I wanted to go ahead and start looking for a pressure canner. I looked at Walmart, Kmart, Amazon, and Lehman’s. Pressure canners come in all sizes, quality, features (pressure gauge or not). Both of which impact the price of course.

The more I looked the more my heart got set on Lehman’s High Quality Pressure Canner. The quality was impeccable and the reviews were as well. I must have this canner! Then I had to decide what size did I need as it came in 5 different capacities from 10-1/2 Quart up to 41-1/2 Quart.

10-1/2 Quart: Jar Capacity: 7 pt or 4 qt.
Dimensions: 7-3/4″H x 10-1/2″ID (11-1/2″H with lid), 12 lb.
15-1/2 Quart: Jar Capacity: 10 pt or 7 qt.
Dimensions: 7-1/2″H x 12-3/4″ID (12-1/2″H with lid), 17 lb.
21-1/2 Quart: Jar Capacity: 19 pt or 7 qt
Dimensions: 10-3/8″H x 12-3/4″ID (15-3/4″H with lid), 18 lb.
30 Quart: Jar Capacity: 19 pt or 14 qt
Dimensions: 14″H x 12-3/8″ID (19″H with lid), 21 lb
41-1/2 Quart:Jar Capacity: 32 pt or 19 qt
Dimensions: 14″H x 15-1/4″ID (19″H with lid), 33 lb

I decided not to get the 41-1/2 Quart canner. It was $419! That seemed excessive to me and I doubt I would need to can that much at one time. Then, I thought about how I would eventually want to be able to can half gallon jars for juice and thought I will definitely need a tall one. I would not want to be limited. Obviously, I must have the 30 Quart capacity for $279! I love me some Lehman’s too by the way.

Wow, that is a lot of money, but it is an investment in our family’s future and I’ll never need to buy another one. So, I rearranged the ole financial budget and found some room for this little gem of a purchase. I would be able to get it mid August just in time for our green bean harvest! I will have to can a lot of green beans to pay for this thing, but it was worth it. I was so proud of myself.

So just in time, this Gi-Normous box was delivered to the house. Yay, my canner has arrived. Wow, this thing was heavy. I proceeded to open the box and what I found inside looked like a pressure cooker from outer space! At a minimum, this thing should be in laboratory or something! I had never seen such a pressure cooker in all my life! I thought my Mama’s was huge, but it was nothing compared to this thing.

It is gorgeous and pristine, but I think I may have been a little over zealous.

Bring on the beans!

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How Not to Build a Compost Bin

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A compost bin is a wonderful idea. Taking things you do not have any use for and turning it into valuable fertilizer for the garden is a perfect win-win situation. Using grass clippings, fallen leaves, and table scraps to help produce better produce.

I did not want to spend a lot of money on our bin, because I am cheap. I also did not have enough scrap wood to build one. We can get free wood out of used wooden pallets! Ann’s father is a truck driver, so he has access to free wooden pallets. On one of her trips to visit family, she returned with 5 old wooden pallets. So now I have my free wood to make our compost bin and make our free compost. Great idea, huh?

Now, I have broken down pallets in the past. Wood always comes in handy, and I like to get as much use out of things as I can. These pallets must have been built to ship tanks! Getting them apart was much more difficult than I had expected. But after several hours of prying the planks apart, I had finally gotten them all apart. In hindsight, I should have just sprung for some wood and had this entire project done in less time than it took me to break the pallets down.

I planned for a simple two compartment box construction with an open bottom.

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Beans!

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This year we planted dragon tongue beans, pinto beans, and top-pick crowder peas. The seed packet for the dragon tongue beans said they could be picked early (green) and the shells are similar to a green bean or left to dry and pick after the bean is fully mature similar to the pinto bean. We opted to let them mature and dry and pick them like pintos.

This is what we got. It is just about enough for one good mess of beans. I am grateful as we did not even know if we would get any harvest. The shells have purplish striping. Some shells are darker than others. We were curious to see how they taste.

Dragon Tongue Beans

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Zucchini, Laserdiscs, and Meat On Sale!

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The kids may riot soon if we force them to eat any more zucchini! To be quite honest Jon and I are getting a bit tired of it too and I love fried zucchini! It blows my mind how much produce can come from 8 plants. So, now we are going to take a little break from the eating of the fresh zucchini and just freeze it.

Which brings us to our next dilemma. Where to put all of this frozen bounty? We decided that we needed a pantry, but where?
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Bush Removal

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What does bush removal have to do with homesteading and disaster prepping? A source of self sustaining food and water are the top priorities in being prepared. When you only have one acre of land, you start thinking every inch is precious.

Our one acre already has 20+ trees. Most are pine, but we do have a handful of pen oaks and two maple trees. Add to that a few handfuls of decorative bushes and flower beds around the house and you start to run out of workable land that is productive.

Jon and I regularly “walk the land” and discuss what we like to plant where and how. We have decided that nothing new would be planted unless it provided a source of food or some practical need. Ornamental plants and trees are pretty, but there are many fruit/food bearing bushes and trees that can be just as pretty.

Right now, we have decided we will not be removing any pine trees, but as we lose them we will not replace them with another pine. We lose about one every year or so. They have shallow root systems and are very top heavy with the pine needles. Add a gusty storm with wind and rain or some ice or snow weighing those heavy laden branches and it doesn’t take much to lose large limbs and sometimes the whole tree.

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Gigantor!

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Now, that’s a zucchini! It was so big that we named it Gigantor!

Gigantor is so big intentionally. We were trying to let it grow enormous so that we could get some good size seeds out of it to use for next year. When I cut it, the seeds were noticeably bigger, but amazingly still nowhere near the size we had expected. They were quite a bit smaller than the seeds we had purchased and planted. So, we just decided to slice ole Gigantor up and freeze him. He even got his name on the freezer bag!
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Conceal Carry Permit (CCP) Class

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Initially, we have put a lot of focus on gardening because food is a top priority. If you don’t have food and water nobody will last very long. However, Jon and I both know that personal protection of ourselves and family is also very important.

Neither of us have a great deal of knowledge with guns but we did have a little exposure to them over the years. My Daddy always had several different kinds growing up, but I never really did much target shooting. About the most I ever shot was a 22 rifle and that was many years ago. We had both been wanting to get some training and also get our conceal carry permit.

This would be a costly process. There was a cost for the class, a cost for the CCP application, and of course a large cost for a firearm. We were finally ready financially to take that plunge. So what did we do on one of our first days off of our “vacation” this summer? We attended our CCP class at First Shot Personal Protection, Inc. in Walkertown, NC.

There are many places where you can go take CCP classes around here like the Sheriff’s department or the nearby indoor shooting range. Before we found out about First Shot Personal Protection, we really hadn’t decided on where to go. A girlfriend of mine from work actually told me about it because her and her husband had recently completed their class there. She highly recommended it and now I know why.

Larry is the instructor and him and his wife Kathy do the classroom instruction in their home in the basement. They are such a fun couple. They do give classes for groups, but I was happy to know they would let us take the class just by ourselves. You see I am a bit of a perfectionist. For some reason I think I should be able to do everything perfect the first time. Well of course that is not humanly possible so in situations like this I can have a little performance anxiety. So, it was nice to know we could schedule a small intimate class. Additionally, as I did not have a lot of hands on experience with firearms, I did not want to be in a large group where I would feel rushed and unsure of myself. I really appreciated the individual personal attention. It really helped with my confidence level.

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