Tales from the Clothesline

Many of you won't be surprised that I am writing about a clothes line since I've mentioned it before, but you know what? I am so excited about having a clothesline again. It's been about 15 years since we've been able to hang clothes outside. We've used a few creative indoor clotheslines from time to time over the years, but the last time we were able to hang clothes outside was in the spring of 2000. Now is the time for us to have a simple, effective,

outdoor dryer available to us again. A few days ago we moved the antenna towers and mowed down the tall grass in preparation for our new adventure in drying clothes outside.

  

Frank installed turnbuckles on the end of each line so we can tighten them up as needed. I thought this was a great idea!






You'll notice that the clothesline is very close to the outdoor kitchen. That will make it very convenient when I am also washing the clothes outdoors, not just drying them. More about that process once we have the kitchen

completed. As I took the first load of laundry out of the washer, I had this vague memory of sorting the clothes before loading them into the clothes basket and heading outside. I'll probably relearn how I want this done as I get used to this new, old routine. We have a plastic clothes basket that I could use, but I've chosen to try out a metal bushel basket instead. Every plastic basket we have had eventually breaks off at the handles and has to be replaced. I plan on this lasting more than my lifetime.

I seem to have that radio on all the time, don't I?

I have had this clothespin apron for many, many years. I don't remember who made it or gave it to me, I only know that I didn't make it. We used to have one with a hanger in it that you could hang on the line. I like the apron better. 

Back in August as my birthday approached, Frank asked me if there was anything I wanted. At first I couldn't think of anything, but then I remembered something. I had recently read about Herrick Kimball's clothespins. For those of you that aren't familiar with Herrick's blog, he is over at the Deliberate Agrarian. He also works from home creating and producing items for his homestead based company, Planet Whizbang. I contacted Mr. Kimball about my interest in his Classic American Clothespins and found out they would be available in early October, but since we didn't have a clothesline yet, that worked out just fine.

I recently received my clothespins and yesterday was the first opportunity I had to try them out. I was surprised how much larger they are than the regular, store bought version I have been using for years. The stainless steel spring is larger also, and easily holds a pair of jeans or thick jacket. Not only are these clothespins sturdy, they are made from beautiful ash wood. I expect these clothespins will last us a very long time. If you go to his site, you will find that Herrick sells out of his clothespins very quickly. His production run of 8000 is already gone. He did mention in an email that he may have an extra run of 8000 available sometime later, you'll have to check with him if you are interested.

Ladies please don't be offended, but I've always just thought of us as girls, regardless of age. Now that you understand that I want you to know, as I took the clothes out to the line, hung them up with my new clothespins, stood back and admired my work, that I was one happy girl. A little kooky, huh? You know, why do all that work? I told my friend Grace the other day how excited I was to have a clothesline again, and that I expect some folks to think I was a little off my rocker. There is a young mother that lives close by, and she told me she loves hanging out her clothes, she feels like she is saving money for her family. She's right, and then there is the advantage of the sunshine killing bacteria, the clean, fresh fragrance without artificial chemicals, and the stiff scratchy feeling of the towels. We were very surprised at how quickly the clothes dried. Frank commented that it was much faster than the dryer.

We broke down today and changed the sizes of our t-shirts. Frank and I were still wearing the shirts we wore before losing almost 50 pounds and they are hanging very loosely. We hate to put something away before it is good and worn out, but it was time to 'down size' our clothes. 

As I was hanging out this batch of shirts, Frank 'Wilson' Feral arrived and had me laughing so hard I could hardly take this picture. He is one funny man, and I am one blessed woman.

It is truly the simple things in life that fill my heart and soul with a deep, abiding joy and sense of contentment. Seek out what fills your soul. When you are in the midst of stress or strife, dip from that well of contentment and take it in stride. In the coming days our stress levels are not going to go down, they are going to continue to increase to a fever pitch. The

Our sheepskin prayer rug

uncertainty of the future has already caused many to lose hope, lose their temper, lose their families and, for some, lose their life. The stress of the coming collapse can bring the most stalwart and courageous to their knees. We find ourselves in prayer on our knees, side by side, every night before we go to bed. It gives us strength and binds us together like nothing else can. Seek that which will give you strength to face the coming days, weeks and months as our uncertain future unfolds. You will need it.

Until next time - Fern

Do You Have Enough Jars & Canning Lids?

We are spending some time organizing, discarding, giving away & figuring. This morning I was going through our canning jars, regular canning lids, Tattler lids, and rings. As I did so, I pondered the possibilities. If these were the only jars, lids and rings I would ever have. Do I have enough? Do you?

With that pondering comes these thoughts. How many jars would I need to fill from our garden, chickens, goats and fruit to last a year until the next harvest was available? I really do appreciate the information we can find on the internet, and went on a quest. Here are a few articles I found that discuss how much food to raise or store, for a year.

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How much to plant in your garden to provide a year's worth of food?

Food Storage Calculator

TheFoodGuys.com - Food Storage Calculator 

Long Term Food Storage Calculator (uses Excel)

The Pantry Primer: How To Build a One Year Food Supply in Three Months

Peek Inside My Pantry - Use This Tool To Help Plan A Year's Worth of Food and Supplies

How Much to Plant Per Person in the Vegetable Garden

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Okay. That's enough for now. But, you see what I mean. We have been homesteading and gardening for years, but now we are getting very serious about trying to have on hand what we may need if the SHTF or TEOTWAWKI happens. Permanently. We've had many conversations

about how many jars of this or that we may need to last a year in 'normal' circumstances. But what if the electricity is off and we have no freezer, refrigeration, instant hot water, or anything that runs off of the grid? We depend on the freezer to preserve our meat, some cheese and some fruits and vegetables for now. If we didn't have that luxury, and it really is a luxury that many people don't enjoy, even in this day and age. So, if we didn't have that luxury, and instead canned all of our meat, broth, dog food (organ meat and fats from butchering), lard, some milk, maybe butter and cheese, fruits and all of the vegetables, I go back to my original question. Do we have enough jars & canning lids?

Some other things I thought of. With jars, we have to plan on breakage. This happens sometimes during canning, or by accident. Ask Frank. I am a rather clumsy person. Regular canning lids can be reused, sometimes as many as three times. We know. We tried it just so we would know and wouldn't have to hope or guess if we really needed them. But it is not a recommended practice. The Tattler lids can be reused many times if you take very good care of the gaskets. If I was solely dependent upon them, I would want to lay in a good supply of extra gaskets. And for Tattler lids to work, you must have rings. We've tried to devise a way to take extra good care of our rings to make them last as long as possible. When we are canning and our jars have sealed and cooled, we wash the rings, dry them well and store them so they won't rust, thus prolonging their usefulness.

June 2013

Spring and the gardening season will be upon us soon. This year we are going to make a serious effort to can and store a year's supply of food. Food that we produce here on our farm. Then, as we use it up, we will take stock of our jar, lid and ring supply. But until we have a more solid idea of our long term needs, we will continue picking up more jars and lids. Just in case. We have been surprised at the stock of canning supplies Wal-Mart has kept this winter. They usually don't. I'm glad. We have picked up a few more lids.

The more I learn, the deeper I learn, and the more I realize how little I know. There are layers upon layers of knowledge to learn. I have barely scratched the surface.

Until next time - Fern

Grid Down Laundry

Hello Everyone, Frank here.

We were recently visited by some old friends, and yes, we've known them for a long time, and they are getting older. So, I guess that truly does make them old friends. We were looking at some pictures of their new piece of property, and noticed that they had an interesting set up for doing laundry.

They were using the old rectangular galvanized washtubs. Two of them, with a hand crank wringer in between the two. When I asked about how it performed, they told us it works great. We've thought about and talked about many ways to do laundry over the years, and we have a pretty good stash of round galvanized washtubs. We plan on using regular household toilet plungers to facilitate the agitating. But, again, we've known these people for a long time, so we started doing a little research. 

We found numerous websites with hand crank wringers, but they were all the exact same wringer. The prices varied by $30.00 to $40.00, and guess the average was about $155.00. I was hoping for a little bit more selection. When looking for hand clothes wringers, we also ran across some sites that had complete kits, which included the rectangular washtubs, wringers, stands to set the washtubs on, and in one case even a stand for the wringer to attach to. All this is great, and it's doable. Then I got the idea, how about a double sink utility basin? Lowe's has a couple of them that they show. Most of them are a plastic type product, and one they show as a rigid composite. But, remember, these are online, and I'm not sure if attaching a wringer to the vertical partition between the two sinks would be strong enough.

Then I got this shebam idea! How about stainless steel restaurant type sinks? Better get ready for a price shock. Then I thought, you know, besides doing laundry, we could use this for butchering chickens, not the butchering part, but the clean up part; cleaning up garden vegetables; on the rare occasion, processing fish. So, it could be used for other things besides just laundry. Stainless steel is expensive. I didn't mention above, but all of these ideas about doing laundry will be outside and on the porch. I would feel comfortable attaching a hand wringer to the stainless steel sinks. 

 But then I could just get two single plastic utility sinks and put a homemade stand with the wringer on top of it, between the two sinks. That's not a bad idea.

So, here is where I need your help. I recently did a post about a propane cookstove that the ignitor uses a 9volt battery. After I did the post, a couple of folks sent comments about other brands that also have battery ignitors. By looking at the websites, they have more features than what my cookstove has, and appears to be a higher quality. But at the time, I didn't know they existed. Same thing happened with washing machines. I couldn't find one without all of the monitoring sensors. Well, after that post, I received comments from folks about Speed Queen washing machines, which are manufactured without all of the sensors. 

So, I'm going to try something different this time. For those of you out there that are either doing laundry by hand, or know someone that is doing laundry by hand, could you provide me with some information about what type of system they use? This is one of those times that I don't want to reinvent the wheel again. Now, I'm not interested in using a paddle to beat my clothes on the side of the stream on a rock. I used to watch the ladies overseas do that. All the women would meet at the same time everyday, some of them with babies strapped on their back or their front. They would bring their laundry down to the stream. That was an interesting trip.

If you can help me, share some information about how folks in real world America wash their clothes in an off grid situation. Your help would be deeply appreciated.

We'll talk more later. Frank