Episode-1202- Listener Calls for 9-6-13
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Join Me Today as I Answer Your Calls
Today on The Survival Podcast I take your calls on real estate, walking to freedom, permaculture, energy, money, cooking, knives, guns, water and more.
Remember to be on a show like this one just pick up your phone and call 866-65-THINK. The best way to improve your chances of being on the air is ask your question or make your point up front, then provide details.
Also please do your best to call from a quiet area with a good connection and speak up so you can be well heard. I can’t put all calls on the air but I do my best to get many of them on.
Join Me Today As I Respond to Your Calls and Discuss…
- What is up with housing prices in Texas
- TSP Member Top Kone talks about his families progress
- Ben Falk on natural swimming pools and planting black locust
- Are pro gun stickers a security risk
- The G-Mag Salt Water Battery System – Steve Harris weighs in
- Propane storage guidelines for the suburbs
- How is the concept of PermaEthos different then an HOA
- Cooking chard and preparing sea food with Chef Keith Snow
- Never and I mean never drink water from a dehumidifier or an air conditioner
- Advice on saving money cash, banks, IRAs etc, where and what percentages
- John in WV asks what kind of man doesn’t at least carry a pocket knife
Resources for today’s show…
- The Year 1202
- Join Our Forum
- 13Skills.com
- Join Our Forum
- Walking To Freedom
- Shop for TSP Silver
- TSP Gear
- PermaEthos.com
- Ready Made Resources – (sponsor of the day)
- Bulk Ammo – (sponsor of the day)
Remember to comment, chime in and tell us your thoughts, this podcast is one man’s opinion, not a lecture or sermon. Also please enter our listener appreciation contest and help spread the word about our show. Also remember you can call in your questions and comments to 866-65-THINK (866-658-4465) and you might hear yourself on the air.
Also remember we have an expert council you can address your calls to. If you do this you should email me right after your call at jack at thesurvivalpodcast.com with expert council call in the subject line. In the body of your email tell me that you just called in a question for the council and what number you called in from. I will then give the call priority when I screen calls.
Our Expert Council is Made Up of…
- Frank Sharp Jr. – Fortress Defense Consultants – Weapons, Tactics and Security
- Darby Simpson – DarbySimpson.com – Livestock and Farm Management/ Homestead Consulting
- Ben Falk – Whole Systems Design – Permaculture (Specializing in North Eastern Climates)
- Paul Wheaton – Permies.com – Permaculture (Specializing in North Western Climates)
- Tim Glance – Old Grouch’s Military Surplus – Bug Out Vehicles, Military Surplus and Communications
- Stephen Harris – Solar1234 – All things Energy
- Chef Keith Snow – Harvest Eating – Cooking
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Regarding the G-MAG, yes, it was Cheaper Than Dirt. As usual Mr. Harris gave a great answer that was much more detailed than needed, but no less detailed than expected. I loved the definitive answer on its worth.
Steven, I hope you had a good vacation. I heard your voice on Zello, after your return, as I saw this device in a promo email from CTD and decided to put the question in with Jack. Thanks again for your answer.
CTD seems to advertise quite a bit of preparedness gear. So much of it seems worth ignoring, but from time to time something legitimate shows up.
CTD markets to people that don’t know better just in general. Darn near every relevant forum related to their scope of business has the general sentiment of black balling them for just being a crappy business all around. Personally I think they earned the moniker “Cheap Dirt Bags”…
Actually I like CTD, they are really great folks, they just sell shit people buy in their catalog. If people want something they carry it. Some is good stuff, some is junk.
If you go to the actual store here in Ft. Worth, you will get a different opinion of their operation. They carry top end guns and sell them at great prices. The staff by in large knows their shit about guns and ammo as well.
Do they sell some stuff I think of as crap? Yep. Does that make the S&W AR I bought from them in anyway inferior to one from another store? Nope.
That’s cool. I think you are the first person I’ve ever heard something like that from. A lot of the disdain I see is a combination of the price gouging and their attitude towards customers from less gun friendly states. They notoriously ban 100% legal items then defend themselves by essentially saying well your state sucks anyway. It at least was bad enough that I wouldn’t even look there because invariably something incredibly stupid like a .22 accessory or a 10 round magazine would be banned. My personal favorite was being told that they couldn’t ship me .45 ACP hollow points because my state had an assault weapons ban. They also had some pretty epic PR failures right after the sandy hook shootings. So maybe they have some good people but a legal department with degrees written in crayons. IDK…
Could someone list the author names Ben Falk mentioned regarding ponds?
Found it:
Art Ludwig
Brad Lancaster
There is a housing boom down here in the Houston area with Exon moving their world headquarters here to Montgomery county…you will not only get market value but there are bidding wars going on…if you don’t get above market value, you have a crappy RE agent…but still you can get a a mini mansion like you said for 500k, hell in places you can get one for 250k
Houston likely will get clobbered in the next downturn. It has happen a few times in the last few decades, each time though the rest of Texas barely skipped a beat. Houston is too dependent on oil, the rest of the state is far more diverse.
I enjoy listening to the history portion of the show. It’s like a snippet of the History channel and getting to see the correlation between then and now.
I am so glad we got tartar sauce out of the Tartars before Ghengis Khan got to them!
LOL!
I’ve lived in Houston since the 70’s and saw what happened during the oil boom then. History is rhyming. It is the mid 70’s in Houston all over again. The boom in Texas lasted until the price of oil collapsed. In a period of high inflation, Texas will be the place to be for jobs.
Also, note that suburbs will be the next slums do to the over building and poor construction during a rush to build housing during a boom.
I’ll give an example. Sharpstown in Houston was a suburb booming in the 60s. http://blog.chron.com/bayoucityhistory/2011/09/sharpstown-shopping-center-50-years-later/
The time to get out was abt 1980, after that it went to hell. I drive through there every day now with my pistol close to my side. The peak of a suburb is about 20 yrs, so plan accordingly.
Yeah, I remember that, thousands of people moved down here from Michigan and when the boom ended they wound up living in tents cities under bridges for over a year!
I was just thinking about the quote from the article I posted, “customers and shops moved toward Fort Bend County”. This is the current suburb on that side of Houston, specifically City of Sugar Land (in 2nd place in Texas for jobs, CNN). This city does it’s best to promote national corporate chains to setup and do business there. They hate the small business owner since it is harder to get tax revenue out of them.
My thought is that when these national chains go under during a nation-wide depression, these local “big box” businesses are going to turn the suburb strip centers into ghost towns.
If you can find a neighborhood that is small business friendly, it might be a better place to be located.
My GF told me last night a girl she works with is moving to N.H. from here in Texas as a part of the free state movement, the funny thing is until the girl told her my GF had no idea she was a prepper
Awesome – both on the FSP move and the surprise prepper.
Regarding the gas stove. VERY good info. I did not know there may be a gas shutoff. Luckily mine doesn’t have this. the power was out for about 2 days earlier this year and I was able to turn the knobs and light it with a match to finish potatoes at 9:00 PM.
BTW it’s a GE I got at A.C. Carlson.
Read the owners manual on your NG or LP appliances. The last NG range/oven I bought could use LP but there was a valve that needed turned and some ports had to be changed out so it would operate properly.
Another thing to note is on some gas stoves, the burners will work, but the oven controls will not due to the electronic control module.
I really should have stated that, that is exactly how mine is. Thanks for the catch I will work that into the next feedback show.
Gotta love a man that cooks with Bacon grease!
I totally AGREE with John in W.V. I keep a Mora companion strapped to my belt and a Schrade Walden pocket knife at all times!
Here in Texas it’s illegal to carry a knife with a blade longer that 4 inches on your belt in public places…That makes my Mora perfect and no one has ever said a word about it, not even the security guards at the bank!
Where did you get that 4 inch number, my reading of the knife law says it is 5.25 inches.
Cool maybe they changed it, back when I was in high school 30+ years ago, it was a big deal and pissed a lot of people off, I guess it pissed enough people off where they changed it
What kind of man can’t change his own oil?
I’m with ya there brother ,BUT, I get my oil changed for $20 and I can’t buy 6.5 quarts of good oil for that anymore so I pay the $20
I love the Elk pic!! I spent 10 years of my youth hunting elk every year near Pagosa Springs CO. I haven’t been in too many years but they are some of my greatest memories!
By the way, the greatest shot I ever saw, I was setting with my grandpa on a huge rock, I was 11 and he shot a 10 point elk (in CO. they called it a 5 point) at 900 yards with a 7mm Mag and dropped it in it’s tracks, no one but the 10 of us that were there ever believes me, I had a gunny SGT. in the marines tell it was impossible…..but I saw it with my own eyes! He buckled and fell right there!
Ohh it was a Nosler Partition bullet, the old school kind that he reloaded himself!
Is it bad to refer to bacon grease as a Condiment? I use an ice cream scoop to put it in a pan. I’ve eliminated processed oils. My overweight, type 2 diabetic brother says, I’m crazy?
That’s all my grand parents ever cooked with, My Grandmother keep an old coffee pot full of it next to the stove, nothing like fried taters cooked in bacon grease!
I agree with “can’t”!
I change my own oil because, well I do it for a living. If I didn’t I would gladly pay for it.
My dealer charges $14 for the labor on any oil change, if customers bring their own oil and filter. That is well worth it to not have to mess with it.
Totally agree. I can change my oil but it is so stupid cheap for the labor I don’t want to. Yet I do have the tools and the knowledge. Still a proper shop is so much better equipped to do it fast.
Just checked the state statutes. It’s 5.25 inches of blade length as the max. Concealment is irrelevant. If it has a blade length of 5.25 inches or less, folder or fixed, single edged and is not designed to be thrown, then it is legal to carry.
That’s cool, I remember as a kid it wasn’t uncommon to see men carrying almost Bowie knives in malls and big stores like Kmart and when the law changed people went off the deep end….but then again I used to have a gun rack in my truck and carried a 12 gauge and .22 in my truck at all times….even to school, I haven’t seen a gun rack in 20+ years!
Jack, I am going to be bold and say that you and Mr. Harris are dead wrong on natural gas as the nothing to worry about.
Here in New Mexico back during the winter of 2010-11, I believe it was February, a super cold front moved out of Canada and sunk the entire rockies into sub-zero temps. We had negative temps here in ABQ, the town of Moriarty which really isn’t that far from here hit -35, it was the most surreal thing.
We had electricity, we had phone; what we didn’t have was natural gas. The problem was the front brought an ice storm that nail Texas. Natural gas lines do not have some type of ‘natural pressure’ that will keep them flowing. For a state that is making its fair share of oil and natural gas you would think we would have such a problem. However, all that gas its pump elsewhere, and is returned to the state via the substations in Texas that pressurize the lines.
PNM, the utility of NM, as best I can tell did nothing wrong, they purchased extra gas ahead of the storm front. The problem was the distributor in Texas. With the ice storm knocking out power, the pumps could not pressurize the lines coming into the state, the ENTIRE state!
As a result, the entire state was holding its breath because PNM had already shutdown service to industries and business, and was dam near about to have to cut-off residential service any many parts of the state just to keep some of the system pressurized closer to the main population areas. Many people, myself included, have wood stoves, so it wasn’t too bad for some people, but with the negative temps, it was down-right dangerous for many.
My point isn’t to beat you or Steve up. I just wanted to point a real world situation that happened in the very recent past. Don’t take your gas service for granted either. I hope they have fixed the issue at this point (it is hard to find info for the last year on it, and what improvements might have been made). The question that always burned in my mind: They have the gas, why don’t they have their own generators to make the electricity to run the pressure system?!?! I guess some book-keeper thought it was cheaper to buy electricity from the grid versus have on-site generations and paying the people to maintain.
Just to follow up on scotts post, Natural gas from the well head to the processing plant is the only time natural gas is under natural pressure. from naturalgas.org ” To ensure that the natural gas flowing through any one pipeline remains pressurized, compression of this natural gas is required periodically along the pipe. This is accomplished by compressor stations, usually placed at 40 to 100 mile intervals along the pipeline. The natural gas enters the compressor station, where it is compressed by either a turbine, motor, or engine.
The reason I say there is no ‘natural pressure’ is because you can’t really use the gas at the well head. They do a far amount of processing on natural gas to make it into the dry clean product that comes out of your 1/4 pound outlet in your home. All the business about natural gas being so great and clean is all marketing.
When Jack mention hit a gas line at this house, and it not being a big deal I could help but laugh. Hit the line out next to the street, you will not forget it. The natural pressure that you are referring to does not exist to end-users.
What kind of man or human being for that matter would not only refuse responsibility for their own mistake, but pass it off on another….?
What kind of human being would glare at a stranger with hate in their eyes when holding the door for them with a smile….?
What kind of adult human being business owner would stare down a man after his employee and concrete truck sideswiped his pickup requiring cops to stop him miles later…?
What kind of human being would judge one on their shoes but refuse to judge themselves on universal excess….?
What kind of human being would use opinion in a discussion and refuse anothers honest assessment…?
What kind of human being would judge one on how few toys they have, when the judge itself has never worked for anything a day in its life…?
What kind of human being would ‘support’ our ‘farmers’ knowing that they bring poison and ecological damage…?
Ooo, bet that one ticked someone off, sincere apology to trouble your conscious…
What kind of human being would disagree with blatant reality…?
I don’t know what is possible to do with a website and the podcast, but if for those who only can listen to podcasts from their computer, it would be an enormous help to click on a topic list that you post and the click would be able to take you to the part on the podcast, so a person can listen to just that one topic. Probably impossible, I listen when I can, but I have a lot of “get around to it” listening to podcasts that I hope to someday to hear. Yes, right– get a player you can carry everywhere and listen to them, the solution.
What self respecting man would carry his own purse?
I’m a black powder man myself and I do carry a possibles bag when hunting with black powder but it AINT a purse and I only carry it in the woods!
Simple chard recipe (as a side dish)
Saute in olive oil chopped chard (3 manly sized handfuls of raw chopped chard), some chopped onions and/or garlic. Once cooked stir in approx 1/2 Tablespoon mayo, 1/2 teaspoon Dijon mustard, a bit of yogurt can be added or skipped. Salt pepper to taste.
Hey Jack,
Totally unrelated to content…I noticed your accent goes in and out during your podcast. Seems to depend on the subject you are talking about. Just wondering if you ever noticed that you did this. My mother in law has a southern accent when she talks to certain people and especially when talking about food. Not an insult, promise, just wondering if you’ve ever noticed this.
Jesse
http://thesurvivalpodcast.com/forum/index.php?topic=248.0
Thanks Jack, Chef Snow and Judith! You’ve given me some great ideas for how to use my chard. I was drooling by the end of the call!!! I actually used it in a beef lettuce wrap recipe. It was the wrap and it was delicious!
I don’t carry a knife because of my job. Try getting throu the airport with one and let me know how it goes. It sucks but its how I pay the bills Try being a teacher, its fine as long as no one sees it, but cut a string on you sock and you don’t have a job and maybe some time with the cops to think about it.
You can check a bag with a knife in it, even a 10 inch blade, they don’t scan those, I have done it every time I fly, make sure your bags are locked though because I have had stuff stolen out of my bags that were checked..but losing a $12 Mora knife is no big deal, I have a bunch of them… Dave Canterbury checks his good knives and has never had a problem..Just do try to carry them on the plane..just FYI I carry a Gerber BG compact multi-tool and a B.S.A. ferro rod and striker on my key chain and I put my keys in the little bowl walk through the machine get my keys back and TSA has never said a word to me and yes that little multi-tool has a razor sharp knife on it
Try working in the back side of an airport. You don’t get a bag to put your stuff in and you have to go through 2 metal detectors just to get into work.
We had a woman that took care of our first aid kit. The kit UPS have us had gauze so it also had those safety gauze scissors. You know the ones that can barely cut paper, and can’t even cut a finger nail. Every day they took the scissors at the guard shack. Every day she would get another pair form the safety office, this went on for years. I moved to a different area so I don’t know if she still has to get a new pair of safety scissors every day. That’s the kind of place I work.
Had an amusing conversation at work earlier this week when someone brought me a package and I pulled out my EAB (which I love) to open it up. “I knew you’d have a knife, you engineering guys and your knives, I don’t get it” says the man who brought me the package and is just as interested in it’s contents as I am…. He says this as I’m cutting away the tape and banding, cutting open bags, etc., things which I do on a routine basis, and I just had to stop and marvel at the image of a fully grown, successful professional who receives a package and brings it to me because “I knew you’d have a knife” but then says “I just don’t get it”.
You should comment that he shouldn’t feel less a man, because he needs help. I have an EAB too as an EDC and use it daily.
Yeah, Jack. It’s me, Jon from NH. Thanks for playing my call. I have since found a piece of land but it’s not ideal. I’ll use it if I have to but I would much rather work with someone from the TSP community. Getting my plane tix tomorrow. Looking forward to seeing you all again.
Hi Jon, I plan to acquire a new property at the end of the month. I also hope to raise ducks and other fowl as well for business. I live in Southern New Hampshire as well. My friends in WAPF have been encouraging me to raise ducks as well. Please drop me a line. I am coding my email so that a yahoo cant mine it, if you cath my drift. Thanks eightiesoid
Cool. you can reach me at:
jdowie@hotmail.com
Thanks, Jon! I just sent you an updated email. I hope that you get it as my email has been messed up. Always good to meet a fellow TSP/FSP!
What kind of man does not prepare for his family whether or not his wife likes it. I think it is part of his guardian responsibility.
What kind of man runs up so many debts he puts his family’s future at risk financially if anything goes wrong? A selfish one.
I am now making some sumac tea at the farm. That’s a lot easier than the East Indian method of extracting the seed skins and making a spice out of it. Thanks for the inspiration
You can also make a za’atar spice from the sumac: thyme, sumac and sesame seeds. Some versions add sea salt, oregano and other spices.
Any reason not to simply let the sumac berries dry on the plant and pick later for the spice?
I was going to pick some sumac berries and try sumac lemonade when I was out last Tuesday. When I got there, all my plants and trees were dripping from a recent rainstorm. I heard that rain washes away much of the tartness and best not to pick right after a rainstorm. I have no idea is this is true or not, but decided to wait until next time to pick the sumac fruit. Meanwhile, the wild muscadines are ripe, collected them instead.
Found a tread on natural swimming pools over at permies.com that had a link to someone who actually did it
http://www.treehugger.com/green-food/how-to-build-a-diy-natural-swimming-pool-video.html
Propane tanks have a test cycle of 12 years (hydro-test). You can buy a tank at garage sales for $2. Take this to blue rino’s and swap it for pennies on the dollar.
on water harvesting from A/C systems. I have done similar to you but through the sump pump drain. My A/c drain and basement dehumidifier both drain into the sump hole. I plumbed it into rain barrels and i have continued to have water available even through dry months. When ground water is high. it will fill my 2 55 gallon drums in a day.
After listening to Jack in the past about sumac lemonade, I made some sumac cider that turned out great!
I like the history in the morning. It gives great perspective on now. Glad you cleared up the confusion with Sallys interview, I knew there had to be something under her skin. Also fyi Bulkammo does not require identification on all new customers. It depends on the state you are buying from. Keep up the good work.
I take it Joe Nobody is off the list… Bummer.
What kind of man leaves his families safety & security up to strangers (assuming you don’t know every officer in your area) that could be who knows where when you need them most?
What kind of man only voices and votes for freedom where it affects him personally?
What kind of man wears skinny jeans?
Hey Jack,
Since sumac is acidic, I bet it could be used as a replacement for lemon juice to make paneer (a soft, simple to make cheese made with lemon juice). Would would just have to use it concentrated… It would be an interesting experiment. Unfortunately I dont have sumac up here in the PNW that I know of.
What kind of self-respecting man…doesn’t carry at least $40-50 in CASH on his person at all times?
I find myself guilty of this constantly. It’s freaking embarrassing to have to swipe a debit card for a cup of coffee or some beef jerky at the gas station.
But I do have my benchmade flip knife with me at mostly all times, so I think John in WV would approve.