Episode-587- Listener Calls 1-14-11
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ack for another round of your calls to 866-65-THINK and boy do we have some great ones today. We take your calls today on farmland in the North West, winter preps for the vehicle, cast iron cooking, coppicing trees, processing wild game and more.
Tune in today to hear…
- Lessons from the motorists stranded in a recent blizzard
- Does inflation make debt a good idea, in general NO!
- Is mercury in rain water a big concern
- The benefits of cooking with cast iron
- A cool deep freezer mod that creates and ultra efficient refrigerator
- Straw bale structures as a root cellar alternative
- The best gardening region in the ID, MT, WY area
- Processing and storing venison and wild pork
- Lead pollution concerns on the home shooting range
- Thoughts on convention to ROTH retirement account conversions
- Coppicing trees for firewood, varieties and methods
Additional Resources for Today’s Show
- Members Support Brigade
- TSP Gear Shop
- Safecastle Royal – (sponsor of the day)
- Common Sense Prep – (sponsor of the day)
- Modifying a Deep Freezer into a high efficiency fridge
- More on chest freezer conversion
- One Source for an External Thermostat for a Deep Freezer
- Building a Cold Room with a Cheap Air Conditioner – (from Permies.com)
- Lost in France Trees for Firewood and Coppicing
- More on Coppicing – Describes the more traditional low cut method.
- Members Support Brigade
- Ron Hood’s Survival.com Magazine
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 and you might hear yourself on the air.
Wow! Here’s one I know a little about!!! I have used a Ranco electronic temp controller to convert a deep freeze to keggerator when I was homebrewing, and never thought about the money savings. Also, it is not unusual for someone in the homebrewing world to just build a walk in. Check out homebrewforums for more tips and how-to on building a walk in or keggerator….
Hay bales are a high ratio insulator, soil also insulates but I do not know the ratio, The point behind a root cellar is cool, light refrigeration and dark. The combination of soil and hay should keep the interior temperature cooler than the outside temperature. In order to prevent the hay from being eaten or destroyed by the elements completely cover to at least a 6″ depth on the roof, which will mean some sort of roof support. I have found no success stories , yet, of an above ground in the open hay bale root cellar, as they have all been destroyed by the elements or the wildlife. The success stories have been underground lined in hay bales or under shelter and tarped in some fashion, protecting it from the wildlife and the elements.
Hope this helps
here is that link jack mentioned off the SOS website: http://www.saveourskills.com/cleaning-seasoning-cooking-cast-iron-cookware
For some reason the blog won’t let me post the link….
anyway go to google and search “mother earth news mini-root-cellar”
the first result gives you an easy DIY root cellar with a bail
it’s called “sweet crunchy carrots in winter”
Speaking of cast iron it does last many lifetimes. If you go to ebay and search for griswold cast iron you will find many pans that were made in the 1880’s and they still look new. Griswold and wagner are the best brands money can buy. Both feature machined surfaces which makes them extra non stick compared to the cast iron sold today.
I saw on a video in that the Gunsite Academy in AZ have built berms (back stops) made of concrete, run at an angle then topped off with sand or dirt. This helps to reclaim the lead from shooting. The guide in the video said that they clam around 90 to 95% of the lead.
Great show as always, Jack.
I think you are combining coppicing and pollarding. Pollarding is usually done at head height or above to ALLOW grazing underneath and for a bigger dense top, weareas coppicing is done closer to ground level to encourage sprouting from the base.
the dictionary states:
coppice v: to form a coppice; specifically of a tree : to sprout freely from the base
Pollard: n: : a tree cut back to the trunk to promote the growth of a dense head of foliage
As far as the tree crews coming and making those awful, ugly cuts in the canopy of the tree parallel to the ground is known as “hatracking” in the nursery industry and should be avoided for the reasons you mentioned. (it is a poor example of pollarding)
I post this alot because there’s so much out there about converting freezers to kegerators or fridges. I wanted to convert a mini freezer to a keg machine and made and then bought external thermostat controllers. All of them failed eventually, costing me money and aggravation. In an attempt to forego spending another $75 on an external thermostat, I pulled the one on the freezer to see about modifying it and found that it had a factory set screw for calibration hidden under a piece of tape on the side. A few turns and I had the unit functioning as a fridge with only a single change after some checking with a thermometer. Best part was that it was free and the cold-colder dial still worked to change the unit’s temp for summer or winter use with no need to remove the unit. Since then I’ve modified more than a dozen units and ALL have had the factory set screw. Save yourself the money and possible aggravation of dealing with an external thermostat and just change the one you have. Many of the new units I see have the thermostat mounted right on the access panel for the compressor or just inside the access opening on the back and you probably won’t have to remove the thermostat to modify it. Another plus; two appliance techs I know and several online have said that externally powering on and off the units while running can damage compressors or lower the service life…good luck!
For deer gutting and processing check out Dave’s channel and search for “deer processing”
http://www.youtube.com/user/wildernessoutfitters#p/search/1/m13XdBFUPIM
Lead is probably a bigger deal than most of us realize – just like with many chemicals – their results are learned about more every year. Much research has said that no lead levels are good levels – the less the better. Your body doesn’t need it like copper and other metals.
So, might as well play it safe. The best design I’ve heard of is shooting into an area totally down hill from where you garden and water harvest and use large timbers or logs as a backdrop – the wood holds the rounds and then you can push the wood with a tractor into an even more secure less likely to be used area if need be before they rot.
Comment on moving to Idaho: I live in the Boise area. To the person looking at moving here, We would love have have more people like you. Are area is the Snake River area. In the central Snake River Vally are two of my favorite small towns of Gooding and Hagerman. Towards the Oregon border are Friutland and Payette. There is also a very nice Fruit growing are just “over the hill” from Boise in the Emmett valley. Much of the western Snake River valley is known for its wine growing. Properly prices are low, growing is great! Please let me know if I can help further. Dave
A comment for the caller asking about coppice: Dave Jacke and Mark Krawczyk have just successfully raised funding for a book on coppice. If Jacke’s previous work is any indication, this one should be a cracker. You might like to check out the vid and synopsis at http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/coppiceagroforestry/dave-and-mark-write-a-coppice-agroforestry-book
On the range lead issue. Get the NRA’s “Range Source Book” it will cover all of those areas. It is abt $50.00 for a hard copy and $20.00 on CD ROM and well worth it. It well covers lead mitigation and reclamation. It also deals with zoning, neighbors, sound issues , political issues etc. Think about using shredded tires as your backstop. We have done that at the range I belong to at the recommendation of a NRA range engineer. By the way. It is not very expensive to get them to come out and look at the place and help you with the.best lay out.
@Jack you can reclaim the lead out of jacketed bullets. Just throw them in the pot with the other lead. The lead will melt out and the remaining jacket will float to the top. The worst source for lead contamination we get into as reloaders seems to be messing around with polishing media.