Threshing wheat on a small scale

Posted on August 1, 2015 by BigDuke6

As I last posted, the wheat had been “scythed” (big garden shears) and left to dry. I had a couple of ideas on how to thresh it, but ultimately I built a replica of another person’s machine. They used two pieces of chain mounted to 1/4″ threaded rod, this was then lowered into a 5 gallon bucket of wheat and a drill applied free-hand. Sort of like a hand kitchen mixer. I though that was hokey, so I drilled a 1/4 pilot hole in my bucket base to serve as a bearing, with the free end poking through a similar hole in the lid. I used 1/4 steel rod, and brazed a washer 1/4″ from the end to serve as a thrust washer. I brazed two 4″ sections of chain to the rod, right at the thrust washer so the flails would scrape the bottom. It’s like a brush hog or weedwhacker, the flails beat the shit out of the heads and knock the berries out.

The first iteration

This is looking down into the bucket.

I first cut all the heads off the stalks, this worked excellent. Notice how the chaff is mostly the seed cover. This was easy to winnow, not much heavy chaff and it went in one step using a fan and a 4×4 piece of plywood.

This was the spring wheat, it yielded 1/3 of the winter variety but looked fine. It was a smaller plot, but it wasn’t as good.

Next I said “let’s just toss the whole stem in” for the winter wheat. This didn’t work well, the stems wrapped around the axle up high and didn’t thresh much. I added a second flail 6″ up, that did the trick and I was able to thresh the whole stalk. I had to get the corded Makita drill to spin it, the cordless was not happy with the load.

Notice how now there’s the normal combine harvester discharge chute contents. Good, as you can avoid trimming but bad as it makes more trash and takes longer to fan winnow. I’m not sure it saves any time, you have to pick out more husks from the berries. They cling to some, vs. almost none with just the heads present. I got a lot more broken seed too. Maybe if I had a multistage thresher, and 4 flails, and a fancy winnower setup it would be a non-issue. But I’m not that motivated yet, this works ok for what I needed. Here’s a shot of that winnowing:Final product

The yield was 2 1/2 cups of wheat berries per 9.25 sq ft. Doing the math, a 50’x50′ plot with good fertilizer should yield a years worth of wheat plus some seed. Impressive, and finally it worked out. I will grind this and make bread, to complete the experiment. Chalk this up as a win…

Progress on the sorghum, corn, and sunflower plot

Posted on July 25, 2015 by BigDuke6

The small plot I made at work is doing well (mostly). I planted about 50 oil seed sunflowers, 25 Sugardrip Sorghum (milo) plants, with Tophat and Painted Mountain corn. These were a few of the essential crops I needed for long-term use, so I wanted to see how they faired in an area similar to a suburban front yard. That’s pretty much what this land is, so it was a perfect proxy for the experiment. If hard times occur, we would need to plant every usable square foot in order to get by. Here’s the pics:

Sorghum

Beautiful!! nice tall stalks, big seed heads which is exactly what you need. It didn’t need much care, just some water in the beginning and a small shot of nitrogen. I need to get a few stalks out and press them for juice, I may have gone past the optimal syrup point but it might work. The seed will be kept for planting, and the rest milled into flour. I’ve never eaten millet, but apparently it’s a staple in developing countries. Sure is easy to grow, so mark this as a win. Flour and syrup from the same plant, what more can you ask for?

Sunflowers

All the plants are growing well, but they are short compared to what I’m used to. This is a new variety, so maybe that’s the way it was bred. I had a problem with deer cropping the leaves, they pushed the fence in and over the plants, and where they couldn’t do that they leaned over and did it. I ran three strands of barbed wire up some posts, fixed that problem. You can see it in the pic, works great but is a killer to work around. I see how a spiral of this loosely staked would stop intruders, the barbs are sharp as hell and snag anything. You would be totally stuck hitting this stuff, and I am keeping a roll in stock just in case. Good luck getting past it.

Corn

Sadly, the corn is not doing that great. All the plants are stunted, and the ears that made seem to be small and partially developed. There was a lot of fungus in the ears, and a lot of them were sprouting when I pulled them. I have plenty of seed now, but eating would be problematic. I don’t know exactly why this happened, but I think it’s a lack of nitrogen (corn is a grass) coupled with the wrong variety for this area. I think these were developed for places like the Pacific Northwest, or cool short seasons. I’ll try this again, using a different one and of course dressing the shit out of the fertilizer. I’m amazed how much you need to grow wheat and corn, I didn’t think it was that critical but it is. Which is an important lesson; make sure you have a big barrel of fertilizer on hand or you can’t grow the traditional cereal grains. Maybe you could use dung or compost, but that’s a luxury and won’t be handy initially.

Scythed Wheat

Winter variety. This turned out absolutely perfect, great yield and well formed heads. No rust or smut. Win!

Spring Variety. Started out well, but didn’t grow as robust as the winter and developed a slight dark coloration on the heads. I think it’s a fungus, it wasn’t wet (actually dry) but it appeared when it was ripening. It seems to be just the husk, the kernels are OK but I’m leery of any grain fungus. Ergot is a common rye problem and causes horrible health problems if consumed.

Miscellaneous stuff

The herb garden is rocking. Basil, oregano, thyme, chives, dill, etc. All doing well, and boy they sure taste good. I never had fresh spices, these are the best. I added a blueberry bush to the berry patch, yielded a good crop and I learned that you need plastic mesh if you want to keep any. Catbirds and robins go for any berries, so lesson learned. Broccoli is still sucking, I gave up trying to spray for caterpillars. I think the only way to stop it is to make a house screened enclosure over the plants (next year).

Lots of plants made seed; I harvested onion, kale, broccoli, wheat, bell pepper, and now carrots and basil (waiting for them to dry). I need to successfully grow a crop from seed before declaring victory, that is in progress. Already did hot pepper and cherry tomato, the trick was to let the fruit drop and overwinter in the dirt. Drying them didn’t work, supposedly there’s a coating on the seed that needs to be there for it to germinate. More work needed on those, I guess.

Mini-garden pics

Posted on June 22, 2014 by BigDuke6

Compare the original “just geminated/planted” pics to these.

Bell Peppers, Hot peppers (see the red ripe one..)

The bell peppers are just starting to peek out from the flower buds, teeny weeny things right now.

Jalapeno Peppers

Yielding like a mother, just had one. OMG. They are so tasty, just the right heat. Got 25 seeds from one slice, I’ll see if it germinates.

Broccoli. Rocking in the woefully small pot, no heads yet.

Here’s everything else:

Onions,Carrots (made almost 100% and are now transplanted), Front sunflowers (to the right next to the curb)

Frontsun

Rasperry, deck sunflowers (babies)

The bad bunny ate some of the back sunflower plants, so they are up on the deck. Ordered two more raspberry and Darrow blackberry plants, they will be here soon. I’m hooked on having these berries every day, I just walk out and pick some and drop ’em in my cereal. I only get a few every other day, but I should be getting loads with 5 plants going. I’ll need to T-trellis them next year, but they are manageable now.

Spring Wheat

If you look closely, you can see the green wheat berries and head on the taller stalks. The crop is a lot shorter than I thought, Ag sites says 2-4 ft but I recall it being way taller. Maybe it’s going to grow more, but to be heading out is odd. I saw some winter what that the combines were just getting ready to go into, it was really short too so maybe that’s what we get here.

All of this (except the wheat) is being grown in planters in minimal space, it could fit on a balcony or even in a sunny bay window. I think someone could have a decent amount of produce in a 6’x6′ area, especially if they build a rack like a gym bleacher or step ladder to use the volume.

Pretty amazing, really. And I’m just going through the exercise of growing everything on my Day366 list to make sure I can do it for real if needed. It ought to be just a matter of scaling it up then. I’m a ways off from getting through the list, this was the easy stuff and I’ll be doing more exotic things like vertical potatoes, sugar cane, rice, peanuts, beans, and sorghum later.

Odds N Ends

The lettuce has ended, started another round of Simpson leaf in a planter but zero germination. Not sure what happened, but going 1/8″ deep this time to see if I can get it going mid-summer. Trying spinach again, 5 of 10 came up in partial shade so reseeding that at 1/8″. Kale is kicking it, 4 of 4 and sprouted in 3 days. Replaced the original lettuce with Jericho (warm weather variety) , and started a pot of Orach which is some Asian green that likes it hot. All this is an effort to make salad year round, need that green leafy veg. Supposedly fall is another time to grow all this but I’m skeptical, it seems to only like cool weather with rain and overcast.

Cookin’ with gas….

Posted on November 9, 2013 by BigDuke6

Finally got around to testing out my heating and cooking gear.

This is a Harbor Freight single propane burner, it’s the shizz. Nicely made, perfect flame etc. I used this one long ago to make coffee, but on a 12 oz bottle versus the 15 lb cylinder. The hose to the right I got at Home Depot, it has a regulator with the gas flare fitting. Gotta have that…

This is the main cooking surface, you can get fancy and go two burner but I’m not Paula Deen. It will also kick out a fair amount of heat if it gets chilly or you are too lazy or cheap to buy a Heater Buddy.

This is the oven.

I got it at St.Pauls Mercantile, along with other cool third-world stuff. This little oven is so awesome, it got to 500 degrees before I realized it and will run at 325 at the very lowest stove simmer setting. Note the oven sits on top the HF burner, it’s not one piece. It’s 10×11″x13″ internally, and will hold quite a bit if you get pans that fit. Normal loaf pans may be too big to put 4 in at once, so you have to make sure to measure them before buying. Same thing with cookie sheets.

Shot of the internal temp and burner, the front thermometer is for amusement only.

The Butterfly Kerosene stove

Also available at St. Pauls, so cool! You fill the tank with K1 (diesel would probably work in a bind), let the wick soak, and light it off. It burned a lot cleaner than the heaters I’ve owned, nice blue flame with no yellow tail. As with the oven, will put out a ton of heat and will get a pot roiling quickly at full tilt. You can adjust the flame a lot, and use it as a heater. The beauty of this is the fuel, 5 gallons of K1 will go a long way so pound for pound this is the way to fly. It does smell, and will smoke like a bitch when you fire it up and shut it off due to the way the chimney heats up and cools off. All kero burners do that, so nothing new there. What impressed me was the simplicity of the design and how well it worked, there’s something to be said for one moving part. One caveat: the burner ring has to be level or the flame will not be equal nor will it get very hot:

Notice how I cleverly ignored the big font in the instructions about making sure it’s level. I though it was referring the tank, but it’s the burner. The liquid K1 needs to fill the wick evenly, if it’s slightly off kilter the wick will run dry on one side and then not make enough heat to vaporize the fuel.

Heater Buddy

Another cool item, it’s a small ceramic element heater that can run from a 12 oz bottle or a tank. This is a non-regulated adaptor hose, it has a male bottle thread on the heater end. Small, efficient, and flexible. Even has a pilot light.

All in all a very satisfying afternoon, things actually worked as expected and I have “Operation Eagle Toast” behind me.

Mid-term emergency planning

Posted on October 26, 2013 by BigDuke6

We’ve discussed short term planning and prep in a previous post, the next phase begins roughly 20-30 days after the event and lasts until you can achieve sustainability. Recall that the short-term will be covered by a relatively moderate amount of preparation and supplies, augmented by whatever you have on hand or can grab prior to the depletion of local stores. That will represent the last link to normal and familiar existence, after that runs out you will need to shift to a much more labor intensive routine. Most of us take advantage of prepared foods and many modern conveniences, none of which will exist. There are a number of categories to consider:

Heating
Power
Cooking
Water
Food
Sanitation
Self-defense
Shelter
Fuel
Transportation
Human interaction

It’s sort of a “OK I made it this far, now what?” scenario. Up to that point, chances are it will seem like a camping trip or the aftermath of a hurricane; not a lot of work just consuming supplies. The next phase will need to last long enough to get things ramped up to allow existing on what you can grow and collect in and around your dwelling. That’s the Day366 idea, maybe it’s Day183 but same principal. At some point, no matter how much stuff you hoard you will run out. That will be primarily food related items, the rest is less critical and beyond the scope of this blog. To a large extent, other things will become available as people move on (both figuratively and literally). For instance, say 5 months later you need some nails. The local Home Depot will probably have lots of them, you can’t eat nails and they are useless to looters.

I’m going to cover the last item of my list first, Human Interaction. This might be the most important one, since your survival could depend on who shows up at your place.

Human Interactions

There’s a new movie out called “American Blackout”, I don’t plan on watching it but the plot revolves around a cyber-attack on the power grid. It covers the first 10 days, but I’m not sure if it assumes the blackout lasts longer than that. This made me think (again) about how people would respond in a crisis, and how my planning would be affected. Frankly, I have a very tough time imagining what others will do. We all tend to assume people will behave in a certain fashion, either like us, helpless incompetents, or as criminals. That’s the sense I get visiting prep sites, maybe that’s correct but no idea, really. I’m going to try to be open-minded and think this one through.

Neighbors

These folks are, by virtue of proximity and familiarity, going to be the first to come a ‘knocking. I expect them to be out and about and seeking help and information from the start of the crisis, it’s only natural but begs the question of how to respond. On one hand, if outsiders cause trouble you may want to band together for protection. On the other, chances are they will only drain what limited resources you have and expect you to help even if you can’t. My position is to offer guidance, information (you may be the only link to the outside), and assistance defending against outsiders. Say nothing about what you have, that will create a terrible problem later. I’d like to be able to function as Farmer Bob and feed the subdivision, but that’s not practical. So, the only reasonable path is to defer food requests and make them find it themselves. I could probably provide clean drinking water, assuming they bring it to me for filtering and treatment. I could also give them a few seeds, if they can plant and maintain a garden. You have to force people to shift for themselves, otherwise they will do nothing and expect to be taken care of. Sound harsh, but there’s no other way to handle it. It’s the old saying about teaching someone to fish rather than giving them one…

The exception to this is block defense, if strangers begin roaming and looting houses you may need to form a team to repel them. I suppose it would be like a tiny version of the Minutemen, those who own firearms respond to the call. That assumes your neighbors are not royally pissed off at you and/or are the ones doing the looting.

What I’d really like to do is organize the nearby homes, pool resources, and get cranking on the gardening/farming/wood cutting/improvising. Whether or not I can convince people to follow that is a big question, but they’d have few options. Beats me if this is feasible, or it breaks down and we end up in Mad Max mode after all.

Outsiders

This is the land of pure speculation. I’m not sure if too many outsiders would show up, given the difficulty of travel and resupply. If they did, I would stay quiet and wait until they left. If they caused trouble, warn then dispatch. I don’t see how you could tolerate any form of looting, that defeats the whole purpose of prepping and would cause you to lose everything you worked so hard to put in place. ‘Nuff said there. One complication would be cops and armed forces, if they started commandeering private property under some bullshit law it would put you in a real bind. I could just see the local doughnut eaters trying this, although I doubt it would be successful. If the armed forces do it, maybe better equipped but still facing resistance from heavily armed homeowners. Same approach, hide then attack if they persist.

Food

Learning from my storage experiments, here’s what I recommend as the food options:

Freeze dried entrees, veggies, fruits. This stuff is reasonably priced, stores for up to 25 years, and has enough variety to prevent food monotony. How much is up to you, but I suggest at a minimum three meals a day per person for 3 months. This, added to the short term stock plus things I list later, should get you to the 6 month or beyond mark. http://www.beprepared.com is a good source of these items, I’ve been very happy with them.
Freeze dried basics. You will want to augment the entrees with some staples, like potatoes, soy protein meat substitutes, powdered eggs, powdered milk/butter/sour cream/tomato paste, etc. These allow you add in simple sides and also make things like pasta sauce from long term stores. This will stretch out your entrée selection and use things like rice, beans, and pasta in normal dishes rather than prison camp fare. What’s for breakfast? Beans. Lunch? Beans. Dinner? Get ready….RICE! Yay! Need to avoid that trap. http://www.rainydayfoods.com/ is a good source for all this.
Grocery Store items. You don’t need to buy everything in sealed cans, here’s a sample of what can be safely stored in Ziplock bags and boxes:
1. Pasta.
2. Rice
3. Baking powder
4. Yeast
5. Salt
6. Sugar
7. Spices
8. Cocoa
9. Dry soup mix
10. Potato flakes
11. Canned meat. Note: this needs to be stored separately, rotated and checked. The cans do corrode and the result is a disaster.
Grains and legumes. Sold as a kit by BePrepared, contains a years supply of misc grains. Highly recommended, but note requires a grain mill for the wheat and oats.
Oils. I’m still working on this, but so far the leading candidate is coconut oil. It’s almost fully saturated, is a solid below 75 F, and is said to keep for 6+ years if kept cool, dark, and unopened. Plain corn oil is OK if you check it, but this is a work in progress. BTW you MUST have some kind of fats and oils in your diet, plan on looking like the Olsen twins without it.
Powdered drink mix, coffee. This falls under the monotony rule, it is said that drinking just plain water leads to dehydration, esp. with kids. Packets and jars of Koolaid and chocolate milk store well and are easy to make.

Heating and Cooking

Really the same thing, you probably will be using the same item as a heat source and for cooking. The best approach is a propane burner, this can be run indoors with no smoke. Downside is the need to stockpile gas, but some quick ciphering leads you to about 8-10 15 lb cylinders as a minimum. That’s not bad at all, and highly recommended. Using a Coleman camp oven on top the burner gives you a small volume stove.

Alternately, you can purchase a cheap wood stove and pop for the Lehman’s Amish oven. This is a lot more hassle, you have to run a chimney, cut and season wood, and will create a giant signal that says “go here to pillage”. It’s totally non-stealthy, and really belongs in the Day366 section but thought I’d mention it.

Stay tuned for more when I get motivated to finish this post….

Planning for the long term

Posted on September 24, 2012 by BigDuke6

I see this as something most people get wrong (including me). We can all get by for a short time, but what about when things get really bad? Imagine you are stuck on your property for the duration, nothing coming in. That’s a bitch, surviving for more than a year with little to no outside supply is really difficult to imagine let along accomplish. The problem from what I see is we tend to be overoptimistic and weirdly selective about what’s needed. I’ve seen a lot of women preppers with pantries bulging with canned food but no way to cook it, or ways to obtain clean drinking water. I’ll throw out a few examples of things that get overlooked:

Water collection. Absolutely the top priority, no water = end of the line. Imagine your bugging in at home, and there’s no city water. How do you get enough to drink? Assume the average adult needs 1 gallon per day minimum, not counting sanitation. Maybe there’s four of you, we’re now up to 4-5 gallons PER DAY. It doesn’t rain enough in most places to yield this much on a regular basis, so some way to store it is an absolute must. How much? Probably a month or more, so 150 gallons. That’s three big drums, that you have to keep full. What if it doesn’t rain for a while? Double that.
Water filtration and treatment. When you open the tap, that water has been cleaned 9 ways to Sunday. Whatever you manage to collect needs to have bacteria and contaminants removed, even rain from the gutters (bird droppings, dirt, etc). Ever design a water treatment plant? Me neither. You may have to get water from some nasty sources in a pinch, so rain is actually a best-case option.
Heat. This is a big one. Not just heat to keep from freezing (who doesn’t live where the temp gets below 32?), but to boil water and cook. Most survival supplies need to be rehydrated, and you will likely need to cook things to supplement your diet. Bread, rice, beans, etc.
Light. Even cavemen had light, you need some illumination to work after dark or to see where you are going. Not candles or oil lanterns, but an LED lamp or flashlight.
Electric power. EVERYTHING runs on electricity. Lamps, electric power tools, hair clippers, mixers, radios, things that are tough to find hand power equivalents for.
Fuel. Gasoline, LP gas, Kerosene. If you need to move via the road system, or run a generator you need gas. Kerosene runs stoves and heaters, and can be used in diesel engines. LP gas for safe room heat and cooking.

This is just the major items, lack thereof could be lethal. BTW I’m leaving food as a separate category. There’s a bunch of other things that aren’t vital to life, but would make things damned unpleasant without them:

Toilet paper.
Soaps. Body, shampoo, laundry detergent, dish soap.
Toothpaste and floss.
Tubs and buckets. Where are you going to clean dishes, utensils, clothes, and your own nasty self?
Shavers.
Bleach. Vital to disinfecting water and other things as needed.
Matches. How were you going to light that burner? Flint?
Clothesline. I still haven’t bought this….gotta hang the wet stuff to dry.
Paper towels.

Why Day366?

Posted on September 15, 2012 by BigDuke6

This blog is intended to be a resource for people who are interested in emergency preparedness, with a focus on long term strategies. The title “Day366” refers to the idea that it’s great to prepare for a year, but what happens on day 366? There’s a lot of discussion and awareness of the subject lately, due to TV shows about preppers and fictional accounts of apocolyptic events. There’s also a lot of misinformation, myths, and plain nonsense about what would happen in various scenarios and how to respond to those events. One of they key aspects of preparedness is planning, but how do you plan if you don’t know what is going to occur? I’ve seen many blogs and individual posts about people stocking up for the Big One, but very little though on what exactly what that is. If you are going to prepare, it makes sense to spend your time and money on the right things. Otherwise you may end up with a false sense of security and be as bad off as doing nothing at all.

I’ve modified my view of preparedness over time, mostly by thinking through the various scenarios and reading other people’s posts. It’s definitely a work in progress, you can’t really ever say “yes I’m good to go” unless you live in a Swiss mountain bunker with 0% reliance on the outside world. Most of us are stuck with a finite budget, time, and space so it’s even more of a compromise. But hopefully we can make enough of a plan to achieve the end goal getting ourselves and our family through a disaster. That’s what counts.

This is good place to stop the introduction, and move on to the first post.

Day366Blog

Emergency prep on a small scale

Tag Archives: long term prep