Catie George

I'm focusing in more on my annual garden this year, rather than my wish which is more fruit/nut trees. Fingers crossed, but I think I MIGHT get a few apples/pears off my existing trees this year. I'd also love a peach or two. If any fruit form, I may bag them. I don't feel like I have enough to share with coddling moths!

For my annual garden it's infrastructure.

More t posts for supporting trellises for beans, cucumbers and tomatoes. Probably some insect netting so I can actually grow brassicas. More heavy duty seed starting trays to replace the flimsy cheap ones that insist on breaking. Hopefully more bags of leaves from the local town.

I'm continuing my experiments with gluten free grains this year, and likely trying a new flour corn variety. I am hoping blocks of grain also serve as a cover crop to push back weeds. Sorghum was my most successful by far.

I also want to try growing some oilseed crops . If I can manage trellising, I plan to increase my dry bean crop again this year.

I am theoretically growing fewer nightshades this year, after discovering they disagree with me, which has resulted in an explosion of my brassica starting. I will enjoy brussel sprouts or die trying!. I'll probably also increase beets. I'm trying celeriac again, and looking forward to pea shoots again.

Sigh, and I've promised myself to do better at freezing veggies for myself! I saw someone online prefreeze portioned veggies for soup, which seems clever.

I probably will grow fewer squash. I love the colours and shapes of the fruit, and the size of the vines, but found myself giving it away en-masse last year. I mostly like it as puree in various dishes. Best way I have found is to cook it whole in the oven, then scoop seeds and flesh after it has cooled, then puree. Honestly, my dog eats more squash than I do.

Before current events, I had begun a ton of native plant seeds. I guess I need to figure out where I am planting those, too.

I'm also planting stuff with an eye to my donations to the food bank this year - more cherry tomatoes, and smaller squash, and more bell peppers, and more baby cucumbers, focusing on what I'd like to receive, that's expensive in stores and lasts the few days between when they accept and distribute the food.  I was disappointed with the quality of some of the produce I saw some people donated last year - 2 ft hardening zucchini, really?!

My final resolution is to be more proactive with watering this year.

I went to university in a town known for bike thieves.

I had a probably 30 year old department store 6 speed (well, 5 speed, as 1 speed didn't work) bike with pitted chrome fenders.

Loved that bike.

Anyway, rode it 3 years in university, left it parked outside in my rough area of town all season, used a shitty bike lock. I had lights stolen,but never the bike, including the 2 or 3 times I left it on campus for half a day and didn't lock it!

I am a big advocate of shitty bikes for short distance commuting and errands.

I saw other people paint their bikes in multiple ugly colours to make them distinguishable and hard to resell (and disguise things like the brand name that made the bikes more valuable)

About a decade ago, I bought a cheap pine bedframe from IKEA.

I thought the pine looked cheap but wasn't fond of the idea of stinky paint in my tiny apartment, offgassing from my bed.

I painted the wood with coats of black tea, let it dry, then with a solution of iron soaked in vinegar (iron acetate), to paint on top and react with the tannins in the wood and the tea. Basically you make rust embedded in the wood. Over a couple of days it became a warm rich brown.

Then I coated it in a mix of beeswax and oil.

I still have the headboard and am pleased with the colour, though I sold the matching dresser in a move.

If you do it, outside would be better than in a plastic tote like I used! It permanently staines the tote. Definitely not an acrylic bathtub.

There are pictures online showing how the iron acetate interacts with different wood species.

I have really been enjoying the answers to this thread.

As I suspected, the answers are far more interesting than the many  generic checklists for you can find online (probably because most permies already aim for resilience in their personal lives).

For me :

Given $200, I’d buy an IBC tote for rainwater collection (and some parts to make it an easy to use system)
- My generator isn’t big enough to run my pump + all my water treatment systems, and my water quality is from a surface well and is atrocious. My pump failed last summer and I ended up driving to town to refill water jugs. I realized how dependent I am on my pump!
- I worry about a long term power outage (or another failure in my system).


Given $1000 – I’d buy the IBC tote, plus a battery backup for my sump pump, and do some sump pit upgrades
-  My sump pump really struggled with the recent melt (running almost continuously as the pit filled within 30 seconds of the pump kicking off).  I realized if I ever lost power during spring melt, or if it had also been raining, even if I was home, I would have flooded the basement by the time I got a generator set up! Normally my sump pump rarely runs.  
- It also left a few wet spots on the floor, as the pump isn’t set in a deep enough hole to adequately pull down the water table, which means I’m going to have to rip up more of the not-water-resistent flooring the previous occupants put in the basement.
- This one is on my to-do list more than my wish list!

Merriam Webster defines resilience as :
“an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change”

Is there anything that you, personally, could do, with a $200 (or $1000) budget that would increase your long term resilience?

I’m interested in how you would spend it on yourself, in your current circumstances, rather than how you think someone else should spend that money.

More “personal reflection” than “general advice”. It’s is a “what remains on your wishlist/to do list” question.

It could be a physical item, hiring someone to do something, preventative maintenance, investing in learning.... or better yet, something I haven’t thought of.

Learning to anticipate lights while driving is one big way I save gas. In the city, most lights have a helpful count down timer for pedestrians, but you might also get used to the timings of your local lights. I try to judge from at least 500m away if I am going to 'make it' and let my foot off the gas long before the light changes to yellow. Accelerating or maintainjng speed to a red light is a waste of gas that gets you home 0% faster. If I time it right, I never have to come to a complete stop at all, and sometimes don't even need to brake. I'm still rolling when the light turns green.

I also play that game when in heavy traffic on a freeway like Ontario's 401 - I try to average our the car in front of me's stop/go into a slow crawl by leaving some space and preventing a lot of gas use. Any time you come to a complete stop, you need to overcome static friction to restart, using more gas.

(Bonus! My brakes (and on this vehicle, clutch) last significantly longer than average!)

On big hills, I allow some variance of speed, especially if there is no one behind me. I let my speed drop up the hill, and don't brake going down. I'll also take my foot off the gas long before a sharp bend in the highway, rather than braking like I see lots of people do.

If I'm turning off a rural highway, I'll start signalling and take my foot off the gas long before my actual turn.

I used to share a truck with a work colleague. He'd keep it for 2 weeks, I'd keep it for 2 weeks...  It averaged fuel efficiency over the last 100 km, and 1000 km.  I made a game out of seeing how much lower I could get it than he left It (he liked to idle, so I could usually cut the L/100km in half, in the winter, I got it down to about 1/3!).  I definitely have the most success with lowering gas consumption when I treat it like a game, and regret my current car doesn't have the fuel efficiency calculator built in!

I spent several months using a modified toilet plunger to clean clothing in my bathtub, upgrading to a pail with the plunger, which workes better since there was more water depth, before upgrading to a used portable washing machine that connected to my sink, because laundromats can be so incredibly pricey to use(for me, it was $40 in cab rides, and $40 in fees, every time I used one!).

It's doable to wash without a washing machine, but drying items is the tricky part since wringing by hand is so difficult. The portable washer was a huge improvement. I think I paid $150 for it, and it paid for itself after 2 missed trips to the laundromat. I ended up only needing the laundromat a few times a year, to wash things like duvets.

There are many stages to washing clothing:

1) wetting clothing
2) agitation with soap
3) Draining, and partially wringing out soapy water
4) Refill water
5) Agitation in plain water
6) Drain, and partially wring out soapy water
7) Repeat steps 4-6 another 2-4x, until soap goes away.
8) Wring out clothing well (lifting, twisting, and squeezing each piece repeatedly)
9) Hang to dry.
10) Check and move clothing around repeatedly to ensure all bits dry
11) Put away dry clothing.
12) If required,  repeat steps 1-11, because you discover that things didn't dry soon enough  (especially if drying indoors) and things became musty smelling, so you need to rewash!

This gets almost exponentially more difficult as items get larger - a sock is trivial to hand wash. A large bath sheet is a chore.

Stomping on the laundry while you shower is unlikely to do much good, as it would only cover the beginnings of agitating with soap - I was shocked at how difficult rinsing and wringing clothing was.

I won't say not to handwash clothing - but I would never dream of asking someone to handwash clothing (and it would be a relationship -ending request if someone suggested I start).

As for homemade detergent - I wouldnt try it in a high efficiency washer but for a portable washer or handwashing, it should be fine. Bar soap is unlikely to be strong enough to act as laundry soap, as it's usually formulate to NOT strip all the oil from your skin. You can buy bar laundry soap for handwashing.

I really enjoyed working through this book:

https://www.thisisclassicalguitar.com/free-classical-guitar-method-book-pdf/

As for a new fridge - I hope to get a used fridge this summer when I can remove my trailer from the snow bank it currently sits in (if I can find someone to help me move fridges).

Or buy a new one I suppose, from a company that does free removals, but I really would rather use the money for a number of other things on my list that would bring me more long term joy than a fridge. Fixer upper houses are expensive!!