Russell Groves

Up before dawn. Take my meds. Feed the pets, upstairs to the altar for 11 rounds of japa. 108 repetitions of Rama x 11.

3 complete chants of the Hanuman Chalisa.

Out the door, raise the flags. Then I share  4 cup french press of home roasted coffee with the Missus.  Back out the door for morning chores.

If weather is warm I ebike to town for mail and groceries. In cold weather the first thing I do is feed the outdoor wood boiler.

Oh, and Wordle.

I use 5 gallon buckets with Gamma Seal screw lids. Throw in some slilca packets. I have blue flint corn that’s been stored perfectly for years.

Interesting timing.  About an hour after I posted about my Itehil, our rural water system went out.  
So my 6 gallons of filtered water are in play, along with my bypass water.  There's also 15 gallons of water in the basement stored in distilled water containers.  Left overs from when my power system used flooded lead acid batteries.

I have a grid powered submersible pump in one of the hand dug wells, two DC pumps in the other, and another DC pump in the cistern.
Oh and a pond about 2 acres in size just down the hill.

I haven't tried filtering pond water. More likely to try that than gunking up my filters with limestone water.

We used to filter through a Berkey drip filter.  I didn't have the PPM meter then so I honestly don't know how much it was removing.

I use an Itehil water filter for all our drinking water. Spend an hour per week filtering into containers I have rinsed with hydrogen peroxide. The bypass water goes onto plants. I have a PPM meter to check the water going in and coming out. Drinking water is 20 ppm, bypass water is 450 ppm. Source water varies because I have cistern, wells and RWD water. The wells are old, hand dug lined with limestone. You could break a tooth biting that water but my garden doesn’t mind.

Susan Mené wrote:I have been blessed with lots and lots of jalapenos, and need some advice/ideas on preserving.
I pickle them with seeds and love them, but they lose much of their heat: any advice to preserve heat?

Does anyone out there want to share other ways to preserve jalapenos and habaneros?  Has anyone tried "cowboy candy?"  Cowboy Candy (candied jalapenos)

Has anyone had success in pressure/water bath canning (have to check which one is appropriate)?  Do they get mushy and do they lose their heat?

One of my favorite ways with all chiles is cold smoking. Cut off the stem end, dehydrate, then into the smoke. With roasted Hatch chiles, I remove the skins and do a quick pickle with vinegar and salt. Sometimes add some other seasonings before dehydrating.
A few hours or more in cold pecan or fruitwood smoke. Then a vacuum bag seal. They keep for a long time. I store in the freezer. They’re dry so I can remove a few at a time easily.

Ebo David wrote:@russell, LiPO/LiFePO and the like have minimum temperature concerns.  LiPO/LiFePO operate between -20°C to 60°C (-4°F to 140°F), and AGM -30℃ to 70℃.  That extra 20C comes with some additional cost, but may be worth it.  Take a look at your use case.  I would be interested in hearing from folks with experience with the ancient Edison cells, but that is more a curiosity than practicality.  I would love to be proven wrong on the practicality end ;-)

I have two banks of Dakota Lithium batteries.  And three years of experience as a Pedego electric bike dealer. You're right about the temp issue, but it's really more a limitation on charging than on capacity. I particularly like the flat voltage out to nearly 100 percent discharge, and the longevity in charge/discharge cycles.
Years ago I had a big pile of Eagle-Picher nickel-iron batteries. That's the Edison cell.  They required a watering system to keep them topped up. Very thirsty.  I got rid of them and swapped in flooded Trojan L-16.   Later I had flooded Rolls-Surrette lead acid. They lasted about 10 years and got progressively weaker with sulfation. Same DOD issues as all the other lead acid batteries I'd used.  I tried desulfating and treatment with EDTA. Marginal improvements.

Did a Dodge Dakota pickup conversion with 8 volt Trojan lead-acid batteries. They didn't survive one winter outside.

Also have used SLA and VRLA batteries in various capacities.  No need to add water, but charging has to be to a lower voltage setpoint or they vent and lose capacity.

I've had one set of Dakota Lithium that lost charge/discharge capacity. The company has been completely unresponsive to my request for tech support.  I suspect it's a battery management system failure.

I'll continue using Li-Fe-Po batteries where possible.  Probably nothing more from Dakota Lithium.

Just downloaded these plans.  I'm impressed.  I have a bunch of building materials and more solar modules yet to install. Will probably use lithium batteries rather than AGM, depending on what I can find.  I have a long history with (flooded) lead acid batteries. They are very needy.

Thank you for making them available.

Anne Miller wrote:Thank you for sharing your experience with making chocolate.

Is making your own chocolate saving a lot of money?

How many hours did it take to process?

Doesn't save any money. Lets me make delicious chocolate without sugar.
Plus in case of SHTF, a guy with chocolate and guns will be the Emperor of Everything.

Total time about two hours, including cleanup. The ingredients had been warming beforehand.

8 degrees here, and I'm shuttling back and forth between inside and outdoor wood boiler. Throwing sunflower seeds on the snow for the birds.  Making chocolate.   I mean, really making it from cacao nibs. This is ridiculously messy.

This time I started with roasted nibs. Previously I started with raw cacao beans, roasted, crushed, blah blah.
Nibs were in an insulated chest, along with cocoa butter.  A 60 watt incandescent bulb warmed it all to the right temp.

The hardware is a Champion juicer. Nibs go into the hopper. Juicer uses a screw auger. Crushes them into a paste (chocolate liquor) that drops into one container. Fiber bits come out the end of the auger.  At some point I started adding melted cocoa butter. When I had a container full of liquor, I took the fiber paste and put it back through the auger. Finished liquor went into a mixing bowl where I added cream, butter, allulose & sucralose, cinnamon and chile flakes. That mixture into a baking pan lined with parchment. 250 degree oven until it's more liquid, then a whole lot of mixing and stirring and tasting.

Finished product is dark chocolate, mildly sweet, with a little chile kick.  It's a building block. Future additions will include more sweetening, vanilla, nuts, more chile. One of my favorite snacks is whole chiles dipped in melted chocolate.

It's a lot of work. Now it's done and I head back outdoors to feed the boiler.

Last night my part of Kansas was covered in heavy wet snow. This morning my yard is covered in BIG tree limbs. Most of them are Siberian Elm.
When the snow is gone, I intend to cut those into logs for a first attempt at hugel. Might look for a chipper to take the smaller pieces apart.
Also looking for wine cap spawn so I can get some food from the logs while they're breaking down.

Best part of this snow storm was - it dropped a bunch of junk trees in the right place. And left alone the trees that would have flattened the house.

Well, that and the fact that I still have power.