Steve Zoma

I am not sure that "big" machines are necessarily on homesteads now. At one time I would have believed that, but now they make very capable smaller machines. A machines I have, and think it fits better than a tractor is a tracked mini-skid-steer. I am not sure where the cut-off is. Probably 5-10 acres, as any more than that and a homesteader would want a tractor since they travel faster, but how capable this little machine is.

It picks 800 pounds, yet fits through gates and standard doorways, it turns on a dime with counter-rotation, has plenty of traction, lifts, hauls and digs.  It gets a lot done, not because it is big, but because it is fast. Standing up on it to operate it, you see ALL of the bucket so no surprises, you see what its doing instantly and can fix it immediately if you are not getting what you want. Need to move something, just step off it and do it. It also has some 1800 different attachments for it, from mowers to grapples, to backhoes to graders. The machines is also stupid-simple in design and cheap to fix with parts found anywhere for it. And brand new it is $7000. BRAND NEW!

It's not a tractor, but tractors now start at $18,000... bare tractor. A homesteader for the same price could buy this machine and a whole lot of attachments and be able to do more than a tractor for the same price. They really are changing the homestead tractor market because of that.

We were on a dinner-date just after the youngest was born and ran across this old line-shack. We stopped to explore it and fortunately took some pictures of it while we were there.

This is located near the 100 Mile Wilderness of Maine so pretty remote. So remote the railroad would sometimes build houses for the families of track foreman to live in. This was one such house because it was close to several slate quarries that used to operate in the area. A few months after this photo was taken the railroad burned the building because it was being used by those addicted to drugs as a squatting residence.

So I have been researching and it seems we are a battery and not a capcitor. In layman’s terms we use potassium and sodium to make electrical generation, about 100 watts worth with most going to power our brains and heart.

I found that interesting because I see a nutritionist and she gave me some surprising information about my diet. After reviewing it, she said, “I am surprised you do not get debilitating cramps. You have absolutely zero potassium in your diet”. That was when I said, “Oh, but I do”. I mean I used to get massive cramps every day about 4 PM in the afternoon.

After some discussion it seems potassium and sodium are some HUGE issues for me nutritionally. I just cannot seem to cram in enough potassium, and yet with sodium I am awash with it. This makes me wonder if my imbalance, which would greatly alter my electrical charge production has a lot to do with excessive millivolts/milliamps in my body. I would intuitively think that not enough potassium would give a human body low voltage, but that might not be the case. Maybe it being a need for almost perfect intakes of potassium and sodium to get the right voltage?

It just makes you wonder if not just grounding, but paying close attention to potassium and sodium intakes, making them ideal might negate the need for grounding?

Interestingly, she said I do not have an issue with sugar, in fact my sugar intact is half of what it should actually be. I thought that was strange, but admit I am not a snacker at all and honestly seldom go for surgery snacks. I don't think this plays into electrical generation, but it is interesting to not.

When I had sheep most years I could plan on putting them out to pasture on the second week of April.

In ten years I never saw that deviate, even when I was sure with a late snowfall it would never happen. It still did: we got extra warm weather following it.

I haven't, but when I moved to this island last fall I did bring my daughters old bike with me.

Here there are signs everywhere warning motorists of bikes and pedestrians because its just that prolific in the summer when the summer people arrive. But it is also just more conducive to bike riding here. The highest natural point elevation wise is 82 feet above sea level, but the biggest "hill" is actually the bridge that leads from the island to the mainland. it has to be steep and tall to allow boats to pass underneath, but there are very few natural hills. And here, people just drive slow. Its this crazy world where as soon as you go over the bridge, you just naturally slow down to 25 mph. Life on this island is just a lot slower.

But I plan to fix up her bike and use it a lot this summer. Mainland is only three miles away but just about anything you want is either on the island or across the bay on the mainland. With no mailboxes on the island and only one post office, everyone has to stop there for their mail. To get there it is a perfectly flat, around the bay ride with no hills, and a 2 mile (or 4 mile round trip ride). It really is perfect for biking and forces us 500 islanders to meet up and talk. I swear this place never left the 1950's.

Here is the bridge from the mainland, on the left side looking towards the first island in this view from the mainland.

I use bar soap in the shower, but also use that soap gel bodywash. The kind I use calls it a 5 in 1 since it is antibacterial, a shampoo, bodywash, etc. I go one further and use it for shaving cream too though. I use a pump of that bodywash, then mix it with a handful of water and it makes my razor glide over my skin. And it smells much better than shaving cream when I am done.

But... this is where I become odd because as a competitive swimmer I learned to hate body hair. In my swimming days we had "shaving parties" where  so that we would get faster cycle times without having body hair, so I learned to dislike having body hair on me. You would never really know it just looking at me in everyday clothes but I have been shaved from the neck down since I was a teenager. So using shower gel mixed with water saves me a lot of money in not having to buy cans of shaving cream. Kind of odd for a guy I know, but legs, chest, arms, etc... I've kept shaven for the past forty years. But my wife understands because she is a competitive swimmer as well. She actually had the State of Maine swim speed record for 11 years so we both take clean shaven to the extreme.

Filtered water will make soap last longer too.

I have really hard water here as it has 37 ppm iron and I go through heaps more soap simply because the soap simply does not lather as well.

Pearl Sutton wrote:
The problem here is the word "grounded."  You are using it as a technical term (GROUNDED.) The people who popularized the concept simply used that term as it's familiar to people.

You are not "GROUNDING" when you ground yourself. Going a hair metaphysical here, what you are doing is connecting the energy field of your body to the energy field of the earth. Any bare skin contact does equally well, quite a few natural fabrics allow that contact through too. What does NOT let it through is things like soles of shoes and unnatural fabrics, a lot of building construction materials etc. People didn't have to ground themselves when they lived without all those factors, with them, it helps to periodically remove obstructions to allow that connection. The easiest thing to convince someone to do as far as this goes, is to take off their shoes outside and stand on the ground (on the surface of the earth, not on a parking lot or standing on a balcony.)

This is where your confusion is coming from. Instead of thinking of it as electrical grounding, think about it as just contact between your body and the ground. And yes, it has lots of great benefits, when the way we live is not natural to the human body, we react badly. Being in contact with the ground without unnatural interference helps a LOT.  

Maybe, but the videos I was reviewing were not merely using grounding as analogy but the physics of actual electricity within the body.

Like in one poignant moment of the video, a guy is standing there checking for true electrical continuity while he was barefoot on grass, and the other man was in shoes. The barefoot man had a path to ground, but the man with shoes did not.

And in another situation, it spoke of where some people had retained voltages in the body, some via millivolts and some as high as one or two volts. Again, not really surprising considering we are made up of 80% water and can have varying PH levels that could make us poor batteries, but batteries nonetheless. Or as it seems, more of a capacitor.

If the latter is the case, then wouldn't any voltage be discharged to ground immediately upon a touch of something grounded? But I digress.

In the video it was saying a leader in this area was a man named Clint who was an electrician who realized he was grounding everything, but human beings were being less grounded. So at least in what I was researching it seemed they were quantifying grounding with dissipating real electricity and why I had so many questions. But maybe that is where I went wrong. I was looking at grounding for answers when I really should be researching electricity in the human body?

Or maybe inventing something we all might need: flux capacitor shoes.

tony uljee wrote:yes i am cheap and mean --i would like to go solar panel ---go off grid --keep all my excess electricity for my own use--not interested in the buy it from me or credit  my bill plan ---should mention i am also very dis-trustful--so onto building my own large batteries has always been my holy grail---i do realize my almost total lack of how its done and all the other back ground to it---disclaimer statement over and out the way-- used to /still do   enjoy -watching   Dr Robert Murray Smith  and his shows--- very sadly though he passed away last year--   a large mine of info still available---he was wacky and a few miles of understanding --above my head. But recently found another "mad scientist " to follow and enjoy his postings--- a young man named Robert Karas under his ROWOW on the tube--and building my dream of homebuilt /own batteries now seems a step closer --- i might then have enough energy to finish my flux capacitor conversion to my kangoo van .

My friend, you are in great company here!

I do not have any specific help to you on a homemade battery, but will reiterate a mantra I have long held.

"They had nothing in the 1800's yet built some amazing things... like batteries... so with todays technology why can't we?" It might be crude looking, but so what. We built it.

I just found in todays world people greatly overthink things. Me? I try and recoil everything back as far as possible so it is simple. Simple is easy to make. Sure, we have to stay out of the rut of reinventing the wheel so using the idea "what can I use that is already made to make that portion of it" makes fabrication simpler, but it does not mean we have to buy the whole thing!

Another area where boughten and homemade bump heads, is with automation. Most times it is in the automation, or convenience, or lack of maintenance that makes something complex. Having the mindset of, "I can do that once a week", can eliminate a lot of sensors, valves, microswitches, etc. But some of that is just human behavior. Build a functioning homemade battery and people will say, "that looks crude", but put something digital on it with cool multicolor changing digital outputs and the same battery will generate a "that's so cool". People buy into complexity.

But make your own battery... hell ya you can. My advice here was just to support you on many homemade versions of things, not just a battery.