Can you think of a reason NOT to prep?

I urge everyone to prep. Sometimes only once or twice though. Some folks seem to get amusement out of calling me paranoid. You can't argue with them. If they refuse to acknowledge the need to have some preparations in place then they are delusional.

It's not like we can't all see the warnings. Shit, even the mainstream media is even reporting things are not good. Inflation, corporate fraud, political crimes, homelesness, unemployment, natural and man made disasters, blah, blah blah. Oh yeah and war. Everybody was pretty bored with the 8 year old ones, so time to start another.

Prep everybody. Prep like your life depended on it. Prep like a motherfucker. Who knows, perhaps everything will be rainbows and unicorns will fly around farting glitter. If I'm wrong then feel free to call me a dipshit and drop off all that useless prep stuff you collected at my place. (Just call ahead and I'll remove the spike belt.)

All Aboard?

Got a dream? Got a partner? If you have both, you may have a problem. That is unless your partner shares your dream or at least fully supports it. The bigger your dream is, the more important this is. The size of your partner doesn't really have anything to do with this. If your dream is something like riding a horse one time then you can probably fit that in without causing your significant other any grief.

But if your goals, dreams are long term, lifestyle type things then you have two choices. First, get a new dream. Or, second, get a new partner.

I'm fortunate enough that the goals I have are shared by my wife. She and I have developed goals that fit both our interests. And it's a damned good thing too. Going off grid, living in the middle of nowhere in a frozen wasteland building a house made out of dirt isn't something a lot of people itch for. For all I know we may be the only two.

 





My lovely wife taking a much deserved break



We've moved many, many, many tons of earth in 5 gal. buckets

Recently we were kind of hitting a wall with the design of one of our rocket stoves. We were both frustrated. But since the project is important to both of us, we just worked through it until we arrived at a solution we are both happy with. No bloodshed, no torn larynx, just arriving there together.

Got convergence?

Earthbag domes calling to me

Soon (but not soon enough) I'll be able to get back outside and get some work done around the domestead. It's been a long winter. They always seem long, but usually there are breaks when I can do things outside. Not so much this year. About all I can do with my domes right now is post a few pictures I was looking through. The first one is the first earthen dome my wife and I built. It is shown without the plaster so you can see the tubes we used. It was a fun project and we learned a lot. This dome was built as a sauna. Heated with a large 'pocket rocket' it gets very warm in a short time.

So then it was time to tackle something a little more challenging. Yeah, just a little. We decided on five larger domes connected with arched doorways. Completely off grid too. "Oh, and lets do a ton of permaculture landscaping while we're at it" we decided. Installing solar panels, batteries, doing our own plumbing at the same time we plant 300 trees and bushes that are ordered shouldn't get in the way of the 1500 earthbags we still need to place. Gardening all the while. Good thing there's two of us. Perhaps going over the deep end will be a blessing and we won't even notice the inevitable exhaustion that's sure to come this summer. Here's a few pics of the domes during various stages during the build last summer/fall.

  

I'm very happy with the way the arches have turned out. I was a little nervous pulling out the form for the first one, but everything remained rock solid. I've even added more layers of bags above and tamped (pounded) them and still no shift whatsoever. Guess maybe those ancient types knew a thing or two after all.