If You See This Post You Need to Update your Root Simple Blog Feed!

A reminder that if you are subscribed to this blog via a blog reader or RSS feed you will need to update your subscription. If you are seeing this post you are probably subscribed to the old url: survivela.blogspot.com. You need to update your reader by subscribing to the new feed at www.rootsimple.com.

If you are reading this . . .

If you are reading this post it means that you need to update your blog reader or feed settings. Root Simple is at www.rootsimple.com. We have switched over to Wordpress and the blog is no longer hosted here on Blogger.

Root Simple's Greatest Hits: Make a Buddy Burner

While we're working on the new look of Root Simple we thought we'd review our most popular posts in terms of hits. And just a note that during our redesign we have to shut down commenting. In the meantime, you are welcome to leave comments on the Root Simple Facebook page. 

People certainly seem to like our posts involving fire for some reason. This is an easy to make and useful preparedness item:

Buddy Burner

An easy craft project for the family survivalist, taken from the brilliant 1970’s Mormon classic: Roughing it Easy, by Dian Thomas.

A buddy burner is a heat source for camping or emergencies made out of a tuna can, candle stubs and cardboard. It acts like a Sterno can, will burn for 1 1/2 - 2 hours, and can be recharged and reused.

Read the rest here.

Root Simple Blog Work Alert: New Look Coming Soon

A note that we are about to switch over this blog from Blogger to Wordpress. Other than a new look, most of you should not notice a difference. The blog may disappear for between a few minutes to a few hours.

Root Simple's Greatest Hits: The Whip: A Homemade Moisturizer How-To from Making It

While we're working on the new look of Root Simple we thought we'd review our most popular posts in terms of hits. And just a note that during our redesign we have to shut down commenting. In the meantime, you are welcome to leave comments on the Root Simple Facebook page.

A Homemade Moisturizer How-To from Making It

Mrs. Homegrown here:

Confession: I can't live without my homemade moisturizer. This is not true of all things. I like take-out food sometimes, and I prefer Ibuprofen to willow bark tea. However, I'll never go back to store bought lotion.

This recipe appears in Making It as Olive Oil Whip. It's my every day body lotion/face cream and I figured it was about time to share it with you. It only has three ingredients. It's safe and wholesome and very effective. Heck, you could eat it!

Read the rest here.

Root Simple's Greatest Hits: A Brick Rocket Stove

While we're working on the new look of Root Simple we thought we'd review our most popular posts in terms of hits. And just a note that during our redesign we have to shut down commenting. In the meantime, you are welcome to leave comments on the Root Simple Facebook page.

Rocket stove info has been popular on this blog, espeically this post which dates from 2007. This brick rocket stove served us well for several years, especially when we remodeled our kitchen and had no stove for a week. I had to tear it down to make way for a new adobe oven, but I still stand behind the design.

A Brick Rocket Stove 

Low-tech is the new high-tech, and the best example of the low-tech revolution is the miraculous rocket stove--a stove that makes it possible to cook with small twigs--no logs needed! Best of all rocket stoves are easy to build. We liked the idea so much that we decided to build a permanent one just off our back deck for entertaining and as a backup to our gas stove should an emergency take out our utilities.

Read the rest here.

Root Simple's Greatest Hits: A Rocket Stove Made With a Five Gallon Metal Bucket

While we're working on the new look of Root Simple we thought we'd review our most popular posts in terms of hits. And just a note that during our redesign we have to shut down commenting. In the meantime, you are welcome to leave comments on the Root Simple Facebook page. 

A Rocket Stove Made With a Five Gallon Metal Bucket

The principle behind a rocket stove is simple--rather than cooking on an open fire, you burn wood in an insulated chimney. Rocket stoves are highly efficient and easy to make. They run on twigs, so you can avoid cutting down a whole tree just to cook dinner.

Read the rest here.

All Politics Are Local

I thought it appropriate on election day to repeat one of my favorite equations for happiness--a stoic flowchart that comes via Mark Fraenfelder of BoingBoing.  At the end of the day, about half of America will be happy, and half will be dismayed. All we can do is remember that beyond voting, we cannot control the outcome of the election. So a stoic would advise us to not to rail against what we cannot change or affect, but to focus on what we can change--ourselves, and our immediate environment: our household, our block, our school district, our city.

All politics are local and the good thing about local politics is that you can make a difference. For instance you can:

• start a community or school garden
• volunteer to teach gardening or food preservation
• plant trees
• build neighborhood resilience and tolerance
• create bike lanes and walking paths 
• legalize backyard poultry and bees

Not that these local goals are necessarily easy, but they can be accomplished. And they all address resource depletion. By all means go vote today, but let's get together after this mess and work on what is really important.

Vote Yes on 37!

I don't normally discuss politics on this blog. I feel that the topics we discuss under the banner of homesteading--such as gardening, alternative energy, alternative transpiration, home ec, health and fitness--unite people across the political spectrum. Overall, I'd rather focus on what we can do and what we have in common rather than the constant diet of strife and discontent served up by mainstream media.

That being said, I'm going to break my own rules.  I want to urge all California residents to vote yes on proposition 37. Proposition 37 will require genetically modified food products to be labelled. And that's all--it's not a ban on GMOs. If you like GMOs in your food you'll still be able to get them in your hot Cheetos. All I'm asking is to be given a choice, through labeling, as to whether I wish to buy GMO products or not.

I suspect it's preaching to the choir to endorse 37 on Root Simple, but if you have relatives and friends in the Golden State that aren't part of our backyard chicken and vegetable garden subculture, please urge them to vote for 37. 

Root Simple Redesign

We're getting ready to make some big improvements to our website. Roman Jaster, the designer of our book Making It (seen at the console in the picture above taking some last minute refinements from Mrs. Homegrown), is just about to pull the switch on the new design. We're switching from Blogger to Wordpress. Our new website design will feature:

• improved search functions
• an easier to navigate interface
• improved comment moderation
• better graphic design 
• podcasts
• videos

All of the 1800+ posts and comments from this blog will migrate over to our new host. The web address will remain the same--www.rootsimple.com. Hopefully you won't notice the switchover, except for the fact that commenting will disappear between the 6th and the 10th. You are welcome to leave comments on the Root Simple Facebook page. During the switchover period we're going to feature a rerun of our most popular posts.

Video Sunday: Victorian Hipsters

Two Thomas Edison films that prove the existence of fixed gear bike riding hipsters in the late Victorian era.

Saturday Linkages: The Calm After the Storm

Got a storm damaged tree? See Trees Are Good for advice.

DIY
Build-It-Solar Blog: A Unique DIY Solar Pool Heating Collector Using PV... http://www.builditsolarblog.com/2012/10/a-unique-diy-solar-pool-heating.html?spref=tw …

Build-It-Solar Blog: Large DIY Solar Space and Water Heating System in ... http://www.builditsolarblog.com/2012/10/large-diy-solar-space-and-water-heating.html?spref=tw …

Primitive Skills
Roland Trevino of Altadena Makes and Uses the Ancient Atlatl: http://dirttime.com/?p=2741 

Gardening
What to do with storm damaged trees: http://www.treesaregood.org/pressrelease/press/firstaid.aspx …

Check out The vegetable garden by M.M. Vilmorin-Andrieux, of Paris on Google Play! Old book recommended by John Jeavons: https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Vilmorin_Andrieux_et_cie_The_vegetable_garden?id=YHQNAQAAMAAJ … 

Bikes
'Getting Jerry Browned' and other new phrases for Californians http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-getting-jerry-browned-20121024,0,2854852.story …

New Urban Velo issue free online: http://www.urbanvelo.org/issue34/ 

The fox is guarding the hen house!
How the sugar industry defends itself against claims that sugar is unhealthy: http://boingboing.net/2012/10/31/how-the-sugar-industry-defends.html …

Billboard firm wrote L.A. proposal on signs http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-1027-billboard-influence-20121027,0,1562494.story … 

For these links and more, follow Root Simple on Twitter:
 Follow @rootsimple

What Preparedness Lessons Did You Learn From Hurricane Sandy?

We're interested in hearing from our east coast readers about how they rode out Hurricane Sandy. How did the storm impact you? How did your preparations work out? Is there anything you would do differenlty next time?

Hurricane Sandy was a reminder to us to take a look at our preparedness. We may not have monster storms here in Los Angeles, but we certainly are overdue for a big earthquake. It's been a long time since we've taken a look at our supplies and emergency equipment. I'm considering a drill--living without power/gas/water for a few days to see what we can improve.

Update. On the Root Simple Facebook page reader Josh Barton left the following account:

I'm in the St.George area of Staten Island, about a 7 minute walk to the water. I live at the top of a hill, so I wasn't worried about flooding, but I think I should buy a raft just in case it doors ever flood in the lower parts (Esp if I move somewhere else. So it'd be good to research what areas were flooded during Irene and Sandy).

During the storm I had my phone and tablet attached to chargers until the peer went out for me at 9pm.

Because my windows face north, and the wind was blowing north, my windows were on good shape, thankfully. In the future, this is something I will always have to look in to. Before the storm I looked up how fat wind needs to travel to break windows and then I constantly checked the wind speed via the weather on my phone.

After the power went out, I hooked my phone up to a battery backup (ZaggSparq 2.0) and then went to bed shortly afterwards.

My first mistake was leaving the phone on overnight. I should have turned it off to conserve power. It used up more power than I was expecting, so I had about 2 full charges left after that.

I own a bike, thankfully, so my first priority was to go to the ferry terminal so I could either charge up there our go in to the city and find a Starbucks our Barnes & Noble to plug in to. I wasn't expecting to see the ferry terminal closed with no ETA on when it would open! That meant I was stranded inn Staten Island since I don't have a car and buses weren't running. That was a major blow for me.

The next day I decided to check out this deli I always pass on my way hone because I knew they had free wifi and I saw they had a cafe level (I've never been in there before). Thankfully, they were open, had power, and wifi!

From this I learned a few more things:

1) don't assume power will be restored anytime soon. I should have bought an emergency radio/flashlight with a hand crank generator that a phone can be plugged in to. Until I find that deli, I was concerned I would lose touch with my mother and a few close friends (I know no one on this island and very few in NYC).

2) Make note of places that have outlets. Since I was able to get on Facebook, I was able to see what others were doing for power (public libraries, and a few people grouped around a chase ATM with an outlet)

3) when going to somewhere that has an outlet, bring a power strip! Do not fall upon the mercy of waiting or being restricted to how many outlets you can use (I wanted to charge my phone, tablet, phone backup charger, and batteries).

4) either prepare emergency food ahead of time or keep an emergency food supply. Based on how Tonga have been in NYC, I'd say a week's worth of food is good.

5) something I've wanted for a while, but never had the funds for (or forgot about) is a solar powered generator. That sure would have made my life a lot easier this week!

6) have an evacuation plan. I have no idea how to get out of Staten Island by bus. I always take the ferry because it's close and convenient.

7) what happened in Breezy Point, Queens (a 6 alarm fire that destroyed a block of houses) could happen anywhere. Make sure that the stuff that's priceless too you us kept safe. Very safe. I'm lucky compared to some people!

Before moving to NYC, survival was a concern for me. It's not as easy as when you're in a house and you have more room and you can install solar panels or keep a large generator on hand. Despite this concern, I think I failed by 50%. The two big things I did right though was I have a Berkey gravity filter, so in the event there was no water, I could have easily gotten untreated water from a stream (you could also get water from a fire hydrant. A few days before the storm I saw someone filing up buckets of water from a hydrant for unknown reasons), I had an alternative means of transportation so if need be, I cold have traveled a large distance, and I was good on food.

In the future, I hope to be better prepared. I got off easy and was able to learn from this.

I typed all this out on my phone, so hopefully predictive text didn't mangle any words

Garden and Ego Destroyed by Skunks

At the risk of turning Root Simple into a skunk complaint blog, please witness the devastation to both my ego and my small patch of rapini.

Luckily, I was able to get a picture of the perpetrator:

Skunk lessons learned the hard way:

• tightly secure vegetable beds with bird netting
• don't do a half-assed job with the hoops that support the bird netting
• don't think that "this year those skunks won't go digging for grubs."
• transplant instead of sowing directly (more work, but it just works better for me)
• lay compost on beds and let the skunks work it in with their high heels

Here's what the our new keyhole bed looks like with anti-skunk measures in place--bird netting supported by bent PVC pipe. 

Now if only I could repair my crushed gardening ego