We’re playing with the grandkids in North Carolina for a week prior to going to the energy show. Hot and humid here but bearable. We’ll see Erik for only a few days as he is doing a lot of training “in the field.”

Annie and the two grandkids plan to move back to Oregon and live with us during Erik’s upcoming (Autumn) deployment to Iraq. She’ll work at the magazine. They hope to settle back in the Gold Beach, Oregon area when he separates from the Marine Corps in two years.

We’re still tired and I’m allergic to whatever is blooming down here, but it sure is fun playing with the grandkids. Thursday Annie and I will fly to Custer, Wisconsin and do the three-day MREA Energy Fair.

Here’s a timely email I received yesterday about the magazine’s preparedness guide:

I am a recent subscriber to your Backwoods Home Magazine and I thoroughly enjoy it. It is the only magazine that I subscribe to that I read from cover to cover. I want to thank you for putting together the wonderful Emergency Preparedness and Survival Book which I received with my subscription. This book is priceless. I’m so impressed with this book that I ordered more for family. My husband and I aren’t hard core homesteaders, just ranchers living quite a ways from the nearest town but we’ve always had at least a 6 month supply of supplies on hand. With the world situation being so unstable, we decided that we needed to expand our supply and this book has been so very helpful. Thank you again.

Sincerely,
Camille Habermacher
Utopia, Texas

Just the other day the office staff and I were discussing how soon we had to send this book back to the printer for its fourth printing. Stocks are getting low so we’ll no doubt reprint in a month or two. The Emergency Preparedness and Survival Guide is a valuable book, full of information you will need if you are to survive an emergency in relative comfort. With more and more economic forecasters predicting a severe downturn in the economy later this year, this book may become very handy in the near future. It contains 296 pages and sells for $21.95. Inexpensive for what it contains. A lot of people order it in bulk — 10 copies at a time — at the big discount we give, and give them to their family and friends. If other readers would like to check it out, click here . If you’d like to read a couple of sample articles from the book, click here and here.

I’ve just about finished establishing my new overflow firewood storage area. It’ll hold a little more wood than I thought — at least 6 cord. Since I can already store about 4 cord under cover, and my average winter use is about 2 cord, that will give me about 5 years worth of firewood storage, 2 years of which will be under a wood roof and the rest under a tarp. Not bad!

I gave up using my chainsaw to get out the stumps and roots in the middle of the spot I had chosen for the overflow area. There were too many rocks and dirt embedded in the roots. A running chain just needs to touch dirt and it’s dull. So I hired a neighbor, Shawn Crouse, to bring up his stump grinder and take the whole mess out.

A stump grinder is one of those super nifty machines that have an ingenious, but simple, design. Made by Carlton, it weighs 1600 pounds and its 27-horsepower motor turns a grinding wheel that contains 20 carbide teeth. The set of teeth cost a hundred dollars to replace but Shawn said he can get through about 10 big stumps with one set. Rocks tend to dull the teeth. He operated it with a remote control attached to a long cord so he could guide the action of the grinding wheel up close. One carbide bit worked its way loose during the grind so he had to stop and replace it.

  Once he was done, my sons and I laid out the rest of the skids on the ground and over the steel fence posts I put up on either side. This will keep the wood contained and off the ground. It’s nice to have a good use for the stacks of skids I have around here. Every time BHM gets in a shipment of magazines or anthologies, they are on skids (pallets), for which the magazine is charged $17 each. Highway robbery? I agree. I’ve given lots of skids away, burned some, and my kids have used them to build a clubhouse. This project used up 22 skids.

Ever notice that there are a lot of people in society who do not act in their own behalf, even when confronted with evidence that it is imperative they do so?

We all sort of understand the alcoholic or drug addict who has an underlying character or mental defect that makes them need a crutch to get through life. I’ve known alcoholics and addicts who gave up substance abuse only to delve headlong into fervent religious beliefs and the sudden need to convert others to what they have “discovered.” Seems obvious to me they’ve traded in one crutch for another, albeit a less destructive one.

The abused housewife is a tougher one to understand. Why don’t they just get out of their situation? And if they do get away from one abuser, why do some of them seek out another abusing man? Some women seem to have a homing device for abusive men. Low self esteem? Victim of childhood abuse that makes them seek out another abuser? Or just scrambled eggs for brains?

Harder still to understand are those people who are at serious risk of illness or death from the way they eat but won’t change what they eat? I’ve come upon many of these people. Heck, America is full of them, judging from what the news media has labeled America’s obesity epidemic.

A couple of years ago I was enrolled in a supervised exercise program following heart surgery. Many people in the program had undergone bypass surgery like me, but few had bothered to read anything about the eating habits that may have led to their clogged arteries. Many were way overweight but weren’t particularly interested in dieting or exercising. How come?

Most people seem willing to give up smoking once they understand its hazards. Why not unhealthy foods? Is it because there’s a social stigma attached to smoking, namely, smoking implies you must be really stupid to go in the face of such overwhelming evidence that it will some day kill you. Is that it? Smokers quit because there’s a social stigma attached to it, not because it might kill them?

I like to act on newfound knowledge. It makes me feel pretty smart. I used to smoke, but read the evidence it would cause cancer so gave it up. I like to drink but limited my intake based on the evidence that too much led to serious social and health problems. I like to eat, but adapted my intake and tastes to healthy foods once I learned that overeating and certain foods could shorten my life.

Heck, I even moved to the country when I realized the city was hazardous to my life.

Who knows! Maybe I just don’t understand certain types of people.

I made kale soup today, chopped wood, and built the first wood stove fire of the season. Great fun! Maybe next post I’ll talk about chopping wood. Thoreau was correct, as far as he went. But chopping wood has more benefits than warming you twice. Maybe I’ll even post John’s kale soup recipe.