The thrivalist life - progress report

When Anaheim peppers go red

Somewhat over four years ago I self-published a short (56 page) eBook entitled The Thrivalist: Beyond Survival in 2012. It's not a hot seller, but it got nice reviews from my friends. As one person put it, "This is not a survivalist handbook, with instructions on how to survive the next tsunami, two-day power outage, or bank failure. The author makes a distinction between survivalism -- gritting your teeth to endure an emergency til things are all well again -- and thrivalism -- living the good life every day in as self-reliant a way as possible for your situation."  (Thank you Laura!)

I don't just write it, I live that lifestyle.  I do it not because I think there's going to be an apocalypse or any particular Bad Thing beyond the tough things that have always happened (flood, drought, blizzard) where I live, but because I actually prefer the lifestyle.

 I always have.

I'm one of those people who, as a kid, was thrilled with stories of explorers and pioneers, of disaster victims who made it through. I didn't care if it was fact or fiction, or whether it was the past (the farther back the better) or the future. I was fascinated by those who would boldly go where no one had gone before and who planned on staying there and living the good life.

I yearned to live that way. I experimented here and there, trying out various ways of doing things. It took me a surprisingly long time to realize that I was building up to the kind of lifestyle I thought I could only dream about. It was even later when I decided that there was nothing stopping me from going whole hog with it if I really wanted to. I wouldn't be the first, after all.  But you know...

It would be a lot of work to just jump in.

Hence the gradual introduction of the various self-reliance practices over time at a pace that suited me. A very gradual pace. So gradual, in fact, that I didn't realize how far I had come until I took stock today.

For instance:

Off the grid and on solar for electricity. No utility bill – yay!

Solar hot water heating in the summer and even sometimes in the winter.

Composting toilet (home-made, not store-bought). I never have liked the idea of a big tank for holding sewage.

Gray water & rain catchment for irrigation .

Wood heat for the house in the winter and for water heating in the winter.

Propane: as little as possible.  I use it now only for cooking in the summer (not needed often, see below) because I cook on the wood stove in the winter. I've learned how to bake loaves of sourdough bread on top of a wood stove!

Mostly raw food diet. Much healthier way to eat, energy saving, too. Plus if I really want cooked food I can enjoy someone else's cooking in a restaurant in town (and someone else's dish washing!)

Garden… well. Maybe I shouldn't go there. This year I planted too much of the wrong stuff – why did I plant anything that requires processing to eat? And zucchini? What was I thinking? There's a glut of zucchini in the world. Fortunately my horses like zucchini. Anaheim chili peppers? Why? I probably will let them all go to red and then dry them. But my tomatoes are doing well, as are the potatoes, which I can store till winter when I want to cook since there's a heat source happening anyway. If I can figure out how to properly store potatoes for that long. The asparagus, which is now quite a few years old, gives me more than I want in the spring. The ants enjoyed the strawberries more than I did. Apples: Finally I got some on the trees this year! Four trees and a big total of three apples that I can see. Garlic: I failed to get it out of the ground in time, so the cloves will grow another year. Ditto for horseradish. My citrus tree (maybe a lemon, maybe a grapefruit) is growing like gangbusters. I started it from a seed. Who knows if/when I'll see fruit.

Plastering my straw bale house. Ummm. You'd be amazed how many people nag me to finish plastering.  Well. I did move the cement mixer closer to the house. That counts for something, doesn't it?

No refrigeration. Yes, it's true, and this is a biggie. For nearly three years I have not powered up my refrigerator, yet I've been able to keep foods cool that need keeping cool. And that's big because for over three years I have not had to have propane delivered. My huge, ancient (1940s model) propane fridge just isn't efficient enough for me to want to burn that much fuel to keep food cold. I'm getting a new (to me) smaller, more air-tight fridge delivered tomorrow. I'll hook it up to the gas line but I don't know if I'll ever turn it on.  It'll still work better to keep my food cool than the leaky old one will.

I could do more. I'm far from self-sufficient. But the end of the world as we know it hasn't arrived yet. I have the leisure to do whatever I want – or not do it. I have time to mess around with possibilities, and to learn as I go, and to enjoy the process because I don't have to do any of it! 

Sure, many of my experiments have failed, but I keep at it – not because I have to but because it's fun. And while it's more labor intensive to live this way,  the trade-off is it costs less to provide myself with what I need to live comfortably. It means a lot to me that I can work less to earn a buck and have the time to work on my own stuff.

Accidentally vegan

If you aren't going to use a fridge to keep foods cold, you have to be careful about your food choices. Cooked/processed foods, dairy and meats don't keep unless they're down below 40°, a temperature I can maintain in the winter but not in the summer. Fresh foods (fruits and veggies) can do fine with that if they're chilled overnight (are you wondering yet how I do that?)

Not keeping prepared foods, dairy, or meat at hand, I wind up eating vegan a lot. Since a vegan diet is not mandatory for my purposes, I don't mind it at all, especially since there are so many great vegan recipes out there these days.

Last week I cooked potatoes. Sometimes I go on a potato-only diet, but that's another story. Today I realized I had 4 leftover whole ones that I wasn't really that enthusiastic about eating plain., so I whipped up a tasty potato salad. It's accidentally vegan. Here's what I put in the dressing. Note: I like things tangy.

Vegan potato salad

• Salt
• Ground pepper
• Olive oil
• Parsley
• Green onions (chopped)
• Dijon mustard
• Apple cider vinegar
• Land of Enchantment spice mix (yummy - but chopped garlic or garlic powder will do if you don't have any LOE)
• A few pounds of cooked potatoes (I leave peels on but you do what you want)

Dice the potatoes and cover with the dressing, mixing lightly to get all surfaces coated. Let it sit half an hour for the dressing to sink in.  Eat.

Swamp cooler: chilling foods without a fridge

Warning:  This is something that works best in lower humidity

Evaporative coolers (swamp coolers) are a real thing. While I've never actually bothered with a thermometer, I can tell you that my swamp cooler system can cool objects lower than the lowest air temperature overnight if the air is dry enough to evaporate liquid from the surface.

Why pay money for propane or use electricity if you can use air to do the work?

Here in the arid southwest swamp coolers work just great, whatever the scale. At its most basic, you put your beer bottles in a bucket of water and keep it out of the sun. The beer won't get cold but it will be cooler than the air, because the water surface evaporates  Any time liquid evaporates it removes latent heat from the surface of that liquid. It's what happens when you sweat.  Sweating works best when it's not humid and the same is true with swamp coolers.

Taken one step further, a metal bucket that is in a pan of an inch or two of water will keep the objects inside the bucket cooler than if the whole thing was sitting in a dry pan. And if you put a moist cloth over that bucket, making sure the edges are in the water so that the cloth stays moist, the contents of the bucket get even cooler because there will be more surface area for evaporation and the metal bucket will not insulate whatever's in it from the cooling effect.

Voila!

You do need to be disciplined about this, but then most of this thrivalist stuff calls for some discipline. You have to remember to set up your cooling system once the sun goes down and the air temperature starts dropping, and then you have to get up in the morning and get your food into the fridge before the sun rises and starts warming everything up.

I also cool jugs of water this way and put them into the fridge to create thermal mass. In the summer my system works even when nighttime temperatures don't drop as far as I want. In the winter, of course, it works really well.  

But remember, kids:  this kind of primitive swamp cooling is only cool enough for living foods (whole raw fruits and veggies). Don't be stupid about it. Food poisoning isn't fun, especially if you've got a composting toilet to deal with.

A grave situation

Two mornings ago I was walking along my usual morning path, racking up the Fitbit footsteps, minding my own business (meaning I was letting my mind wander wherever it felt like wandering), when I was ambushed by a new sight in a place where I expected things to be the same as ever.

Sinkhole above, grave below  July 2016 Lif Strand

In fact, I had walked right past a hole in the ground that had not been there the day before.  It took that long for awareness of the anomaly to interrupt my reverie and make me stop and turn around to investigate.

The thing was a sinkhole, a depression that is made when somewhere below the surface a cavity collapses and the earth above it sinks into that space. My sinkhole, the one in the photo, is over a grave.

No, I have not murdered anyone lately, nor have I allowed anyone else to bury any bodies on my property. This is the grave of a horse, and she was put in the ground some years ago. The sinkhole was totally unexpected, because unless you know where to look, you'd never know there was anything different about that place than, say, ten or twenty feet away. Dirt and weeds.

I've probably walked over that grave dozens of times over the years. I don't have creepy feelings about graves.  But suddenly I did have creepy feelings about the appearance of a sinkhole over one.

Of course, whatever I had been cogitating on to that point was shot right out the window, to be replaced by thoughts of zombie horses digging out of the ground.  My writer's mind ran with that one for a while until it reached a natural conclusion, which was that the sinkhole was too small for a zombie horse to have risen from.  So, more realistically, I started figuring out what had caused this sinkhole to form just like magic and literally overnight.

It's quite fascinating, in a gruesome kind of way.

I had just read an article, A different way to die: the story of a natural burial, originally published on Grist, a nonprofit news site that uses humor to shine a light on big green issues, and I had viewed an attached video which showed the process of decomposition of a dead (human) body. I got to thinking about the process of a body of a nearly thousand pound horse breaking down:  the effect of microorganisms on flesh that was no longer living; the sequential death of those microorganisms; how the body would go from something that looked like a sleeping horse to just bones; how long it would take for it all to happen in a hole that was over 6' deep and therefore relatively cool. Maybe an earthworm had bumped against a pebble that caused the collapse of an ant tunnel that moved a rock that shifted and allowed dirt to settle into the now-empty cavity of my horse's chest.

Then I had to wonder if the sinkhole had been big enough would I have seen a horse mummy? Or a mass of stinking, muddy glop? Or just bones?

I got to thinking about what it would be like if I had been standing on top of that spot when it collapsed. The hole is nearly four feet wide and it is a good 18" deep. It might have been bigger. I might have had to claw at the sides to break them down so I could scramble out. My foot might have broken through... I don't know what... and gotten wedged between the rib bones of the mare's barrel.

Eww.

Those entertaining thoughts took me all the way back to the house. I got busy with my day, starting with making sure the Fitbit was syncing with my online account so I could be awed and amazed by the accumulated footsteps. Or maybe more like dismayed, because I have not been keeping up like I should be. But that's another story.

I went back and reread the article, which reminded me how natural a process death is if it's allowed to be, and further, how an end comes to all living things in this system of reality that we inhabit. And yet... and yet...

Death is still creepy. So today I went out to the sinkhole.  It has not gotten any bigger and shows no signs of a zombie hoof trying to work its way out of the grave. Or a vampire horse, come to think of it, though both would have risen early on if it was going to happen at all. 

I spread wildflower seeds in the hole. It made me feel better, because I know they will stand between me and undead horses.  RIP.

Photos: Around the ranch

Photos from around the ranch the last couple days of May, nearing the end of springtime.

Fertilizer and flowers  May 2016 Lif Strand

Yes, yes, it's just cow poop and bindweed, but it really also is the circle of life, isn't it?

Springtime reeds  May 2016 Lif Strand

The cows kept eating down the reeds over the winter, but now that there's a little grass for them they're letting the reeds alone.  There's just something about the water and the color and the angle of the sunlight that gets me every time.

Koko:  Places to go, things to do  May 2016 Lif Strand

My Arabian stallion, SE Kokopelli Kid.

Photos: Cat, flowers - you can't go wrong with either!

My cat Lili, now in her mid-teens.
A grump most of the time. Cute when she's quiet.
 did a bit of photoshopping as you can see.
Lili sunbathing  May 2016 Lif Strand

Iris! After years and years of not blooming
I have iris this year!
Iris, Greek goddess of the rainbow  May 2016 Lif Strand

Photos: Around the ranch

Last week it rained 3/10". That brings the precipitation up to nearly an inch since the first of the year, meaning it's dry, dry, dry. It also means when it rains that the soil turns to snotty clay-mud. I had been out of town that day when I came home to 'running the slick', as I think of it. The two mile of unimproved two-track from the county road to my property is always a challenge when there's been even the slightest bit of rain (snow's not quite as bad until it starts melting). So nearly a third of an inch of rain was quite enough to make my pulse rate rise, because I just do not like having to walk home in the mud (something I've done quite often enough, thank you very much).

I know where all the places are that cause trouble. The ones where I have to drive slow or risk spinning out. The ones where I have to be moving along at a good clip or I'll sink in. And then there's the spots where nothing works, and last week I did a bit of slip-and-slide. I managed to not get stuck and only had another minor slide after that. By the time I got to my gate I was feeling pretty proud of myself.

Until I saw a mass of wire trailing behind my car.

For all the cattle fencing out here in the West, you'd think cows would stay where they're supposed stay, but they don't. They're always seeing better graze on the other side of the fence, and they rarely meet a fence that they can't get through if they really want to. Consequently there often will be long strands of barbed wire curled into a coil or a wad of crumpled field fencing out in the middle of a pasture, the result of a cow going through a fence and taking the fence with her.

I must have slid over one of those wads, which hitched a ride on the drive shaft of my car.

 

I didn't even look at it till today. Partly because I was busy, partly because I knew that even using bolt cutters I was going to end up in a bad temper working the wire off. It was a trial, let me tell you. Trackers are little cars with not a lot of clearance underneath - better than a sedan, mind you, but not like a truck. There wasn't much room to maneuver plus there was dried mud in just enough places to fall into my eyes and ears whenever an arm or shoulder bumped up against it.

Stuff like this is pretty normal for out here in the middle of nowhere. A person has to be able to handle little things by herself or else she should live in a city where help is just minutes away. But she doesn't have to like it.

Is there an emoji for a snarly face?  If so, imagine it inserted here.  I don't do emoji.

Here's a photo of PJ Kitty (Papa J) in the alpenglow a couple nights ago. Makes me feel better just looking at him.

And here's a sunset photo from the next night. The delicate silhouette of the juniper against the flaming sky gets to me.

Photos: From the ranch

Here are a couple photos I took on a hike the other day

Mamas and babes May 2016 Lif Strand

Kelsey  May 2016 Lif Strand

(Click on a photo to see a larger view)

Photo: Knee deep...

Knee deep in hay (Tess & Sonnie) May 2016 Lif Strand

Because, you know, they're just so skinny that I've got to make sure there's enough for these girls to eat.

NOT.

Truth is, I was going away for two nights and I'm a worrywart. Thus I put out five bales of grass hay for five horses. They're big bales.  If I was at home and not free-feeding, that'd be enough hay for a week. But I wasn't going to be home so I had to leave enough to keep me from worrying about them.

This isn't the first time I've free-fed them grass hay so I could go away overnight, mind you. I knew perfectly well it was an awful lot of hay. But you know.  Worrywart.

That's an interesting word I think. Apparently it was dreamed up for a comic strip called Out Our Way by J R Williams, that ran from 1922 to 1977. Worry Wart was the nickname for one of the characters, a boy, who was a real pest in his family. It used to be believed that warts came from too much stress and worry, so someone who was a worrywart was someone who caused stress and worry. Warts, not being life-threatening, were more of a nuisance so the worrywart was not a really bad person but more an irritating one. As with many terms, though, the meaning evolved over time. Today a worrywart is someone who worries too much and worries unnecessarily about something.

I guess worrywart is me when it comes to my critters.

My horses normally get an alfalfa/grass mix. They of course prefer straight alfalfa, which is like candy for them. Aside from Sonnie who is young, and Koko (not in the photo) who is a stallion, the rest are retired and don't need alfalfa hay. They're plenty fat, they're not working or breeding. But they love alfalfa.

My mares provided an income for us for many years, so they deserve to be treated well in retirement. They want alfalfa... but it's not good for them. So I compromise and feed them the alfalfa/grass mix. They think this is less than stellar treatment after all they did for us over the years but then that's why they're on that side of the fence while me and the hay are on this side.

I know my horses. I know that if I throw more than a meal's worth of alfalfa/grass over the fence so I can go away for a few days they would pick through the pile to eat the alfalfa all at once and then get sick.  With nobody here to help them. Thus the grass hay. Free feeding grass hay is almost as good as turning them out to pasture while I'm gone, but I can't just do that.  The stallion doesn't run with the mares since he's related to all of them.  He'd go bonkers if the girls were turned out 24/7 for a couple of days while he was locked up. And I'd worry about that while gone so all of them  had to be penned for the duration. Which I worried about, too, but not so much.

Free-feeding all that grass hay worked just fine. While the two in the photo above were interested in taste-testing right after I put the hay out, the others thought I was poisoning them. Ultimately none of them were thrilled about straight grass hay. They ate it because that was all there was. They're still working on the pile and will be for another day.

I had a good time on my little trip, by the way. Among other things were the great B&B we stayed at (such awesome breakfasts, beautiful gardens and incredible southwestern artwork on the walls that I can't tell you where we stayed because then everyone would stay there and there'd never be any rooms available for us); the four hour lunch we enjoyed at a friend's house yesterday; getting to hear Craig Johnson, author of the Longmire series, at the Albuquerque library last night; and discovering a new quilt shop today, Hip Stitch, before heading back home.

I'm glad to be home, though. The horses are glad, too. They're tired of that crummy grass hay. They want their alfalfa and they want it NOW. I better get out there and feed them before they starve.