Good cutaway of how a remmington 870 works. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21uh28Z77Xg

Fire up your smokers! Happy Thanksgiving to all our subscribers

Bonus points if you're eating a turkey you hunted

On a serious note, look out for your livestock and pets. We just closed the side windows on the chick coop this week.

I love my wife. Last night we were discussing putting up a shop ourselves and got to the part about working on the higher places outside the slab. Her idea was a pair of forks to go on the bucket (which we'd been looking for anyway) and using one of my IBC tote cages as a platform to stand in. Just like that I have a platform on the tractor to work from with hand rails.

Yesterday I went on a field trip to "an undisclosed location". The directions involved 'turn off highway and go two miles on dirt road, the turn at the gate marked private property, and drive another 1.6 miles past the anti-aircraft gun". (really... I should have taken a picture) Wooo!! So I met these folks and hopefully they'll join us here on this channel. Super nice folks. I don't want to disclose their stuff, but trust me, SUPER NICE and SUPER PREPARED folks.

He was featured on engineer775's youtube channel as having broken solar panels. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFBHLodmIOI . He got the panels from a local company has having been damaged in shipment and promised to dispose of them. Can't fault a guy for that. So he wasn't getting anywhere near full power and ended up buying all new panels.... and his system is working GREAT. He is completely off grid with no power within 2 miles of his house. He and his wife told me yesterday that the engineer from the power company showed up to measure the length of the proposed power run with a walking wheel and the guy said "you may as well just use the odometer on the truck". When they told him running power would cost nearly 6 figures, his wife said "We get to pay you THAT much money AND pay you for the rest of our lives too?" So solar it is for them.

His issue is that as the days have gotten shorter his batteries aren't quite making it thru the night because they are running little ceramic electric heaters. So his sol-ark inverter cranks up the generator at 3am. Due to software issue will run the generator until the batteries are at 95%... which in turn means that the solar has little to do the next day when the sun comes up. We figured out a way to rewire one of the sol-ark switched outputs to interlock the generator from running if the battery is over 50% charged and he should be getting a relay ordered directly... or maybe I'll take him one today.

Another solar story for you. A friend in a nearby town recently cut over to solar using 4 growatt inverters making 12kw total. Suddenly he had a problem with the inverters dropping out. By troubleshooting he was able to narrow it down to one inverter... and guess what? He followed the mantra of two is one and one is none.... he had purchased an extra inverter. It's new in the box and the bad one is off for warranty work.... well not quite... turns out it just needed reset to factory settings and reprogrammed. Never the less, an excellent reminder for us all.... two is one and one is none.

What to expect after using your weapon. Good generalized info.

What to expect after using your weapon. Good generalized info.

Solar cigarette lighter. Radio shack used to sell these when I was a kid. Hell of a fire starter.

I posted a book about concealed carry a few days ago. One of the take-aways from this story is to be careful what you say in the aftermath. Today a story in the news caught my eye. He said "I took a moment to pause and get my adrenaline under control before shooting". Dangerous statement. If you have time to stop and THINK, a lawyer could argue that you were not in grave danger. Your statement should simply state the facts... two guys kicked in your door and you shot at them because "you feared for your life".

Also, the spokesperson for the police said "although you are allowed to defend yourself, confrontation should be avoided if possible." Maybe he should mention this to the criminals who cause the confrontations?

https://youtu.be/Nymx_g7P60g

I’ve always been fascinated by this cooker design. The mirror platform folds up when not in use.

Here’s a neat idea for a stall bar latch. Small screw or bolt in a recessed hole keeps horses from opening. Push bolt up and slide bar.

Never underestimate thermal mass. 4800ft (480m^2) two story insulated concrete form house. Well the first floor is walk in basement 1/2 way in the ground. It’s on a 76cubic yard slab.

Our HVAC system flipped the breaker on August 30 and we figured it out Friday. The set point of the thermostat is 73F (22c) and the house is at that temperature. The temperature outside right now is 38f…. We will see what the temperature is in the morning. My bet is the house will be 71 or 72. We found out Friday that the outside heat pump unit has a bad pressure sensor and they’ll order the part Monday, might be in this week some time. Dunno, it’s not exactly an emergency.

This makes me think that evacuated solar tubes might be just enough to heat a mass of water to keep the house thru the winter.

Not exactly off the grid related but certainly on the subject of strong family. I have seen several headlines lately about men acting as mentors for "troubled yoots". THere are a group of men in Louisiana who patrol the high school talking to the kids as dads. They de-escalate fights, shame the boys into doing better, etc. Gosh Mickey, imagine if there were dads in the homes of these young boys!

I'm not saying that there aren't some shit head men out there.... and I'm not saying that women can't raise a kid.... but I am saying that God made man and woman with different abilities and children need a dose of what each parent has to offer. Isn't it ironic that as soon as the great society social programs started in the 60's the black family went to shit? In 20 years time, those programs carried over to the white community. Women were told they didn't need a man... but their kids do! So by and large we have a bunch of working women trying to hold the fort down and raise a kid or three and trying to date and guess what falls thru the cracks? It's funny to me that society will tell women "men are toxic" "toxic masculinity" "you don't need a man".... and these women go on to raise a son who never learns to suck it up and be a man, the honor in providing for your family. What society gets is a bunch of young men who learned to be manipulators of women (because nagging and whining mom got you what you wanted). Just as in the book of 2 Timothy 3 But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. 2 People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive,disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, 4 treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— 5 having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people. 6 They are the kind who worm their way into homes and gain control over gullible women, who are loaded down with sins and are swayed by all kinds of evil desires, 7 always learning but never able to come to a knowledge of the truth.

So what does all this have to do with off the grid? People who live off the grid rely on themselves instead of society. Do you let main stream ideas into your home via sit-coms? Do you know what your kids are exposed to at school? There is one good thing I can say about covid and that is that it has caused a lot of parents to become more involved in their children's schooling. With all the video chats, parents can see first hand what the school is indoctrinating the kids with.

Home schooling allows you to control what your kids are exposed to. Off the grid compels you to depend on your wife or husband. I can make families stronger and marriages last longer. Shut off the damn TV and talk to your kids!

I'm going to open up about some personal things here... I have two kids with my exwife who hate me. She said I was barbaric and initiated divorce. We later fought over things to do with the kids, but as each of my children came to the age where they knew what they were doing, they each were manipulated toward her.... I represented rules and tough love. My oldest is 22 and I haven't seen her in 10 years. Flip it around and I married a lady with a daughter who needed a dad. I needed a kid. That young lady is 20 now. She was shy and I made her speak to people. We never covered for her screwups... we joined the authority figure who had caught her in a bad choice. But we love her. Instead of watching TV we talked to her about how the world works (credit, interest rates, sluffers who do drugs but think they are cool, etc) We show that love by guiding her and NOT giving her everything she wants. There are compromises in everything we do for her and she knows it.

Do you know the greatest "thank you" I could have gotten for loving my step-daughter? She wrote me this out of the blue one day from college "I never realized how much of the everyday learn something new or understanding specifics would come in handy until this semester specifically. I am on the path of getting where I want to be in life and a lot of that is because of the knowledge you guys have instilled in me. I sit in class and listen to other students answer/ask questions and I think to myself that I already know half of it. The knowing half of it or basics is good but what’s even better is I can figure out the rest. I’m not always the smartest person in the room but I strive to be the most knowledgeable and most willing to learn in the room. Thank you for all of the car lessons and dinner conversations over the year. I didn’t appreciate them at the time but I certainly do now."

So folks, shut off the world... love your kids, stay with your wives and husbands. Learn to depend on each other... When I was a kid my parents would say "fresh air and sunshine makes a boy tired".... well fresh air and sunshine also makes for strong families. Suck it up and do it for your kids! Get off the rat race, stop keeping up with the jones' and take care of your family.

Everything you wanted to know but were afraid to ask about Lithium batteries.