11. Home-Built
Items
| Miles
made this portable solar oven, which gets hot enough
to cook food and even melt wax for candle making. |
|
By Miles
Stair
A
half century ago, many farmsteads had specific tools for specific
purposes. It was called efficiency. Most of those tools have disappeared,
in many cases along with the reason for them. Now, we must often
build our own specialized equipment. Fortunately, it is neither
hard nor expensive, and the end result is vastly increased utility
and efficiency.
In hard times,
canning
fruit juices will be necessary. Commercial products
might not be available nor their purity reliably. Home canned
fruit juice retains the vitamins and minerals, and thus health
is more easily maintained. How soon has modern society forgotten
the cause of rickets and scurvy!
To can large
quantities of juice, one needs to have a safe, fast, food chopper,
a filter bucket
(on left, second photo below), a sediment bucket
(on right, second photo below), and
ideally a bottom draw bottling
tank (tall tank in center) and a proper valve (right photo
below), may be
heated over a kerosene stove. With this equipment, dozens of
quarts of fruit juices may be easily and safely canned in a day.
  
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Large quantities of
applesauce and berry juice can be processed with the use of
a Squeezo strainer and the proper filter cone. Apples
need only be chopped into quarters with a home made chopper
(left, above), boiled for 15 minutes, cooled, then run
through the Squeezo strainer - the peels come out the end,
separated from the sauce. The applesauce can then be kept
hot in the bottling tank over a kerosene stove (3rd and 4th
photos above), and poured directly from the bottling tank
directly into pre-heated canning jars.
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Processing
and canning large quantities of foods puts a strain on any modern
kitchen - they were not designed for such purposes. It is much
more convenient to do the work where the area can be hosed down
and spills or messes don't damage delicate modern floors or counters.
It may all be done outside on a patio or in a garage, using kerosene
cookers as the heat source. Kerosene stoves are extremely reliable and inexpensive to use, plus
they provide a marvelous freedom from the electric or natural
gas grid systems. But the kerosene cookers are not strong enough
to support heavy canners. The best idea is to build a sturdy,
steel
cooking stand
which fits over the kerosene stove and supports all the weight
itself.
To protect
our electronic equipment,
Faraday
cages stop electromagnetic pulse (EMP) resulting from nuclear
explosions or Coronal Mass Ejections (CME's), also known as solar
flares. It is very easy to make Faraday cages from aluminum foil
or sheets of Mylar, store the equipment in them, and know that
when we need that equipment it will actually work.
Charging or
operating small appliances from a 12 volt RV battery is possible
using a home built pig tail with battery post clamps as an external
cigarette lighter socket (bottom of photo). Then a small
battery
adaptor (top of photo), such as a Recotron AD 61, can be plugged into the
lighter socket and the proper voltage selected to run or recharge
many small appliances.
To keep ourselves
in life saving fresh water, we can build water collection, storage
and delivery systems for our homes, as detailed in my booklet
"Rainwater Collection." But what of
our domestic livestock and pets? They too need a reliable, independent
source of water, and it is relatively easy to build
a
gravity flow chicken or stock
watering system for them.
Solar
ovens or melters are extremely efficient and easy to use for
about 7 months a year - spring through autumn. My solar oven is
used mostly to melt wax for making candles, but by removing the
wax melting tray it can also cook food just like a slow cooker
and even bake bread. It reaches 220 F. within 2 hours of placement
toward the sun, and if turned and oriented toward the sun again,
will ultimately reach about 300 F - enough to bake bread. Solar
ovens are totally passive, last for many years, and can be used
without attracting attention from passers by. Anyone with carpentry
skills can make a portable solar oven, and even if used for nothing
other than making candles, they are extremely worthwhile.
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