THEN, you’ll remember the windows in the basement.

On the other hand, when it comes to losing energy, basement windows are basically horrible. In general, they fit so badly into the sill on top of the foundation (a topic we have discussed before), are usually of the awning type and close and seal poorly so they are a major contributor to energy loss in a home. People are very very cognizant of replacing windows and doors in the living spaces of homes, insulating in walls and attics but the basement is Terra Incognita as far as energy savings is concerned which is really a mistake.

Now, one of the things to remember about this time of the year (winter in the Northern Hemisphere) is that doing any sort of energy saving work from the outside is practically worthless. Sealants such as caulk or foam need 55 degree temperatures to stick and cure. So, you will be needing to work from the inside and with any luck, your basement is 55 degrees. If it is NOT, then the technologies that you can put to work becomes more limited.

There are basically two items in the equation of losing energy with a basement window: The window itself which includes the frame in which the window is installed, and the sill. Whenever you have two independent materials coming together or laying on top of one another, you have opportunities for energy loss. The sill is on top of the foundation, so there can be energy loss between those. The window frame sits on top of the sill and is surrounded by the rest of the foundation so there are opportunities for heat loss there as well. Between the window itself and the frame can be cracks and crevices which can leak energy. And we won’t even discuss whether or not there are cracks in the window or if the caulking around the glass pane (or panes) is old, chipped, or cracked which would further increase the air exchange.

If you have a warm basement, you’ll be able to use silicone caulk and a caulking gun (or expandable foam) between the foundation and the sill and the sill and the window frame (see the diagram at the top). If you do NOT have a warm basement, then what you can do is (while wearing gloves), tear off bits of fiberglass insulating batting and with a thin bladed knife or putty knife, cram as much of it as you can between the foundation and the sill and the sill and the window frame, all around the window. This will take care of that part of the equation.

For the window itself, at this point in the year (since you can’t take the window out to do any repairs until spring), the best thing to do is to seal it off with heavy plastic. Now, the quick and dirty (and not terribly efficient) way to do it is to close up the window as tightly as it will go and then staple heavy plastic around the frame. If you want this to be more energy efficient, cut lengths of wood lathe and using a staple gun, staple through the lathe and the plastic into the frame. In the spring, you will have the job to tear off the lathe and the plastic but it does give a better seal.

A better insulation job, though can be done later if you do one thing: Anything you get shipped to you that is wrapped in bubblewrap (the bigger the better in terms of bubble size), as long as the piece is as big as the window frame, keep it. Just shove it into a plastic bag and hang it in a closet. Then late next fall, when it’s time to seal up the basement windows again, do the following:
1) Examine the windows and repair any window caulk, broken glass and so on.
2) Make sure there are no leaks around the window frame and the sill and foundation and re-caulk or re-foam as necessary.
3) Use the bubblewrap instead of plain heavy duty plastic or, tape together a layer of bubblewrap and heavy plastic the size of the space you need to seal off and staple THAT unit to the window frame. Bubblewrap produces a superior job in terms of acting as a barrier against heat loss through the window glass and it’s worth it. The plastic usually only lasts through one winter season but it’s worth saving the bubblewrap to do it.

Now, some readers might be saying to themselves, “This is madness. It’s winter already; how much energy can I save at this point by doing this?”

Every little bit counts, folks.

Now, we’ve worked with batts before and one of the real weaknesses of fiberglass batts is that they are NOT impervious to mice (well, at least we think they were mice; we’re hoping they were not chipmunks or anything, ahem, larger). And once mice (or whatever) start to tunnel through that stuff, the whole R-value just goes to heck.

I am still trying to figure out how mice can tunnel/chew through fiberglass and survive, or perhaps they are sacrificing themselves for the greater good (that is, opening up nice warm places for field mice to hole up for the winter). But the DH figured that there needed to be some sort of ‘sealing up’ of the batt needed to take place, just to keep the mice out. Now, we already know that sheet plastic will not stop mice (they are almost as effective as rats at chewing through plastic, Rubbermaid(tm) containers and so on) and though something approaching extruded wire mesh (like window screening) would stop them, it would not stop moisture from getting to the fiberglass and once fiberglass gets wet, it holds moisture next to wood floor joists like a magnet (which promotes mold and rot).

So, we’re going with 1/4″ plywood. We’ll give this a test right now and unscrew it later and see how the area has done. In the meantime, here is our own DIY star, the DH, showing you how he does it. In this demo, he’s working in the front NE corner of the house, which is probably the coldest spot in the entire house, which makes the room above it (where I am sitting right now) rather uncomfy at the floor level.

Step One: Measuring

Step Two: The Insulation

Step Three: Measuring and Cutting 1

Step Four: Measuring and Cutting 2

Step Five: Installing

Again, the list for what the DH was using for this:
Measuring tape
R19 Fiberglass batt
1″x1″ board as his straight edge
Retractable craft knife
Protective gloves
1″ wood screws
1/4″ plywood cut to the same size as the fiberglass batt
Electric drill with a screw-driver head on it.

The sill?

Yes, my little wombats, the sill. This is the big piece of wood that is put on top of, and is connected to, the foundation of the house and is the starting place for building the house (hopefully your home has a foundation of poured cement or cement block but if you live in a REALLY older home, it could be laid up stone, in which case, you have a whole different issue to deal with and you might want to check out “This Old House”, and the old house forums on the internet). The floor joists of the first floor are attached right to the sill and the subfloor and the finish flooring are attached to the floor joists.

But, Aunt Toby is getting a bit ahead of myself. To return to the sill. The sill is one of those places where the chances of cold air leaking in and the warm air escaping out are quite good; the top of the foundation is never, ever flat and smooth and the sill plate (or the timber) itself is not perfectly flat and smooth either. So there are all sorts of little cracks, crevices, etc. for there to be air exchange. In an older home, you cannot completely eradicate those little holes (unless you somehow find every single one of them and spray the living daylights out of them with that closed cell spray-in foam which has its own set of issues which we are not going to go into here), so you have to do your very best to seal them off.

Today, we are going to discuss and the DH will demonstrate how to insulate the sill in our back basement (the ‘new/old’ part of the house), using two-inch foam board. This part of the house has been cold since the day we finished the addition for the following reasons:
First: the furnace, although big enough theoretically to handle to extra space, is in the opposite corner of the ‘old/old’ part of the house in the basement and the duct runs have to go all the way across the house, through the basement wall and all the way across the ‘new/old’ basement to the floor registers before warm air from the furnace can go up into the dining room upstairs. Since there is a basement wall separating the new and old parts of the basement, there is this physical barrier to any of the heat in the old part of the basement coming into the new part of the basement.

Second: Since the duct run is going through this new basement, which is in effect, unheated, the duct is exposed to the relatively cooler (and in some cases, much colder) air of the new basement, so it is very easy for the warm air in the duct to be chilled inside the duct before it can even get to the floor register upstairs. We solved a good bit of that issue by insulating the duct work with big fiber glass bats and duct tape.

This project has actually been going on for a while. Last year, the DH and our son put two layers of foam board in between the floor joists (that is, if you were standing in the new basement and looked up, you would not see the wooden subfloor because it would be hidden by the insulating board) and started the process of insulating the sill in that part of the basement. The goal for this holiday season, when the DH has some time off, is to get the rest of the sill in that part of the basement insulated. He is also planning to do some insulating on the sills in the front, old, part of the basement, using a different technique, which will be the next post.

For the moment, however, we will be discussing and showing you how we did the blue foam board. For this operation, here’s a list of what the DH used:
2″ foam board insulation – this is something that you can find literally at your local hardware store or lumber yard.
small serated knife
straight edge
Roll of household aluminum foil

Step One: Measuring

Step Two: Cutting

Step Three: Installing

No such luck. Today is breathtakingly hot here, so out came the step ladder and the drapes and up they went…again.

It isn’t that way for everyone – for a lot of people on the East Coast, it looks like this: And no matter how hot it is there (and for folks in the Catskills, I’m sure it is just as hot as it is here, since the worst flooding is about an hour and a half away from me), it’s a mess and horrible and a lot of people need a lot of help.

But I’m not bringing THAT up today. What I want to discuss is this:
And we all know THAT is coming as well, though it is really easy to sort of push that toward the back of our minds because a) it’s early September, b) it’s hot, and c) it looks as if cold weather is so far into the future that we can ignore it for a while.

Except, we can’t. Even with the rest of hurricane season in front of us, there are certain activities that need to get taken care of before winter shows up. Here at Chez Siberia, we have more than a few things to putter with before the temperatures get too cold to do it.
So, what is this?

Or, better, what are THESE? This is one of two doorways on the south side of our garage, which was put up a couple of years ago. Aunt Toby was absolutely sure that what was spec’d was ‘primed and painted’ but it’s obvious that what we got was primed woodwork only. So now, after two winters, two summers, one almost-hurricane, numerous thunderstorms, and so on and so forth, the primer was not enough to do the job of protecting the wood. So the primer is peeling off, moisture has gotten to the wood and it looks as if we have some mildew doing a dance there. Now, I have to admit – the south side of any building takes a whupping from the sun, which is very hard on coatings of all sorts. But paint does a pretty good job – if the wood has been primed correctly and then given a couple of coats of good quality paint. But the woodwork on these two doorways were not, so what I need to do is:
Take a wire brush and scraper and get off all the primer.
Let the woodwork air over a day of dry weather
Prime again, let dry.
Paint, let dry and paint and let dry again.

And as a reminder – paint is not happy in temperatures under 55 degrees F. So, I have a window here of about 6 weeks to find a couple of dry days to get this done.

Paint: It’s what’s happening.

And this, my friends is exactly what it looks like: A snow shovel. An aluminum snow shovel to be exact which, for some unfathomable reason, is out in the greenhouse (the other collection of snow shovels is out in the barn). And this picture is to remind me (and you, especially those of you who live in places which usually don’t have snow or don’t get much snow at all) to take a look at every piece of snow removal equipment in our collection to make sure nothing needs a handle replaced, or screws tightened or rust removed or anything untoward like that.

Because winter is going to come. And as a reminder, there was snow and ice (and a good bit of it, actually) in places last year which never see this – and people did not have snow shovels. Now, I’m not necessarily a big fan of gas powered snow removal equipment (unless we’re talking major sidewalk and parking lot removal) – but a good metal bladed shovel is worth its weight out there when you need to shovel out. If you don’t have one, go to your hardware store or home center and get one. Don’t waste your money on shovels with plastic blades – yes, they are light weight, but they are done after one season and you’ve wasted your money. Spend a bit more and get an aluminum or steel bladed shovel. They last for years. You can actually find ones that are made in the US – worth it to look for that.

Another thing that you can do (we don’t need to do it this year but it’s worth it to check) at this time of the year is caulk around windows and doors, any outside electrical or water taps. As a matter of fact, this is the time of the year when you can still do it because silicone caulk is another thing that requires temperatures higher than 55 degrees F. If you wait too long, it will be too cold to get that stuff to come out of a caulking gun. So, put that on your list of ‘to do’ now.

(the sun, the flood and the snow plow photos are courtesy of:)
Marshall Space Flight Center
Washington State DOT
donxfive

And don’t ask me why except perhaps people there suffer indoors in the winter and when the weather gets nice, they are so desperate for warmth that they jump outside without proper protection from the sun. Or perhaps it’s more genetic in terms of the percentage of people who live in those areas who have fair skin, light eyes and relatively little melanin in their skin for protection.

But no matter – skin cancer can be deadly and it’s a problem everywhere in the United States. As a matter of fact, one of the fastest growing cancers in the United States is malignant melanoma skin cancer (versus the Laura Bush basal cell ‘scrape it off/put a bandage on it and go home’ sort) in children up to the age of 18. This is serious, life threatening stuff, especially since people have a tendency to believe that children don’t develop melanoma. Even if they see changes in moles or marks on a child’s body, they don’t take the child in for an exam. Here are a few facts that should make you very upset if you are a parent or grandparent:
• Melanoma accounts for up to three percent of all pediatric cancers.
• Between 1973 and 2001, melanoma incidence in those under age 20 rose 2.9 percent.
• Melanoma is seven times more common between the ages of 10 and 20 than it is between birth and 10 years.
• Diagnoses — and treatment — are delayed in 40 percent of childhood melanoma cases.
• Ninety percent of pediatric melanoma cases occur in girls aged 10-19.
Skin Cancer Facts

Since skin cancer is caused by cumulative exposure to the sun (or to tanning beds – I think that last statistic about teenage girls and melanoma points heavily toward that activity), I think that we need to look very seriously about protecting our children right from the get go. Think about all the time you have spent in the sun – not necessarily at the beach, but perhaps at a park in the summer, not covered up, not wearing a hat, not putting on sun block. Think about the number of times you got a bad sunburn (I shudder to think about that – I got a couple at the beach growing up that actually made me physically ill). I was also given photo-therapy for acne as a teenager and I used to ski a lot when I was young (and the sun reflecting off the snow is as bad as sun reflecting off the sand at the beach). It’s enough to make you lose sleep at night.

No matter what age you were then or are now; no matter what the ages of your kids, it’s time to take a good strong look at how to protect them and yourself, especially if you have concerns about the chemicals in sun blocks. The Environmental Working Group did a massive study on sun screens and found some that provided inadequate protection, some that broke down with exposure to sunlight and some with chemicals that caused great concern. Many sunscreens contain chemicals that have been found to be hormone disruptors, which means that they are something you do not want to use on anyone under the age of about 20. Safest Sun Screen?

The best sunscreens, frankly, are the old fashioned mineral based ones – with zinc and titanium. Most effective

But, let’s say you don’t want to be smearing anything on yourself or your kids – how can you protect little guys, who are running, swimming, and generally going nuts, from UVA and UVB rays? Wearable protection, that’s what.
Long sleeves, long pants, and a hat. There are many companies out there that are producing UV protection clothing for the entire family. If you want to make current wardrobes more UV-protective, you can buy a UV-wash from places such as Dharma Trading. UV Wash

Or, if you sew, you can find UV-protective fabrics at places such as Rockywoods UV Protection

On the other hand, a basic rule of thumb is that the darker the color, the more UV protective it is – so even with a regular cotton shirt, a dark blue long sleeved tee shirt is more UV protective than a white long sleeved tee shirt. And closely woven materials are more UV protective than materials such as mesh or gauze. And dry clothing is more sun protective than wet clothing (so much for going swimming and throwing on a white tee shirt).
You can also find UV protective swim wear, such as is worn in Australia (which has the highest rate of skin cancer in the world and where in at least one of the ‘states’, all children’s school uniforms no matter what the age, contain a broad brimmed hat which is worn at all times outdoors), which contains options like swim tights or ‘rash guard’ shirts, bathing suits with longer sleeves and the light. A couple of places to find these are here:
Solartex

Coolibar

I’m not even going to go the vanity route here to talk about protecting your skin from wrinkles and aging – because if you protect your skin from the sun, you will do that automatically. But here are a couple of issues that really do need to be addressed:

People, generally, don’t use sunscreen or they don’t apply it properly or don’t re-apply it. Sun Screen Use

Using indoor tanning parlors has been found to be addictive, in that it is not just getting that ‘toasted’ look – users associate the activity with warmth, relaxation, and a feeling of confidence. Stopping tanning causes anxiety. Tanning Bed Use is Addictive

There is still this issue from celebrities (who do tend to hale from California and have that ‘golden tan’ look) that tanning is fashionable, with it, and makes one look healthy.

We need to protect our kids. There is no such thing as a ‘healthy tan’ and especially one for little kids.
Keep the kids protected. Show some discipline as parents and grandparents:

Want to go to the beach? Go early and leave by 10 a.m. or go late in the afternoon. Cover yourselves and the kids up. Hats with an all-around-the-head 3” brim, long sleeves, long cover ups or pants. Use an appropriate sunblock and take a sun shelter or big umbrella to produce shade and stay in it. Don’t stay for hours and hours. You aren’t there to work on your tan.

Remember: the Sun is very powerful and does many wonderful things for us in terms of warmth, light, growing food and so on. But for us and our skin? The small amount we get through exposure of our hands is enough for Vitamin D. Protect yourself and protect the kids – 20 years from now, everyone will be thankful.
(photos by handpicked, Mary Mactavish, AF Ross)

At this point in the season, we’re all extremely tired of winter, the snow next to the road is grimy, and we’re all itching for spring. For most of us north of the Mason-Dixon Line, though, we’ve still got several weeks of winter and some of it will be extremely nasty. We also have (and they’ve started already) ‘end of the season sales’ going on not only in our local malls but over the internet. So, at this point, I usually take a serious look at what my family has been wearing this winter, what shape it’s in, and whether or not the item actually performed its function HERE. Now, depending on where YOU live, the weather and temperatures might vary from what we’ve gotten here, but for winter, there are items where fashion goes right out the window as far as I’m concerned (if you have ‘tweens’ and teens, this whole discussion becomes moot because kids this age will refuse to do anything that comes close to ‘reasonable’ or ‘sensible’ or ‘did your mama make you wear THAT?’ The best you can hope for is that they don’t leave the house in shorts and flipflops in January, and get them coats with hoods and maybe they’ll put them up). We’ve talked about coats before, but here are a few items which are really useful to think about in terms of what you might see at the end of the season sale and if it comes in the right sizes, they are worth getting and putting away for this November.

Pants: in terms of jeans or chinos, you can actually get, from LL Bean and Landsend, versions lined in cotton flannel or in thin polyester fleece. Remember this formula: Fleece-lined is warmer than flannel-lined, flannel-lined is warmer than no lining at all. Cotton is NOT warm. If you are in a situation where you can wear jeans or chinos to work and don’t want to get ones with linings in them because you’ll roast when you get to work, wear something like tights or thin long underwear underneath and then take those off when you get to work. The very best pants or slacks to wear in the winter, especially if you have to stand outside in terms of waiting for a bus or train are made from wool flannel and lined. Men’s pants sometimes come with lining down to the knees and those are worth it. So, if you see any of these on sale now – get ‘em.

Sweaters: Lightweight sweaters in natural fibers are great because you can layer one underneath something heavier like a jacket, blazer or another sweater. I found some very lightweight mohair pullovers on sale and they have been a great layering piece. If you can find them in a cardigan format, so much the better but v-necks will be really valuable.

Tights: pretty soon, stores will be clearing out their winter weight tights. Pick up every single pair you can find in your size, especially the sweater knit sort. These have been in fashion for the past couple of winter seasons and if you are like me, you find that when you want them again, they have disappeared and you can’t find them for a another five years.

Hats, gloves and scarves: For all the common wisdom about wearing a hat, I find that a scarf around my neck under my coat is a major contributor to my feeling of comfort when I’m walking to work. It’s fairly windy and my walk is about a mile; even with my coat collar turned up, without a scarf to block the cold wind, I lose a lot of body heat. So having scarves is worth it. In terms of hats, I know many people feel very strongly about the whole ‘hat hair/fashion’ thing in terms of wearing hats in the winter. Believe it or not, Aunt Toby follows the ‘fashion weeks’ very closely and I can tell you that Fall/Winter 2011 is the season of hats: knitted, felt, you name it. The designers are showing everyone wearing hats…nice…warm….hats. And even if you can’t afford a new coat this fall, if you can find hats on sale, stand in front of the mirror with your coat on and try on hat..after hat…after hat…until you find one that you love and that loves you. Remember: Even if warmth was not an issue, skin cancer IS and you can get just as much UV exposure from reflected light on snow as you can in the summer. Winter is a time for hats with brims too. So look for a hat on sale NOW.

Gloves: OK, I realize that gloves are seen as more fashionable than mittens and there is a certain amount of dexterity issues that go on with having them, but all things being equal in terms of fit, and what they are made of, gloves will not keep your hands as warm as mittens will. Having said that, however, what they are made of makes a huge difference. For example, using the photo above, the purple and white knit gloves, though they are heavier and much thicker than the fleece gloves at the top, are only worthwhile down to about 35 degrees – there are too many holes for body heat to get through. If there were fleece mittens in that collection, I’d say that the fleece mittens would be warmer than the fleece gloves. Why? Because the fleece gloves have much greater surface exposure than a mitten does AND all of your fingers are inside, together, to keep one another warm by sharing heat. If you want gloves, however, the key there is getting lined gloves (whether lined in fleece or something else thick or one of the insulations from 3Mtm) which have an outside covering that is densely woven and windproof – nylon or something like it is vest. Cashmere-lined leather dress gloves are not as warm as you think. The next step up from that is something like the mittens at the right – lined in fleece, with a nylon windproof covering. If you have to work out of doors in the winter, these are absolutely the best and right now, you can find them in stores with sporting goods, ski and snow boarding equipment and discounter outlets over the internet.

Some other items are more from the ‘thing’ aspect – certainly you might be able to survive in the winter without them but worth knowing what is best:

Shovels: Because the winter weather all over the country has been so horrible this year, stores have ordered in snow removal equipment several times over and might have shovels in an end of the season clearance. Remember this formula: metal blade/wooden handle. Anything plastic is basically worthless. Aluminum bladed shovels with wooden handles are pretty good – hold up for numerous seasons and are lightweight. When you have heavy wet snow, an aluminum bladed shovel will be much easier to use and not so tiring but they do not last as long as steel bladed shovels. Steel bladed shovels (and get the ones with a curved blade that looks like a plow; they are really effect in that format), as long as you don’t leave them standing in water, last forever. When we bought Chez Siberia, we inherited a rusty old shovel which the owners inherited when they had bought the property 15 years before. Those sorts of shovels are worth their weights in gold but they are heavy. You will get a work out with them. The older ones are worth looking for at estate and yard sales, too. And if the handle is broken, that is ok – just go to a lumber yard or home center and get a new handle, undo the screw fastening the blade to the handle and replace. Remember: Plastic in the winter is worthless – the cold weakens it and they bend and break.

And finally, and I realize this is totally from the entertainment value for a lot of people, here is a bird feeding system that IS squirrel proof. We don’t begrudge the squirrel paying his way by working through the pile of dropped bird seed on the ground – he’s working for his meal and not dumping over the feeders, which is the problem we used to have. We suffered last year with squirrels that defied everything we tried – this sort of thing works because:
a) The metal pole (it’s coated cast steel I think; I don’t think it’s cast iron) is slick enough that the squirrels can’t get a grip to crawl up.
b) The collar prevents them from going any further.
Any pole or wooden stake will give squirrels a grip and up they go. Also, if the poles are close enough to the building where the squirrels can launch an attack from the roof, porch or gutters, they are worthless as well. One thing though, these poles are NOT bear-proof, so as soon as spring comes, take all bird feeding stands out and store. Also, don’t keep any seed or suet blocks where bears can find and smell them – remember, they have very keen memories and will come back. Also, in the fall, don’t put bird feeders out until it’s gotten cold enough that the bears will have gone into their dens for the winter.

So – stay warm, keep an eye out for good solid stuff for next winter.
And pray for spring!

Slow down, Bucko. Let’s throw a little science on this, ok?

A couple of years ago, we grew tomatoes that we had dreams about. The descriptions in the catalogs were uniformly exquisite.

And then we got a cool, wet summer.

And late blight.

And tomatoes? Well, those fantasies stayed fantasies because we got no tomatoes. And we got no peppers either. Anything that needed ‘hot feet’ was just a dead loss.

So, this year, I decided to do this whole seed thing in a much more scientific way. If I had any sort of clue as to what sort of summer the long range forecasters thought we would have, I’d have a shot at beating the first frost with some red tomatoes and peppers that were not nubbins.

So, this year, I am consulting this site here: Long Range Forecasts

Which has these wonderful maps (Aunt Toby dotes on maps. Bar charts too, but that is a discussion for another time; I’d put one up but they are ‘all rights reserved’ but trust me on this one; they are great maps) which show me that, oh dear. We are not only going to have a cool summer early when I want it to be hot, we’re going to have a cool and DRY summer and then it will get hot later. So, on the one hand, I’ve got to take into account that I won’t have the sun and temperatures working for me in terms of things like tomatoes and peppers, but on the plus side, since it won’t be wet, the blight thing might not be as much of a factor.

What to do? What to do? And what if the long range forecasters are wrong? What if I do have a hot summer? How do I hedge my bets here?

Well, first of all, even the most cold hardy tomatoes and peppers, the ones with the shortest seasons, are not necessarily the worst choices for a hot summer. They will just develop and mature faster if it’s a hot summer, as long as I can provide steady sources of water. Which we can at Chez Siberia because we have TWO sumps which run most of the time all year round (yes, I know but I actually have two separate basements and my house is at the bottom of a hill). The DH has run hosing from the sump closest to the garden so we have steady water for the garden no matter what. And since we’d be running those sumps in any case (because otherwise, the basement would be 18” deep in water in about two hours if we did not), this is as good a use for the water as any.

So, I’ve got my water and I’m going to choose the shortest season, best tasting tomatoes and peppers (and if I was an eggplant person, I’d go for the shortest season, best tasting eggplants I could find too). So, what is out there that is a candidate?

Less than 60 days to first ripe tomatoes:
Early Girl
Early Wonder
Glacier
Kimberly(will set fruit well in cool temps)
Matina
Oregon Spring (nearly seedless)
Prairie Fire
Silvery Fir
Sileta
Stupice (From Czecholoslovakia – we grew this last year; great taste and productivity)

Sixty to 70 days to first ripe tomatoes
Applause (good for tighter growing spaces)
Better Bush
Bush Beefsteak
Fireworks
Grushovka – 65 days are you have canning tomatoes
Jetsetter
Legend (this one has strong resistance to late blight fungus)
New Big Dwarf (2’ plants make these great for container growing)
Red Rocket
506 Bush

We like to can a lot of pear tomatoes; our choices for this year will have to come from this list:
Super Marzano: 70 days
Victoria Supreme: 70 days

For sweet peppers:
Better Belle: 65 days
Biscayne: 65 days
Bounty: 65 days
Corno di toro: 68 days
Cubanelle PS: 65 days
Flexum: 65 days
Giant Marconi: 63 days
Gypsy: 60 days
Roumanian rainbow: 60 days (we grew these last year – they were wonderful)

Now, I love hot peppers but if we have a cool and/or wet summer, they don’t do well here, so I don’t bother.

So, there you go – use a little bit of science to modify what you put into the garden and you just might do better than you think.
(photo courtesy of AJ)

So, we replaced our major source of heat in the house with a wood pellet stove in the living room with the oil furnace as a back up in case the weather got so horribly cold that we could not keep the house warm enough.

The is just one problem with wood heat – it’s dry. Really really dry. Like dries out your nose and your skin and makes you cough and gives you winter itch dry. So, we needed a source of moisture.

As some of you know, the DH and I have used racks over the floor furnace forced air vents to dry clothes in the winter time; as a source of moisture, it works really well, but we no longer have floor vents that are in operation except when the weather is really cold and we turn on the furnace. So, we were looking at humidifiers when one of the big ones at my office died and they were going to just throw it in the dumpster.

I looked at it; the power lights were on but the fans did not work. Which meant that something was not working between where the power came in and whatever was controlling the fans.
(Warning: Be aware that working with electrical appliances takes care; when testing individual components with a voltage tester, the tester leads were touching the components at all times to determine if power was going through; no one should ever use allow any part of their body to touch electrical sources)

This humidifier has two rheostat sorts of switches – one which says Humidity on it and one which says Fan Speed on it. The fan speed switch was the culprit, the DH found by using an voltage tester on it. As you can see from this photo (and I’m sorry that the labeling is not coming out very well; the call out on the right is indicating the black electrical power lead which comes INTO the switch. The call out on the left indicates the blue and red leads which go out of the switch to the fans. The switch controls the amount of power going to the fans and thereby controls the fan speed. Because the switch is buggered in some way, no power was getting to the fans at all.

The switch itself consisted of the outer knob which is attached to a soldered circuit card with power leads attached. This is what the switch actually looks like when you get it out of the little box. At the top of the photo, you can see the black power lead coming into the circuit board; the blue and red leads which went to the fans are at the bottom. The every-trusty DH’s hand is holding the actual knob which was used to set the fan speed.

First, we went to our local appliance parts supply store with the model number of the humidifier and the actual switch and the little box sort of thing it was housed in because that had all sorts of labels on it that we thought the appliance guy would find useful. No luck – the humidifier is not being made any longer and the manufacturer which made the actual part is no longer making that part and there is no substitute, according to the clerk’s database (Now, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that IMHO, there has to be someone out there who is making this sort of thing – I think the clerk in the parts place was not knowledgeable enough to look at the item, identify it in terms of what it was – “oh, that’s a 2 amp rheostat umpty ump,” and find us another one – he only knew enough to look at the database that said ‘no sub’ on it).

So, we were dead in the water. We could not replace that part.

Try strategy number two: Figure out what the switch actually did in the system and see if we could figure out a work-around. By using his tester, the DH figured out that the switch was really the gatekeeper for the power going to the fans, so we decided to ‘hot wire’ the thing so that there was a direct connection between the power supply (the plug in the wall) and the fans themselves. We did not particularly care how much humidity there was; just that there was humidity, which meant that if the fans ran, that is what we’d get. So, the DH fastened the black power line directly to the red and blue lines going to the fans under an electrical screw nut (see photograph).

This is NOT an elegant solution. I don’t even know if my high school physics teacher would OK it. And the way we control this thing is: plug in the wall/the fans work; plug out of the wall/the fans don’t work. Pretty crude.

But we do have a big humidifier now (that thing has two bottles that are probably two gallons apiece) that we use when we are in the house and it kept another piece of electrical appliance stuff out of the landfill.

And seriously, the only tools it took to do this job were:
A Phillips head screw driver
A voltage tester
Wire cutters
Electric nut
and some time.

Now, I realize that a voltage tester is not necessarily in every apartment or house tool box, but it’s definitely worthwhile to have one and learn how to use it and learn what you can use it FOR. In this case, by attaching the leads to the power and then to various parts of the humidifier, the DH was able to determine that a) the motors attached to the fans actually worked (thus eliminating the fans as the culprits in the case), and that b) the switch which controlled the power going to the motors on the fans was the ‘fan speed’ switch and that was the gatekeeper that was broken. Again, once you have identified where the issue is, then the solution can be very simple: Either replace (if the part is still made or if there is a substitute) or do a work around.

Yes, you CAN do things like this.

Once upon a time, a while ago, when the Little Siberians were younger but not necessarily still little, we raised sheep. By that, I mean we had breeding stock, with rams and ewes and, as nature always takes its course with these matters, lambs. Which, if we were lucky about when we put the rams in with the ewes (because you have this ‘window’ when everything works, the earth moves at least for the sheep and 20 weeks later….), would be, believe it or not, in January when again, if we were lucky, there was a thaw, things would warm up and the lambs would arrive when it was relatively cozy. Or, if we were lucky, no one was feeling particularly romantic at first so the lambs would not arrive until March.

And also, if we were lucky, the moms would behave in mom-like ways and would cuddle up the little mites (who usually arrive in the 6-8 pound range), and let down their milk and allow the babies to feed and not indulge in “Mommy Dearest/”No wire coathangers!”/dysfunctional” ways (like one ewe we had who had the delusion that someone was trying to steal one of her babies and hid him inside a hole in one of the inside walls of the barn – we had to rescue that pup for sure). Because like the breeding thing, you have this ‘window’ of opportunity when the lambs first make their appearances where if they can get cleaned off and get a good meal inside of them (first milk, which is colostrum and which is sort of super-food for mammalian babies everywhere) and it’s not too horribly cold, they are basically good to go. And I really mean that because lambs are born with their own fur coat and under the skin this amazing chemistry called ‘brown fat’ which burns like a house afire and they can live off that for quite a while and get their figurative feet underneath them and just take off.

But, if the poor little buggers are born in the middle of the night, in February, when it’s below 0 degrees F. or if they have a negligent or dysfunctional Mom (and there are all sorts of reasons for that which I won’t discuss at this time since this is a family program) who refuses to recognize them or who refuses to allow them to feed or who won’t clean them off or mother them up, then you have a little critter that resembles nothing less than a ‘lambsicle’ – the poor little thing is chilled literally to the bone.

I don’t think I need to tell you that in the greater scheme of things, these little guys do not do well.

They have hypothermia – their metabolisms slow down, and they enter this spiral where they are not burning enough fuel to stay warm, their circulation slows down, not enough oxygen gets to their brains and well, it’s curtains. Needless to say, the DH and I had some experiences out there in the barn at 2 a.m. on February nights when we ended up with lambs in the kitchen trying to save the little buggers from going into hypothermia, which means we were trying to take a little mite that was hovering at the edge of the cold and darkness and bring them back.

And we learned a bunch of lessons that believe it or not, have application for all of us when we are cold or ill with the flu (because viruses tend to produce some of the same deal in terms of slowing down metabolisms and so on).

Lesson One: If the inside is not warm, warming the outside doesn’t do squat. If we had a lamb that was really chilled (and you check that by putting your finger into the lamb’s mouth; cold mouth/cold lamb), putting said lamb under a heat lamb or a hair dryer made the outside warm but the lamb did not get any better. What worked with the lambs: Really warm colostrum tube fed directly into the stomach. Holding the lamb in a bucket of really warm water. See? Warm the inside AND warm the outside. If you are cold and/or feeling crappy, just taking a hot shower and jumping into bed is probably not going to be enough to really warm you up – you need to be warm on the inside too. So – here’s the drill: Make yourself a hot drink (or soup; whatever you like as long as it’s hot and you drink it all down) and drink that; THEN take a hot bath or shower, and dress up warmly.

Lesson Two: Sometimes you have to jump start the process of warming up. That is, if we’d fed warm milk to the lamb and had the lamb in the warm water – if we moved the lamb’s legs – like making them walk in the water in the bucket — all of a sudden, they would generate enough energy and circulate enough that they’d wake up, start to move around on their own and just take off. We’d dry them off, put them in warm towels, feed them more hot milk and mother them up some more (we won’t go into the fact that they would no longer smell familiar and their mom would not allow them to feed – but the fact that said Mom had abandoned the lamb in the first place meant that she wasn’t going to allow anything to happen so we figured a saved lamb was a saved lamb and we’d put the lamb on the bottle and raise it that way). So, Lesson Two means that when you are cold and feeling lousy, getting some exercise can actually raise the body core temperature also and that can help you to feel warmer and more energetic and better also.

So, if you are feeling bad (or even at the edge of ‘coming down with something’) and cold:
1) Make yourself a hot drink or hot soup and drink that down.
2) Do some mild exercise which will raise your pulse and do it in a warm area inside. Be dressed warmly enough so that you will stay warm while you exercise but not so warm that you will sweat a lot and then get chilled.
3) Take a hot bath or shower and dress warmly. If you are at home and can then go to bed, then bundle up in bed or on the couch. If you have to go out, make sure you are dressed warmly. Even if you feel a little bit overly warm when you get wherever you need to go, you can always peel off a layer or two to regulate your temperature, but staying warm is one key to holding viruses at bay so if you feel a little bit warmer than usual, that will be ok.

Get warm. Stay warm.

And though our landlord was very encouraging (“Sure, you can rip up the lawn for a garden”), we felt the need to get some books because we wanted to ‘do things’ but did not know anyone who actually knew how. Over the years, we have collected a pretty extensive library of books which we have read over and over and consulted many times over. We haven’t felt the need to look for any books currently so we thought we’d take a look at what is being marketing right now on the shelves of what would probably be what most people have available to them unless they are going to the Internet. A lot of people buy books off the internet, but if you are looking for something specific, it really helps if you can go to the bookstore, plunk yourself in front of the shelf, pull down books and take a look and a bit of a read for yourself.

Today’s Topic: General Self-Sufficiency
Now, it’s obvious from my looking at the books that are on the shelves right now, brand new, that ‘self-sufficiency’ is definitely one of those ‘in the eye of the beholder’ positions. The range seems to run from the level of “How to handle survival after a nuclear attack” all the way through “How to slaughter your own pigs” and everything in between. So, a lot depends on what exactly someone’s goals actually are and where you are living. Because, if you are living in the suburbs, having a book that has general home and family stuff, gardening, a bit of home repair and maintenance, energy saving and so on is going probably be useful for someone who has never picked up a hammer or canned food. Having a book that delves deeply into radiation disease, setting up military level home protection systems and so on might not be your cup of tea. Or, it might, if you are into weaponry and thinking ahead…way…way…ahead.

This post is not meant as an in-depth review of every book out there. Basically, the DH and I walked into our local ‘extremely large big-box national chain bookstore’ and pulled every book we could find off the shelves that seemed to be handling certain topics and sat down and looked through them. We looked for certain topics that WE feel people who want to be more self-sufficient would want to see and at a level that is accessible, understandable, and in enough detail that a family could actually perform the task and complete it. No book is going to be truly encyclopedic but we felt it had to be good value and give people enough information to do the jobs; if readers want books that are more specialized, there are certainly books on specific topics out there, but for the true beginner, someone who perhaps is a little concerned or fearful, here are our recommendations for a good first book.

For those who really appreciate having photographic ‘how to’, detailed diagrams, uplifting copy, etc., the best book of the lot is:
Dick and James Strawbridge’s Self-Sufficiency for the 21st Century ($30.00 retail; DK Publishing, New York, NY. www.dk.com)
DK Publishing is to DIY books today what Readers Digest was 20-30 years ago: big, glossy, informative books which weigh a ton, filled with meaty material. Their position is obviously, “If you can only get one book, we want it to be OURS and we will make sure you get value.”

What put this book at the top of the heap for me was the totally realistic and pragmatic tone, a recognition that most people who are just starting out, who most likely did not grow up on a farm or even out in the country, not only don’t have a lot of skills or confidence, but also might have very…mmm…strong feelings about things like doing their own slaughtering. This is a British book; the father and son team of Dick and James Strawbridge have a UK television series called “It’s Not Easy Being Green” where they are working on a 300 year old derelict property. But everywhere I looked, the techniques and advice being given were right on the mark for people anywhere. Two big thumbs up.

Second Place, and only because I am extremely nostalgic about Storey Publishing is this compendium:
Country Wisdom and Know How ($19.95 retail, Black Dog and Leventhal Publishing, New York, New York)
Storey Publishing is one of the original ‘back to the land/do it yourself’ publishers in the United States. Their series of ‘Country Wisdom Bulletins’ (single topic booklets) have grown, expanded and been sold everywhere from through the mail to the counters at home and garden and farm centers since 1983. What Black Dog and Levanthal have done (and don’t misapprehend me here; it’s a clever thing to do) is to collect all of this material in the bulletins and other Storey publications, and put it into a paperback book the size of almost a newspaper – like the old Whole Earth Catalog. To do this, they are using extremely small print on the page, which is newsprint (which is not exactly a high contrast medium), and squeezing down the diagrams and drawings. Little showing of ‘how to’ and frankly, I doubt if they updated any of the material. This is referred to in some places as ‘old wine in new bottles’. I always felt Storey’s information was boiled down and very useful but with this font size, they really should have packaged this with a magnifying glass. Great material, almost encyclopedic but not current and not user friendly.

Third Place, or Top of the Heap if your goal is to be prepared for alien or zombie invasions or having to live off the land or dealing with natural or national disasters, is this book:

The Big Book of Self-Reliant Living, Walter Szykitka (Lyon Press, Guildfor, CT)

The Table of Contents says it all:
1) First Aid
2) Survival
a. Radiation Contamination
b. Survival On Land
c. Survival At Sea
d. Emergencies At Home
3) Health and Exercise (includes such topics as malaria and lead poisoning)
4) Food and Nutrition (includes preserving and drying)
5) Farm and Home (includes gardening, orcharding, and home repairs)
6) Tools, how to use them and repairs

If you are the sort of person who has a lot of concerns about whether or not your family is prepared for emergencies or some sort of disaster scenario, this is a book you might want to have on hand and use. And lest anyone mistake me, most American families are totally unprepared for what can happen.
Example: 9/11. Families all over the United States who had friends and relatives in New York and Washington, DC were suddenly unable to contact, find or assess what was happening to their loved ones. People were being evacuated; no one knew what was going on. It was horrifying.
Example: Hurricanes. Every couple of years (and sometimes in the same year), we have major hurricanes and people do not have any other plan other than putting up plywood on the windows. Thousands of families got stuck trying to evacuate from vulnerable areas in Texas the year after Katrina because…they ended up on the Interstates in a giant traffic jam and they ran out of fuel in their cars. There is nothing wrong with sitting your family down and talking about family emergency plans. This book contains information to help you through the process.

Books Worth Looking For in Used Book Shops:
If you are interested in looking at used books, Storey Publications and Readers Digest Books from 20-30 years ago are definitely worth looking at. Rodale Press books on gardening topics from that period are also excellent. Be careful about books which are frankly dated – “Five Acres and Independence” was probably one of the biggest sellers during the Great Depression but is practically useless today except in a general sense. The advice, product recommendations (DDT, anyone?), and so on leave it truly in the realm of ‘for popular historians only’.