The Chatelaine's Keys

Sharon May 9th, 2009

The very best thing about being invited to be a speaker at various environmental and energy events is that I get to meet the other speakers and hosts of interesting people.  One of the coolest people I sort of met (briefly) at the conference in New York’s north country was a middle school shop teacher by the name of Jim Juczak (and his seriously cool wife and daughter).  They have an intentional community and farm, and he’s a tinkerer and scavenger.  I got to see several panels that Jim was on, as well as his talk about creating a cheap homestead which he and Krista did together, and was thrilled by them all, but most impressed by the very first one, which offered a solution to a major problem for a lot of people.

You see, nearly everyone who relies on wells loses their water access during an extended power outage – and 17% of the US population has no access to a municipal water supply.  You can put a pump on a very shallow well cheaply, but most wells are more than 25 feet, and that’s a solution for only a very tiny number of people.  The cost of putting a manual deep well pump (only possible down to about 220 feet, so a better solution with higher water tables) in adds up to several thousand dollars unless you can do it yourself – that’s a tough sell for rural households, often low income, even when something as basic as water is at stake.

One project I’ve been working on for a while, with only middling degrees of success, is to get town centers to put in water pumping stations.  This is useful not only for rural towns without a municipal water supply, but also for towns with a municipal supply at some distance, where it is possible to imagine water contamination that left local supplies uncontaminated, or the disruption of local water transmission.  My rough estimate is that this includes about 1/3-1/2 of all the towns and cities in the US – they have water under the ground, but no way of getting at it, and no way of dealing with a major, extended power outage or widespread contamination of reservoirs or surface water. 

Now many individuals and towns assume that in such a case, they will simply wait for the water trucks to arrive, or will melt snow or use surface water.  But as we saw in New Orleans, the water trucks don’t always arrive quickly, dehydration is a serious problem, and without good filtration, surface water is not safe.  Now there are plenty of scenarios where well pumping isn’t a perfect solution – when people are housebound and get get to the local sites, when the wells are also potentially contaminated, say by heavy flooding.  But they are a measure of security on one of the most basic needs we have.

But the high cost of installation for towns and individuals means that many people simply choose to take their chances on the water front.  Frankly, this worries me – I think that our overall water infrastructure is one of the most vulnerable spots to a breakdown – but that’s another post.  What I got excited about is that Jim Juczak actually did something about this problem.

What he did was this – he built a manual deep well pump that can be made of off the shelf hardware parts, with minimal machining.  Because he’s a middle-school shop teacher, he actually taught his 7th graders to make these, in an attempt to make sure that it was something that nearly everyone could put together.  His estimate of the cost of parts is about $125, and handy folks may even have some of them lying around.  He’s tested the well pump for three years, to assure himself that the PVC version holds up to regular use, and includes in his plans a model for a brass and steel version that should last a long, long time.  He’s charging $20 for the plans, and will be offering kits – machined parts only, pvc or brass and steel.  Even the most expensive version shouldn’t cost more than $500, as opposed to 1500-2000 bucks.  I believe all of them can work around an existing well pump, but you’d want to double check that with Jim.

I find this tremendously exciting for a host of reasons.  There’s really no excuse for towns and small cities not to put in municipal pumping stations at schools, community centers and parks in this scenario, using existing wells.   The potential applications for the Global South are enormous – I can think of a number of anti-poverty groups that have been struggling to bring water access to many areas, and could potentially now put in more wells.  Moreover, all of us who realize that our water infrastructure cannot be allowed to depend on something as uncertain as an always-there electric supply have choices that we did not.

You can see pictures of the pump here, at Jim’s website: http://www.woodhenge.org/2009/05/farming-writing-and-water-pumps-at.html.  You can contact him about the pumps at his email address jsjuczak@gisco.net.  He also has a really great book on scavenging – making use of things people have cast off or don’t know what to do with. 

Meanwhile, I’m just plain excited – I’m ordering plans for myself!

Sharon

k@gisco.net

• tools , water
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Sharon January 8th, 2009

This refers only to food storage and preservation tools – although I probably should do a series like this for other areas.  But for today, let’s start with the kitchen stuff.

 Now this is one of those things that people vary a lot on.  First of all, there are personal and physical issues – I find it rather pleasant to grind grain manually, and I have healthy young children willing to take a turn, for example – and elderly person with arthritis might find it unbearable.  6 gallon buckets full of 40lbs of wheat aren’t that big a deal for six foot me to hoist around – but a 5′ woman might want to store her grains in smaller containers.

Then there are issues of taste and skill.  The good thing about powered tools is that they generally don’t take any skill – so someone with weak knife skills might find it much faster to chop a couple of onions in a food processor, whereas someone with good knife skills might find that the time to get out the processor and clean is longer.  Some people have strong opinions about taste and texture – they may find the texture of the food processed chopped liver unacceptable, and the manually chopped better, or vice versa.  A job you hate always seems to take longer – so it might be worth a powered tool, say, to grind sausage if that’s one of your hated chores, but not so much if you find sausage making relaxing.

Then there’s space issues – someone in a tiny galley kitchen is going to have to limit himself to fewer kitchen tools than someone with a huge farmhouse kitchen.  Even those of us with tolerable amounts of space (and while I have a lot of storage space, my actual counter space is quite limited) will have to make choices about what appliances are kept out and what are moved to less accessible places.

So this is definitely a ymmv.  My own feeling is that we should make the best choices for ourselves, but we need to think through carefully our use of tools – a lot of us simply assume that because a powered tool exists, it is preferrable to the non-powered one.  Somewhere in the back of our heads, we tend to think “no one would have made a salad shooter unless slicing cucumbers was really hard” (ok, that’s kind of a joke, but that is how the powered grain grinder or the food processor work ).

I don’t at all object to people making a compelling case for a tool I don’t want or use, what drives me crazy is the automatic assumption that we need all the tools, we should spend a lot of money on them, and that a good kitchen has everything in it.  Now I have plenty of kitchen tools, but I try really hard to go over Wendell Berry’s list of points to determine the value of tools before I buy one.   They are

1. The new tool should be cheaper than the one it replaces.

2. It should be at least as small in scale as the one it replaces.

3. It should do work that is clearly and demonstrably better than the one it replaces.

4. It should use less energy than the one it replaces.

5. If possible, it should use some sort of solar energy, such as that of the body.

6. If possible it should be repairable by a person of ordinary intelligence, provided that he or she has the necessary tools.

7. It should be purchasable and repairable as near to home as possible.

8. It should come from a small, privately owned shop or store that will take it back for maintenence and repair.

9. It should not replace or disrupt anything good that already exists, and this includes family and community relationships. (Berry, _The Art of the Commonplace_ 219)

You could spend your whole life building a world around this vision, but let’s stick with the kitchen for now.  Not all of these factors will be achievable in one tool – but they are useful grounds for thinking about how to use tools in our lives. 

And I would encourage people to consider the whole cost, and the whole time used – something I think is implicit in Berry but may not come through to those not familiar with his body of work.  That is, his version of “cheaper” would include the question “do you have to work more hours to afford it?”  “Do you have to pay interest on a credit card to buy it?”  “What is the ecological cost?”

The same is true of asking whether it helps you do the task well – we should calculate into its time costs the amortized time needed to earn the money, the item’s potential lifespan and the times spent cleaning and repairing something that breaks easily, as opposed to something that doesn’t.

One thing that I am trying very hard to do is when I replace things, to only replace them with things that do not have plastic parts.  Plastic is essentially unfixable – so a plastic corn cutter that breaks is a piece of junk.  So no more plastic tools unless I have no choice.  This sometimes means not buying locally, which is unfortunate, but I’m finding it worth it.

The other thing that I’m working on very gradually is replacing ceramic bowls, glasses and dishes with enameled metal and wood.  This is because, frankly, I’m a complete and utter klutz, and Eric is better, but not enough .  I am tired of throwing away broken pottery.  We can handle good dishes, which don’t break as easily and aren’t used as often, but for everyday, we need hard-to-break.

I was planning on including a “what I like and what I don’t list on this” but that will have to come later – I’m having internet service problems.  So forthcoming…. and in the meantime, try looking at your life and stuff through Berry’s lens.  Boy is it enlightening!

 Cheers,

 Sharon

• Food Storage , tools
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Sharon March 18th, 2008

Ok, if you are storing a lot of grain, you are probably going to want something to grind it with – and something better than the manual coffee mill that Laura Ingalls Wilder’s family used in _The Long Winter_.  They pretty much had to spend all their time grinding their wheat to eat – you probably don’t want to do that.

 So you’ll probably want a grain grinder, and probably one that works without power, so that you can use it even in a crisis.  If you want an electric mill too, for daily grinding, the only one I have any personal familiarity with is The Whisper Mill, which I’m told is the quietest of the bunch (although it sounds like elephants trumpeting, so take that for what it is worth ), which several people I know recommend.  But this is third hand knowledge – we have a manual grain grinder and use it almost daily, and don’t mind not having an electric.  I rather enjoy grinding grain.  Note, however, that we have a strong healthy household with lots of kids who think it is fun to give the grinder some turns.  Not everyone has that, and they might want to look into an electric for everyday use.  It is also sometimes possible to electrify a mill – or even hook one up to an exercise bike.

Note – I have absolutely no connection to any of the companies listed here, with the exception listed below and benefit in no way from these sources (again, with one exception).  I also don’t swear these are the cheapest sources, just the cheapest I happened to find.  Please do your own research.

But I do think everyone who stores large quantities of whole grains other than rice should probably have a manual grain grinder.  Which one depends on how often you are going to use it, how much money you have, what grains you are storing and your state of health and upper body strength.  Here is a link to a review of most of the grain grinders mentioned here: http://waltonfeed.com/self/grinder.html.  I don’t necessarily agree with everything they say, but they cover most of the material and electric grinders as well.

 So let’s go through this.  At the very low end of things is the Corona Mill – it was designed for poorer nations where corn is the primary grain.  Corn is an easier grain than many others to grind, and if you have more time than money, and no expectation of using it except in a crisis, a Corona Mill is a good, cheap grain grinder.  New, they cost under $50, and even better, there are tons of these around used.  So if you live in a place where corn is the staple, and don’t imagine grinding grain unless you have to, or have no money, this is not a bad idea.  Not only that, they can be converted to other uses, including hulling rice, if you grow your own or find a source for unhulled paddy rice (unbelievably hard to find in the US).  The lowest price I saw on ebay for a new one was $38, enough less than the Back to Basics Mill that I bother mentioning it. 

 Next up, on the price scale is the Back to Basics Grain Mill, available in a lot of places.  I’ve borrowed a friend’s and it isn’t a terrible little grinder – it is definitely more work to use than the one I own, but it is substantially cheaper.  If  you think you might actually rely on the grinder, but have very little money,  I’d spend the money, if you can, to get this one.  It will still take a good while and a bit of effort to grind enough to make a loaf of bread or pan of cornmeal, but it does work, and seems reasonably sturdy.  I still don’t  think this is as good as some of the others, but it is cheap – I found it here for under $50

The Family Grain Mill is a good basic mill for people who plan to grind some flour regularly by hand.  This is a big step up from the lower priced ones, and of much higher quality – not as high as the Country Living or Lehmans best, but quite decent.  It is reasonably quick, but doesn’t grind that finely.  A friend of mine has used hers quite extensively, and generally likes it a lot.  Best price I found was $114.  If you think you’ll use it a lot, this money well spent.  The one bad thing is that it is attached to a piece of wood, not a sturdier metal clamp, and I’ve heard of them breaking.  But still, it is pretty good.  It can also be electrified, which means you can buy one mill and use it either way.

Riding up the price ranks a bit, I own a Lehman’s Best – and use it all the time.  We do like it quite a bit.  This is not reviewed on the Waltonfeed page.  It does require a bit of effort, but nothing too strenuous and has stood up to a lot of over-enthusiasm by the kids.  It is easy to clean and pleasant to use, and substantively cheaper than the next mill.  I think it is the best and most reliable of the middle priced mills at about $180 - I see no reason why mine won’t last a long time.  As far as I’m aware, Lehmans is the only place that sells these, but I could be wrong about that.  I really like my mill.

I don’t know how it compares to the Country Living Mill, but from the reviews, the CLM is a fairly substantive step up, and if you have the money to throw around (the best price I’ve seen is $365), probably well worth it.  My friend Tom at Sustainable Choice (ad on the sidebar) also sells them, (this would be that potential bias thing ).   I couldn’t find anyone who owns one – but all the reviews I’ve read say it is a nice, nice mill.  I think if you have physical limitations but want to hand grind, this might be a good choice.  I also haven’t been able to get ahold of a Diamant mill – the near-$600 price range apparently being a barrier in my neighborhood.  But I think I’m going to take the Waltonfeed reviewer at their word, and accept that it is pretty much as good as the Diamante, for $200 less.  And if you are going to grind all your own grains in perpetuity, the CLM is probably a good investment, assuming you can afford it.

 There are other grinders out there, but none of them seems to be good enough to bother with compared to others in their price range.  I’d recommend if you can that you save up and get the best grinder you can afford within the parameters you are likely to make use of. 

If you can’t afford a grinder, is that the end of the world?  No, I don’t think so.  You can store more rice, make bulghur and store some flour.  But it is a nice thing to have and it opens up your options a good bit.

Ok folks, tomorrow more on tools and organizing!

 Sharon

• Classes , Food Storage , tools
• Comments(19)