BOB, GHB, SGB, SOB

Bug Out Bag,
Get Home Bag,
Stay Gone Bag,
Start Over Bag,
How many bags are there?

Yesterday I started getting my Bug Out Bag together. Opening every drawer and cabinet I looked for items I might need in a 72 hour evacuation situation.

When I was younger I carried a similar bag everywhere I went and I never called it a Bug Out Bag. I called it my emergency kit. It came in handy several times while out on the road with an old pickup that would put you to walking at a moments notice. Back then there was no such thing as a cell phone. You just got out and walked home.

This new fad to have a bag for every event that life can throw at you is exhausting. If I had a bag for everything, then I would have nothing left in the house to come back to. Can you be prepared for every event and if you can, would you be able to have the time to sift through and grab the right bag for that event? The only reason I would have to evacuate from this place is storms and fires.

So after pulling whatever I could find from the shelves that I thought the family would need to live on for a 3 day outing, I wanted to see what other people put in theirs. I found a great website that showed pictures of different bags and the contents within them. I soon found out that I needed a lot more than I could scrounge up from around the house. Plus I quickly realized my bag was not big enough. What I did not know was that there is more than one bag you need to have.
The Get Home Bag is a bag that stays in the vehicles so you can get home. The Stay Gone Bag is for if you evacuated your house to live in a compound you have already built somewhere else. The Start Over Bag is when you just wonder off in the woods to start a new life. Each bag having different items for that purpose.

Here is the way I am gong to do it. I already have all the stuff to get me home from work in my truck and it's not in a bag. The items are in every nook and cranny that I can find. You might could say the truck is the bag. The one problem with that is if I can not drive home then I will have to grab what I can carry with me leaving the rest. It's not but a days walk from work to home.
My personal truck is the same way. It has whatever I need in it. I do have a small bag under the back seat I can stuff things in if need be to get back home and ditch the truck.

I am not going to do a SGB or a SOB. Everything in the BOB and the items in the truck will do the trick for extended stays if need be. I still need to get a few things like ponchos, tube tents, thermal blankets, collapsible water cans, collapsible fishing pole, 100 more rounds of ammo and some MREs and energy bars, but if I had to get out now I think I could manage just fine without all those bags to have to worry about.       

Where is Your Spot?

 I found this website a while ago and did the survey. It asked a few questions and then gives you your top 25 places you would most want to live. My # 1 spot is Mount Airy North Carolina. That is a long way from this hot and dry North Texas. You might enjoy seeing how far you are away from the spot you want to be at the most. findyourspot.com

With the combined gardens of mine and my mom's, we were able to get enough cucumbers to justify heating the house and make pickles. The wife spent a few hours cutting and canning enough dill pickles to last over a year. 
I love that smell.





The gardens are having a real ruff time making it in this heat. I cannot put enough water on them to keep the plants alive. An hour after watering I can dig down an inch or so and hit dry ground. It does not matter how long I let the water run. I think next year I am going to bury the soaker hoses about three to four inches into the ground and then that might keep the soil moist longer.
I went ahead and pulled up some unproductive pepper plants and threw them to the chickens. The little hens had a field day with all those green leaves. These plants were not making many peppers anyway and the ones they did make were dried up before they got ripe.

It is to hot to do much outside today so I plan to get my Bug-Out-Bag together and ready. Now I just have to find it.
(That's funny)  

733 Miles Part 2

Sorry it took so long to get back to part 2 of this series. It has been really busy around here since we got back from out little trip.
For the blogs I follow, I do apologize for not being able to leave as many comments as I should, but hopefully things will slow down a bit and I can get back to reading and commenting again.

Part 2
The first part was about the blog meet and the girl going to college and this part is is about the trip and what we did.
Being a native Texan I feel it is my duty to learn as much as I can about this great state. I am ashamed at the fact the first time I saw the Alamo was when I was in my early thirty's but never the less I did see it.

Next on the list was Washington on the Brazos which is what we did this week. It is the birth place of Texas and it is where the Deceleration of Independence from Mexico was drafted and signed.     
We also had to prove that the wife is a direct descendent of one of the signers and she got a t-shirt and is registered with the Daughters of the Republic of Texas now. 




There is not much to this little town but the history of just walking in the foot steps where Sam Huston and many other famous Texans did is enough to put you in aww.
This building is Independence Hall where all the delegates met to read the Deceleration and vote on it.   
If you are into History and like a good story on how Texas came to be, then this is the place to be.


After the tour of Washington on the Brazos I put on my work boots and got my gloves because it was time to work on the farm.
I have been gitty about this for a week and told the wife that is I did not get to do anything else but work the team of oxen, I would be happy.
The hype was all for nothing. It was in the off season and the farm was all but shut down. The half drunk guide saw my disappointment and took us on a tour anyway.
The first place we stopped was the chicken pen. He proceeded to tell me all about chickens and when he was done I told him his chickens are sick and how to cure them. He would not hitch up the oxen for me and most of the buildings were under construction so we did not get to go in them.
I did get to do some wood working but I showed little enthusiasm doing so.
He talked as if he farmed hundreds of acres and when I asked him is this all the fields he had, he just lowered his head and said yes.
On our way out he said he needed to get back to the chicken pen and do some work on it. I perked up and asked if I could help and he said no.
Big, big disappointment. They advertise it to be a place to come and live like your ancestors did so that's what I was going to do. All it is, is a tourist attraction.

A days ride on horse back away we found the Fanthrop Inn. You need to look this one up. A unbelievable story of a guy that came from England and lived the dream. This is on the way to Washington on the Brazos and everyone stopped here before heading on in. Sam Houston had his own room here and three presidents had slept here.

 This was fine dinning. A servant would stand outside the window and pull on the rope that made the fans move back and forth to keep you cool and to keep the flies off ya while you ate. That's living right there.
Everything in this Inn is original items from the 1840's and 50's that were used in the Inn.
A must see.    





Besides the working farm, it was a good trip. I love history and learning everything I can about it. On this trip I got to learn quite a bit of the not so normal stuff you learn out of a book.
I am not sure the wife liked it as much as I did though.    

733 Miles Part 1

I have much to say and not enough time to say it in and you probably don't want to read that long of a post anyhow so I am going to break it up into a couple of posts.

Part #1.
733 miles round trip is what we finally drove. I averaged 14.8 miles to the gallon and maintained a blistering average speed of 45.9 MPH. That is over a course of three days on the highway, through the city and off in the back roads. I am wore plumb out.
In part two I will tell yall about the Amish village I was at and some of the things we got to see and learn but in this quick post I want to talk about the Blog Meet and the Girl.

Monday we took the tour of Texas A&M and learned some really good stuff about the university I never knew. They are big on symbolism and deep meanings on just about everything your see. For instance, Rutter tower is built 11 stories tall because that was the same height Doctor Rutter and his men had to climb during an invasion in WW11. Things like that are all over the campus dating all the way back to the 1800's. It is a real privilege that my daughter will now be part of that living history.
The girl stayed on campus in a dorm room for her first time while the wife and I stayed in luxury at the Hilton. I could never afford the room we we in but with the new Aggie parent discount, they made it as affordable as a motel 6 so we did it.

As we went our own ways Monday night I guess it kinda hit me that the girl will be living here and not with me for the first time in her life and it was at that moment I think I made a huge mistake.
I have prepped her her whole life for this moment but never took the time to prep myself. I don't know how I am going to just drive away next month and let her start her life without me there. I don't know how to deal with this at all. Parents do this all the time so why is this so hard?
We all want our kids to do better than we did and I know in the end this will be the best thing she could ever do. Not that my life has been bad but I do not want her to hang around this one horse town and marry some dirt farming redneck like her momma did. We have had way to many struggles in life and this girl is way to smart not to make a big name for herself.
In the end if she is happy by doing what her momma did, then I will be happy for her but in the meantime, she needs to do this herself and know she is somebody without having somebody to take care of and then always wonder what could have been. I just wished it could be closer.

Tuesday night after some site seeing, the wife and I met up with HossBoss from womanrunswithhorses and her hubby Yeoldfurt. She says it was a blog meet and I guess she is right.
After reading about a persons life for over a year now I already new them and though of them as friends. I just have never met them. I probably over thought this meeting way to much but I was kinda nervous because I did not know if I needed to live up to the Redneck image or try and sound more educated and proper.
All my worries went out the window in the first 30 seconds when the two women teamed up and started to harass us two men folk.
I knew I was in good company when I was made fun of using a knife and fork, together at the same time so I finally gave into formalities and just used my fingers. Over the next three hours the blogs only came up a few times and most of the conversations were focused on getting to know one another on the stuff not blogged about.  She puts it in better words than I do so you will have to read hers to get a better understanding of the blog meet.
We had them as internet friends but now they are good friends with a life long connection.  We plan to make several more trips down there over the next few years and plan to meet up again.

Is that crazy or what? I guess the people who read our blogs in this little circle we all have are a lot closer than we think. Like it or not, you people are stuck with me and I hope one day I get to meet you all.
           
           

On Our Way

Old Tires

You know if you have an old tire and it keeps going flat on you. You put in several cans of Fix-A-Flat and it has so many plugs in it you find yourself pushing in a plug next to another one and airing it up hoping it will get you to town and back. That's kinda like my AC. We did get it going again by patching a patch that had been patched. The unit will have to be replaced eventually but for now we are replacing non working parts with wore out parts to keep it running till fall.

For the past two mornings I have been going over to my dad's with my buddy Dave and my youngest girl to put the roof back on the barn that blew off in the storms we had a month or so ago. Let me tell you what, you might think your all that but when you have to hold up boards and a 20 pound nail gun standing on a 3'X3' platform attached to the front of a tractor 20' in the air, at the end of the day even your butt cheeks hurt.
It was just in prep for what I plan to do on Tuesday I guess.

I would have taken the camera but I didn't want it to get hurt. 

Not Enough And Getting Worse

It reached 106 degrees today and my AC is on the fritz once more. I have the repair man coming out in the morning, again, to asses the situation. If I had the money to fix it right in the first place then we would not be having all these problems. We have been patching a leaky hole with bubble gum so to speak.
This would not be that bad but I am needing the money for the A&M trip next week so maybe we can patch it one more time before winter and that would give me enough time to save up for a new unit.

On a good note, we are doing our best to keep the animals cool and alive and so far it is working. The gardens are just about to give up the fight though. I water them day and night and the soil is dusty an hour after I water. I might end up having to build a hoop house over all the raised beds just to keep the Texas sun off them.
I have done this nasty heat for 40 years now and I am just about done with it.

No pics today, nothing outside looks good enough to take pictures of anyway.     

It's Funny Like That

I tell you what's funny. I got more comments on yesterdays post on doing nothing than the post on a project I worked on day and night for several weeks. All I can do is chuckle and scratch my head on that one.

It is back to work for three days and off for another five. Next week is the week I prove to myself I have what it takes to live the way they did back in 1833. They may try and hurt me making the adventure only last a few minutes or if I can man up and take it, it may last all day. Either way I plan to enjoy every minute of it and try and learn a thing or two.
I have seen and read about places kinda like this where you can go and live for a few weeks and learn. I think it was a place called Rabbit Run or something like that but I cannot remember. From what I can recall, it is a ban of hippies living in the sticks and live off nothing but renewable energy and only using what they grew on the farm. It was part of the green movement. I guess they get there money from having workshops and people pay to learn. I would do it. 
They came up with several things I liked.  The grain silos they converted into houses was one of them. What I did not care for was the fact they used there own poo for fertilizer. Yes it was composted down and done right but I just don't see it. It was had enough to get the girls to use the outhouse much less have them go in a bucket with sawdust.  Never the less, I would like to try living 100% green for a while, I could improve the Mini Farm so much if I got the chance to learn and live that way.

Try and stay cool tomorrow.

Days Off

I hope everybody had a great holiday. It was a hot one here but end the end everyone had a good time, ate plenty of good food and everyone got home safe.

For some reason my work decided to take today off with yesterday and make it a four day weekend. Believe me I am not complaining but it is to hot to do much outside so I am only wanting to get out early in the morning and late in the evening. Last night I worked up until 9:30 and early this morning I got some fence repair done. Other than that is has been laying around and watching movies and relaxing.

I have really been wanting to do some research on some things but have been to lazy to even read. I was wanting to find out how long a earth oven would last while out in the weather. They all say you have to do routine maintenance on them anyway, but nobody says if they last out in the open where they can get rained on or if you have to put a cover over them.
If I have to do all that then I will just make mine out of fire brick and concrete instead of having the thing melt away in a rain storm.

I think I am going to go ahead and make the outdoor kitchen for the simple reason of seeing if it will all work together. In the event I move in a few years, I will then be able to adjust the areas and add or subtract items as needed to make it the most productive and useful outdoor facility it can be. Plus, I am getting tired of messing with chickens all the time.     

Secret Project Completed

After several weeks of working on the Secret Project, it is now completed. 64 pages of Redneck Cooking right here all bound together and made available to you. Colored photos and the whole nine yards.

This is my first attempt at doing anything like this and I really enjoyed it. I had a hard time stopping and deciding on what to put in it. I could have filled so many more pages but the price was getting bigger and bigger so I decided to stop at 64. This is not your normal run of the mill Cookbook that was edited by some some professional that you would find on the shelves at the store. These are my own pictures and my own words put together for others to enjoy.


This is a first in a series. The next one will be "Open fire Cooking" 

You can pick one up at  Modern Day Redneck Cookbook   

I don't Think You Belong To Me

 This little hen jumped up on a few goose eggs about a month ago thinking they were hers and look who joined the party yesterday. She has to be wondering how in the heck did this happen..

Redneck Thought Of The Day

I was listening to a Christian radio show this morning and the host got me to thinking.

If a Gay gene was to be found and it was proven that you are born that way and a pregnant woman carrying a baby with the gay gene decided to have an abortion, would the gay activists demand the ban on abortions and would the government then recognize it is a baby because it's gay?

Just a thought.