Grid Down Tips and Tricks to Get By: Part 1

[Music] hello friends hiding here from rain country god is good all the time and yes even now and here we find ourselves in the middle of that situation that many of us have been preparing for for many years but hoped would never come so I thought it would be a good idea to start talking about a few things if you haven't started doing it yet that you can do for yourself likely with stuff that you may already have on hand even if you were a last minute buyer trying to stock up on things and if there's time you some of you may still have the ability to get a hold of a few things whether it be in your local stores or online because these are some things that aren't flying off the shelves right now and so I recommend you know don't don't over purchase leave stuff for everyone else as they figure it out too but I do I'm gonna mention a few things I recommend you get now if you still have the ability to get it or even order online through Amazon I actually want to start off first with vinegar and yes I know I have a ton of videos out there but we have a lot of new followers that may not know and have totally new to vinegar making and why would I talk about this what would the purpose be well there's gonna be a lot of things that you're not going to be able to get for some time and vinegar at the store may be one of them especially if you're totally quarantined and can't get out but you can make your own homemade vinegar very easy and I have a good many videos on how to do it I also have a video on what it is good for and one of the great things you can use it for is for cleaning so let's say you can't get any other cleaning supplies because you can't get out or they're not available homemade vinegar will work if you do it right now I'm not going to go through all of the details here but I'm gonna get a bat started showing you how I do it and I will also link down below to one of my more recent vinegar making videos so I'll and also throw a few tips out now because the way I do I've been doing it for the past couple years is different than when I first started my chance because I've learned a better way so what I'm going to do here is I'm gonna start yet another batch of citrus vinegar now we managed to get a hold of some more oranges before everything was gone and even some grapefruits and so what I'm doing right here is I'm putting the peels from the oranges into my jar here these ones look a little dried out because they're actually from last night I was waiting for today and so this is one thing you can do if you have any citrus fruit this is one of the best cleaning vinegars I make right here but you can do it with anything so any kind of scraps that you have pretty much but you do have to have sugar if you're if you're adding stuff like maybe the peels themselves aren't going to be very high in sugar then what you're going to need to add to your jar is at least a quarter cup of sugar and up to a half cup especially if it's something that's a very low sugar content like herbs and things like that because you can make you can make vinegar out of your garden grown herbs and flowers in fact I think the video I'll link to is the calendula vinegar down below made with just calendula and sugar and water and so you don't really you don't want to go over a half cup of sugar if you put in too much sugar it's gonna slow down the ferment process and may never start and it may just end up being way too syrupy and that's not gonna work for a cleaning vinegar and so to this I'm just gonna fill this up most of the way with water and I'll explain why in a minute white only most of the way all right and then the next thing you're gonna want to do is just stir that really good so you can get a long spoon or chopstick preferably something not metal but if it's stainless steel it's gonna be totally fine stainless steel is non-reactive non-conductive you don't have to worry about killing any kind of ferment so just stir that sugar in there it doesn't matter if it doesn't if it doesn't fully dissolve it will dissolve in time and then take a cloth and put it over it like that and now the reason I'm not filling it up all the way with water is as we eat some more of our citrus fruits and we have lemons too I'm going to be putting the peels of that in there and adding to it until I've got the jar completely full so that means later today when I have a couple more oranges or Patrick has a grapefruit take those peels and stick them right in there with that now what I have here is a batch of mango vinegar I just started yesterday because Patrick had to go into town again the other day because we really needed new tires on our bigger truck and we knew we'd better not put it off any longer because we don't know when we'll be able to get into town again and so while he was there because the tire shops right next to the Costco he decided to go in there and just you know see if there was anything that we could use and you know some of it's just luxury items that we don't really need but he knows I like mango so he grabbed me some of those mangos and so what I've been doing is taking the peels and the pits as I've been eating them and throwing them in some water and yes still with some sugar even though mangoes are high in sugar and getting getting this started so it's not bubbling yet because I only just started it yesterday it probably won't really see any bubbles until at least tomorrow or the next day but you still want to make sure with your vinegars especially once they start bubbling you want to make sure that you stir them daily even if it's only every other day that's not so bad but don't let it go for too long what that's gonna do that's gonna prevent mold from developing on the top though that's not really that big the deal some people forget their vinegars and they say oh no I got mold on it what should I toss it out no it's fine just when it's all done just just carefully lift all that off the top strain it out it'll be fine any mold that gets in your vinegar will be killed by the vinegar itself once it's done now I have several more jars in the other room because now I'm getting to the point where I've got a lot going and so I've only been keeping one jar at a time these two will stay out here now because I'm going to add a little bit more mango to that one even though it's probably good I probably should just leave it it looks pretty full but I'll be out any more peels to that so I leave them in here until I got it full then I move it into the other room and then at least if I have one out here I'm reminded I need to go in there and stir the other ones too so when I stir this one I go off in the other room and stir the rest of them so right now I got all citrus except for this mango one I've got all citrus vinegars going eventually I'll be starting as my herbs come in I'll also be starting some herb vinegars as far as the sugar you use the best sugar to use it's going to be a blind cane sugar you can use white if you want just make sure it's not beet sugar but if that's all you have in storage that's better than nothing especially if you're using it to make a cleaning vinegar so you have something to clean your countertops and even do your laundry with without in mind if you don't have bars to soap on hand and you're worried about a limited supply or not being able to get any now it's the time to start making your own I have a lot of videos on soap making and if you can't get your hands on soap molds you can use a cardboard box and line it with you know like a little small cardboard box or it could even be like a cream cheese when those big cream cheese boxes or anything it comes in a in a long narrow box will work just line it with wax paper and do it that way it will work I've seen people do this I think Barre prepper I don't even know if she's doing videos anymore but she has an old video out on making soap and in just wax paper line boxes you can check out my soap making videos again I'll make sure I link to at least one of them down below having some lye on hand is going to be important I actually just went ahead and ordered some more off Amazon today this is my favorite one to use and now while supplies are it still available to you you can do this if this is not available or you can't order online but you can still have somebody or yourself get into your local store go to your hardware section or your dedicated hardware store and see if they have any of this on here this as long as it says 100% line it'll work just as well as this will so you don't have to have any fancy soap making labelled luck lye I just like this one because it comes in the bigger containers and I it seems to come out to be about the same price as buying this in the store I could be wrong but whatever I mean this will work I've used this for making soap before it's all really the same thing it's sodium hydroxide so as long as your drain clean says 100% line is good enough it'll work so you'll still need some kind of fat though some kind of oil coconut oils my favorite to use lard is a great one if you have buckets of lard on hand or even if you have some kind of towel you know you're cooking some beef and you have all that strain off that fat and use that you can use that to make soap I've never done it that way but I know I could if I had to but I have plenty of coconut oil and even some lard that I bought specifically for soap making because lard is a some lard is a little cheaper than getting coconut oil so you might even be able to get that lard in your local store and if you have that and some sodium hydroxide all you need to add to that is water to make your own soap but obviously you do have to follow directions and be careful because life will burn your skin and the fumes can be toxic so those are the two things you have to be careful with yeah and once you make your own soap you can also make your own laundry powder so all my laundry powder is made out of anymore I stopped using borax years ago because it weakens and breaks down elastic in your clothes so your underthings maybe even some of your socks are falling down that's why if you're doing the homemade stuff the borax so you know save your borax for soaking you know for washing clothes that don't have any elastic in them but anyway this is just the two ingredients homemade soap and washing soda so washing soda if you can still get it that's something I recommend getting a couple boxes and having that on hand I see a couple boxes cuz though I believe in stocking up you're at a point now that you may only be allowed to get one or two and you also don't want to buy out the whole store you want to make sure you're being considerate of other people that are in need because maybe they also waited till the last minute yes some of us may say well we told them they shouldn't wait until last minute but you know what again we got to be kind and considerate and be compassionate and realize that for whatever reason they made their excuses yes now they have to live with it but let's still do our best to try to help and teach these people and that's why I'm doing this right now is to talk about things that you can do if you're still trying to learn various things there's a couple different kinds of washing soda you can get but it is different than baking soda baking soda will work in a pinch you can use baking soda washer clothes but washing soda is stronger it's going to work better we find ours actually in the hardware section in our local store but some of you might be able to find it in the laundry section or again you might be able to still get it on Amazon online or maybe some other places maybe even Walmart online so once you made your soap you can also make your own laundry soap doing that now if you don't have access to any of these things then we come back again to the vinegar vinegar you can do quite a bit of cleaning with vinegar you had to you can wash your laundry with just vinegar it'll disinfect and it will remove odors that's one really great thing about vinegar especially if you're making a nice smelling vinegar like one made out of your lavender flowers or your your citrus peels like I have going on here it's going to help add a little extra scent to that another thing to consider is if you didn't stock up on yeast learn how to make a fermentation starter because yes you can use your fermentation starter to make bread I've done it before I still fall back on my dry yeast because it's easier I don't have to give it more time and I do still get a fluffier bread but if you're wanting a yeast type bread your fermentation starter will work I do have a video out on that it's old and I sometimes I get real light fluffy breads and sometimes they're heavier because this is something that's alive it's going to act differently every time and your your various different ways of dealing with it and your temperature and all the different things you're working around will have an effect but bread is bread whether it's heavy or it's light it's still bread and it's still gonna be something it's better than nothing so a fermentation starter is something you can make out of pretty much anything that you have any kind of fruit whether it be freeze-dried dehydrated or fresh I've used all to make fermentation starters so this was started with raisins this one here was initially started with freeze-dried raspberries but then eventually I also added some when I went to make the wine I use some of the pulp the blackberry wine from the blackberries that we had frozen and threw into the fermentation starter here the raspberry one just to give a little more fruit so if you want to learn how to do this again I have the video a very lengthy one I have several but I have one that's very lengthy that should answer most of your questions about the fermentation starter I will link to that one down below and all this stuff back here the newspaper and all this I'm getting ready to make a couple more batches of soap I made two yesterday so I just left this out cleaned up my instruments and then just let them sit here because I plan on making two more batches today for the time being I will still be selling some of my soap on the store but I don't know how long I'll be doing that because I might be wanting to hang on to some of that for ourselves but for now I will still be putting some up let's talk about the wipes for the toilet now when I did that video when I talked about a couple of different herbs you can use in replace of toilet paper and I talked about using the toilet wipes I had totally forgot to mention the option of a water wash you know some people are just talking about using soap and water some people some people have bidets or making their own kind of homemade bidets whether it be with a squeeze bottle some kind of sprayer these are really good options too so in that video I did if you're interested I'll go ahead and link down below because there's a lot of great comments in there where people talk about what they do and what they will do and and how they wash their wipes and different things like that but in that I talked about how I've been using my own cloth wipes for years but only for urination and knowing that eventually I would be I would just move on to using making bigger ones and just doing it that way if the need arises now we don't need at this time to use the cloth wipes for all jobs but after reading the comments under that under that video I decided you know what I'm gonna go ahead and do it now I'm just gonna go ahead and do it and just like I thought I'm liking it much better than toilet paper I made a whole bunch of ten inch squares and I am using a colloidal silver spray that I put essential oils in there I have two different ones I have one in each bathroom this one has orange and clove essential oil the other one has the time oregano and rosemary and no it doesn't burn because it's very well you know it's very well mixed into the colloidal silver so what I do is I simply take the wipe like this it's actually a 10-inch square that I keep folded in half this way I spray it down really good on each side I use the one side then carefully fold it over and then use the other side and that's good right there so I don't even have to use two and obviously I'm not gonna wash these with our clothes now some people do some people wash them with their clothes because if you're doing it right it should be clean and disinfected and shouldn't bother any of your clothes but for some of us the idea just we're still a little bit squeamish about our using these kind of things and washing them with all the clothes especially things like kitchen rags and towels just doesn't seem like a great idea even if we believe that everything we do is killing off the bacteria just something about it just seems a little nasty so I so far have done one load of my wipes and they turn out fresh from right from the washing machine there was no smell we have Sun right now so I went ahead and hang hung them up in the Sun and of course that that's going to kill any more any bacteria that may be remaining in there and any odor but here's what I did I use my own homemade laundry powder and I used my vinegar as well so the vinegar is really great to put in your rinse cycle in that way now quite a few people mentioned using peroxide in the wash that is a good option however for us you know we have quite a bit of peroxide on hand because we've just always been that way we've had a lot of peroxide and isopropyl alcohol but at the same time with such limited supply that might be something you're going to want to save for other things for more important things your vinegar is going to work just fine it's going to disinfect it's going to deodorize so I recommend saving if you have any peroxide hang on to it for medical things and then use your homemade vinegar for washing these so the only real difference I did was even though it was a small load I just want went ahead and washed it the full length time heavy soil if you have an efficient washing machine that senses just how much is in there it's not going to be a waste of water just wash it the same way I do all my the rest of my laundry so my homemade laundry soap and the vinegar and they came out smelling fresh and clean and then a worst-case scenario you don't have any any kind of laundry soap no way to make it you do you should have a way to make your own homemade vinegar it does take a month though because you got to let it ferment for a whole month so get started on it now you can use that alone I've actually washed clothes in just vinegar alone including my homemade wipes so it'll work especially now that we're getting into nicer weather a lot of you don't get the rain we have so you might have a lot more opportunities to hang your stuff out and in the Sun so that it can really get deodorized and sanitize that way so one thing you can do is you can save washing those things for days where it's actually sunny and look out it's going to be sunny wash that stuff out get it hung out on your line if you don't have a clothesline let yet you're gonna need to fabricate one it can be as simple as tying some paracord or some kind of smaller rope from one thing to another I have actually two clotheslines outside one is actually an old-fashioned one I found at a antique store and I I can actually roll it up and then that one's on my deck so that we can get it out of the way when we need to and then the other one is strung permanently across the backyard behind on the far side of our big garden so I use both and of course you know some of you know they've been following us for a while I always hang the clothes to dry I have actually two clotheslines inside my house pretty much permanently they're there all the time and they're in front of our fireplace so on days where it's raining that's where I'll hang it but I can also hang some stuff in my greenhouse before the tomatoes get too tall I'm very happy with this I don't actually see myself going back to toilet paper at all I mentioned the greenhouse one more thing I want to throw out there if you haven't started gardening yet start thinking about it now get your seed started now right here what I have is just one of my little pots of tomatoes from Tomatoes I grew last year I dried the slice I put a slice in here kept it watered just grew I didn't use any extra light no extra heat just grew it right growing right there I have a whole bunch of these pots just growing them right there in front of our front south-facing window and I'm going to be putting these probably today into bigger pot all I do this is just the simplest method and what works best for me I just take the whole bunch put it in a bigger pot just like this and then let it grow in the greenhouse like that until I'm ready to put them in the ground and then I will separate them out and then put them in the ground for now I like to keep the chickens running in and out of there as much as possible tilling things up fertilizing the soil and also it gives them a dry place to hang out when we're having our heavy spring rains and so that works really good so I'll be able to put these in at least a bigger pot at the time and then they'll go on the ground now before I close out this video I want to say I have 3 to 4 weeks worth of videos still coming out that we recorded before things went crazy like they are now so keep in mind that includes different this and that videos all of my older videos that have been ready to publish are going to keep getting pushed out farther and farther because I want to try to get these ones out that I think are more important for this time out to you as soon as possible way I have a lot of videos out on making meals from food storage why because oh that's most of my meals they come from whatever we already have in food storage so if you've already got a good pantry of good food storage whether it be freeze-dried frozen dehydrated what a canned foods whatever it is you should be able to make good hearty meals for yourself and your family with whatever you have oh and before I forget we do still have colloidal silver generators at this time it's getting harder and harder for us to get parts and they're getting more expensive so we did have to raise them up a couple of dollars apiece but we are still able to get some stuff right now so we're still getting those made and getting them put up on the store they do sell out pretty quickly but we I think we got ourselves far enough ahead we might be ok for a little while but I don't know how long we'll be able to keep getting parts to do this so if you haven't got your generator yet go ahead and check out our Etsy store it's always linked in the description box down below and also in one of the end screens you'll see a little red flower pop up that's our Etsy store you can just click on that red flower it take you right to it if you're interested in getting a generator you can also use it for making colloidal copper or even colloidal gold that I've never done that before and if you haven't got some silver bars yet I recommend going to silver dart comm people are finding they can't find those silver rods that I'd link to before on Amazon it looks like they're all selling out but you might still be able to get your silver bars I did actually go ahead and order up a couple more to add to our stash because having some silver on hand is always a good idea all right well I hope you're finding this these videos like this helpful more will be coming thanks for watching take care and God bless [Music]

Channel: Rain Country

Views: 32,113

Rating: 4.9675384 out of 5

Keywords: traditional, old-ways, Health, Garden, Frugal, Homesteading, Self-Sustainability, Cooking, DIY, Homemade, natural-living, herbs

Id: PKXyl6zcclY

Length: 23min 0sec (1380 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 22 2020