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Math Doesn’t Lie, Even For Housing
House prices as listed by Realtors are now OBSCENE. I mean that. Outright Psychopathic – not merely Psychotic, but Evil, Cruel, Insane, Brutal, Psychopathic.
You are told that every house sells fast. You are told that they sell for outrageous prices (and they do, but not what you think). You are told there are no affordable rentals or sales.
You are being lied to. We are seeing for sale signs for YEARS in front of houses. Outrageous prices are 1/5 of the list price, NOT the list price. There ARE affordable houses, but no way to find them.
There are metrics that EVERY community has to have. If they do not have them, the community COLLAPSES.
The Median Household Income in MOST areas of the US is around $50k. The Census Bureau reports it at $74k and DECLINING. But they SKEW the number to make it higher, by eliminating everyone on Public Assistance (this eliminates about 3/5 of people who are under the Poverty Level, and this accounts for the adjustment). Other experts insist that the Median Household Income for the US is actually closer to $41.5k if you adjust for some housing issues (basement rented to family, two families, two households, counted as one), and some additional income issues (counting earnings from outside the US while residing outside, counting some kinds of savings payouts as income, etc).
So the metric is this:
MEDIAN housing prices (for a basic, comfortable 3 br house) HAVE to be available at 1/100 of TWICE the Median Household Income. That means $1000 per month. For a 3 BR.
Currently they tell you you cannot even get a shabby 2 BR for that, and many places want you to believe this will get you a Studio apartment (often a remodeled strip motel room). They’ve been pushing this one for a LONG LONG time, and we are too used to rents hurting.
Median Single Earner Household Income is the next lynchpin. That runs at 3/5 of general Median Household Income – or $30k. That works out to $600 per month for a 2 br. Normal, average, sorta comfortable 2 br in liveable condition.
Now, this HAS TO EXIST. If it does not, you have NO minimum wage workers in your communities! You have no earners for less than about $20 per hour – they MOVE OUT because they cannot afford to live in the community.
MORE SO in College Towns, because young families with parent in school CANNOT AFFORD high priced housing, and in fact, Financial Aid just CANNOT go far enough EVEN WITH part time or even full time jobs! School is EXPENSIVE.
If you have no workers in this category, you lose EVERYTHING.
- You lose hotels.
- You lose Fast Food.
- You lose Grocery Stores.
- You lose gas stations and convenience stores.
- You lose local delivery.
- You lose carpentry, framers, roofers, home repair.
- You lose classroom aids, and MANY teachers.
- You lose DAYCARE ENTIRELY.
- You lose production line manufacturing workers.
- You lose road construction laborers – a few make more, but most not.
- You lose phone call centers ENTIRELY, and they move out.
- You lose ALL cashiers, bank tellers, and clerks.
- You lose office workers of all kinds.
- You lose lower to mid level government and corporate workers.
- You lose part time artisans and crafters.
- You lose agriculture – land prices skyrocket and they move on because they can’t earn enough to cover it. (Industry analysts say this one goes early.)
- You lose mechanics – most do NOT make big bucks, and those who DO make more than $20 per hour are the exception, and have worked their way up for a LONG time.
Once this begins, it CASCADES. You don’t just lose workers, you lose the BUSINESSES that depend upon them. First, they raise wages, and then, they close their doors.
It does not stop with low bar earners. It reaches into higher tiers because they OFTEN reside with a lower income earner, and they BOTH move out.
The next phase is that Services that a community NEEDS are no longer there.
Wealthy people leave first on the receiving end of things. They just WON’T stay in an area that does not offer conveniences.
The upper middle income leaves next. And once they go, EVERYTHING collapses.
This process rarely completes fully, usually a correction occurs, and housing opens up again. But in the mean time, it can get VERY ugly.
Now, there are various lies out there to “explain” this. It is different in every area, but here are two that we have heard:
- Rich people from Salt Lake and California are moving in here and paying half a million for a vacation property.
- Rich people are tired of Vegas and L.A (Houston, New York City, Miami, Chicago, Boston, DC, etc)., and are paying half a million for a property to relocate to. This one is regional, with a different city listed for each region.
- They are selling for AirBNB.
- There’s a factory coming in that is taking up all the housing for employees.
- Refugees are taking all the cheap properties.
- We are also told that houses “appraise” for ten times their value.
- That high interest rates are skewing the markets.
Lies. PROVABLE lies.
First off, there AREN’T ENOUGH RICH PEOPLE IN SALT LAKE AND CALIFORNIA to buy THAT MANY houses at THOSE PRICES. There aren’t even enough of them in the entire US to create a housing crunch in even a single community, let alone in the entire country. (And before we hear the myth that rich foreigners are buying them, you need to understand that rich foreigners don’t exist… Incomes in Europe average FAR lower than the average inside the US, and there are FEWER people living above what we class as poverty level, and FAR fewer living above OUR median income levels. When they buy outside of EU, they buy cheap condos or cabins, but mostly they rent hotel rooms for short vacations because they can’t afford to maintain a second house full time. There are not NEARLY enough of them to affect the housing prices here.)
Second, there aren’t ENOUGH RICH PEOPLE WHO WILL PUT UP WITH SMALL TOWN LIMITATIONS to relocate to the places in question here. They want a CITY. A BIG ONE. Not enough jobs in small towns and small cities to absorb THAT MUCH. Especially AT THOSE INCOMES. And there aren’t enough of them to affect a large town either.
Third, the incomes required here are ENORMOUS. They are in the top 0.000034% of earners in the US. Incomes over $2m per year are RARE, and that is what it takes to keep selling million dollar homes, and it works out to less than 500 people in the US who can afford them. Incomes of $1m per year are a 0.0026% factor. That works out to about 8666 people in the US with that kind of income, and that works out to about 173 per state, only 2% of whom WANT a second home, and even if you tip MOST of them over into a single location, it still is NOT ENOUGH to have more than a MINIMAL effect on a single location. There are not enough rich people to cause this in all the areas it is claimed for. There are even too few who make over $100k to have THAT KIND of effect nationwide, as is claimed, and there is NO WAY they are all going to go to the same place.
Fourth, they don’t buy an EXPENSIVE vacation property. They buy a CHEAP ONE. You can’t AFFORD two huge mortgages, you can only afford one, IF you can afford one.
Fifth, retirees also do not buy expensive. They buy cheap.
Sixth, AirBNB is NEVER a big thing, and it is NEVER lucrative. People don’t generally stay in private rented vacation homes, they stay in hotels. They are suspicious of private rentals for vacations, and they tend to NEVER pay for an entire house unless they overload it with extended friends and family, and leave it a mess. Owners of AirBNB (and former owners) tell terrible stories, and a very high percentage go into foreclosure or they either rent by the year or sell out entirely within 6 months. It just isn’t a way that you CAN make money due to how it operates and how people think about vacations and overnight or temporary rentals. Would you rent a house for $600 per night when you can get a clean hotel room for less than $100? Statistically, only ONE vacation house rents for every 300 hotel rooms. The market would be saturated in this valley with six rented homes, yet people say they are all selling for that… that half the homes here are AirBNB. Not possible.
Factories being talked about, moving into LARGE cities (they won’t locate elsewhere), only need an average of 40 employees. A few larger need as many as 200. NOT ENOUGH to even make a DENT in a fair sized city. 200 employees in a town of 100,000 are lost in the crowd. Heck, that many will have moved out as the new ones move in.
Refugees are the same as rich people. There just aren’t enough of them, and they are not living in low income properties, they are living in flop houses and shelters, and other places while they try to find someone to hire them. The life of a refugee is horrendous, and they lose sponsors as fast as they gain them. There just aren’t enough of them to affect the housing markets anyway, especially in cities that are not landing zones. This isn’t even an issue in Miami except in about three very small districts, and they are OBVIOUSLY racial communities.
Houses do not appraise for 10 times what the populace can afford to pay for them. They just can’t. Houses don’t sell when people make half the amount of the payment due on the mortgage. Crooked appraisers puff prices to keep the idea of high prices in play.
High interest rates do NOT increase prices of houses. In fact, they DECREASE them, because when interest rates are high, monthly payments and loan costs go UP. They go WAY up. An $800 payment can go to $1100 just from a significant change in interest rates. That means people HAVE to have LOWER housing prices to afford to live.
Even if ALL OF THE LIES WERE TRUE, it still is NOT ENOUGH to affect the entire nation, and we find that these lies are being told in EVERY CITY, and even in the small rural towns. It can’t be true everywhere.
Let’s do some of the math.
A half a million dollar home costs UPWARD of $5000 per month for the payments. We know this.
A $100k home is MEDIAN for a $50k income. And that is a $1000 per month payment.
Landlords and banks BOTH just won’t qualify someone on LESS INCOME for that payment. They REQUIRE $50k to get a $100k loan. If there are variances they are SMALL ONES, not huge ones, so you might get a $100k loan on $42k, but you WON’T get a $200k loan on $50k.
Now, let’s examine the meaning of Median.
It means the MIDDLE OF THE AVERAGE. That means SOME will be higher, and SOME will be lower, but the spread is NOT EVEN. Higher incomes disperse more, and the very high incomes are VERY INFREQUENT. The lower ones cluster in the survivable ranges, and about ONE THIRD have LOWER incomes than median, and about ONE THIRD have CLOSE to Median on either side.
People, there just AREN’T enough RICH PEOPLE in the WORLD to skew housing like you are being told.
So what IS happening?
I can identify only TWO factors that are not being talked about. And they are big.
- The internet is broken. Craigslist is broken, Etsy is broken, Ebay is scary twisted, Google is outright fraudulent and broken (search results are screwy messed up and way incomplete), online real estate listings are outdated and fraudulent, online rental listings are even worse. In short, you cannot look up ANYTHING accurate online for housing, especially rentals. The days of finding a house online are long gone.
- Print is broken. There are NO LISTINGS in newspaper classifieds for rentals. There are only puffed and outrageous pie in the sky real estate listings – the majority, by the way, WITHOUT PRICES (always an indication of a con).
This means that DEALS ARE THERE. But nobody knows where. Landlords have forgotten how to promote an available rental. You CAN’T find it except word of mouth, and even THAT is mostly broken. People have forgotten how to personally network.
What we get are Property Management Companies, and Realtors, both of whom are so screwy insane with greed and avarice right now that they JUST WON’T let you rent ANYTHING under “their pricepoint”. And that can be ANYTHING crazy high.
Some of the tricks they try:
- They will discount your income – eliminate many legit types of income from consideration as earnings, so you can’t qualify even for a low pricepoint.
- They charge an “application fee”, and that can be anywhere from $40 to CRAZY HIGH. We encountered one at $80, when they quoted $40 (then they tell us that it is for EACH ADULT). Non refundable. They disqualify you, sucks to be you, you just gambled $40 or more, and lost. And they KNOW they can just yank you and you will never know the truth of whether they already rented the place and just disqualified you to keep the fee. Yeah, it’s a thing. A BIG one. We consider application fees to be a scam, NO MATTER WHO CHARGES THEM (Yes, you, Century 21, and other major Real Estate companies.) This is also done by companies that HAVE NO RENTALS, they just make them up, and charge fees and disqualify. This is also done by Banks and Realtors for housing purchases, with the same spread of fraud and extortion.
- They bait and switch. $975 says the listing on their website. “Oh, that one is $1200.” they tell you. (True story.)
- They maintain OUTDATED listings. Everything affordable is still listed, but no longer available.
- They want you to fill out the application, but they are REALLY BACKWARD about scheduling a viewing of a rental. Sometimes happens with purchase, but tends to be “look at the outside we can’t let you in” version. Can we say, “Con”?
- They LIST the property at one price, and SELL it at another, and then report that it “SOLD” as a $— listing. The sale price is generally LESS THAN HALF of the listing price if it is one of those outrageously high priced listings. You think that you KNOW, because someone at the courthouse who files deeds says this is what is selling and they see it every day. But DEEDS NEVER LIST THE SALE PRICE. Neither does the purchase notice (essentially a bill of sale but without the price listed). It says, “for $10 plus other considerations”, rather than a full price listed. So “comps” you see are ALWAYS on LIST PRICE, and NEVER on SALE PRICE.
- Corruption is Rife. Realtors have been taken over by greedy leeches who believe that if they PRICE it high, they can FORCE YOU to pay more, whether you can afford it or not (with the irony that they won’t approve you anyway because your income is not high enough). Once one company starts it, the rest fold and go all in. The world is being run by people who disconnect their “neat idea” from the dysfunction it causes (how else can we explain Colorado’s current love affair with Roundabouts – I mean, we expect this kind of dysfunction in Great Britain, but NOT in America). Get a clue Realtors – you are NOT selling puffed properties like you think you can, and for many of you, NOTHING is moving. We are NEVER prepared to suffer THAT MUCH, to try to make an extortionate payment every month with eviction hanging over our heads if we fail, just so you can scrape 200% of a reasonable sale price. (Many versions of the high price scams, going from crooked breach of contract on sales where the owner gets ripped off, the buyer gets ripped off, and the realtor takes it out of the middle, all the way to involvement of crooked banks or bank loan officers. LOTS of criminal behavior, as well as just merely dishonest, as though there is something such as merely dishonest).
Work it out. The math HAS to work, or it is DECEPTION.
What we are being told is NOT TRUE, no matter who insists that it is.
But I suppose the high prices do have more gossip value than the real world. I am ever shocked at how many people would rather believe the lie than to apply some common sense and math to see the truth and possibly see a solution.
Ever Wonder About Those Corncobs?
“I’d like to subscribe to your newspaper, what is the cost?”
“It is a dollar a week. But tell you what. You drop a load of corncobs behind my outhouse and I’ll give you that subscription.”
“If I had corncobs I wouldn’t need your newspaper.”
This is an old joke, and we wonder about those cobs. Surely that would tear you up so bad it would not clean you at all! And that’s the truth.
They didn’t USE corncobs, they only CALLED them that. The corn was husked dry, and the kernels were rubbed out, leaving the cob with the husks attached. You had a bucket in the outhouse, and you filled it, cobs down, husks up. You took off HALF of the husks, and that was your TP. If you were the second user, you tossed the cob into the can after you tore the husks off.
That isn’t all they used. Outer cabbage leaves, dried flexible, were an option, as were lettuce leaves, dock leaves, elk cabbage leaves, maple leaves, and other large leaves that were not scratchy. Newspaper was used, and was preferred because it was a softer paper. But the Wards or Sears catalogs would do just as well (once the new one came out you could use the old one, if you were still using the catalog you had to tear out the pages you did not need and put just those in the outhouse, otherwise you just left the catalog, a double benefit if you were a reading stinker thinker). Once they went to those glossy paper catalogs though, they lost their appeal as an alternative to paying for TP. Some families still endured it though, and remember it as a sort of punishment.
In the winter, rags were cut up into 4″ squares, and left in the outhouse. SINGLE USE! So you needed a lot of rags for a thriving family.
We are so pampered to have soft paper, and we don’t even know it. We complain if we are forced to use what my family called “Elephant Wipe” (paper towels). We don’t think about the privations of yesteryear, if we even understand what they were!
There are so many things we hear of and we can’t begin to comprehend what it actually meant. Corncobs are just one of those things that is misinterpreted regularly.
Business Cards? Who Uses Business Cards?
Business cards are still a useful business tool. We don’t care WHAT Millennials tell us about marketing, just because they are disconnected, doesn’t mean the entire business world marches to their whims.
Business cards are still a standard, and good for so many things.
- Carry them on you, and hand them out when you get into a conversation that leads toward what you do. I’ve handed them out in the checkout line at the grocery store.
- Any time you set up a display for your business, carry them, and make sure they are available. If you bring other promos, let the Lookie Lous have the business cards. Hand out the more costly promos ONLY to those who seem like good prospects, if you get into a good conversation with someone. Don’t let the kids come buy and take them all, that doesn’t do you any good.
- If you beat the streets hunting work, a business card is essential, but that’s not the only thing we use them for.
- You can write a note on the back, when you get a question from someone, so they have the answer on a business card.
- Use them to share your phone number when the person does not have a phone – Yeah, there ARE people who don’t!
- Use them with a discount code on them, and write “pass this to a friend”. Drop them into every package you mail.
- Instead of printing a brochure or catalog, put a reference to it on your business card so they can access your website or a download link for a catalog.
- You can even set up a PDF of a sheet of your pass along discount card for your prospects to download and print.
- There are novel business card types, and various types of items you can sub for business cards to get attention, but be warned, they are ALL EXPENSIVE.
Business cards are not dead at all. They are still one of the FIRST Things you can create to promote your business, even if you have an online business.
If your business needs a boost, it just might be worth downloading a free copy of Serif Page Plus SE to whip out some snazzy new cards.
Turning Down the Unwanted Customer
With recent news regarding the infamous (and I mean it) bakery attack by individuals who cried that their rights were violated because the bakery owner denied their request for a “wedding” cake, I find that there is a commentary that NEEDS to be made. And a strategy that I have used, which is effective.
While the Supreme Court has ruled that it is NOT Constitutional to use the law to punish business owners who have denied service based on personal conviction (including religious conviction), where essential services are NOT an issue, this kind of attack is BOUND to happen again. Those who planned and carried out the first attack will undoubtedly try again, or others with the same agenda will do so, in an effort to find SOME kind of circumstance under which a direct denial based on moral grounds can be challenged, and profited from, through the courts.
I have thought long and hard about this. There is ONE way that I have found that I can REFUSE artistic or literary services (none of which are “essential” to anyone’s survival!), that they CANNOT refute. Because it is absolutely true.
It is this:
- I do not understand this product well enough to market it effectively.
Their response may be “You can learn.” Counter response:
- If I take the time to do so, it is not worth my fee.
If the prospect is trying to TRAP you, they may counter with “I will pay a higher fee to compensate.” The truthful response may be:
- If you pay me more, I still have to move aside other things in my agenda in order to study your target market, marketing messages, product philosophies, and to get inside the head of your prospective customer, and I do not have room in my schedule to do this.
This is perfectly true. I have NO time in my life to learn about the mind of a person who wants to engage in acts I find morally reprehensible. You may or may not wish to be FIRM about your refusal, but DO NOT try to JUSTIFY your reasoning or choice!
- I CHOOSE not to engage in a contract (or business transaction) with you, for that reason.
My words in this matter are completely truthful. I have used them when I have turned down customers selling addictive substances (legal), artwork that depicted subjects I could not appreciate, media that contained content I could not promote, and a few other prospective clients whose products contradict my personal beliefs.
It may be wise to finish with this, to avoid being accused of unkindness (which the attackers in at least one of this kind of court case tried to suggest of the defendant, who had in fact referred them to another provider):
- These people may be able to help you FAR better than I can do (referral).
The thing is, a little thought regarding YOUR business, can come up with a completely rational, and DEFENSIBLE reason to deny ANY customer where providing any product service which requires an act of artistic or literary expression. The beauty of this particular response is that it is absolutely true. I simply CANNOT throw my BEST work behind something I cannot comprehend. If they want the BEST work, they do not want it from ME, because I am not the person who can give them the best, at all!
It would be wonderful if our laws allowed us to post and act on the old “We reserve the right to deny service to anyone, for any reason.”, but courts have consistently ruled against SOME reasons, and even NO reason, saying that if you have an establishment offering goods or services to “the public”, that you have to serve ALL of the public. I cannot find that in the Constitution!
I think it is worth posting still, but I think you’d have to post it right at the door, in plain sight, with the following words added: “Your entrance into our establishment constitutes agreement to this policy.”. Legally, if you DO that, under strictest interpretation of precedent, then you are NO LONGER a “public” establishment, but an establishment that ONLY serves those who agree to your terms. The courts may not agree next year, or the year after, though.
You can also simply say, “No. I’m sorry.”, with NO reason given. But if you do, someone may STILL try to claim prejudicial action on your part. And the dumb thing is, there won’t BE any EVIDENCE that you have broken a law, or that you have harmed them in ANY way, but they may still win. That is the thing about such cases that has been contrary to United States law, and case law – no one was harmed. They were merely offended.
If this is likely to be a problem for you, in your line of work, then I challenge you to come up with a statement that you can use, in ALL HONESTY, to deny those for whom you cannot, in good conscience, provide a suitable product or service.
Fernbush Tea… Oy!
I’ve been discovering many new herbs and wild foods lately. Out foraging for what we can, I ID new things when possible, or go searching for things I’m already familiar with. It has been kinda fun, and we’ve discovered some real treasures.
Brigham Tea is ok. It needs sugar, but does not taste bad if prepared at very high temp (I pressure it). I went looking for that on purpose. That got me looking at bushes on the side of the road, the majority of which are rabbit brush and sagebrush, in varying tones of gray and gray green.
Then coming home one day I saw a green bush on the side of a back road. NOT sagebrush. Real green. So we came back later to get a better look.
A 2-3 ft bush, with leaf clusters running up each branch, that were beginning to sprout out. Each leaf cluster looked like a little fern plant – six or eight little fern like leaves in this perfect little arrangement.
I broke off a piece to take home and ID it. Once in the car, I noticed the leaves had a kind of nice perfumy smell. Well, on the surface. Very pleasant on first whiff. Running underneath that though, a distinctly yucky smell. Not something I can describe easily, but sort of heavily oily and with an edge of things rotted, and just barely resinous, and yet mellow at the same time. Odd, really, I’ve never smelled something that had two distinctly different odors about it, but this did.
I looked it up, identified it positively as Fernbush. I mean, how many bushes out there have such a distinctive leaf arrangement, growing in that particular habitat? No doubt about the ID. The descriptions often mentioned that the leaves were “fragrant”.
I then researched edibility (struck out), and medicinal use. Turns out it was traditionally used to make a tea for various purposes, recreational, ritual, and medicinal. Ok, I’ll bite. Some of the medicinal uses sounded like ones that might benefit me.
I made up a syrup (easier to preserve than tea). That resulted in a HEAVY and nauseating emphasis on the yucky smell. The perfumy part was still there, but overpowered and tainted by the other odor.
We tried a little. The taste was inidescribably foul – and yet I have to try. A neutral sweetness from the sugar and a bit of the perfumy at first (like tasting floral perfume), followed by a gagging yuck ending with a hit and run resinous grab at your tonsils, and then nothing. No lingering aftertaste. A small mercy!
This isn’t like Yarrow, or Hops, or even Calendula, where the sharp bitterness and awfulness that the bitterness just seems to encapsulate, where it yanks at your throat and stays there. Not that kind of yuck. Not the kind that turns your face inside out. and makes you cough and grab water.
This was very different. Like the difference between being wrapped up in unwashed coyote fur, compared to being sprayed by a skunk (the fernbush being the coyote fur, the skunk being Yarrow or Hops). This particular awfulness was more something that made you want to regurgitate your tongue. I did not know this particular force of yuck could exist!
I tried it with some vanilla added. And a little butter rum flavoring. Because they seemed like they would possibly dampen the yucky. They enhanced the perfumy side, but didn’t even DENT the icky part. Sort of like putting rotted cod liver oil on top of buttercream frosting, and being able to totally taste both flavors.
Still hoping to use it as a medicinal, I tried it mixed with a few other medicinal syrups. Oddly, when you try to make a good tasting substance out of that bush, you fail. Nothing you add to it seems to overpower the ickyness. But even more oddly, when I mixed it with about three other syrups (none of them any too pleasant, actually, they are all just tolerable to get down), the resulting blend was like most medicinal tea – not pleasant, but not horridly nasty either. Somehow, blending that yucky syrup with several other less than enjoyable flavors, resulted in something that was somewhere in the middle where medicinal experiences go!
I think that it bears experimenting with a little more, I will try the blossoms and see if they produce something more pleasant, and less unpleasant. For now, I can get the mixes down, and should know in a week or so, whether it is helping with the issues I am taking it for.
When I heard that it was sometimes used as a recreational tea, not just a medicinal tea, I somehow thought it would taste better, because I cannot honestly imagine that anyone would want to drink the stuff for fun, unless their noses don’t pick up on that second overpowering awfulness to the same extent that mine does. But Kevin smells it the same way I do, so it can’t just be me!
The cool thing is though, ANYONE can identify this bush, if they see it, wild, or in gardens. Whether or not they want to take a chance on the medicinal tea though, depends on how much they need it!
There IS NO Debate About Refugees
Everyone has an opinion about whether the US should “rescue” refugees or not, and the opinions seem to center on two basic topics – compassion, and safety.
The issues here are lengthy, and often distracting. Mostly distracting. Because the things you have been lead to focus on, are not the issues at all. A few loud voices have controlled the dialog, and carefully circumvented the facts.
I’ll try to break this down into some coherent sub-topics.
Compassion
If the government resettles refugees, that is not compassion. That is socialism. That is theft of American money, from American taxpayers, given to foreign entities. There is nothing compassionate about it.
Compassion is an individual thing. You feel it, sufficient to act upon it, GIVING OF YOURSELF (not taking from someone else, or ordering someone else to do it). If you do not decide to GIVE… PERSONALLY… YOU DON’T HAVE COMPASSION. You are only pretending.
So let’s stop the pretense that those who want the government to fix the problem, somehow have more compassion than those who want to stop the government from acting beyond the scope of immigration law.
Economics
Our nation is broke. Maybe you don’t realize this, but when you are so far in debt that you will never have the resources to get out of debt, you are broke! When your income exceeds your expenses year after year, and there is NO EFFORT to restrain or economize, YOU ARE NOT JUST BROKE, YOU ARE STUPID.
For our government to discuss SPENDING money to take on the upkeep of refugees here, is not only contrary to our law, it is unbelievably irresponsible, and CRUEL to the very people to whom this government owes its first allegiance – that is WE, THE PEOPLE… NO, that does not mean people from around the globe. No, that does not mean citizens of another nation. It means AMERICAN CITIZENS. We pay the tab. We come first. It is the duty of the government to see to the needs of its own house before aiding another (that is Biblical, for those Christians who want doctrine – it is just plain fair logic for those who don’t care about that).
If you are living in a house with a mortgage payment that is 3 months past due, and your bank is about to foreclose on you, then taking out a mortgage on another home so that you can fill it with refugees is REALLY DUMB. You don’t offer to pay for someone else to have a home while you and your own children are crying in the cold because you don’t have sufficient to pay for your own home. You see to the needs of your OWN FAMILY FIRST. Then you render aid wherever else you HAVE THE MEANS to do so, whether it be a dollar or five, or a hundred. OUR GOVERNMENT is under the same obligation.
This year, there will be no Cost of Living Adjustment for Seniors on Social Security. People who paid into a system, and to whom the government made promises. A system that would be self-supporting were it not periodically robbed by that same government to fund things unrelated to Social Security. To make a decision to not increase Social Security because “we don’t have enough money”, and then turn around and offer to pay welfare for refugees is senseless, corrupt, and inexcusable. If we do not have money to take care of those close to home, we certainly don’t have it for those whom we have no allegiance to!
Immigration Law
US immigration law requires that anyone coming to the US as an immigrant not be a drain on welfare resources for at least 5 years. They must be employable, or they must have a sponsor. Historically, recent immigrants were ineligible for welfare services – only those who had paid taxes IN were eligible to draw on the system. This is only fair and just.
Children may not immigrate without a home to go to. Orphans may be adopted, but the family receiving them must be able to show sufficient income to ensure that the adopted child will not draw upon welfare services for a 5 year period.
In a refugee situation, the powers of the US government have historically been limited to ONE decision only… That is, how many immigrants will they allow from each country, each year. In a refugee situation, they may increase the number allowed from that country.
In all cases, standard background checks are required, refugee or not, and immigrant law is not circumvented. So when the House currently seeks to require background checks on Syrian refugees, they are NOT asking for special treatment for them! They are only asking that CURRENT LAW be observed.
If immigration law were enforced, and not set aside, the government would NOT BE INVOLVED in any kind of debate at this time!
Sponsoring Adults
When an adult immigrant, or a family of immigrants, has a sponsor, the approval processes are generally much faster. This sponsor may guarantee a job for the head of household, or they may certify that they will ensure that the needs of the family are met so that welfare resources are not required.
If this provision were utilized at this time, ANYONE who felt like Syrian Refugees SHOULD be brought to the US, would be capable of stepping forward, and volunteering to sponsor a refugee, or refugee family. If you think they ought to be here, then by all means, PERSONALLY welcome a family into your home, your business, or your neighborhood.
No government involvement necessary, beyond standard immigration policy.
Those who claim “Compassion” for the refugees are free to act upon their conscience, and demonstrate to the rest of the nation, just how it should be done!
Adopting Children
Syrian refugee children are with families, or a guardian – they don’t get out otherwise.
In Muslim countries, women and children are possessions. They are not free to act for themselves. They are not able to travel by themselves without being taken captive, and abused, or punished for being without proper company. Muslim countries do NOT allow their orphaned children to be adopted by infidels.
But, supposing a child DID escape. Supposing there are refugee children in camps where parents or guardians have died, who have not been claimed by other Muslims in the camp (even then, this is the exception, not the rule, since the majority of refugees at the outset are adult men, without families).
The ONLY way that the US can legally help them is through overseas adoption. This is a lengthy process – mostly for the parents. There are many parents here who ARE prepared with homestudies done, and INS paperwork completed or nearly completed.
There have ALWAYS been children around the world in dire straits… and those upon our own shores as well. So people who REALLY have compassion, are already helping, no matter where the children are located (this help may also be rendered through non-profit donations, humanitarian aid organizations, fast offerings, etc, and may be small or great, but is always a personal sacrifice and a personal effort).
Parents who are prepared for this KNOW that children raised in a culture where women are degraded, and children are used for immoral purposes, and where children are taught that people who are not of their beliefs are never to be respected, will be VERY DIFFICULT to normalize within an American family situation. Personally, if I had daughters in the home, I would never bring a boy with that background into my home, unless he was under about the age of 3. It would be foolhardy. If I had no children in the home, I would consider a child up to about the age of 7, but would not consider older children unless I felt like I was instructed personally by God to do so. Because some children over the age of 8 have been trained in behaviors that would present a threat to the mother in the home.
God bless those who feel called to take in these children and love them in spite of the dangers.
If you are NOT ALREADY PREPARING to bring an international child to your home (or directly and PERSONALLY helping someone else do so because you cannot), then SHUT UP about the “poor orphans” whom our government is supposed to rescue. YOU HAVE NO RIGHT!
A government CANNOT rescue orphans. FAMILIES have to do that. Put up, or shut up!
Action On Your Part
There is nothing stopping ANYONE who wishes to help the refugees, from helping the refugees. Government involvement IS NOT NEEDED.
- You may donate money to a charity that is aiding refugees in overseas camps.
- You may donate money to an organization that facilitates international adoptions.
- You may donate money to a family that is trying to adopt.
- You may sponsor a refugee or family yourself.
- You may prepare to adopt a child.
- You can do one of any number of other tasks that require your personal attention to offer aid.
Just don’t stand around pointing the finger and saying that other people are mean because they don’t want the government to circumvent immigration law, in order to get out of having to act in a way that costs you personally.
The Government’s Legal Right to Decide
The government has a legal right to decide how many immigrants to allow in.
Unfortunately, so many people are mislead by the misdirection right now, that our government is GOING to decide an issue which there is NO POINT in having them decide, and they will probably throw money where it will be largely wasted, and get us deeper in debt in the process.
If THEY would first FOLLOW law, before trying to change it, there would be no need for them to decide anything other than what they already have the process in place to do!
Your Legal Right to Decide
It is your right to decide HOW YOU PERSONALLY are going to make a difference. You have plenty of options.
But it takes more than words of ridicule pointed at someone who feels that it is NOT the responsibility of the government to be importing refugees. Those words carry no weight, they are hollow, insincere, and recognized for the evasion of integrity that they really are.
Where Wild Onions Grow
I could not find it in the wild – spring has eluded me where I was familiar with the wild areas. I’ve had my eye open for it for several years and still no luck. So when I spied it on the website of one of my suppliers, I snatched up a bunch of it along with the other supplies I was ordering.
Wild Onions. There is confusion over wild onions and wild garlic. More over wild onions than wild garlic, because wild garlic is pretty easy to identify – looks like tall straight chives, with round stems, smells and tastes like garlic (deep tiny bulbs, so you have to dig it, cannot pull it).
That is one of the key identifiers with both wild onion and wild garlic – their leaves are the opposite of the domestic versions. Garlic is round, onions are flat.
Wild onion also forms deep bulbs, and should be dug, not pulled, if you find it and positively identify it. Make sure you ID it using several descriptions with images from different sources before you consume it though, because while there are more than a dozen different kinds of edible wild onions, there are also one or two look-alikes that are harmful if you mistake the identity – be aware that there are signs to look for, and once you KNOW what to look for the ID can be made for certain, but make sure you KNOW.
Having ordered it, I had no idea what I’d be getting. I received a bunch of oniony looking things, with flat V’d leaves (not tubular like domesticated onions), and with lovely white bell flowers drooping from the tops. Seven of them had good root systems still on them, so I planted them in a container.
The eighth had no roots. I chopped it up and fried it in butter with some Hedgehog mushrooms. Chopping it up did not make my eyes water. I think that is worth noting!
It had a mild onion flavor, which was very good with the mushrooms.
After dinner, I did a net search to ID the specific type. It appears to be Allium Triquetrum, which is a non-native plant in the US. Grows in the south and along the coast, quite far north. It is considered to be an invasive species in California – so if you live there, you might especially wish to learn to identify this weed, and make a habit of digging it up and bringing it home for dinner.
If you live elsewhere, various types of wild onion grow almost everywhere, and wild garlic is also widespread. Both are worth looking for – not just because they are wild food, but because they offer slightly different flavors when prepared.
Wild onions usually pop up with the early bulbs, right as the ground thaws, and they set flowers 6-8 weeks later. If you see something that looks like it might be wild onion or garlic, pinch a leaf and see if it has that distinctive smell. You’ll know! If it doesn’t say “ONION!” or “GARLIC!” immediately to the smell centers of your brain, then it isn’t onion or garlic! If it does, then get a sample to take home to ID. It is best if you have the bulb, leaves, and flowers if possible (in fact you will have a difficult time IDing wild onion without a sample of the flowers).
If you forage wild onions, make sure you watch out for pesticides and herbicides. If they look skinny and wimbly, then they may not be good for you unless you flush them out by soaking the roots in water for several days. They typically are somewhat droopy in the leaves, but very lush and clustered together, much like Daylilies, but a slightly smaller leaf.
I’ll be encouraging my little pot of wild onions to reproduce, and I’ll be on the lookout for other varieties and more wild garlic.
Through the Eyes of Need
I do not know how many years our family participated in the annual Scouting for Food activity in our town, gathering food door to door, taking it to a central location, sorting it, then taking it out to people in need in our town that same day. The last two years we participated in Scouting for Food, we saw the intake decline dramatically.
Our seven living children are adults now, and they were raised in circumstances that were extremely modest. We fed any child that walked through the door of our double-wide, who happened to still be there at mealtime, and there were many through the years. We were not the only family in the small town we lived in who would do this. We were just the largest. We took loaves of fresh bread to the neighbors, delivered cinnamon rolls to people around town after baking, and brought cookies to people we knew. Our children raked leaves and shoveled walks for many of the elderly without pay, carried in groceries for them, and helped them with lifting and cleanup. If a neighbor moved in, they ran out to help tote boxes from the truck to the house. It was a way of life, and one I never really considered to be unique, or fading.
I can feel the change sweeping over our nation. Especially in the last 10-15 years. Our nation is no longer a nation of givers. It is a nation of takers.
Lest anyone be offended, I realize there are people who still give, and generously. I have personally received much from such people. But I also see, as I never have before, that the native generosity of Americans has changed dramatically in the last decade, or little more. Even those who WANT to give, now find it harder and harder to do so.
Recently on Facebook, an article circled regarding statements made by foreigners about what surprised them most in America. One of the comments was expressing surprise that so many Americans gave to charities. That stunned them. Most nations are far more socialistic than the US, and the more socialistic a nation becomes, the less the citizens give to charities, or personally to their neighbors.
The first thing to go, is personal concern for their neighbors. Then they stop giving to charities. Charitable contributions in the US are now on the decline.
For many people, the lack of connection and concern for their neighbors is an outright abdication of responsibility, but for many it isn’t that at all – many of us still WANT to give.
Part of it is simply an inability to SEE need anymore.
The transients that ask for help in the Wal-Mart driveway are obvious. The homeless people under the bridges and pushing shopping carts are also obvious. But to much of America, those things are NOT visible. The majority of America is made up of smaller towns and rural stretches. And you just do not see those things in rural America, or even in small towns or suburbs.
Need is more often private than public. It hides behind the closed doors of homes where only friends and family see. Many people in need now have NO friends or family who ever enter their homes – their friends are all in remote locations. The needs behind those doors are sometimes every bit as dire as the desperate people we pass in the car, whom we feel are NOT our next door neighbors. Our neighbors do not hang their needs in the street or wear them out of doors.
The internet has replaced personal contact. The face we show the world online is not the face we look at in the mirror each evening. The lines of care and worry, framed by bottles of prescriptions from serious illness, the clothing that is worn, the background of a home sparsely furnished or too few blankets on the bed, the absence of a coat, or an empty fridge, the heaps of despairing unpaid bills. These things simply are not visible online.
To see need, you have to BE there. You have to see what is NOT spoken, and what cannot be broadcast to the world at large. Even caring Christians are simply not THERE where need IS much of the time. We WANT to be involved, to give, to help, to lift up and strengthen. But we are simply not THERE enough to SEE.
Life is so busy sometimes, we get stuck in our routine – those routines all vary from person to person, but they contain a common element of focusing on where we are and where we need to be next, and often not seeing beyond that. Sometimes I feel like I am drowning, coming up for air to gasp on Sunday, when I associate with people in my own area, then plunging back under for a week of slog through business and online interaction (necessary for my business). I am as guilty as anyone else of not being THERE during the week, and have had to make a strong effort to just stop and visit one person on the way home each week. I struggle to connect the people in my community with the daily routine apart from Sundays. It makes it difficult for me to see needs – and though my routine is unique, I do not feel that the difficulty in seeing needs IS unique, nor the reasons why it is so hard.
For the last three years, we have lived in need. Great need, due to things we did not cause, and which we could not stop, and which by their very nature have been very difficult to overcome. Many hands reached out to help. But many did not. Kind people, who simply never came close enough to us to even SEE that the clothing they were taking to the Salvation Army was needed by someone they knew, or the working toaster they were trying to find a home for would have been welcome in ours.
Early in our marriage when we had nothing, and at other times of hardship, we have been on the receiving end of great kindness, of all kinds. Much of it unasked – when you have seven kids in the home, people just assume you always need SOMETHING. A lot of it was mentioned by us, because we knew it was SAFE to mention it. Needs were met time and again, by people who knew us and saw our needs. We likewise filled boxes of groceries to deliver to people out of work, bought gift cards to give anonymously to people in need, and handed bags of food to hungry people passing through. But it really HAS changed recently. On both the giving and receiving end. The receiving end is a topic for another day…
America is more “programs” oriented now than even 10 years ago. When needs present, most people do not open their pockets to help, they refer the people to a program. But programs do not meet the majority of needs. They do not see inside the home, inside the heart, and inside the life of a person in need. They are incapable of perceiving the genuine needs, which are sometimes NOT what a program is designed to meet.
Programs, through the government, or charities, are limited, necessarily, by arbitrary rules. They are not designed to see exceptional circumstances, and a massive percentage of people in need ARE exceptions. We were exceptions – deeply in need, no income, no belongings at all, no transportation, no financial reserves. Our need was very real – yet we did not qualify for assistance through the state, through reasons beyond our control. Fortunately, we belong to a church which has a very successful welfare program, and we were able to receive assistance as we worked to get back on our feet. It was only able to meet some of our needs though – important ones, but leaving many things wanting.
I am NOT complaining about having needs unmet – we SURVIVED only because we had help. I am merely illustrating how my eyes were opened to the complexity of meeting the needs of disadvantaged people. No program in the world can do it. Because it has to be PERSONAL, and only individuals can be personal. Programs cannot be personal.
As I have considered the issue, I have come to the conclusion that there is only one real solution. Those who wish to serve the Lord and be the hands that relieve suffering, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, lift up the infirm and comfort the lonely and grieving, must VISIT people, IN THEIR HOMES – the internet is not enough! They must form bonds of genuine friendship and caring. They must learn to see through the eyes of charity – seeing the limitations in the person, seeing the good in them, and wisely aiding them in ways that help them to be uplifted and made better by the help, not just relieved of a burden temporarily. Help that makes someone better in the long term, and which helps them become less dependent on that assistance, is wrought in the workshop of deeply personal relationships.
For us, the needs that were met, were not met by a single person. They were met by many people – a skirt here, shoes there, a computer from someone else. A friend linked our new business website to her websites, and promoted me through her social media network. Two great ladies suggested a place to look for a house when we needed to move. Another friend sold us a used car, for far less than they could have got elsewhere. Two others helped patch a business back together so we again had the ability to build an income. A family member sent money for my husband to buy a bike when we had no car, and another family member stuffed $70 in cash into my hand one day (all the cash she had with her) on an impulse before they got in the car to leave, because she decided that the need she saw from us was greater than hers at the time. Someone else invited us to work for three days at a flower shop, giving us some income to tide us over a rough spot, and introduced us to another individual who helped my husband apply for a VA grant for job retraining – the only program we qualified for! A kind stranger in one town cleaned out her freezer and gave us quite a bit of meat. Several close friends and family members listened to me cry, and encouraged me when things were at their worst. Each person gave a little thing, and the total added up to survival. It had to be personal, in order to even see those things that we needed, and to understand the extent of our needs, and our limitations.
I have looked at the world through the eyes of need, more than once. This time has been by far the hardest. At the same time, it has truly deepened my appreciation for those who HAVE sincerely befriended us. Many could offer nothing to help us but prayer, because that is all they had to share. But they did that.
I do not know if the tide that seems to be turning America inward can be turned, so that we learn to see outside ourselves again, and to see behind the superficial masks that people wear in casual virtual interactions. I don’t know if that is even the goal. Perhaps the only goal is turning it in OURSELVES.
Tealight Room Heater Reviewed
“Heat an entire room for 8 pence a day!” says the title of a video making the rounds on social media. After watching the video, I could already see some problems with this claim. But the heater looked useful, so I decided to try it out, and see what it COULD do.
IMPORTANT… After additional review, we have concluded that there is NO CIRCUMSTANCE under which this system is not a SERIOUS fire risk.
But the original information is still available here.
The setup consists of a bread pan, two clay pots (one large, one small), and four tealights (an alternate has bricks and clay pots). The tealights are placed in the bread pan, and lit. The small clay pot is placed upsidedown over the tea lights, balanced on the edges of the bread pan. The larger pot is balanced in the same manner over the top of the first one.
The first problem I had, was with the design of the setup. It looked like a fire waiting to happen. Tea lights, in a bread pan, sitting on a magazine. Tea lights get hot when they burn down. Probably not hot enough to light a magazine on fire, but to me, a child raised in a home with wood heat and taught by her father to respect fire, too much of a risk.
So I purchased a clay pot tray, and turned it upsidedown for a fire-proof base. I had to improvise some of the other elements a little also, but the end result was equally efficient, with one major difference:
My setup held only three tealights, not four. It does not significantly change any of the aspects which I am reporting on – I did not try to heat a large space, and the number of candles does not affect any of the other numbers, since I used his original numbers as a baseline.
These are the problems I found with the system:
1. The room the Brit heats in the video is a VERY small room. It is also generally a fairly WARM room. So the amount of heat he required was fairly minor. A toaster oven used to heat his noon meal would have produced sufficient heat for an hour or two in a room that size. Just pointing that out, because “an entire room” in this case, wasn’t much at all. By comparison, we are talking about a bathroom, or a bedroom in a 1970s singlewide trailer (you know, those little bitty bedrooms).
2. He lists the price of tea lights at about 1 pence each. This converts to anywhere between 1 and 2 pennies USD, depending on the exchange rate. This price is found NOWHERE for tea lights. At least, nowhere I can access that actually ends up BEING that low a price by the time the costs are tallied. The lowest I found was 4 cents each. I paid 6 cents each for mine. While this is only pennies we are talking about, the cost doubles, or triples when the actual cost is calculated. That is very significant. His 8 pence a day now becomes 16 or 24 pence – or 32 to 48 cents.
3. He claims that the tealights burn for “about 4 hours”. This, again, is rather an exaggeration. Mine burned for 2 and a half hours. Perhaps tealights are larger in Britain, but I doubt it. Perhaps they are made of a different type of wax – but if it burns longer, it also burns cooler, so there is a trade-off. Since mine burned for just 2 1/2 hours, I have to base my calculations on that. Our costs just increased by 50% again, if we have to do three burns instead of two for the same heat. We are now up to 48 to 72 cents per day.
4. Some people with whom I discussed this suggested that “residual heat” in the clay pots would compensate some for the shorter burn times. The pots cooled fairly quickly, retaining radiant heat for only a short time, and being completely cooled within half an hour. This means that they’d only have useful residual heat for about 20 minutes. For the sake of simplicity, we’ll call the burn and heat time, combined, about 3 hours. We still have to do three burns for anywhere close to 8 hours of heat (based on his original concept of 8 hours equaling a day).
5. Because he only counts a day as 8 hours of heat, you still have 16 hours unaccounted for. To truly heat for a day, you’d have to again triple your cost. This brings the cost of heating a tiny room up to somewhere between $1.44, and $2.16 for an actual full day. Now, I realize people are NOT going to try to use this to heat a home, but we have to calculate it in that manner in order to see how it compares with other heat forms. If you can heat an entire 3 bedroom house for about $200 a month, in SEVERE cold (yes, we did so in Wyoming – an 1800 sq foot home), then it works out to about $6.66 per day to heat the whole house. The room in the video was about 8X12 ft, so that works out to about $.36 per day to heat that space using gas or electric, for a full 24 hour time period. Here, in the south where we live now, it is half that amount. For any amount of real heating, the tealight heater is simply NOT economical. I point that out, because his main claim is that it is cheap heat. It is not. It is actually very expensive heat.
So is this little thing good for anything? I originally thought so, but I don’t anymore.
1. Spot heating. When you need a little extra heat in a single area, for a short period of time – this kind of heating is ALWAYS more costly than whole house heat, on a square foot basis. What makes it economical is being able to heat just a single small area rather than having to increase the heat throughout the house. I was using mine to rapid-cure silicone. In the summer, our silicone for our Fermenta Cap products cures in about 4-5 hours. In the winter, even with the heat on in the house, it can take 24 hours, sometimes more, to cure. This slows our production to the point of getting us seriously behind in order fulfillment. I can pour my silicone, light three tealights in the burner, and have them cure on one burn. The burner puts out just enough extra heat in that one small area, to cure my silicone within 4-6 hours. MUCH faster. That is worth 18 cents per day to me! If I need to leave the house, and the burner has only been lit a while, I can blow it out, and place the clay pots over the tops of the silicone molds, where the residual heat works on them, safely, while I’m gone. PROBLEM was, I could not walk away, the heater created a Flash Fire, even with the pots raised higher.
2. A cozy alternative to a fireplace. The warmth of an open flame just has more romantic appeal on a cold winter evening. A candle powered heater, and a warm mug of hot chocolate, and a good story to read with the family could make any evening special. I’m not willing to try it for that though, if I am having to watch it to make sure it does not light a fire on the surface it is sitting on.
3. Emergency heat. It is likely that the heater would get hot enough on top to at least heat water, and in an emergency, a little heat is better than none. Because it is off-grid heat, it seems all you need is to be sure you have SOME ventilation if you light more than one, and be sure you have matches on hand. Unfortunately, you can’t leave it unattended, and the potential for too much fire is too great.
There are some safety issues if you decide to experiment with this type of heater – SERIOUS SAFETY ISSUES. The issue with heat from the bottom is only one potential issue. Since this is an open flame, standard cautions regarding candles and fires apply.
1. When you have tealights concentrated together, they create more heat than a single candle. The wax in each tin will quickly reach the melting point all the way through, since you have a covering over the lights that make the candles heat up more (there is NO published design for this heater type that does not concentrate the heat). Liquid wax will wick out over the edges of the tin, so that whatever surface you have them on can become covered in a thin film of melted wax. After a matter of half an hour or so, this is a SERIOUS fire hazard. Even when you take precautions, this gets out of control in ways it does not look like it would.
2. The clay pots need to be placed over the candles, and that concentrates the heat enough to create a Flash Fire even when they are placed fairly high. Since the wax becomes liquid fairly rapidly, a build-up of heat on the surface of the tealights can cause the entire surface to ignite – this happens when there is sufficient heat to maintain the fire without needing a wick. If this happens, you’ll hear the sound of the flames (a quiet roaring), and black smoke will billow out of the hole in the pots, and around the edges – the fire is NOT the only problem, in this case the smoke is also a serious risk. If wax has wicked out onto other surfaces (which often happens), it is an even greater fire hazard, PLUS it produces so much smoke that the smoke alone could be deadly. The fire is also very difficult to put out – you’ll need to find a way to smother all of the candles at once or they’ll re-ignite, and you can’t blow this out! If you decide to test this, BE VERY CAREFUL, and make sure you have some means of smothering the entire surface of all of the candles at once, or you cannot put out a flash fire. It can, and WILL end with a house fire if you are not careful.
3. To generate additional heat, some people close the hole in the smaller pot. The greatest heat build-up is right at the top of that smallest pot, and it can be far hotter than you think. If you plug the hole, the material you use to plug it has to be entirely fireproof.
4. Make sure you have hot mitts close by, in case you need to blow out the heater. You have to remove the pots – you’ll need a safe place to set them also.
5. Keep it away from kids and pets if you are experimenting. This thing gets HOT on the surface. It is designed to trap and radiate heat, and it does just that. It will get blisteringly hot on the surface of those pots, and if it creates a Flash Fire, it is even hotter. If you don’t like such risks in your home, don’t use this kind of heater.
My conclusion is that the video circulating is inaccurate, and even dangerous. While the concept could be useful, I cannot find any situation under which I feel comfortable with the fire risks involved.
I do not feel these can be useful in a power outage for any kind of significant heat either, because you can’t leave them unattended.
I just don’t NEED my room to be THAT HOT!
Uses for RAW Sour Milk
We are conditioned to think that sour milk is a harmful thing. If you are talking about pasteurized milk, it can be. Sour pasteurized milk can have some really nasty opportunistic pathogens in it.
Raw milk, on the other hand, is a different thing entirely. When it sours, it develops a wide range of microbial growth, including many helpful probiotics. It DOES contain some bacteria and fungi that would be considered to be harmful pathogens when in higher concentrations, but they are balanced and neutralized by the much more plentiful helpful microbes.
So why is pasteurized milk so risky when it is soured?
If you kill all the good bacteria and yeasts, then the milk is completely lifeless – for all of about half a millisecond, until it comes in contact with air again (or the inside of a milk jug, sterilized or not, or equipment, etc). It becomes a fertile environment that happily cultures any opportunistic bacteria or fungi that come along – the fast growing nasties are able to thrive, breed, and multiply without restraint. There are no natural inhibiting “enemy” or “competitor” strains to slow it down or to mitigate the effect. The ones that grow fast are likely to be fairly harmful, and they are likely to grow in very high concentrations. The fact that commercial pasteurized dairy products are stored for long periods of time in production, transit, and then on the grocery store shelves means that there is ample time for them to grow to very high levels. Levels NOT seen in fresh raw milk.
Raw milk, on the other hand, is chock full of a full complement of bacteria and fungi. If you leave it out at room temperature without ever putting it in the fridge, it will develop into buttermilk. Buttermilk is just old fashioned “sour milk” which old recipes call for (they are not asking for that nasty stuff that pasteurized milk turns into when it gets too old).
Note: Buttermilk is just raw milk left out to sour. The cream rises and firms up, which makes it easier to skim. The milk left behind was “buttermilk”. The cream was then churned into cultured butter, and the milk from around the butter was poured off and added back into the buttermilk. Just so we understand why sour milk was called Buttermilk.
Refrigeration does affect it some. It will develop a different complement of microbes at higher temperatures than it does at low temperatures, but they are generally equally healthy.
So, when your raw milk turns a little off, what can you do with it? Turns out you have a lot of options!
NOTE: It is still healthy enough to drink. You can drink it as long as you do not mind the flavor. There is no need to worry that you have to “catch” it before it goes the least bit off to save your kids from being harmed, or to avoid ingesting something dangerous. It is just milk, with a little more probiotic benefit.
- Make Biscuits. Southern buttermilk biscuits are a natural for sour raw milk, and so are buttermilk pancakes. You can omit the Baking Powder and use 1/3 that amount of baking soda which will react with the sour milk. You can also use it in any other recipe calling for milk, depending on how far off the flavor is, including things such as custards, milk gravies, and even home made macaroni and cheese or alfredo sauce. All of these cooked options will kill both the beneficial and harmful bacteria and fungi.
- Make Smoothies. If you usually use yogurt or kefir in smoothies, sour raw milk is a good substitute. Bet nobody even notices! Microbes are kept intact.
- Make Cheese. Let it sour a bit more, out at room temp for a day or so. Dump it in a pot, and heat until curds form and separate – to the point where you cannot touch the side of the pot at the level of the milk without it stinging. Strain, and either use as fresh cheese or press to make a hard cheese. You can also substitute it in any cheese recipe for buttermilk. Cooked cheeses result in a pasteurized product. You can also simply strain it without cooking if it has curdled, and use it as a soft cheese. It will be VERY full of microbes.
- Pasteurize it and make yogurt or kefir from it. You CAN do either one without doing so – they are, after all, just variations on sour milk! This process kills anything that might be lurking in your milk, and replaces the microbial assortment with a cultured assortment (which isn’t that different in kefir than it is in ordinary sour raw milk, by the way!).
There does come a point where it is too far gone – but that is quite a bit further along than most people think! Milk that should NOT be used will be discolored (more than just a little yellowing), it will have mold on it, or a very unpleasant smell. You won’t generally mistake if it is too far gone.
Sour milk is actually one of the benefits of using raw milk. Our ancestors knew this, and had uses for fresh sweet milk, and uses for aged sour milk.
The more I use it, the braver I get. I started with just using it in baked goods and cheeses, but we now use it in many other ways. My favorite is probably smoothies – my probiotic smoothies have single-handedly healed a number of annoying health issues for me.
NOTE: Because of the rabid “sterilize everything” Nazis, and various government entities which subscribe to the theory that killing everything must be better than retaining any kind of natural balance, I am compelled to leave a disclaimer. This is my opinion. It is based on broad research and experience, but it is still my personal view, provided for informational or entertainment purposes (making buttermilk biscuits is great fun). Use it as you see fit AT YOUR OWN RISK. I am not recommending this to heal or treat any disease, and am not a medical professional, nor a health or nutritional professional.
Cottage Industry and Manufacturing Consulting
Is there a limit to what a sole proprietor can earn through cottage industry? Can a cottage product or service business realize the potential of unlimited earnings?
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This can be done with many types of businesses – a good number of them are businesses which people do not think CAN be converted to home based. They can be operated in the home, on the farm, or in a shop at home. It offers so many financial benefits, in reducing operational costs, keeping profits with the manufacturer instead of being spread across a supply and distribution chain, and of reducing regulatory and tax burdens to the least possible requirements. It makes possible Point of Production Distribution, which increases profits dramatically. And business does not get greener than this! Equipment is small and energy efficient, factories are eliminated, transport pollution is dramatically reduced, and each producer is free to act on their own convictions for stewardship of our environment instead of being bound by the rules of an employer.
In case you don’t realize, Firelight Heritage Farm is owned by the Frumpy Haus Frau herself, Laura, and her husband, Kevin. We developed a business model for cottage industry, including cottage manufacturing, which allows almost unlimited growth and income potentials, with NO employees. The model includes methods and policies for expanding through a network of subcontractors, and includes logical process controls and a range of choices for controls over proprietary information or designs.
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Cottage industry is as old as the earth, but must be adapted to our contemporary world. We will be launching a new website in a few days which will feature the services available for starting a cottage industry, growing a cottage industry, creating and selling cottage industry packages, and for converting a corporation to a subcontractor based cottage industry.
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Making Butter at Home
It was the color of daffodils. Cream the color of most butter, skimmed off the top 2 inches of the jar, put into a smaller jar, and shaken by hand for about 20 minutes while we chatted and watched a video, produced butter of a strong yellow color, the exact shade of spring daffodils and buttercups (there’s a reason they called them “buttercups”). The color you never see in grocery stores, except from egg yolks.
Butter is easy to make, and there are several ways, from low tech, to mechanized. Shaking it in a jar is one of the traditional methods. As a child, we made it in a Kitchenaid Mixer. You can also use a hand mixer, or food processor.
Cream from milk from any animal works to make butter. It is made around the world from cow, goat, sheep, even horse, camel, and llama milk. There are probably a few other oddball animals in there somewhere too.
When milk is let set, the cream rises to the top. At least it does with some kinds of milk, like cow’s milk. Other types, like goat and sheep milk, are naturally homogenized, and the cream stays more suspended in the milk, with just a thin layer separating (a cream separator can pull out a large amount though, and goat and sheep milk often have very high butterfat in spite of appearances).
The cream can range in color from pure white, to a soft yellow. The color depends a lot on the breed of animal, and the diet of the animal. The resulting butter can also range in color, from pure white, all the way through a very intense yellow.
Cream is skimmed off the top, usually using a spoon or a flatish ladle (we have a deep gravy ladle that works nicely). You can’t really get it all without a cream separator, but that’s ok. Leaving a little cream in your milk is a good thing.
The cream is then put into whatever contraption you use to make butter – a jar, a butter churn, or the bowl of your particular appliance. According to some sources, the naturally homogenized milk types work best if the cream is shaken, not beaten to make butter.
The goal is to stir or shake it until the butterfat clumps together. This means you spend 95% of the time just stirring, shaking, or beating the cream.
Make sure you allow it a generous sized bowl, or a jar that is only half full, because it will generally expand in volume during the process. It will then reduce in volume and suddenly clump together into visible lumps of butter. Beat it a bit more, and it will clump mostly into a single mass. Be aware that if you are doing this with an open bowl and a mixer of some kind, it will probably start to splash wildly when it turns.
Pour off the milk (it is just skimmed milk, nothing special about it unless you cultured it first). You can stir the milk back into the rest of your regular milk if you want.
Now, what you have is butter, with lots of little bubbles filled with milk. If you want the butter to keep well (or to keep out of the fridge), you need to get that milk out of it.
The butter may be VERY soft by now – especially in warm weather. You may need to pop it in the fridge for a bit before proceeding. When it is cold enough to work without sticking too much to the spoon or paddle, go forward.
Use a butter paddle, or the back of a spoon, press down on the butter to squeeze out milk drops. Periodically rinse it under cold water – you can keep it under the cold water stream if it is cold enough to chill the butter, but if you live where your cold water warms up in the summer time, you will need to just rinse periodically.
Keep pressing the butter and working it to get the milk out, until it doesn’t come out white anymore. Then remove it from the water, and press the water drops out.
Add salt if you want salted butter, and work the salt through it. Since you are never going to be exactly certain how much butter you have, you really have to salt to taste every time.
Once the salt is blended in, you can put it into a butter pot, or mold it, chill it, and then remove it from the mold.
So what about that Buttermilk stuff? Why does buttermilk taste like sour cottage cheese if it is just milk that has had the fat removed?
Well, cream is actually easier to skim off the top of cultured milk. By “cultured” we mean fresh raw milk (not more than 24 to 48 hours old if it has been refrigerated, after that the microbe balance can be off), which has been left at room temperature to “sour”. You know those old recipes that call for Sour Milk? They aren’t talking about that nasty stuff that you get when your pasteurized milk stays out too long, or is too long in the fridge. No, they aren’t talking about that AT ALL.
Pasteurized milk goes nasty because all the healthy and friendly bacteria have been killed in the heat processes. So it is just wide open for contamination by opportunistic nasties.
Fresh raw milk though, has a complement of healthy bacteria, and when left out of the fridge for 1-3 days, will sour in a pleasant way – more like cottage cheese in smell and flavor. It will sour and thicken within about 24 hours, and that is when you want to skim the cream for butter. After a couple of days, it will start to separate, with curds on top, and whey on the bottom. At that point, it is really good for making no-rennet cheese.
When you culture the milk first, you end up with classic buttermilk, and cultured butter. In other words, expensive butter.
Now, you CAN make butter from cream that you buy at the store. Put it into a container so that the container is only halfway full, cap it tightly, and shake it if you don’t have any equipment to process it in another way. You’ll end up with fairly white butter. It will still taste like butter.
Making butter is one of those old skills that is so simple, that pretty much anyone can try it. It is fun, and gives you the feeling of experiencing a little history if you are not the kind of person that is into adopting it as part of a lifestyle. Personally, I really like knowing what is in my food and where it came from, so making butter is just part of the whole package.
And making butter leads naturally to making a loaf of homemade bread. Because there is nothing better than fresh, warm bread, and homemade butter!
Gardening doesn't have to be that hard! No matter where you live, no matter how difficult your circumstances, you CAN grow a successful garden.
Life from the Garden: Grow Your Own Food Anywhere Practical and low cost options for container gardening, sprouting, small yards, edible landscaping, winter gardening, shady yards, and help for people who are getting started too late. Plenty of tips to simplify, save on work and expense.
