Monday, March 14, 2022

Burning brush, support jobs for food production and walk-abouts

Burning brush

You know you are doing it right when your neighbor's smoke alarm goes off.

Over the transom (email)

(Paraphrasing) "What if I am not a gardener, just moved into a new place or don't have property and/or have disabilities. Am I screwed if food-insecurity increases?"

You are not screwed if you network and can find somebody who does raise food and needs services you can provide.

Suppose you have neighbors who raise cattle. Rustling cattle is a "thing" when people are hungry. Most 20-somethings have to work really, really hard to be motionless for 10 minutes. Most 60 and 70-something year olds can sit motionless for hours.

If you zoom in you can see many "stock ponds". The creek has catfish as does the river it runs into.

An person who is relatively sedentary can also be an awesome fisherman. He can run a set-line or watch "jugs" which would under-utilize a man with the potential to burn 4000 Calories a day in physical labor but is just right for a fellow who values his time in a lawn-chair and iced-tea.

Another niche is in food preservation. Sometimes it is just a matter of keeping fires burning or moving trays around a food dehydrator. That seems like a small thing but producing food is of little value if you cannot convert it into a nonperishable form. It is like driving the football down to the 1/2 yard line but not being able to punch it into the end-zone.

An iconic example from literature is found in Thomas Hardy's Far From the Maddening Crowd where Farmer Oak interacts with the old man in the malthouse. The old man was notable for doing very different things over the course of the year but also notable for shifting over to less physically-demanding jobs as he aged.

Several years ago when I was looking into air-guns, I read about a handicapped man (very little use of his legs) in Great Britain who performed "pest control" on rabbits. He used an air-gun and maybe snares to reduce rabbit populations. Not only was he paid money for the service but he kept the dead rabbits.

In fact, I would have considered it a blessing to have an old man or an old woman available to sit and watch the burning brush reference in the first section of this post. I could have been doing other things rather than being "pinned down" watching the fire.

Walk-about

I am nearing my 63rd birthday. I am out-of-shape due to winter and estimate that I am forty pounds over my optimum weight.

I am tempted to take a one-day walk-about to see how far I can walk. From a statistical standpoint, the only thing less valuable than a single datapoint is zero-datapoints.

In light of what is happening in Ukraine, what weight "load-out" would be most interesting from an educational standpoint? My personal leaning is toward thirty-to-forty-five pounds. Yes, the guys in the sand-box carried 90 pounds. I could manage that to the end of my driveway.

An AR and ten, thirty-round magazines would run about 17 pounds. Food for a week about 7 pounds. Water for a day's march 8 pounds. Poncho and a change of clothes another five pounds. Add three pounds for the weight of the pack and frame and you are looking at 40 pounds. Comments?

The plan is to do the walk-about toward the end of May or in June for maximum daylight.

22 comments:

  1. water for *two* days. Even in your AO.

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  2. Full battle rattle ... my old plate carrier is daunting, and I'll bet it's close to 40 lbs alone. Just recently got some FRAS which is much friendlier.

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  3. 80's LBE, assault pack two miles or up on our property which is very steep. 62 year and still moving. Advantage, I don't need so much snivel gear as I used too, old and ache anywho! I do have an OTV with soft plates but I ditched the hard plates, move is more important then armor IMHO.

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  4. This is encouraging to us old coots with old friends and family. Thanks. --ken

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  5. I'd work up to it, shorter trips with less load to get back into the grind. Also, 300 rounds? That's quite a loadout there. The standard is still 210, IIRC.

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    1. I am trying to get a handle on how much weight. Weight is fungible. For example, I forgot any cooking gear, bug spray and any of that stuff.

      I figure most of the weight in the pack will be sand-bags but I need a target weight.

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  6. Tweel: I don't doubt that. Perhaps 300+ for folks who cannot whistle up a resupply mission?

    My personal (work in progress, 66 year old, gotta walk my old ass home from two + counties over) load out is 11 x 30 round mags, pistol with 6 mags, and gonna-sleep-sometime gear.

    Haven't weighed it (fail!), Haven't road tested it (ERJ's "walkabout")(fail!). Arguably, my ambition to walk home if required> my ability to do so. Still I *do* yet work full time, 12 hour shifts, so, maybe not insane.

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    1. I found 15 miles a day to be doable back in 2018. Compressions shorts are your friend because abraded inner-thighs are painful. Also, a pair of women's, calf-high nylons beneath your regular socks helps immensely with avoiding blisters.

      My two longest days were 25 and 26 miles, back-to-back. Running out of daylight can become an issue when pushing that far, especially if you are doing this in the winter.

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  7. At the risk of sou ding like the ever lovely Mrs. ERJ,

    ARE YOU NUCKING FUTS?!

    Seriously, practice is great, but weigh it against practical purpose. Risk of death is not a zero factor in that equation.

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    1. I did something similar in 2018. One episode HERE (http://eatonrapidsjoe.blogspot.com/2018/07/walkabout_30.html)

      One walk-about was from Allendale, Michigan back home and the other was from home to Ray, Indiana.

      I didn't carry any significant luggage on those trips.

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    2. I think that's great, whatever the age.
      I did something similar a few years ago (the Max Velocity Rifleman Challenge with rucking) and even then I was several decades past physical prime.
      Just knowing I could do it a few years ago helps me keep pushing the physical training, even if not as heavily. Knowing that a couple of years ago, you were able to knock out a couple of 25+ mile days in a row may help get you through a spot where you need to get whatever it is done.

      re the weight- I can only think to cut down on the amount of the everything until it's an amount you can carry. Even 35 pounds isn't that much food, ammunition, water etc but you would need at least some of all those things.
      It's not a complete solution but you can try to be clever about staging this stuff around, perhaps in caches around your property or near places where it might be used. Then you wouldn't have to carry 300 rounds, you could carry less than that and restock from a cache or prepared place. Not ideal but you'd otherwise need a wheelbarrow or a garden cart to carry all of your needs. ?

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  8. You have good points about how less mobile people can contribute.

    As far as your pack, I'd suggest trying short distances first and work up to a multi hour trip once the bugs are worked out of your system. Don't forget comfortable clothes and broken in shoes.

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  9. On the food prep thoughts, just having knowledge of HOW to do it is extremely valuable information once refrigeration is no longer an option. That is where the elders of the tribe may have an advantage over the young. The elders saw this knowledge first hand in their youth and/or perhaps have years of experience since then.

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  10. ERJ, I have been adding a weight vest to my daily walks with Poppy The Brave to prepare for an upcoming backpacking trip (assuming, of course, we are not eating cockroaches by August: anticipate the best, plan for the worst). I debated doing rucking but after my experience last year in the Grand Canyon, I found that the backpack was not so much of a challenge as the overall event of moving the weight.

    Food preparation is extremely valuable knowledge. Better to practice now while there is a relative abundance that wait until messing up a harvest has significant consequences.

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  11. I find walking, even without a pack, painful. Just a quick tour of the mall leaves me with my left hip and sciatica screaming. On the other hand a 20 mile bike ride just leaves me a bit tuckered. Being 73 and weighing 270 just might have a bit to do with it.

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  12. Several years ago a friend did something similar in his AO - studied a map, performed the intial route surveys on a bicycle because it was faster, then did the Ankle Express Offroad version.

    He wound up with a pretty good estimate of what he could do daily with 40-45 lbs, knocked 20% off the distance and found spots near that distance to cache things - freeze dried food packets, a few full magazines, dry socks, etc. in 50 cal cans some of which were the 2X taller version, very liberally coated with several layers of undercoat rustproofing. He must have at least 3 dozen stashed "out there somewhere."

    What he couldn't stash was perishable stuff, and water. Water will always be the limiting factor, and it's heavy. He said he used several factors to determine the "best" routes, one of which was availability of water. I do not know, but I *assume* he took into account seasonal variables in water availability.

    I can understand the value of doing all this for patrolling purposes, but "patrolling" drives different route choices than "bug out" - one requires going where the activity is to observe, the other requires avoidance. There's overlap, but the purpose drives the solution, and if it's bug out where, exactly are you headed, and how, exactly, are you caching enroute supplies to support that plan? If conditions dictate bugging out to the west then all the caches you've placed N, E and S are pretty much useless, and how far out - 2 days, 4 days, 10 days? - do you go with caching?

    I will say this, though - after 4 years of it he's in excellent shape so if nothing else it's a damn good aerobic exercise program.

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  13. Knowing what you can do is always a good plan. If you want more motivation Finnish Outdoors and Milsurp supplier Varusteleka has a remote military march every spring since the pandemic started. Its based on the Finnish Army reserve training, and its a come as you are 30k or 50k march with a 10 kg pack. They also have a bunch of useful articles on how to prepare and march properly. https://www.varusteleka.com/en/events

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  14. Don't forget the roll of Charmin.

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  16. I'm 65 and a member of a volunteer SAR team. I agree that your one data point is better than none, but beware of cumulative wear on the body. I can still do a full day's searching, but by the end of that day, I'm done - I can't go out on another right away. So your one-day ruck has value - but you also need to know what you can do on a day-after-day basis, too. Maybe plan so that you do a series of shorter treks to see how you react to repeated workouts, then do your 'go for it' day.
    As for how much in your ruck, and what can come out - do you really need that much food in your bug-out-bag? It isn't fun, but you can go two or three days on very limited intake. Water, yes. Food - not so much. A lot depends on your movement plan - are you heading out into the great unknown, or to a pre-planned cache or rendezvous? Remember your water filter - runny guts can keep you out of action just as much as a broken bone does.
    (Previous comment deleted to fix up typos)

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  17. Unless you're planning on fighting your way out of or into somewhere, I would lose the rifle and ammo and substitute a pistol and several mags, say 4 with #5 in the pistol itself. My reasoning is that if I'm doing some variation on E&E, the last thing I want to do is get involved in a shootout. I want to move quietly and as quickly as I can. That also eliminates body armor, helmets and the like.

    Don't forget a small first aid kit. Go heavy on moleskin. Ibuprofen if you can take it.

    No pack with frame. Internal frame, or none at all.

    As you have already determined, weight is your enemy. Look to the extreme backpackers for more ideas.

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  18. Well, I agree real world data is important.

    Can I suggest a good quality folding bicycle with a Beast of Burden single wheel trailer instead? I'm pushing 60's myself and find bicycle camping enjoyable. I can go anywhere I am willing to hike with that set up. Citizen bike is decent AND has the Muffin Solid tire option so No Flats. They ride well.

    Also, suggest you look into a 22 Mag as your bug out rifle. A CMR 30 is sweet, and weight is much lighter. A pair of 30 round magazines seems more reasonable than my old Sand Box loadout.

    I for one am NOT looking to get into a firefight but bad dogs and stray surprise humans are a threat.

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