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I remember when I was young, my family spent the summers on my step-grandparents homestead.
For light, we had "Aladdin lamps", filled with "coal oil".
For heat and cooking, we had a wood/coal fired kitchen range.
for doing laundry, we had a double washtub and a gasoline powered Maytag washing machine.
there was no electricity.
there was no running water, but there was a gas powered pump for irrigating the garden.
the toilet was "the little brown shack out back".
the firewood was cut with a cross-cut saw, a "Swede" saw, and a double bitted ax.
The only gasoline used was for the washing machine, the irrigation pump, and a monthly trip to town in the 1930 something Chevy touring car that had been modified into a truck.
Yes, life CAN be lived without gas, oil, and plastics, IF you really want to do the work. It WILL be a lot of work!
You will be doing laundry and bathing once a week. Heating that much water requires a LOT of wood for the stove.
You will be doing a lot of canning to preserve the produce from your garden. More wood to heat the water.
You will be smoking meats to preserve them. More wood, but special types. You can't use pine!
Your days will be spent cutting wood, weeding the garden, irrigating the garden, feeding livestock, hunting wild game, and cooking.
In the fall, you will be harvesting, canning, butchering, smoking, etc.
In the spring, you will be plowing, planting, etc.
and through it all you will be cutting wood.
Yes, I remember it well....
Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention, we were lucky; there was an old coal mine on the property. We had an unlimited supply of coal. All we had to do was dig it and haul it!
Thanks for all the replies. I also love nice wool clothes for the winter. Has anyone tried alpaca wool as an alternative? Some people claim it is warmer and not as itchy. I wouldn't mind having a few alpacas someday for pack animal purposes and a wool source, not too mention they look really cool and would be fun to watch .
Having had a couple dozen llamas here at our ranch ... foster homed while awaiting adoption, and 4 for the last 15 years, and a dozen alpacas given to us from a ranch that raised them for companion animals and the fiber ...
I'd say that your expectations re alpacas are unfounded.
they're nasty, miserable animals to keep, not very friendly at all.
expecting to use them as pack animals may leave your sorely disappointed.
even with a full-size shearing station and quiet professional handpiece shearing gear, I couldn't shear any of the alpacas ... which is why I'll bet this group was culled from the herd the lady gave to us. They were living the "alpaca lifestyle" dream in the Colorado mountains with a studio, looms, and their own fiber processing plant. Years later that awful experience with these animals, I found out at a fiber arts fair that the lady was buying most of her alpaca fiber and finished products from South American sources.
Having had a couple dozen llamas here at our ranch ... foster homed while awaiting adoption, and 4 for the last 15 years, and a dozen alpacas given to us from a ranch that raised them for companion animals and the fiber ...
I'd say that your expectations re alpacas are unfounded.
they're nasty, miserable animals to keep, not very friendly at all.
expecting to use them as pack animals may leave your sorely disappointed.
even with a full-size shearing station and quiet professional handpiece shearing gear, I couldn't shear any of the alpacas ... which is why I'll bet this group was culled from the herd the lady gave to us. They were living the "alpaca lifestyle" dream in the Colorado mountains with a studio, looms, and their own fiber processing plant. Years later that awful experience with these animals, I found out at a fiber arts fair that the lady was buying most of her alpaca fiber and finished products from South American sources.
Have to second this. I worked on a ranch that had llamas and alpacas, not the best disposition. The spitting really gets old quick.
Any wool is graded, the highest quality uses the finest wool based on length of the shaft and the diameter. Most military surplus and military wool blankets are made from what's called rag wool. Very coarse and itchy.
The best wool doesn't itch, but you pay for it. http://www.textileschool.com/article...rading-of-wool
Most "wool" clothes and products we get these days are a blend of cotton or a synthetic fiber that allows the manufacturer to use a cheap course wool, but only blending 20% or less wool means you feel the cotton or other blend.
I have no experiences with alpacas and from the descriptions above I probably never will now . I am still curious to try out some of their wool though.
A few eclectic thoughts on the question of fossil fuels:
I believe in conservation for conservation's sake. Waste not, want not. You know? I was very worried about "Peak Oil." (Logic tells us it must run out some day.) I was worried because American agriculture is said to be the process of turning petroleum into food and there's no good alternative to fossil fuel. Our food supply would be in jeopardy as oil supplies pooped out...but then came fracking. We now have access to natural gas supplies that will last 600 yrs. (Easy to turn gasoline engines into NG burners, and, to how many future generations are we responsible?)
While burning fossil fuel does add to the atm co2 pool, it does NOT effect the climate. Co2 levels have risen steadily for the past 200 yrs, but temps have gone up AND down in cycles over that time. Other weather/climate factors are much more potent determinants than co2. The whole AGW crisis is manufactured for political purposes to control us. Check out Saul Alinsky's Rules for Revolutionaries. (BO, BTW, taught a class at U of C on Alinsky's methods.)
Heating with wood is cheap and efficient. It recycles a natural product, so no change in co2 if you're still worried about it.
Autos can be converted to run on wood gas. It can be calculated that we have enough wood in this country to run our engines on wood for over 200 yrs, even if we don't replant the trees. (!)
Alternative energy sources like wind or PV are terribly expensive. Don't forget to figure in your "lost investment potential" when calculating your true costs, and also the fact that just about the time you get your system paid for, it's time to replace it.
The only real solution is to conserve: use less energy. Do we really need an 84 inch Big Screen TV in our 10' x 10' wilderness log cabin?
I have no experiences with alpacas and from the descriptions above I probably never will now .
I think how any animal behaves has a lot to do with the owner and what the animal is used to. The owners of the alpaca farm I menioned spend a lot of time with them. They have frequent visitors too so the animals are used to getting a lot of attention. They are more like pets.
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I am still curious to try out some of their wool though.
It's soft, close to something like cashmere. People who suffer from allergies like it because it's hypoallergenic. Something to do with the fibers. They are hollow and smooth on the outside so allergens don't stick to them. Sheep fibers have little spurs that allergens get caught in. Some say alpaca has higher thermal quality because of the hollow fibers, but I haven't paid close enough attention to determine this.
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