Dear Editor,

In the article, With commonsense planning, you can survive hard times,  under SALT you state that iodized salt is used for canning pickles and meat preservation. NON-IODIZED salt is used. This needs to be corrected immediately before you kill somebody.

Sincerely,

Dinah M.
Certified Home Canner

Dinah,

This is a typo and should read “non-iodized salt”. However, using iodized salt will not kill anyone.

The reason you don’t use iodized salt in pickling is that when combined with certain natural occurring minerals in some water, it can darken your pickles.

Most table salt used in the US is iodized and it has been strongly recommended that consumers USE iodized salt as it combats iodine deficiency possible in some areas of the country.

Used in such minute amounts, it certainly won’t poison anyone. I use iodized salt in most of my canning and have for decades.

Jackie (and still alive!)

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I loved your article in the latest BHM. I can sympathize with your recent move.

I myself moved several years ago from Orange County, California to Moab, Utah. Though I don’t regret it all, even though I went through a good deal of culture shock and awkward acclimatization as well.

I’d love to see you write more articles on self-reliant living in the high desert. Most of the BHM staff has (understandably) a northwestern climate slant on the tips and advice they proffer.

I hope you come to love 300 plus of full sun a year. I think it makes winter more bearable even if it never gets above freezing.

Keep the Faith!

Ardell Hollobaugh

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Just wanted to thank you for giving me knowledge on post-construction cleaning. I appreciate it, and I’m sure a lot of others do too.

I used to do this for about a year, it’s a tough job. I was working my butt off. After reading your page, I now realize I was totally getting ripped off. I’d love to start my own Post-Construction Clean Up Business one day.

Thanks again!!!

Hilary Horvath

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Hey!

Me and two auto buddies used Len Torney’s info for a fleet upgrade. Gas saver idea.

Thanks, he’s a smart dude!!

If we save what he says, I guess we should send him a case of Foam.

Best,

Phi, James & Bill the (aka Fat Tire)

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Ms. Wolfe,

You’ve touched on a topic that I’ve thought about time and again. Speaking with liberty minded friends I’ve said that the only places left are Space and some area in the Antarctic! And the statists are doing their damnedest to cut off the last option. Think about it. On our planet we have nations laying claim to territory they don’t even tread upon yet they say its “theirs”. What kind of Imperialistic, cockeyed, brain damaged reasoning is that?

I also had to laugh when you used the word “criminals” in how some folks, albeit brainwashed statists, describe the odd balls who don’t fit their tiny mold. Yes, some can certainly be considered criminals by any set of standards, and yet I’m left scratching my head knowing full well that the definition itself, as used by government and its boot licking minions, is corrupt. They see every problem as a nail to be beat down with its “authoritative” hammer. Which is to say that you’re to shut the hell up and do as you’re told while forking over dough with a gun pointed to your head. That kind of “freedom” and “order” I can live without.

With regards to the last great frontier we have NASA endlessly sucking tax dollars to beat down ones hope that anything will ever be accomplished in our lifetime. This isn’t by accident but by design. When you have people being paid to “produce” nothing what incentive is there? It reminds me of that movie “The Truman Show” where the lead character, when he’s young, has this burning desire to discover the world while his controlled life (just like governments everywhere) seeks to discourage any such notions so that it can financially benefit off of his existence and share in some sick pleasure in playing the part of God while manipulating him.

I’ve also said to my friends that the only reason people in America managed to find any “freedom” at all was because it was too far away and too expensive for the powers that be to reign them in. It also didn’t hurt that they had enough weapons to reinforce that fact. Sadly these founders pulled the same stunts on their newly minted citizens that they wailed and bemoaned about their British brethren. They made it illegal to do what they just finished doing. How very hypocritically convenient!

Escaping this planet is mankind’s last chance, short of global revolution, of fleeing from these rat bastards. So lets encourage a search for alternate energy and a way to flee so that all “criminals” such as ourselves can forever be paroled from this present Earth. Time to leave the nest.

David

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Greetings..

I’m an organic farmer/homesteader in southern Louisiana and have been a fan of your magazine for a number of years. I have to admit though that I haven’t picked up a copy in quite sometime. This article reminded me of why I should.

I have been searching the web and books for an identification of what I believe to be chanterelle mushrooms that are growing in droves in the woods surrounding my farm. No image that I could find was an exact of this particular mushroom, until coming across this article by Devon Winter.

It turns out that the mushroom I have is the Cantharellus Lateritius, which has a less pronounced ridge than the other species I have come across.

Thanks for settling this issue for me. My farm could sure use the extra income in this particularly harsh season we have been having(too much rain).

Thanks to Devon Winter if you happen to speak with him.

I look forward to the next issue of Backwoods Home I pick up.

Joel A. LeLeu

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Very good exposition. I’d like to add that there is an ongoing effort to educate Americans of their perfect right to judge the law and the facts in every trial by jury.

I’m proud to say that I got the Jury Rights plank into the Libertarian Party platform at LP10, Denver, 1981, from the floor in open convention. I was a lot younger, and hot from reading Lysander Spooner’s “Trial By Jury.”

In 1987 Larry Dodge and Don Doig, then of Montana, were reading the 1982 LP platform and decided to take it out of one Party’s province and make it a public issue.

So they founded the Fully Informed Jury Association (FIJA) which is still active.

I hope you choose to mention FIJA to your readers. FIJA also offers some tips on surviving voir dire with one’s principles intact.

Regards,

Jim Lorenz

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The new gardening and canning book by Jackie Clay is absolutely top-notch!

It’s practical, understandable even by newbies, and very comprehensive.

Thanks SO MUCH!!!

J Millhorn
Plano, Texas

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Dear Ms. Wolfe,

Thank you for writing your wonderful article Learning To Love The High Desert in this month’s issue of Backwoods Home Magazine (Issue #120). Good work – and welcome to the only culture on Earth that you can join simply by proving that you can join it! You are now a Desert Rat, and there really is no going back. Be warned: even if you leave physically, you will never be able to leave in spirit. You will pine in your soul for the vast, lonely spaces of the High Desert until, like an irresistible magnet, it draws you back into its depths.

There are a few things you should know, however. Perhaps you already know them. I rather think you do. If not, please allow me the presumptuousness of being the one to tell you about them, as certain concepts will be of great comfort to you in your new life as a Desert Rat.

In the desert you really can put lipstick on a pig. By which I mean a doublewide doesn’t have to stay a doublewide for very long. Mine started out as a battered castoff that I bought for $1500 in Reno, then had moved to my ranch for another $1000. I gutted it, painted it, re-floored it, and built a mudroom/ porch along the front of it. I added a wood-burning stove, a swamp cooler, spinning vents, and propane heating (well, propane everything, to be honest). Now my wife, child, and our various pets live quite comfortably inside. It’s truly ours in every way, and I love it infinitely more than the home we used to have in San Francisco.

Don’t sweat not having a “stick home.” You can always do the same.

Off-grid power is a journey, not a destination. You will go though “phases” with your off-grid power project as you experiment with various things. It’s a never-ending attempt to figure out what works for you which changes as new technology comes along or you scrape together more cash. I use a combination of solar panels, windmills, and generators myself. My inverter/battery bank setup is a pretty simple one… too simple, to be honest. So that will probably be the next stop of my journey: buying/begging/trading for a more sophisticated system. You folks will go through your own phases as well.

A practical suggestion: new tech makes old tech a lot cheaper. My three Air-X windmills are pretty lame when compared to the nifty new wind spires that are now on the market. They were also one tenth of the price, and work quite well.

The winter will tell you a lot. Actually, it will tell you whether or not you are truly a Desert Rat. A true Desert Rat takes perverse pleasure in the Siberia-like winters of the Inner Mountain West. It separates the men from the boys and the women from the girls. It makes the tourists go away. It cleanses the dusty land. It is starkly, harshly beautiful as well.

It also freezes pipes and 55-gallon drums solid. So consider moving the barrels from that picture on page 81 inside for the winter and make sure your pipes are buried as far down as possible. Or you could do what we do: use easily defrosted hoses instead of pipes. And, while we’re on the subject of water, consider a filtration system for your well instead of hauling water in. A simple but effective one can be made out a 55-gallon drum, clean sand, and crushed charcoal.

You are now truly free. The very lines that provided your old home with power were also designed to hold you down. Living in the desert can be a delightful exercise in severing the lines that tie you to The System (Any system, really. Take your pick.). Your fellow citizens can be easily controlled by their dependency on the power grid, sewer system, water lines, grocery stores, and even gun stores. Your decision to walk away from these things and to recreate the basic structures of society on your own is the only revolution that is now genuinely practical: if the collective cannot control the means of distribution to the individual, the collective cannot control the individual.

Of course, like off-grid power this is a journey, not a destination.

In conclusion, I hope you enjoy your new lifestyle. I know I enjoy mine, and do not miss my old life as a San Franciscan. If you give the desert a chance you will not miss Oregon (though you may miss friends and family, of course). And remember this always: the lower the population density, the greater the personal freedom.

Sincerely,

Jason S. Walters

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Thank you for your article.

I’m afraid that we are in for some hard times.  We have to be prepared to protect our families and homes.

Randolph
North Carolina

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