NZ Resilient

Over the past two months, I’ve been cooking with my GoSun Solar Cooker. This post shares practical lessons for anyone considering a solar oven—especially for prepping, off-grid cooking, or homesteading. 🧪 Testing Under Real-World Conditions To gather meaningful experience quickly, I’ve used my solar cooker as my primary oven for more than a month. During this time, I’ve cooked a wide variety of meals—breads, rice, steamed vegetables, curries, meats, and stews. Overall rating? Positive—but always have an alternative available. My trial period coincided with the seasonal shift from autumn into winter, revealing several practical challenges I hadn’t considered when I first purchased the unit. 🕒 A Typical Solar Cooking Day Planning ahead is essential. Here's how I generally manage the process: Weekly Meal Planning : As part of this, I check weather forecasts and plan accordingly. Morning Setup : Confirm weather conditions. Prepare ingr...

  This weeks theme is 'mission complete'.  As intended, I  relocated the mixing barrel  uphill, where it now directly  waters/feeds both the southern and the northern gardens:  On the negative side, the southern garden now gets inconsistent pressure for an unknown reason, so some troubleshooting is needed.  The main result is that the infrastructure is now effectively complete! M y Saturday routine is looking like below, achieving the same results in about one-third to one-half of the original time with significantly less drudgery and effort:  As mentioned last week, I want to switch focus to planting the next crops, so from here I'm going to debug the known problems and make the best of what I have. Besides relocating the mixing barrel, I Ran a permanent hose to the mixing barrel, eliminating this recurring task Centralised the compost tea tubs, eliminating hauling the compost tea Connected the northern garden to the mixing tub, leaping ahead fas...

Overall Progress Another week, another win - ”soooooooo much winning” etc etc Morning dews are common now, and rather than a loss of ‘good’ weather, it feels like a transition as the kale, silver beet and salad greens are being resurrected. Looking out the window at the last cherry tomatoes, I appreciate how well these plants have fed me this summer (Mind you, so has their price in the supermarket!). Storing the surplus is well underway, with the freeze-drier back in action. I briefly thought about getting the pressure canner out… but then I remembered how much I hate canning. Also, in the last three weeks or so, I’ve effectively halved the water, time and labour involved in watering and basic feeding of my southern garden. This will be a template for the other gardens. Irrigation Improvements Extending the irrigation worked out better than expected: The ad hoc irrigation layouts are effective enough, so I won’t buy additional components. Using the hose pressurises the tank supply en...

  Things are going well.  Recently the focus has been on producing food and reducing the effort needed to grow well at scale. In both cases, immediate benefits are starting to flow and that I am building up to growing a full years supply.  The dry weather is forecast to continue for a couple more weeks at least, so let's see how long we can keep summer crops going. Regarding the food, e verything is hitting their stride and attention is turning to harvesting and preserving. The main challenge I'm experiencing is balancing my time. The 'product' comes through in variable amounts, and my goal is to use or preserve it  - While still fresh i.e. as soon as possible - In time-efficient batches i.e. when there is enough product to justify the effort of each batch - In a way that fits in with the rest of my routine to keep good habits going.          Mind you, it's a good problem to have.  T he seasonals are coming through in strength.  Che...

 While it's been another week for working on infrastructure as the dry weather persists, the small-wins come through daily with fresh tomatoes, celery, capsicums and salad greens in particular drip-feeding through daily. I have mixed feelings about this as I would prefer it all to arrive on an defined schedule, but then there is something highly satisfying about picking what I need when it is ready.   Weather-proofing the house has continued, with the damaged lintel above the front stairs now painted again, leaving the front and back stairs as the next priorities for action. Both of these involve repairs I don't know how to do - so it will be .... interesting.   In particular, I'm come to appreciate having my own rainwater collection system and solar system.  This summer has been dry with intermittent rainfall, yet I've kept gardens going off my tanks so far. It's gotten close with multiple last-minute saves, so another month of capacity seems my optimum ba...

This week is more of a general reflection- while there's always something to work on, I didn't have any specific development goals. Saying that, there are some good lessons and opportunity around the irrigation work.  This week has been about T he impact of easy irrigation Expanding the blue barrel irrigation to supply an adjacent vegepod, and Painting necessary part of the house to weatherproof for winter.   The Impact of Easy Irrigation Below are the ‘before’ and ‘after’ for the peanut experiment. I’ve tried to equalise the scale so size can be accurately compared. A)                                                                Plants Before                                              ...

One of my greatest challenges to gardening performance is having a consistent routine.  I recently tackled the watering for an isolated vegetable planter. An annoyance is the repetitive labour of rolling out hoses to water and apply liquid feed - I do it, but I could be using the time for something else.  Instead of using a garden hose and manual liquid feeding, I explored storing the water next to the planter. By repurposing a 200-liter blue barrel, I streamlined the watering and feeding routine while reducing the total water used. The biggest negative is just how it looks, so I am considering options. The planter concerned is located separately from other planters and irrigation sources. Previously, watering involved running a garden hose out to the planter, and standing there as I directed the hose. The crop is a small experiment in peanuts, so water requirements are light at 16 litres per plant per week to saturate the surrounding soil to 5 cm deep. Every week I apply one-...

 Introduction To improve the return from my solar system, I am experimenting with using a low wattage kettle. The idea is to run it off a battery, preventing using any mains power. This post shares some of the 'basic performance measures' and problems in getting said kettle going. For homesteaders, preppers and those living off-grid, this may be helpful if you're considering using an electric kettle over gas or fire based backups. Quick Summary The kettle boiled a cup of water (200 milli-litres) to an acceptable temperature in about 15 minutes . By 'acceptable' I mean hot enough to drink immediately - which saved on boiling time and energy. The time concerned is an openly stated ‘feature’ of the product, not a defect. Unfortunately, my experience is that some of the supplied parts were unreliable, with the cigarette lighter/socket components burning out after a few uses. Once I replaced these components, the jug performed consistently. If I was to buy this product a...

Emergency preparedness is often daunting for the new person.  Most people starting out are bombarded with lots of detailed 'technical' suggestions e.g. food storage, prepare for an EMP, etc. This can be useful, but inevitably, leaves the new prepper to figure out what 'ready' looks like and how to get there.  This article outlines one view on what the major activities involved in becoming prepared/'ready' are. A key consideration is to identify a realistic emergency scenario and then prepare for it using the process given and the capabilities identified.  C licking on the image below will magnify it. The Map The below map provides a  big-picture view of how to prepare for a given emergency .  The practical uses are Show the full spectrum of possible readiness as a single 'big picture'.  To compare your current readiness against and identify any gaps. To show where the advice/information can be applied.   Working top-down, the standard 4Rs of the Civil ...

Communications play an important role in dealing with an Event - preppers /emergency preparedness communities typically value having backups to their main services.  This post outlines a backup for making voice calls.   By default, cellphones operate via local cellphone towers for your carrier. With Wi-Fi Calling, a voice call can be made through a broadband connection.  In effect, the person is pointing the cell-phone to use a landline.  During an Event, cell-phone towers can be knocked out, so  Wi-Fi Calling  gives people another way to call for help.   To illustrate, below is a possible case-study based on some experiments I did with my own cell-phone.  Scenario 'Bob' is at the office, which has a wi-fi connection to a landline broadband service.  An Event has occurred, knocking out all local cell-phone towers but the company broadband is working. There are injuries that require an ambulance. Sequence Bob confirms The usual...

Emergency preparedness is often daunting for the new person.  Common obstacles/challenges include  Making sense of the overall topic. Figuring out what you need. The amount of work and complexity involved is far greater than your enthusiasm. This article presents a high-level map to kick-start preparedness for households. C licking on the image will magnify it. The Map This map provides a  big-picture view for someone new to preparedness .  The practical uses are Show the full spectrum of possible readiness as a single 'big picture'.  To compare your current readiness against and identify any gaps. To show where the advice/information can be applied.   Working top-down, the standard 4Rs of the Civil Defence framework are converted into a set of capabilities or steps  appropriate for any circumstances.   This map is a 'one size fits all' approach for organising anyone's thinking. As such, the reader needs to Tailor the range of risks and responses ...