When I first moved here I bough 6 oil lamps and a supply of oil. This is insane we are talking about this in a present-day tense at the hand of our government Democrats.
When we lost electricity for about 2 weeks after the tornado a few years back, I used the little solar lights that I had in the back yard for indoor lights. The lights that I had were just the cheap little ones, but still good enough for Bobby and I to find our way around the house in the dark, and each morning, I set them back out in the sunshine to charge. I don’t think that we have any oil lamps anymore, but for years I always had some in the house in case of emergency need for light.
I think my inverter is fairly small--800 wats--but larger ones are available. I have kept too large freezers going on 800 watts, but you have to take precautions that they don't start at the same time.
I received the parts from the equipment rack guys yesterday, and when I was cutting my grass today the other rack arm came off. Believe it or not, I was able to fine the arm, the plastic spacer, the washer, and the securing knob. The only thing I could not find was the carriage bolt. Still, that's pretty good, considering I mow 7 acres and each successive run blows cut grass on top of my prior path. I don't think I went under any branches or smacked it like I did the other one (entirely my fault), I think it may have just vibrated loose. Maybe I didn't have it tight enough? So when I went to Lowes to buy another carriage bolt, I also bought some external-tooth lock washers (star washers) to go between the knobs and the flat washers. I'm pretty certain that will hold it. And if I go under trees or do that kind of heavy work, I'll just pop the whole thing off...I put the allen wrench in my tractor's little tool box so I got no excuse. I also bought a cheap bungee cord, cut it in half to make 2 extensions, shaved down the edges, and installed an "S" hook to extend the straps on the upper rack that's designed for small-handle tools. This gives the extra length required to fit around larger handled stuff. It's a functional, crude first attempt that only cost $5. If I find thinner rubber (I couldn't yesterday), I'll make a longer replacement for the factory strap, or I'll make a prettier extension. But for now, it does what it needs to do.
Here's another Oliver for sale on Craigslist: This is the Model 1265, made between 1971 and 1976. It was made for Oliver's then-current parent by Fiat. I don't know if this is owned by the same guy who advertised the other Oliver with the huge front-end loader on it. That listing is gone, but there's a 1944 Oliver 60 for sale in the same area as the Model 1265: This one was made in Iowa. Here's what it looked like when it was born:
If you can still get the parts, they can be pretty good deals. Up here they have tractor shows where guys restore them, show them, do tractor pulls.....with threshing machines and all sorts of other antique machinery. It is kind of fun.
I may have mentioned that I would have bought a used old tractor (probably a Ford N) when I moved here if I had any experience with them. But I needed something that came with instructions. That Oliver 1265 is $3,500 and has a 3 cylinder 2.6L engine. There aren't HP specs I could find other than 41hp at the PTO, so it's at least 50hp...maybe 60hp. I bet it's a tank. I wish they did pulls around here. I have vague memories of them when I was a kid in Indiana.
I've always had Coleman fuel lanterns and a stove on hand for hurricane aftermath, but my sister had a full-house generator installed in her house and gave us her nice portable generator. It'll keep the fridge going and a fan or two, so we're ready for hurricane season. Nothing happened the last two years, so we're probably due for a day or two sans power.
We have oil lamps and oil, but we have also installed battery-powered motion detector lights in some areas after our experience with the earthquake a few years ago. When that happened, we were in total darkness and couldn't use oil lamps for fear of aftershocks. The motion detectors are in areas near the bedrooms and such, so we wouldn't be so disoriented when everything went black and started shaking.
I bought a bunch of these from Walmart: These are automatic dusk/dawn night lights that have non-replaceable rechargeable batteries, an Automatic Emergency Light function, and a (3) LED flashlight. You can kill the night light feature and just use them as Automatic Emergency Lights. I have one in the kitchen, the living room, the dining room, and each of the 2 bathrooms. The lighted front panel has a Hi/Lo mode. You can unplug it from the wall and set it on a table top (or your workbench) for local light, whether the power's out or not. I bought them a couple of years ago, and the power went off for the first time (at 9PM) just a few weeks ago...they all worked great. It took me a minute to realize what happened, because the TV, my monitor and the regular lights went out, but it wasn't dark. I once tried to see how long the batteries would last (user comments range from "hours" to "days") but they timed out after 3-4 hours. I thought the batteries had worn down, but when I cycled the Mode switch the lights came back on again. I just plugged them back in and and have not messed with it further. As an incidental benefit, it's handy to have a bunch of always-charged LED flashlights scattered around the house. They're $8.99 each, sold in the store. Be advised that the package, the product website and Manufacturer's Customer Support all say that you cannot kill the night light feature and just use them for emergency lights (I do not like night lights on while I sleep.) User Comments insisted otherwise, so I bought one and tried it. The Users we right, so I bought another 4. There is no secret to this, Emergency Lights Only is one of the standard Modes it cycles through with the button on the side. All 5 of mine work this way. The other minor thing is that the emergency light goes on when the power's out, even if it's daylight out. In this instance--or during an extended outage--you can turn them off when not needed and then back on again later, or use one at a time to conserve batteries.
I do have rechargeable flashlights plugged in in every room. They're the type that come on if the power fails. At least we'll have a little light right away if the electricity goes off. And candles......I have enough candles for half of the town....LOL.
Yeh, I've always liked candles. I was unaware of the flashlight/emergency light combo. Ain't technology grand?
Either of the above solution's would be fine. We just experienced how disorienting sudden total darkness can be. I posted about my wife being downstairs in the kitchen when the lights went out and everything started crashing around her. She didn't know where she could step as she couldn't see where broken glass and such had scattered. I see Amazon has something similar to what @John Brunner posted, so I might get those, as we only have a couple and we need more.
Our goats did a lot of brush clearing and killed every tree they could get to. Our Boers were primarily grazers if they had pasture and would browse when the grass wore out. The Boers taught our Nubians how to graze, so that was handy. I got into the meat goat business for a while, but my wife insisted on treating the meat goats like she did dairy goats, so I decided to close that part of the business out. The Boers were quiet, didn't really smell--even the bucks--and would have been pretty trouble-free. They didn't clear the brush as well as the Nubians did, however. The Nubians would strip the bark off any log we gave them, so when people wanted bark-free logs, we would prop them against the fence of the goat pen and they would strip the bark off the logs better than any machine could--even the spruce logs.
You gotta wonder how any digestive system can not only survive the onslaught, but eek out sufficient nutrients to sustain the host. And those eyes...