Off-grid cooling: From 103 misery to 85 comfort

Now, here in Texas, with this kind of heat, one of the challenges we have is actually, quite frankly, keeping them alive. And years ago, if you remember, I started out having them in rabbit hutches, and we found out very quickly in the summertime, especially if a rabbit is large and fat, it will die of heat stroke. And so we set up a very simple misting system just to keep them cool, and it helped tremendously. Now, we could not breed rabbits, and it’s generally considered that you can’t breed rabbits anytime from about May onward through almost October in Texas, just because it’s too hot.

But, I want to show you something that’s pretty amazing. So, the misters that we had set up for the rabbits, I’ve also been exploring setting up this system on a larger scale for everything else on the farm. So, the chickens and the guineas and the geese, and then, of course, also in an emergency, the human beings. And I’ll get to that in just a section in just a minute. But, I have been astonished, as you may know from following, we’ve got a project where we’re working with rabbits and rabbit tractors, and also with free-range rabbits.

And one of my free-range rabbits, I found out, I want to show you something. So, this mama was running around as a free-range bunny, and just last week, I found out that she kindled. Kindled is a fancy word for giving birth to a litter of bunnies. Look at that little baby. He’s so cute. He doesn’t even have his eyes open yet. It’s amazing. This thing is only about a week old. Now, she kindled up in the barn, and I know I’ve got a snake problem up there. So, I moved the mama and the babies down here into this little portable pen, and this mama could easily dig out of this at any time, if she wanted to.

But, because we’ve got her set up with some misters, some food, some water, lots of protection and safety, she’s very happy here. She’s not leaving, and we’re going to go ahead and raise these babies here. One of the amazing things is, is with these misters going, the general temperature in this region around here is about 85, 87 degrees. Pretty amazing. I’ve got another area here where you can see it’s underneath a tree, and this is even denser shade. And, of course, this is where all the chickens are. They are not stupid.

We also have that big blue bucket there, and the other metal buckets around it are their watering, drinking water systems. That’s for the chickens to drink water. The combination of the misters, the deep shade, and then the water storage has that area where the average temperature is about 83, and if there’s a little bit of breeze, it gets down to 82 or 81 degrees. This orange bunny that you see running around here is the free-range daddy, and I believe that he’s been able to stay sexually viable because he’s hanging out in this area that we’re keeping cool.

The way you get pressure, there’s several different ways, and I’m doing different experimental research to figure out the way. One way, very primitively, is to just get water up high, maybe have a small tower or rooftop, and use a bicycle pump to move it up in the morning, and then have it through gravity feed. Ten feet will get you four and a half psi, and that will run some of these misters. I’m also doing experimentation with a small solar panel and pump that would actually create the pressure that way, and also looking at the possibility of some hand pumps.

So I’ll keep you posted with this. I feel that this is very important information. Just imagine the scenario. You’re living in Texas. There’s, what, 40 million people here. We have some sort of grid, regional grid problem. The grid goes down. We’ve got this many people that are hot. People die of heat stroke. What are you going to do? So having a system like this set up to where you can actually stay cool. If we can get it to where you can, it’s 102 degrees outside, but you can be at 85 degrees in the shade with a misting system.

That’s something that you can live through. That’s something that your elders and your children, and it’s going to prevent heat stroke and heat exhaustion. We’ll be able to, we’ll be able to do that. Just the whole system in general, even without people, while we’ll be in the air conditioning, it’s going to put a lot of less stress on your livestock. Now, if you’re interested in this kind of research, by all means, please, you know, stay tuned, subscribe. Your subscription and your support really helps us. What really would help us even more is, if you buy one of the products we have, any one of them at the grow your own groceries dot org website, we’ve got a full video set on how to grow food.

How to grow an abundance of vegetables and fruits and meats in an off-grid situations. Two DVDs and then a resource CD with a bunch of books. I have another video set on how to take care of your teeth, clean them, how to treat cavities, even abscesses. Again, in a grid down situation with very simple primitive things that you probably already have in your backyard. We also have an e-book on how to find the perfect survival retreat. How to find a place out in the country where you’d be safe in the case of a major collapse.

So, this is Marjorie Wildcraft. Stay tuned for the next video. Please go to the website, buy something from us, support this research, and we’ll see you again on a future segment. [tr:trw].