Bingo, i'll ask around the village. I'm sure someone has a grinder i could borrow. (duh)

Most of the elders here grew up without electricity on islands off the coast. Did not re-settle until the early-mid 60's.

All you need is a power inverter, say 1500 watts ($50).

Plug it in you car, (with the engine running) and you can operate many 120VAC appliances if you have a power outage.

You can even power up you computer and phone charges, well pump, ------ etc.

dcarch

We have that. Actually two. Now we do, : )

But during the storm we moved the truck way up the hill just before all the bridges washed away. All gas/fuel was cut off for emergency vehicles. We had to hike up the hill for minor supplies. Mostly helping the elderly. The one grocery had no power and opened for just an hour a day having to take care of his own family...helicopters brought supplies ahead of the pokey Navy boat.

And remember during storm Sandy when fuel was rationed and the Palisades entrance was shut down for days because of the long gas lines....we learned from Igor and had our cars full and a dozen gallon water bottles frozen ahead of time...and a generator. Extra fuel cans.

I'd feel pretty silly hauling up a coffee roaster and grinder to the truck. ; )

Having off-the-grid solutions like a wood cook stove for cooking and heat...a hand dug well in the basement...just dip a bucket...we had the neighbors tea kettles on our stove and an open house to keep warm. Sea water to flush toilets...

This will be our retirement home, if that ever happens. We are planning/researching wind and solar. When we are here we are not working. Just enjoying daily survival work. DH spent the morning helping a friend/neighbor building a new fishing stage/dock. Our cloths are on a line to dry...most of are meals are from the sea...

"----We are planning/researching wind and solar----"

1. Talk to some salvage companies. Corporations regularly upgrade their computer systems. They will throw away high power premium backup batteries. Wonderful for solar or wind power use. Worth $ 1,000s.

2. Learn to do simple soldering. You can buy chipped solar cells, which do not really effect performance, solder them together and make you own solar panels at 1/10 the cost,

3. Go to your town dump and see if you can find old rear projector type large screen TVs, there is a thin sheet of plastic in front of the TV that is called a Fresnel lens. You can make a very powerful solar furnace to do some real solar BBQ. Check out youtube for simple constructions.

dcarch

With hand-powered grain mills a good practice is to set it on a coarse setting and run your grain/seeds/beans through the first time; next, set it on a finer setting and run it through again. You require a quality mill to get fine flour, but using the two-step system does a pretty good job.

You can actually make coffee using whole coffee beans.....

Preheat a Thermos Bottle with hot water. Dump the hot water (save it for another use, like hand washing or doing dishes). Place 2 T. of whole beans per 6-oz. of boiling water in a Thermos. Lay the Thermos on it's side to evenly distribute the beans and leave for 1-hour. The coffee is lighter in color, and as another benefit, this method also greatly reduces the bitterness.

Thank you grainlady. I was hoping for your input. Rice is easy. I'm somewhat impressed with this mill, but i have no comparisons. All my spices are whole and it should not have trouble with them at all. Bag flour here is really fresh for the most part. Good quality. All my neighbors bake bread. Though i did bring up a large variety of whole grains. Grinding grain is new to us.

dcarch, my initial research for wind and solar, years ago, was interesting but always dead ended and overwhelming. As you know, the work and rat race in NYC is energizing and wonderful....we work 14-16 hour days for months on end, then boom. Done for a small time. I love it, then appreciate the time off.

We can barely breath, then have the time to design and dream. We are both masters at what we do. DH a master carpenter and boss. We tinker quite well. I have a tractor trailer full of tools, he has two. Some of that is welding equipment. Right now we have days of time...after a 4day drive....toilets flush, no leaks in our roof.

I so appreciate your knowledge in tinkering engineering. Apparent in so many of your posts and responses. It is what we do every day. We just need more hours in the day, and paychecks when not working, to pay for what we would rather be doing, : )

Alan Scott, brick oven guru, uses the Diamant grain mill. Now it's pricey (just under $1k) but it'll probably be an item your great great grandkids fight over. I've read that it's the model that some relief agencies get to supply a rural village with a communal mill.

It is a beauty. Lehman's has it.

The meat grinder is out of stock. I like that it is USA made. So many from elsewhere have iffy reviews...parts don't go together properly. etc.

I'll just keep asking around to borrow one.

I would suggest a Family Grain Mill before I would invest in a large and expensive Diamant Grain Mill. The Family Grain Mill is a real kitchen workhorse, not just a grain mill. There are also attachments for it for a food grinder, meat grinder, and a flaker mill. You can use it by-hand OR an electric motor base. Having owned one, I can attest to it being an excellent mill.

http://pleasanthillgrain.com/family-grain-mill-flour-grinder-wheat-grinder-combos

As an aside, I also own a hand-powered Vortex blender - http://beprepared.com/vortex-hand-crank-blender.html

Grainlady, which mill would you recommend for coarse stuff like cornmeal and rye chops? I'm interested in coarse breads like vollkornbrot and the like, and making cornbread from freshly ground corn.

Arley -- I have a CORONA CORN MILL for coarse milling (you can adjust the grind from fine to coarse), and two other hand mills (noted below) that will also do coarse milling. I teach classes on home milling and that's why I've accumulated all these mills over the years. I also have a Marga Flaker Mill for milling flakes and some coarse milling (it has 3 different settings but can NOT do corn - only grains), and a Nutrimill (for fine flour).

FAMILY GRAIN MILL: You can't (repeat, can NOT) mill popcorn and flint corn ("Indian" corn), chickpeas (aka garbanzo beans) or tapioca pearls with a Family Grain Mill, but you CAN mill dent (field) corn.

WONDER Jr. DELUXE MILL is another great little mill you should take a look at. It will mill all types of corn (popcorn, flint and dent) using the stone head (adjustable to grind desired). It will also mill tapioca pearls with the stainless steel burrs. You have a little more variety with this mill since it has both stone heads and stainless steel burrs. You can even mill peanut butter with roasted peanuts, almonds for making almond flour, coffee beans, flax, and the tiny things like teff and amaranth that a lot of mills can't mill into flour. I also have a Porkert Seed Mill for tiny seeds and oily seeds (flax, poppy). Not all mills can mill oily seeds.

If I could only keep one mill out of my bevy of them, I would have to pick the Wonder Jr. Deluxe Mill ( http://pleasanthillgrain.com/wonder-junior-deluxe-grain-mill - be sure to check prices on-line, they can vary quite a bit). It will do everything from fine to coarse flour. You can also mill with it using either the optional large pully system powered by a variety of power systems (including a stationary bike), or an optional adapter and an electric/battery powered drill, if you don't want to mill by-hand only.

I had the Whisper Mill, which is now the Wonder Mill (electric micronizer mill), and it was a real workhorse for fine flour, but after years of great service it met with a horrible kitchen accident and went to "appliance heaven". I replaced it with a Nutrimill because it has a few features the (electric) Wonder Mill doesn't have, but neither of these mills will mill coarse flour you are looking for.

The Victorio will do corn, but not without a bit of rocking back and forth...not easily with a full rotation. I just did it, and doubt i will try that again.

I'm 'site specific', not wanting off-grid or a daily 'grind'. : )

All small soft grains easy...wheat berries, lentils...rices.

Just trying to limit my travel load....as i can get a course grind corn meal locally but often/almost always like a finer corn flour...what i have will do that. It also does coffee that we roast a 1/2 lb at a time. I can roast it on the wood cook stove as well as an electric roaster.

Just covering all the bases if we have another long power outage....

Granddaddy's suggestions will be necessary in the future when we spend more time here.

ALWAYs listen to grainlady's advice. And research for your immediate needs.

She has the experience.

I see meat grinders all the time at auctions and kijiji. Mine is a super heavy duty cast iron German made one I got it from an auction years ago for super cheap.

We do tend to use the one that is attached to our meat saw more though. Much easy, but I have used the hand crank one on several occasions.

I hope you'll be making some meat pies from that moose meat. We were gifted with some last year and it was the best tortiere I've ever made.

I did a coin flip and used AmazonPrime. Used the grinder last night. A beast. 22 is the number. DH did the manual labor but it handled all with ease. Even thigh bones for the pups food. I always run carrots through at the end and that was a minor struggle. (did our moose well ahead of the chicken for sanitary reasons) Meat partially frozen helps.

Funny you should mention Tortiere. I was looking at recipes and i should look at Ann-t 's. I do not have any of the listed spice. I have made an Italian version that is lovely.

Back home i have a big cast iron sausage stuffer from a yard sale. At the time i thought it was an apple press, : )

I can't remember the exact recipe I used for the tourtiere but it had cinnamon, cloves, all spice. Can't remember what else was in there. If I remember correctly I did plain moose meat too, normally you do pork with a lean meat. We still have some goat and lamb left from the meat we processed in December and this thread has made me think that a lovely goat or lamb combined with pork pie would be awesome this week. Maybe Italian spices or a Greek inspired one?

I think the Italian and the greek pies have olives. I have good green olives. And some artichoke hearts, (bummer in a can), but still good in the Italian version. It does have egg as well. I might try roasting the artichokes in the oven to bloom the flavor.

And then their is the Irish pie. With peas and topped with smashed potato....