A Backwoods Homestead Christmas Gift List

by Claire Wolfe

So there we all were the other day, sitting around at the Hog Trough Grill and Feed, making ourselves homesick for the foods we grew up with. (Edible food, I might add; not the Hog Trough concoctions that wandering native Hardyvillians probably get nostalgic about as they sit around in cafes in Paris or Greenwich Village trying to accustom themselves to real cuisine.) Suddenly, Bob-the-Nerd quit waxing nostalgic about Cabot Vermont White Cheddar Cheese, pulled up the calendar on his laptop computer and said:

“Oh &^%$#@!*()&^!”

Since polite SuperAsian Bob isn’t normally inclined toward such language, that got everybody’s attention.

“What &^%$#@!*()&^?” I asked.

“Christmas &^%$#@!*()&^,” Bob groaned. “It’s almost here.”

“Uh … yeah,” Marty Harbibi said with his usual tact. “It usually is, in December. What, did you think it was time for St. Swithin’s Day?”

“Don’t get sarcastic,” Bob said, clattering his way through some more keys as he headed for eBay and Amazon.com. “I have to shop! And fast!”

Which reminded me, more than a little belatedly: Me, too.

And what about you? If you tell me you’re one of those sorts who has all the Christmas shopping done by October with the gifts already wrapped and under the bed … well, just don’t tell me, okay? Not if you want to stay on my good side.

As it happens, this year I have a better than usual excuse for not being up on my Christmas shopping. I’ve been toiling away at friends’ brand-new backcountry homestead a ways south of Hardyville. This toil involves: digging ditches, getting water lines and electric lines laid, puzzling over the vagaries of what’s supposed to be a functioning off-grid power system, freezing my buns off, sweating my brains out, getting dirty, hunting for the right size wrench, cussing at drills whose cords aren’t quiiiiite long enough to reach where they need to go, and occasionally trying to find a left-handed flatchenhammer and instead making a three hour round trip to the nearest real town and coming home with a right-handed floobiewhatsis by mistake and having to turn right around and go back to look for a ambidextral thingamawhosis.

Ah, the simple life.

But. Although it’s kept me from getting my shopping done, or even kept me from noticing what time of year it is (except that it’s freezing-buns-off time; that I know), this backcountry toiling has equipped me brilliantly for making up a Christmas list for any newbie or soon-to-be homesteader you might happen to know.

Keep in mind, this list doesn’t even pretend to be comprehensive. There are about 6,984,236 things every new homesteader needs, starting with a mint for coining money and the patience of a particularly martyr-oriented saint, the kind who still looks saintly even when pierced with several hundred arrows. That said, here are a few things I’d consider giving to the new homesteader.

Ryobi’s “The Works” 18-volt cordless toolkit. Every homestead needs a good set of cordless electric tools for work in those far-away places. Don’t tell me; I know that the words “Ryobi” and “good” don’t necessarily belong in the same sentence. But for $300 (or less at Wal-Mart or eBay), getting a jigsaw, chainsaw, reciprocating saw, circular saw, wet-dry hand-vac, flashlight, drill, drill bits, measuring device with laser pointer, a blade-and-file set, two batteries, a recharger, and a cool duffel bag … well, it ain’t bad. So maybe the tools aren’t DeWalt quality (and Some, like the chainsaw, are strictly light duty). But then, $ 300 isn’t a DeWalt price, either. I’ll take the Ryobi to get started, while I spend the rest of my money on all the other stuff a homestead needs.

Good quality hand tools. The macho boss of our local homestead says everybody off-grid and far from the hardware store also needs good quality sledgehammers (at least three sizes), shovels and spades (ditto – and with different lengths of handles), picks, axes, hoes, mauls, and maybe a post-hole digger would come handy, too (he says, having just dug a 3-foot deep pit for his solar-panel mount using everything from picks and shovels to a Tupperware bowl for the final scooping.

Backwoods Home’s “Whole Shebang.” You’ve got The Works. Now you (I mean, your deserving homesteader friend, because after all we are not buying selfishly for our selves here, now are we?) need “The Whole Shebang” to help you … I mean your friend … do the right thing with all those tools. The aforesaid shebang is nearly everything that BHM has ever published – 11 print anthologies and 12 CD-ROM anthologies. And it’s all only $207.80 or three payments of $69 each. Pretty good, considering that the full price would be $414.80. Invaluable, should you need a quick reminder of how to make venison jerky, what to feed an orphan goat, why the country’s getting so messed up (John Silveira will tell you, complete with unknown history), or how to turn an old Cadillac into a chicken coop (or is it turn an old chicken coop into a Cadillac, I’m not sure). You can also get the shebang free with your lifetime subscription to the magazine Then keep the subscription and give the free shebang as a gift and look like a hero.

Xantrex inverter from Sunelco. Now, if I really liked my homesteader friends and had a ton of money to spare, I’d make sure they had a Xantrex (formerly Trace) inverter or inverter-charger to turn DC into AC power for their off-grid energy system. These high-tech wonders come in a variety of varieties, starting at $860 and going considerably up from there. But when you care enough to send the very best – and you don’t want your poor friends caught in the middle of nowhere without a useable microwave oven or toaster – Xantrex is really it. And Sunelco is pretty wonderful, too.

A subscription to Netflix or Blockbuster Online. In the “gifts that keep on giving” category, a subscription to one of these DVD-rental services is great. There is absolutely nothing to do after 6:00 p.m. in the cold dark backcountry (unless, of course, you’re out fixing an emergency power outage or trying to locate and repair a burst water pipe). On one recent Friday evening, all three restaurants in the town near our desert homestead were closed, without explanation. Becoming a connoisseur of DVD movies is a real winner in these circumstances. A basic Netflix subscription is $17.99 per month. Blockbuster is just $17.49 and also offers games. But Blockbuster is Evil because of its in-store (not online) policy of insisting on having customers’ social security numbers. So I’d personally go Netflix. Both companies let you keep three DVDs out at a time, both pay postage on every rental, and both let a busy backwoods homesteader keep the discs out for as long as they want.

A DVD player. If your friends don’t already have one.

Read the rest of the article

December 23, 2009

© Copyright 2009 Backwoods Home Magazine

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009 at 5:44 pm and is filed under Essays. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.