The Small Town Post Office Produce Exchange

In our town, there are no mail trucks or mail delivery people. There is no "on demand parcel pickup" or vacation mail holds. There are not any mailboxes on the streets because there is no mail delivery. There is only the Post Office.

If you want to mail something, you go to the Post Office. If you want to GET your mail, you go to the Post Office. If you want to know what's going on in town, you read the bulletin boards and notices at the Post Office. If you want to chat with your friends, you go to the Post Office (around 10:00 for the older folks, or around 11:15 for those with Kindergarteners or around 3:00 for those with gradeschoolers). Just don't go between 12:00 and 1:00 because they are closed for lunch.

Now, as if all that were not service enough to our community, our post office also doubles as a produce exchange. Throughout the gardening season you can occasionally find boxes of squash, onions, carrots, etc. outside the post office that were left by gardeners with a bit of excess. This produce is there to be taken home by whoever in town wants it. It's a pretty good system. I picked up quite a few odds and ends for the dehydrator throughout the summer, and just last week scored a couple of boxes of apples. Not bad for a trip to the post office. :)

Growing and Harvesting Dry Beans

Here's a post I put up on Utah Preppers about Growing and Harvesting Dry Beans. Check it out. Maybe you'll want to give it a try in your garden next year. :)

Living History to Learn Skills

I read a post at Preparedness Pro yesterday about the importance of learning skills. Acquiring useful skills is actually something I've thought about a lot in case you couldn't tell by all the crazy stuff I share with you that I've been doing. I believe that having a quiver full of skills and things you've actually tried is way better than having a library of books about self sufficiency. Now don't get me wrong, your resource books are very important. It's just that having experience with something, even if it didn't go so well, gives you so much more to work with.

The type of skills that were the focus of the article were the skills that will make you an asset to society if it ever needs rebuilt from a major disaster or TEOTWAWKI type situation. Skills like blacksmithing, woodworking, weaving, sewing, leatherwork, candle and soap making. Skills that were everyday and ordinary in the past but are not as necessary in our world of convenience and electricity. Unfortunately, because of that, many of these skills just aren't taught anymore. But I wanted to let you all in on a great resource for learning some of the "old time" skills (no, it's not my mother). It's historical reenactments or living history events.There are so many different groups that organize and participate in historical reenacting or living history events. I bet there's one near you. These events usually range from a few hours to a week long, and encompass many different time periods. Everything from vikings to pioneers to World War II and everything in between.Our family participates in historical reenacting of the colonial and mountain man eras (1770's-1840). We've been doing this since my kids were very small, in fact the littlest turned 2 months old at her first rendezvous. Besides being a great family activity, these types of living history events are an amazing resource for learning skills from the past. Through reenacting, I've been able to take classes on different types of weaving and cordage, outdoor cooking, flint/steel firemaking, basketweaving, butter making, tanning leather, and the list goes on. Sweet husband has taken some of the same classes plus done some blacksmithing classes as well. You can learn to make knives and other weapons, shoot guns appropriate to the era, and primitive archery. You can even learn to throw knives and tomahawks. (Yes, she's only 4 here, yes, she popped the balloon with her own tomahawk, and yes, it's scary how consistent she is with it--watch out future boyfriends!)Get to an event and ask questions. Most re-enactors are more than willing to share what they know. If you meet one that's not, go ask someone else. Some events have organized classes, others don't. You might need to get out of your box and strike up conversation to learn the skills you want to know.

Attending these events as a visitor is a good start, but will only give you half the experience. Why not step up and become a participant? Then you too can experience the joys of primitive dishwashing!
You learn how creative you can get when the whole family is cramped in a little tent while the rain pours, how fast or slowly shoes dry out, how to wash hands, faces, hair, clothes, and dishes with minimal water, how long making a fort of sticks and rocks in the woods can occupy a boy, how to string canvas together to make a shelter when the tent isn't big enough anymore--you get the picture. It is exhausting and fun and educational all rolled into one.
And you get to do it all . . .
wearing . . .
really . . .
cute clothes!

Here's some ideas to find your nearest living history event:
Check this page at wikipedia.
Or this site for a listing of events.
Search for your state muzzle loading association and contact them to see if they sponsor any events.
Ask your local chamber of commerce.
Ask the "locals" in your community.
Watch out for flyers or notices in the newspaper.
Sometimes even the TV news crews will cover events.

So if you're looking to learn some "old" skills, give some thought to giving living history a try--you might find out you really like it! :)

Chicken House Progress

After many weekends and evenings of construction, the chicken house finally hit livable stage this past Saturday. Happy day for my poor homeless chickens. Of course I had to take pictures, even though it's not quite "finished".

Here's the back and door side of the coop. It's built on a 4x8 platform of 2x6's and wafer board. The walls are framed just like a house (seriously, this thing is built BETTER than our house). They are sheeted with wood that we bought to build our shed, then decided to sheet the shed with metal instead, so these sheets of wood were already bought. Really, I'm too cheap to have bought the nice stuff specifically for my chicken house, but as it turns out, it looks pretty nice. We don't have an air compressor powered staple gun for attaching the sheeting so had to screw it on--slow, slow, slow, but it's done. Trim is 1x4's. (And no, the rake is not holding the whole thing up!) It is tall enough for me to stand up in, but I'm not very tall. The cut out parts on the back wall are supposed to be nest box access doors, but the nest boxes aren't built yet, and their design is currently subject to change, so we'll just see how it all turns out when it gets done. It is raised up about 18 inches off the ground on steel supports and will eventually have the underside fenced in to give the chickens more room to roam. Roof is framed with 2x4's, sheeted with wafer board, then tar paper and old metal roofing off somebody's old shed.

Here's the chicken access side. Approx 6 feet tall on the outside. Window was a cast off from another friend whose wife was glad to see it gone from their place. Faces east--should help them warm up nicely on winter mornings. Still need to put the door on the chicken entry, and the underside is boarded up because the fencing isn't wrapped around the outside of the house yet. The ramp is one we built for the kids to get on the trampoline, but now they're all big enough to just climb up on it without help, so the chickens get the ramp.
Now the inside. Check out the fine framing job. Perfectly square, level, precise, and time consuming. We forgot to account for the overlap at the corners when building the back walls, so we had to scab in a couple extra pieces to catch the edge of the sheeting that didn't fall on a stud. Things like this are why it takes us so long to build something out of wood. Roosts in the back built by me and our son. Nest boxes are supposed to go on the right wall.
Here's the serious, hurricane proof support structure (okay, we don't get hurricanes here). Steel pipe sunk in concrete with brackets on top holding the floor platform, and then braced together so they don't shear off if the wind were ever to get that strong. You can kind of see it all if you look hard. It just looks like 3 pieces of pipe welded together in a squashed "N" shape.
I forgot to get a picture of the inside of the door! It's framed in steel (ahh, steel--it is sooo straight) and sheeted with the same fancy grooved plywood.

We still need to get the house painted or stained (that will be my job--hubby doesn't do paint). I also think a spring closure on the door would be good. We opted for an "out" opening door which gave us more room in the coop to work with, but also means that if the door is not latched the chickens can get out of it and wander around the yard like they did this morning . . . luckily, the neighbors dogs weren't out and they didn't go far. They also follow the scrap bucket around, so they all followed me right back into the coop as soon as I had the bucket in hand.

And for all this work, we don't have to buy eggs and get to have constant chicken entertainment. Good trade.

Emergency Essentials Food Storage Analyzer Review

One of my favorite preparedness stores, Emergency Essentials, has a new food storage analyzer on their site and graciously offered a $10 gift card for me to try it out and write up a review. Now don't go thinking I'm so special, you have the same offer--just click the button at the bottom of this post to try it for yourself.

Anyway, here's how it works:

You create a login for free if you want your input saved, otherwise you can try it out without having it save your information. I figured if I was going to go through the trouble of figuring out what I have in my storage, I should let it save my answers for me.

After you login, you tell the calculator who you are storing food for (male/female and age) and it calculates how many calories per day you need to have for your family/group. Then there are pages to input the amount of certain food storage items you have in storage by category: cereals, grains and pastas; fruits and vegetables; meats and TVP; dairy items and eggs; legumes and soup mixes; desserts and gourmet mixes; cooking essentials; Mountain House; MRE's; nutrition specific; grocery store canned foods; and add your own item. Most items had a button for more information which took you to the item page on Emergency Essentials' site, a button to order, and a button for nutritional facts. Some had a button for recipes using that item. Each also had a box to input the number of that item you had stored and a box to input the number of that item you intended to purchase from Emergency Essentials along with the price.

The cereals, grains and pastas group had items like wheat, rice, spaghetti, etc. pictured in the packages that Emergency Essentials sells them in, and you put in how many of each of those packages you have. My trouble here is that most of my food was not purchased through Emergency Essentials, so I had to estimate on some of the items. Like "spaghetti noodles" were only available in a can, but I have mine in bulk in boxes, so I had to estimate the number of cans that would equate to. They have the superpails of some items and list the weight for those, but don't list the weight for the cans, so I really did some guessing on some products to get a number to put in their calculator.

Fruits and vegetables group covered freeze dried and dehydrated fruits and vegetables, but again, only the ones that Emergency Essentials carries, so not everything I have stored could be input.

The meats and TVP section had freeze dried/dehydrated products that Emergency Essentials carries. I don't have much in this category, as most of my meats are bottled/canned or frozen.

Dairy items and eggs had Emergency Essentials available powdered milks, powdered butter, powdered egg, etc. They only had instant powdered milk, so I just used that instead of digging out a can of the non-instant I have in stock to get the information off it.

Legumes and soup mixes covered dry beans, lentils, and bean soup mixes. I estimated a few here also, because I have bulk items and some they didn't list, so I just picked something close and entered my amount on that item.

Desserts and gourmet mixes . . . Again, items offered for sale by Emergency Essentials, and most not something I stock.

In the Cooking essentials section are items like sugar, yeast, cornstarch, baking soda, etc. I estimated here also since I usually just buy things like that at the store and not in #10 cans or superpails. How many average boxes of cornstarch equal a #10 can of cornstarch? I don't know either. If the cans had their weight listed with them, I could have probably estimated a little closer.

Mountain House section listed freeze dried Mountain House meals in pouches and cans. I do have a few of these, but they are buried deep in the food room, so I guessed at the varieties, but did enter the amount I have (or pretty close to it anyway).

I did the same thing for the MRE section. We have some, but I don't know the varieties, nor did I want to dig them out to find out. I know we have some MRE side dishes also, but didn't even input them as I don't have any idea how many or what kinds. I picked a couple of main dish varieties I remembered seeing in our stash and used them as the total amount instead of itemizing every variety of MRE we have.

The nutrition specific section listed foods already in other groups, but you could sort them by what vitamins they were high in, etc. to make sure you're getting some variety in your food storage. I skipped that section.

The grocery store canned foods section listed some of the more popular canned foods you get for storage at the grocery store, including canned beans, chili, soups, fruits, etc. It did not have everything you could possibly purchase in a can from the grocery store obviously, but did have a pretty good variety.

After you input your grocery store items, the last section is add your own item. In this section you can input an item you have stored, but need the label/nutritional facts for the calculator to be able to calculate the product into your storage. I didn't put anything in here. Most of the items I have stored that weren't already accounted for I bottled or dried myself, so I don't have nutritional facts on them, and really, by now I didn't want to take the time to input every can of randomness in my food room ;).

At the end of my analysis, including all my estimating, but without counting my home bottled or dehydrated tomatoes, meat, fruits, veggies, etc. or anything in my freezer or stored fresh (like a sack of potatoes), the calculator/analyzer said I could feed my family for 363.69 days. I need more food. ;)

Pros: This was a fun experiment and overall a good program. You could spend a lot of time on it if you wanted to input everything you have and inventory exactly how much of each item you have stored, and get a pretty good calculation of how long your food storage will last. They had a good variety of items available for easy input.

Cons: If I put in that I have 10 superpails of wheat (approx 450 lbs), the calculator says I can feed my family for 74 days, but how would we do for 74 days on just wheat? It doesn't help you put meals together, just calculates the calories/servings that you have stored.
I didn't like that it was so difficult to calculate amounts of items if I had them stored in different containers than Emergency Essentials offers. Even listing the pounds/can on items would help with this. And of course the items that I have that I had no way of figuring out how to include I just had to keep in mind as additional items on top of what the analyzer results were. Also, as a nutritional analyzer, it didn't take things like water, medications, or other items outside of "food" items into account.

Anyway, now you have my opinion, go give it a try for yourself:

Kids 72 Hour Emergency Kits

Sorry for the trouble, but this post has moved to our new blog site.  Click here to go straight to Kids 72 Hour Emergency Kits.  Thanks!

Rotating the Adult 72 Hour/Emergency Kits

Remember the 72 hour emergency kits? Well, if you've put one together for yourself or your loved ones, it's a good idea to get into them and rotate the supplies every so often. I actually like to do this every spring and fall (I use the LDS General Conference weekend as a reminder). Getting the pack out at least twice a year serves a couple of purposes. First, I get to rotate out all the old junk like old MRE's and expired medications and replace them with fresh stuff. Second, I am reminded of what I have in the pack and it gets me thinking of what else I need or want. And third, I get to organize all the stuff I added during the last 6 months (letting you all in on how I operate here--when I want to add something to the kit and it's not rotation time, I just unzip the top zipper and stuff it in, then I usually have 4-5 things that need to be put where they belong in the kit when rotation time rolls around).

This fall, just for you, I dumped the entire contents of my kit and took pictures--now doesn't that make you all feel loved? Just don't pay any attention to my nappy living room carpet--it was that way when we bought this house and I've got no drive to replace it until my kids are bigger.

So we'll start with the clothing. I have windproof fleece pants, thermals, a long sleeve top, socks/underwear, lightweight pants, and a small fleece blanket (okay, the blanket is for the kids). I've vacuum packed it all, so it takes up less space in the pack.Next, is the water section. Bottled water, nasty water purification tablets, portable water bottle style water filter (dad has the pump type filter in his kit). Redundancy is a good thing. Having clean water to drink is a big deal. I'd carry more water bottles, but they're heavy.
Now the food section. I have a real low tolerance for not eating. I am prone to migraines in a hurry if I skip meals or just eat junk all day. I also have kids that can only carry so much in their own kits, so it may look like I have food overkill, but I don't think I have enough. Freeze dried Mountain House meals (the best tasting brand of freeze dried backpacking food in my opinion), a couple of MRE's with MRE heaters (trying to phase these out of my kit--they taste nasty to me and are heavy, however, they are "ready to eat", I wouldn't need to use water for them, and they have their own heaters), kippered snacks (really, those are for my husband--I guess they should be in his kit--a bit of nastiness in a can), Power Bar type bars, what's left of the emergency food bars (re-vacuum packed), utensils, stainless steel cup that can be used for cooking as well as eating, chocolate (m&m's).
Now the heat/light section. Again, you might notice a little redundancy. Firestarting is not one of my strengths, so the more means I have of getting one started the better chance I have of actually getting a fire going. Okay, I'll try to go in some kind of order here. Lets try starting at the top left and going clockwise-ish. Lightsticks, military firestarters from somewhere (maybe out of a 20 year old mre?), dryer lint firestarters, super sappy sticks, high altitude lighter by Coleman, magnesium/steel firestarter thingy, magnifying glass from Target pharmacy, waterproof matches, cub scout style buddy burner (rolled cardboard in a tuna can doused with wax), solar/crank light radio, shaky flashlight. Need to get a bit of my char cloth in here. There's also a LED light clipped to one of the zippers of the pack.
Whew. Okay, now on to the tools and miscellaneous stuff. This one we'll go top left and then just kind of sweep to the right side of the picture. Cheapo rain poncho, emergency blanket, emergency whistle thingy with a compass and waterproof match case (forgot to check if there were matches in it . . . ), scissors to open all the vacuum packed things and whatever, a clothesline in a film canister, extra ziplock baggies for whatever, gerber tool (like leatherman), rope, pencil/paper, razor blades, assorted string/twine/small wire, pocket knife, ammo, leather gloves (hate to use up all my bandaids on scrapes that could be prevented by wearing gloves).
Are you done yet? Nope, still going. More assorted miscellaneous items: cash (small bills and change), playing cards, mini scriptures.
Lastly, toiletries/first aid/more miscellaneous. I'll take a stab at order here, but there's kind of a lot. We'll at least start at the top left. Maybe we'll try going in rows this time. Row 1: Minimal first aid stuff (triangular bandage, bandaids, ointment), hand sanitizer, baby wipes, feminine needs. Row 2: lotion, ace bandage, sunblock, ion drops, contact solution, glasses, extra contacts, contact case, toilet paper. Row 3: sewing kit, soap, handwarmers (guess those should have been in the heat/light section), medications in ziplock bags with the lot number and expiration date written on them, comb, shampoo, deodorant, toothbrush, toothpaste, floss. We have a better first aid kit as well as a bag with more medications in an easy grab location. I've also added a little travel type tube of insect repellent and my important docs scanned to a thumb drive.
I have all this stuff packed in an internal frame backpack with the hip straps on it and a good old pair of shoes tied to the outside.

Here's the problem. I'm only 5'2" and about 110 lbs and have degenerative disk disease that gives me some real good back pain off and on and makes it tough to carry anything too heavy. Sweet husband hefted my pack and asked, "Can you carry this?" And the answer is: Not very far. It is a well built pack with the hip straps to disperse some of the weight, but it's still heavy as all get out. But what do I take out to make it lighter? And I haven't even really hit on the "shelter" concern in my pack contents. I'm hoping to be able to drive to my evacuation location or at least take the wagon. Any great ideas? Sweet husband's pack is just as heavy, and I don't want to rely on us having to be together or have both packs to have what we need.

I also rotated the kids' packs, I'll post on that hopefully in the near future :)

Hot Peppers Part 2: The Saga Continues . . .

Our poor chickens need a house. They had a house that we borrowed from a neighbor, but it was really too small and had no nest boxes and no good access to the interior except through the chicken door which is a bit small and nasty for adults, and although not too small, it's just plain ol' nasty for the kiddos. (really, this post is about peppers, hang in there.) So Saturday sweet husband had the day off and we decided to work on the new chicken mansion. We've already put a couple of good afternoons into the project and had the cement footings poured, the floor built and the walls framed. Now, the way the coop is set up, we had to remove the little dysfunctional house from the inside of the coop before we could erect the chicken mansion on the west wall of the coop or we'd need a crane to lift the old house out after the mansion was built, so Saturday morning we took the little chicken house out of the coop and set about working on the new chicken mansion.

As we were working and "hanging out" with the chickens all day, I was doing a horrible amount of coughing and sneezing, as were the kids and even sweet husband. He thought it was chicken dust, but something was seriously burning my throat out there! Everybody that came near the coop that day started coughing or sneezing.

Then it dawned on me--we had fed the chickens the hot pepper scraps--tops, seeds, and plants--just a couple of days before! So here's my theory: chickens eat nasty hotness, then it comes out the other end and they scratch it around on the ground of their coop and voila! CONTAMINATED CHICKEN COOP DIRT!

We ended up hosing the whole coop down so we could finish working that afternoon. Seriously folks, I won't be planting those particular varieties of hot peppers again! Sweet husband tried some (I told him I thought they should sit and "pickle" for a few months or something, but he really wanted some peppers on his sandwich) and they are SO HOT he about can't eat them. Now he's thinking of all the family and friends who need a bottle of pickled hot peppers for Christmas this year.

On a side note, the chicken mansion only got about half put together Saturday, so the chickens are now homeless, living in a box (the original chick box on it's side) and laying eggs in a pet porter until we get another day off to finish their new house. I'm seriously considering bribing some of sweet husband's friends to come help finish the coop as neither of us are much experienced at wood construction. Maybe they'd like some hot pickled peppers . . .

Pickled Hot Peppers and my Attempt at Plumbing

Pickled Hot Peppers. Sorry, it doesn't even sound appetizing to me, but sweet husband likes them on his sandwiches and we had an abundance of hot peppers in the garden this year, so as I'm contemplating what I'm going to do with them, he suggests slicing them and canning them for sandwiches. Sure. Sounds easy enough I suppose. Well, after getting it done, I wouldn't really recommend it, but you're welcome to learn from my experience and try anyway. So here's how it went.

First, a friend and I picked all the hot peppers from the garden (it was going to freeze, so they had to get out of the garden anyway) and I washed them. Aren't they lovely? Peppers are much better to look at than to eat.
These are Bulgarian Carrot Peppers and Georgia Flame Peppers. They look pretty much the same as each other--green when immature and dark orange when fully ripe, about 3 inches long and hotter than all get out. I was going to bottle them separately and see which was better, but didn't manage to keep the two varieties separated during the chopping process, so they're all mixed up in the bottles now.

Next I got a pot and mixed up the pickling mixture:

5 cups vinegar
1 cup water
4 tsp canning or pickling salt
2 TBSP sugar
2 cloves garlic smashed


Heat it to boiling and simmer for 10 minutes, then remove the garlic and discard. I ended up using 4 times this recipe by the time I was done. Also got the boiling water canner warming up and a little pot to heat lids in.

Have you ever been in a kitchen with boiling vinegar? Definitely cleans out the sinuses.

So while the vinegar solution was heating up, I put on my rubber gloves, chopped the tops off the peppers and cored them with a potato peeler (bottom right in the picture). You don't have to core them if you don't want to, but sweet husband doesn't like the cores on his sandwiches, only the peppers, so ours got cored. He actually did this bowlful of peppers while I took the kids to their soccer games. Kind of like a bouquet of peppers.

Now, here's where I quit taking pictures as things got a little interesting. Once the peppers were cored, we needed to slice them up, so I first tried using my salad shooter. It sliced a few and then quit working. Meanwhile I am having intermittent coughing attacks from the peppers being chopped. I do not like peppers. They do not like me. I decided this should be an outside job in the future.

My little gal came in to tell me something and had her hand on the counter while she was talking, then after she left the room her eye started hurting--I determined it was pepper juice from the countertop, so she got the burning eye wash on screaming child treatment and felt much better. After that, the kids were banned from the kitchen, and I was sure everything I touched or the peppers were even close to was contaminated with burning pepper juice. Hence, no pictures. I didn't want to take the gloves off or contaminate my camera by using it with the pepper gloves on.

I still needed to chop the peppers, so I got out my dangerous food processor that the lid doesn't latch down and sliced a few in there, but it kept getting peppers caught between the slicing blade and the lid and then it wouldn't slice anymore, but just spun around with peppers caught in it. About this time, sweet husband offered to put the kids to bed so I could get these peppers finished before tomorrow morning.

Then I remembered I had the slicer attachment for my Kitchenaid, so I got that out. I've never used it before. Turns out the blades are not very sharp on it--in fact not at all sharp, so it just kind of peeled the pepper meat off the skins, turning it into mush and left the skins spinning around between the blade and the pusher. So after exhausting all my automatic pepper slicing options, I was left with the good old fashioned knife and cutting board. This went along fairly well until I cut a hole in one finger of my glove and pepper juice got on my finger and burned it. I donned a new glove and went about slicing like a crazy chef lady until I was almost finished and as I cut, pepper juice squirted up right in my eye! I peeled off one glove and ran to the bathroom and did an eye flush in the sink for I don't know how long. Amazingly, when I was done, my contact was still in. Weird. I went back to the kitchen and decided the few peppers that were still in the bowl could just go to the chickens. I was done with peppers.

I put the sliced peppers in the jars and poured the hot vinegar solution over them leaving about 1/2 inch headspace. Wiped the rims and put on the hot lids and put the jars in the canner. After 10 minutes in the boiling water canner, the peppers came out looking all pretty and harmless. I put them on the rack to cool and after repeating the process for a second batch of jars, went about cleaning up the kitchen.

While I was cleaning up, my garbage disposal quit working and with little pepper bits floating around in my sink from washing all the chopping equipment, the sink quit draining. Now I have a sink about a third full of water with pepper bits in it and can't get it to drain, and somewhere in my brain I remember in another house when the disposal quit working there was a little tool you could use to unjam it. So I look under the sink and miraculously there is a little allen wrench looking tool between my grocery sack collection and the pile of rags and random cleaners I never use. I find a place the tool might fit on the disposal, stick the tool in and pull on it. Just as I think I'm loosening something up, the whole disposal comes off the bottom of the sink with a bang and a scream (that was me) and all the water with pepper bits in it is all over under the sink and on the kitchen floor. I was amazed at how fast I threw towels at the mess considering how late it was and how tired I was. Nobody woke up. I reattached the disposal and cleaned up some more. I took a picture to preserve the moment. ;) Then continued cleaning and sanitizing the entire kitchen so it was safe to walk into and make breakfast in the next morning.

Sweet husband figured out how to unjam the disposal--I had the right tool, I just used it in the wrong place.

I hope the peppers are good. I'm sure not trying them. I'll say again, I don't like peppers, but they sure are pretty to look at.

Now, if you choose to try this, here's a few warnings:

WEAR RUBBER GLOVES, safety glasses, respirator, heck, maybe a whole chem suit while you're working with hot peppers--serious chemical burns can result if your hands are not protected. We actually wore latex gloves--they are not the same thing as rubber gloves--the pepper oil can get through the latex gloves somehow. Strange but true. Keep the gloves on while you clean up--I didn't do this and ended up burning my hands and arms AFTER the sink ordeal.

Even if you think you don't have pepper contamination on you, don't go touching your eyes or sensitive areas! You'll probably end up burning yourself.

DO NOT LET YOUR CHILDREN HELP when you're slicing peppers. Don't even let them in the room!

Just buy sandwich peppers, it's easier.

And leave the plumbing to the plumbers.

(Hot Peppers Part 2 Here)