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Garden dinner

From What if IT is today? – A Survivalist’s Blog

I volunteered to make dinner tonight.  I guess I wanted something edible.  I bought some meat today, seasoned it well and cooked up about a pound of meat for five of us – six if you count the one little slice that was given to the baby.  I’d have loved to eat that much myself but not this time.  Somehow I just got paid (once a month) and after I figured out my bills for the month of September I’m already about broke.  I’m finishing paying the bills for our trip back east and since I pay all my bills in full, September is going to be lean.

Back to dinner.  Since it was me doing the cooking I was going to use food that I like.  This means food that I either grew or is part of my food storage program.  Tonight it was mainly food that I grew. 

I called the grandkids outside and taught them how to dig up potatoes.  I told them that you can get a little shovel to help but that you have to go slow so you don’t slice up potatoes as you go.  Granddaughter went into the barn and got a square headed shovel.  One with a handle that was about three feet in length.  It’s a small shovel.  No, that’s not what I mean.  One of your toy shovels.  Of course they can’t find any of their toy shovels…

Four Letters Re: Hurricane Irene Lessons Learned

From SurvivalBlog.com

Mr. Rawles,
I am in northwest N.J. I wasn’t affected as badly by the hurricane as others were, but I did learn a few lessons about my preparedness.

1. Inspect your gear on a regular basis. I live on a dead-end street, and the road goes over a country stream, which flows underneath through a 2-foot culvert with a paved berm built over the top of it. Yesterday, that country stream became a 40-foot wide river about 10 inches deep and flowing rapidly over the road surface. To get across that, I got out my waders — and discovered that mice had chewed some holes in them. They were still usable for getting through that water, but I can never use them again to go fishing.
P.S.: inspect one’s bug-out bag regularly; also inspect food storage containers, including the back side and the bottom, to ensure they haven’t been compromised. I plan on doing this once a month going forward.

2. Mindset change: don’t skimp on temporary arrangements. I have lots of supplies for preparedness, but when the situation is going to be temporary — for example, power will be out for 6 or 8 hours, instead of multiple days — one thinks, "I don’t really want to drag out (gear, supplies, etc.) to set up, only to have to clean and put away everything tomorrow." Wrong attitude. If you need light, set yourself up to have plenty of light. If you…

Empty Shelves: Hurricanes, Disasters and Civil Unrest – a Contingency Plan

From SHTF Plan – When It Hits The Fan, Don’t Say We Didn’t Warn You

This article has been contributed by Kevin Hayden of Truth is Treason. Kevin is a former police officer who has seen what societal collapse looks like first-hand during Hurricane Katrina.

If you think that you’ll be able to simply drive to Wal-Mart or the grocery store and load up on food, water and supplies during an actual emergency, you are living in a fantasy world.  We now experience freak weather on a regular basis.  Oklahoma has experienced a record-breaking 53 days of 100+ temperatures, a massive hurricane is nearing Washington, DC and the New York City area, and NASA continues to amplify their warnings regarding solar storms disrupting our way of life.

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Orange Peel Candy

From What if IT is today? – A Survivalist’s Blog

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Odds ‘n Sods:

From SurvivalBlog.com

Mike Williamson (SurvivalBlog’s Editor At Large) wrote to mention that September 6th is "Book Bomb Day" for his novel Rogue. It is the sequel to The Weapon. It has: "Some violence, some harsh language, and very few sexual references." You can read some advance chapters here. Let’s lift Mike’s new book into Amazon’s Top 20! By the way, Mike will be signing books at Uncle Hugo’s book store on September 10th, 2011, including the signature edition of Rogue.  Uncle Hugo’s is Mike’s preferred outlet for sales ranking. 

Also, Mike’s new Freehold series adventure story (with minimal adult content in the form of two swear words) is now available for free reading at the Baen publishing web site.

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My wife Avalanche Lily pointed me to an excellent post over at the Paratus Familia blog: Long Term Food Storage – Baking with 25 Year Old Wheat

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Businessweek magazine just lumped me in with a bunch of Rapture Profiteers, even though I told their reporter that I’m a post-mil kinda guy. Oh well, it it tough talking about eschatology, even with fellow Christians, much less with a non-Christian reporter.

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Jeff B. sent this: Military bulks up to protect against groin injuries

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Taipan’s editor, Joseph McBrennan suggests: Buy a Gun. Link coutresy of J.B.G.

Long Term Food Storage – Baking with 25 Year Old Wheat

From Paratus Familia

There are a lot of methods for the long term storage of wheat in survival guides and on the internet but, most people, being fairly new to preparedness, have never had the opportunity to test the validity of any long term storage techniques.  Although Sir Knight and I have been storing food for 15 years, we regularly use and rotate our supply, ensuring that our stored foods are never more than about 5 years old.

A month or so ago, my best friend from high school helped her mother prepare to sell their family home.  They sorted through years of family memories and accumulations, kept a few precious memento’s and prepared the rest for a huge estate sale.  As they sifted, they came upon the remnants of their stored foods.  Deciding they couldn’t sell 25 to 35 year old stored foods, they forwarded them to us.

The foods that we inherited consisted of a number of 5 gallon buckets full of hard red wheat, about 20 quart jars of honey (harvest from their own bees!) and 25 pounds of pinto beans.  What a treasure trove!

Knowing that wheat was recovered from a Pharaoh’s tomb, and, after 2000 years was sown and successfully germinated, we thought we would we would attempt breadmaking with our very young 25 (to 35) year old wheat.  The wheat was stored very simply.  It was poured into 5 gallon buckets, a piece of…

The new house and food

From What if IT is today? – A Survivalist’s Blog

Army daughter and son-in-law just opened escrow on their first house.  Hopefully this will go through because they had an offer accepted on another house and then someone came along and offered more so their offer was cancelled by the seller.  It’s a great first home.  It has three bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a swimming pool.  Not much room for growing anything…not like they will garden or anything.  They are supposed to be closing escrow and moving in the first week of October.  I can’t wait. 

I will miss them and I will miss the ridiculousness of my daughter’s shopping habits.  Today she went to the grocery store.  She asked me to pick up cheese from Costco but everything else she planned on buying.  When she came home I helped put the food away.  She bought asparagus.  What about the asparagus plants in the garden?  But these are ready.  If you wanted asparagus you just let me know and I’d cut back one of the plants and in a week we’d have asparagus.  For free!  Then my jaw dropped to see her next purchase.  Actually I’ve never seen it in the store, although I heard that it existed.  She bought a quart sized carton of….egg whites!  Yes, we have about 30 chickens that like to lay eggs and she bought egg whites.  Why?  So she could just open the carton and pour out the whites in the…

Forever foods and your food storage pantry

From The Survival Mom

The original list, “10 cooking staples that can outlast you“, was written by Laura Moss.  It’s great info for anyone stocking up on food and would make a good addition to your Survival Mom Binder.  The original list follows with my comments in italics.

• Sugar – Regardless of whether your sugar is white, brown or powdered, it will never spoil because it doesn’t support bacterial
  

  image by afiler

  growth. The challenge with sugar is to keep it from hardening into chunks. To keep sugar fresh, store it in an airtight container or seal it in a plastic bag. If your brown sugar is more like a brown rock, you can revive it with just a minute in the microwave on low heat.

If you don’t use sugar very often, store it in canning jars and even sealed, small mylar bags.  The price of sugar has been rising, so     now would be a good time to stock up on at least 40 pounds, which is the recommended amount for one person for one  year.  If you’re planning on making preserves, you’ll need a lot more.

• Pure vanilla extract – If you have pure vanilla extract in the back of the cupboard, there’s no need to throw it out because it lasts forever. It may be more expensive than its imitation counterpart, but its shelf life certainly outweighs the

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Odds ‘n Sods:

From SurvivalBlog.com

F.G. sent this: Illinois to feed Asian carp to the poor

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R.J. asks: "Better than nothing?", in pointing us to this: ThinkGeek : Ultimate Survival Kit in a Water Bottle

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In conjunction with National Preparedness Month (in September), Emergency

Essentials is giving
away one of their "Traditional 2000" Year Supply food storage packages that is worth more than $ 1,600.

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S.T. mentioned this: How to Remove Yourself From People Search Websites.

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Fast and Furious’ a prelude to gun registration? (Link courtesy of James C.)

Survival Sanitation: It all Begins with the Hands

From Tactical Intelligence

This is the first post in a three-part series on survival sanitation. In a survival situation, proper sanitation is of utmost importance if you want to avoid your family getting seriously sick.

If you add a lack of medical facilities due to grid-down issues, then staying healthy becomes even more crucial.

In this series I discuss the skills you need in order to avoid getting and spreading disease, and how to deal with waste and sewage when your town and city services are no longer working.

• Survival Sanitation: It all Begins with the Hands
• Survival Sanitation: Disposing of Human Waste (coming soon)
• Survival Sanitation: Disposing of Garbage (coming soon)

This may be a bit cliché, but having clean hands is really the first step in staying sanitary in a survival situation. Since the hands are the primary contact point with every-day objects as well as between humans, they are also the top spreaders of disease. Hand washing — although it’s a simple practice — is the single most effective way to prevent the spread of communicable diseases.

Diseases Spread through the Hands

The hands can spread disease caused by fecal-oral transmission (you or someone else goes to the bathroom, wipes, and doesn’t wash), indirect contact with respiratory secretions (coughing or sneezing into hands), and coming into contact with urine, saliva or other moist body substances (I won’t go there, but I’m sure you get the point).

Here is a list of the most common diseases that are easily…