Posted on 11/16/2013 6:32:36 PM PST by dynachrome
You have your 1,000 pounds of wheat. Your 500 gallons of water and enough ammo to make Chuck Norris jealous but the question remains, are you truly prepared? Just because you’ve been prepping for twenty years doesn’t mean you haven’t made some mistakes along the way. It’s not enough to just have your emergency food storage, you have to be able to store it, eat it and even move it if things really get crazy.
(Excerpt) Read more at shtfplan.com ...
I have a lot of potable water on hand and alternatives to more. My hot water is supplied by the tankless method. But not bad advice for those that it applies to.
Thank you for the link...
Some of us early Freepers are now seniors, handicapped, living in “senior facilities”, because our adult children are too busy, preoccupied with their jobs, families, etc, to care for us directly in their homes. We are a modern “inconvenience”, and I understand that. It is what it is.
In fact, they are so busy with the daily struggle to meet the expectations of modern suburbia, they don’t even want to listen about how it used to be, - that gardening, canning, and freezing was a spring/summer/fall event involving the entire family, providing food over the bleak winter months until the next spring, when the cycle of life began again.
Because now, “Walmart, Publix, Wegmans, Whole Foods, Sam’s Club, & Trader Joe’s” are eager to take our “fiat” dollars, so why should our children take the time to learn how to garden, can, dehydrate, smoke, etc. We end up sounding like elderly naggers, telling stories about long walks uphill, in snow, both ways in the “olden times”. They are
They are the Sesame Street generation, and if you can’t explain how to grow tomatoes in 10 minutes, they get anxious - they want the “trophy-bragging points” for home-grown tomatoes, but do not have the time to learn the importance of temperature, varieties, soil, fertilizer, weather, water, bugs, time, etc.
They do not even know the difference between indeterminate vs. determinate varieties, and start shifting their feet if one attempts a brief explanation.
All I can do is weep, for survival skills are degrading, generation after generation, and many of our grandchildren will die from ignorance/lack of simple skills, all easily learned by elementary school years. But, we are too busy teaching them about sex in all it’s unhealthy expressions to be bothered with cooking, sewing, carpentry, mechanics, or basic animal husbandry.
We still vote for our local public school budgets, even though these schools have abandoned “shop, home-ec and agriculture, in the deluded notion that everyone has to get into college, Dare we ask about what degree repays the cost to our society/culture for valuable skills neglected, therefore lost, in these “institutions of higher learning?
Sorry for the rant. It is late and I am grieving, for I can see my grandsons slip-sliding away, charmed by the “Turkish Delight” of our suburban “mall” culture.
Our adult children are struggling to survive, and we elders are in danger of becoming the proverbial straw that will break their backs, if they even try to help us in the sad decline of our entire economic system, and what remains of our culture ahead.
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I have the same (maybe 15, it’s the diaphragm pressure tank). At any rate, you might be interested in a hand pump that works in unison with your well pump in case your run out of fuel for the generator or the generator just decides to quit.
I was checking out this one of these types myself:
http://flojak.com/?gclid=CN6QzMj06roCFZMDOgodsHMAjg
Preppers’ PING!!
Hat-tip to dynachrome for the Heads-up.
I understand exactly what you are saying. My kids have finally come around and want to learn a few of life’s lessons that my parents taught me. Gardening, canning, preserving and raising farm animals is how I was raised. I still do it cuz I can. Maybe I should turn this knowledge into a hands on business?
We have used milk jugs to store water for years.
As soon as they are empty of milk we wash thoroughly, rinse them well and leave with caps off to air out.
When dry we give them the smell test before filling with water.
Any with an odor get recycled but there are very few that fall into this category.
I suspect that leaving empties around awile before washing them makes them more likely to go off but I have never kept track.
I do know it makes them harder to clean.
Every storm season we fill any empty ones with tap water that is chlorinated at the water treatment plant.
We used to put a little bleach in each jug but stopped a few years back and have not had any problems.
I figure there is enough bleach in the city water to make more unnecessary.
However, If I was going to store water for several years I would go back to adding more bleach.
After storm season we gradually use the water in them, air them out and refill.
We have almost never had a problem with water being off, even after stored for a year.
We also use 2 liter soda bottles and other containers but I like the milk jugs for their ease of handling and storing.
Those of us who are able, and who can find young ones eager to learn, should seriously consider an “underground apprentice program”, passing along what we learned, and placing a value on these important life skills.
Who knows, maybe if enough of us start teaching these important skills, we can take back the future?
I am a big believer in canned goods.
Also, a big believer in the plastic milk cartons that the various dairies use to deliver milk.
Those plastic (actually, most are steel-rod reinforced) are made to stack and get used over and over and over in rough conditions.
Built-in handles.
AND!!!
They will hold 32 (4X4x2) or 48 (4x6x2) of the standard one pound cans of just about anything. You know, like spaggettios or hash or canned corn or whatever.
Xlent for storage if you want (they can take the weight) or xlent for transport if you need!
I have a “Family Grain Mill”. I think that is a good one but you would know better than I do. I bought it new, years ago. But my flour is already flour and hermetically sealed without oxygen by Walton Feed. I don’t remember how much I got but it’s on the bill I have plus on a spread sheet I printed of all that food I bought. There should be enough for a year as that was the criteria when I put that list together of what to get.
I tried storing flour on my own and it was a miserable failure so I went to professional flour sealing.
Very useful pointers there. I rotate my stock of stored water out on a regular basis. I don’t usually throw the old stock out right away, though, as I figure it might still be good to use for bathing and washing (feel free to correct me on that point if that’s not a good idea).
I didn’t know at all about the oxygen levels in some freeze dried foods. Learned quite a bit here.
I was given two cans of water made somewhere in the 50’s that were stored at a ICBM Launch Facility. One was tested for purity, it was OK. The other is a souvenir.
Water itself does not deteriorate with time but it can be contaminated if improperly stored. Proper filtering and disinfecting with chlorine will make most stored water fit to drink.
Imagine the 1800’s and before. Folks traveling cross country stop by a water hole and refill their canteens while their horse is pissing in the same water. I bet they ever even bothered to strain those little plants and animals out of it.
Imagine that hand dug well with the bucket crank and the little roof. And all the birds, snakes, mice etc that fell in and died. Not to mention the birds that perch on the well side and crap down into the well. People still drank it.
Regarding canned food, in Vietnam (1969)we ate C-Rations made at the end of WWII. I’m a believer that any canned food if stored in a cool dark place will last for ever.
That is wrong about water. Mine is in clear heavy duty plastic Ozarka jugs but they are in cool darkness. Put any stored water through a Berkey to be on the safe side if you have stored it for a number of years and you have pure water but it should be pure anyway if it has been kept cool and away from light.
I buy some fresh every year when hurricane season approaches - still in the Ozarka jugs that stack on each other.
BTW, if you do put back a cache of booze for a SHTF scenario, I recommend getting some of the small, single serving, bottles, which can be used for trading.
BUMP!
“Never use milk jugs to store water. As I’ve heard.”
True. You can’t get the milk smell out plus they are very thin and you will have water on the floor within a short time.
And a lot of people got sick and died
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