M4L
Not sure the water thing is really accurate. Bottled water is certainly good for much longer than 3 months. Sure you shouldn’t use non-food grade containers or store in a way that encourages mold growth.
Bread was one of my specialties at culinary school. 4.0 GPA for baking.
/johnny
Best grain mill - Country Living Grain Mill
Very Pricy but will last the rest of your life even if you use it.
Ping.
It is not as easy as it looks.
You also have to be able to... er... “pass it”
how many preppers remember to set up a way to remove waste long term?
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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Preppers’ PING!!
Hat-tip to dynachrome for the Heads-up.
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!
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.
One tip I rarely see mentioned is to have a “SHTF Binder”. It should include a spreadsheet of exactly what you have stored, expiration dates, quantities, etc. Have one sheet alphabetical and another sheet listed by expiration date descending. This helps you quickly locate a particular item and will help you rotate efficiently.
In the binder, you should also have some basic info printed out (water purificiation methods/dosages, how to make charcoal, how to make soap, gold/silver amounts in U.S. coins, etc.)
The most important info to have is a collection of RECIPES that use WHAT YOU HAVE STORED. So you’ve got 500 pounds of oats...what are you going to do with them? Make oatmeal? Whole oat groats for breakfast? Oat flour? It’s really not pleasant to have all this grain stored and realize you can’t make bread because you don’t have any yeast (or baking soda, or baking powder). And yes, there’s a recipe for that. Have some recipes printed out and you’ll be far ahead of the curve.
For water have several methods to purify - “pool shock”, laundry bleach, Berkey, Katadyn, boiling, etc. As with all prepping we do the “Two is one, one is none” so we have backups for our backups. Water is especially important to get right.
Just my $0.02...