Posted on 03/12/2022 5:43:54 AM PST by Pollard
Thanks for the link! I don’t watch much TV, but I love watching ‘how-to-s’ on You Tube. Beau does, too. Finds LOTS Of car/truck repair answers there, which saves us tons.
Have you seen ‘Prepper Princess?’ She’s a hoot. ‘Retired’ at 38, a millionaire. So, SO GOOD at saving money. I’ve changed some of the things I do and how I spend, based on her ideas. She’s VERY conservative, and it shows. She comes off a little gruff at times, so just be aware of that. She does not suffer fools gladly, LOL! ;)
And here I thought I did good by retiring at 56, LOL!
Herbs freeze well.
I put mine in jars and close them tight and there’s no moisture loss.
I save and use primarily spaghetti sauce jars as the lids have the built in gaskets. That way I’m not using canning jars that I need for actual canning.
In addition to seeds, I strongly recommend a good book on plant-breeding. “Landrace Gardening” by Joseph Lofthouse, and “How to Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties” by Carol Deppe are both great books. They present the subject in a way that anybody can understand, and they focus on how to breed for resilience, adaptability, and natural pest/disease resistance.
If potatoes are a normal part of your gardening plans, I recommend getting a few packets of true potato seed (TPS). Unlike seed potatoes, TPS can be kept in storage for years and still be viable. TPS is also unlikely to harbor diseases like seed potatoes sometimes do. The downside is that the plants grown from TPS are unpredictable, so you’ll want to store the tubers harvested from each plant separately, so you can select the ones you like best and use those as seed potatoes the next year.
There are a few people who use TPS for their main crop, but for most people it would work best as a backup plan, so you can rebuild your seed potato stock if anything happens. Cultivariable.com usually has TPS available, although they’ve been selling out fast these days. Jungs has one variety called “Clancy” that looks like it’s still in stock. If your potatoes form “potato-berries” you can save your own TPS. Clean and dry them the same way you would with tomato seeds.
If things get bad enough their kids may come back home if they have any.
We don’t have municipal trash service here so we burn anything that will so I’ve got dog food bags sitting outside full of glass jars and bottles. I was thinking the other day that I might need to to put over seedlings if we get more snow/sleet/freezing rain. I should probably grab all the bigger ones like that and simmer to clean them up and save them for multiple uses. Pickle jars have the gasket too.
I’ve got an old hand vacuum pump with rubber adhesive strips, As Seen on TV. You punch a tiny hole in the jar lid, put the rubber seal strip over it, hold the pump end over that and pull a vacuum on it. The vacuum sucks down and holds the seal tight.
I also have a few plastic containers made for the hose attachment on a food saver but I no longer have a food saver.
Reminder to include fermenting vessels and some kind of airlock in with your long-term preparations.
In addition to fermented foods like sauerkraut and yogurt, it’s good to at least know the basics of making alcohol. In addition to being a handy barter item, it’s also a preservative, an antiseptic, a precursor to vinegar, and can be used to make herbal medicines. On top of all that, I’ve found it to be an effective way to cultivate yeasts for breadmaking, especially for those of us who don’t like the “sour” part of sourdough.
I have glass carboys and special airlocks, but it’s also easy to make wine in a plastic soda bottle. Wash the bottle, add your ingredients, and put the cap on tight. The next day, feel the bottle to see if pressure is building up. If it is, loosen the cap very, very slightly. You want it to just barely hiss after you let it go. At that point, pressure from inside the bottle can escape, but if the pressure decreases, the lid will act as if it’s still airtight, preventing outside air from getting in the bottle. Kind of a “poor man’s airlock”.
I make wine from apple juice and do it right in the 64oz plastic bottles they come. I just tighten until I feel the gasket touch and then make sure I can squeeze air out.
Figured out I can take 6 full 64 fl oz bottles plus one clean empty and pour off just a tad over 9 fl oz from each full into the empty. Add a cup of sugar and tsp of bread yeast. Two weeks later, wine that’s approx 10-11 ABV.
Did the math and it’s about 1/5 the price of Natural Light beer by volume and at least 1/10 the price by ABV. I’m not 100% sure what the ABV is for Natural Light here in MO. ALDI had no apple juice today. :(
A very detailed article on biochar and its effects on soil: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/gcbb.12885
Biochar is fairly simple to make at home, using things that would otherwise go to waste. Including “waste”. The charring process kills off any nasties that might be in the material, so it’s also a good way to deal with diseased or infested materials.
Will check it out. Supposed to be great for tropical soils but not so great for heavy soils in temperate climates which is me. I did see where in a study, they used it as a replacement for perlite in a potting mix because it has similar moisture absorption/retention capabilities. Also, part of my property has pale, fast draining soil so biochar might be good for that.
I once saw an article where a guy filled the bottom half of his chest freezer with bottles of cooking oil for help keep it cold when the power went out. I guess the holds it’s temperature for a long time. Would also be a way to store oil for longer as cold slows down the rancidification. Besides, stuff at the bottom tends to get forgotten until you clean out the freezer at which point that stuff has freezer burn so bad you end up tossing it.
I’m going to stock up on canned veggies, flour, sugar and coffee, bisquick, instant potatoes, pancake mix, rice, etc.
Don’t forget salt.
Salt is critical for survival.
3/22/22 11:38am central time
Migrating to new hosting so my cloud will end up having a new url, http://permasteader.route66custom.com/cloud/
Will update my profile page asap. I’m waiting for my local file copies to sync/upload. It’s almost up to 1,000 of 1,567 files. Then I’ll have to go through all the file folders in nextcloud and create share links to update my profile page with.
A search for “Food” in FR thread titles; https://freerepublic.com/focus/search?m=all;o=time;q=quick;s=food
Just about a new article every day about food shortages. Could be fear porn but would you want to find out the hard way in the future that it wasn’t?
Server migration done, as far as the cloud goes. Still got a couple of websites to finish.
All links on my profile page to my cloud files have been updated to the new urls so if you have anything bookmarked, you’ll want to update because I wasn’t about to create 34 forwarders on the server. Updating 34 share links was enough work.
https://freerepublic.com/~pollard/index
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