Posted on 09/16/2023 3:07:53 PM PDT by CottonBall
This is an ongoing thread – meaning come back to chat, post information, or ask questions any time. Hopefully the thread won’t stagnate and I’ll do better at posting weekly (or bi-weekly) topics than I have in the past. (anyone willing to post a topic now and then we'll be highly praised and appreciated).
We are in for some bumpy rides, and prepping can only help. If for peace of mind, if nothing else. We have a wonderful gardening thread and a current-events survival/prepping thread, and hopefully this one can piggyback off of those, maybe having a longer discussion about certain topics or … whatever. It's your thread, do what you like with it! (civilly, of course)
Here are granny’s threads, if anyone wants to peruse them:
nw_arizona_granny’s Thread #1
nw_arizona_granny’s Thread #2
nw_arizona_granny’s Thread #3
You are probably young enough that is a possibility in your life time. I don’t have many years left so I don’t worry about it.
“I always prep every fall for winter anyways. That way, all I need to buy is a few basics and am not schelpping home heavy, bulky stuff through the snow and slop.”
I do the same. We are in a cold snap that has lasted two weeks so far and I was able to (easily!) feed us and skipped the grocery store for three weeks, which was awesome. Next week is bringing ICE - which I absolutely HATE - and it makes everyday life on the farm really, REALLY hard! Grrr!
But I’m ready, Freddy! :)
My Mom (Bless Her Ever-Lovin’ Heart!) buys us a case of TP and a case of paper towels (very many prep uses for those!) every Christmas - because she’s crazy like a FOX, LOL!
https://successfulhomemakers.com/17-uses-for-paper-towels/
“If you don’t want to prep a lot now, just watch things politically and economically.”
I am watching but I am 84 yrs old and don’t believe I will be around when things get real bad.
I had canned Chickpeas to use up in the ‘rotation’ so I went looking for various recipes. I was surprised to find that use for them, too.
It was well worth it.
Bonus? Beau doesn’t like it, so it’s ALL for me, LOL! :)
Maybe. I’m mid-50s. But I’m thinking forward to children and grandchildren too.
Potatoes can be used to stretch flour in your baked goods. They have the advantage of making the bake good last longer as well. You can also use corn meal. Chickpeas can also be turned into flour. And beans can be used to make a bread or cake of a sort. (look up bean cake) Lastly you can grow wheat and grind it by hand but unless you have a water or wind mill set up it is going to eat up a huge chunk of your time and energy.
If you have bees you can use honey in place of sugar, you can also tap trees for sap and you can grow sugar beets. What you get from the sugar beets is not the refined white sugar but more a syrup that can be boiled down.
Salt, unless you live by the sea or a salt spring, is something you are just going to have to buy.
Sourdough can be used to take the place of baking soda in baked goods. It will just take longer and not be quite as light and fluffy.
You last thing is tea/coffee which some may argue about as a necessity. They have never met me when I have not yet had my coffee. :)
Yaupon holly for caffeine is about the only substitute you can grow in most of the country but you can use chicory root to stretch your coffee.
Chickpeas and sugar beets are also a good thing to feed your animals. I know a couple of people who are using chickpeas in place of soybeans for animal feed because chickpeas are not GMO while most soybeans are.
I see.
In that case, your decision makes much more sense.
Good ideas. Thank you.
Don’t let canned coconut milk go past the date. It will smell and taste like vomit. Serious, vomit. I refuse to buy it anymore.
Does your canned tomatoes expire in September of whatever year? Every last one of mine always expires/best buy is September. That gives quite a while for plus or minus leeway so who knows. A while back (not that long ago), I had just purchased some Great Value canned tomatoes and shortly after noticed each can had serious spikey rust on the top rim. Carefully got some of the spikes off and opened them. The rust hadn’t gone through but it was the weirdest thing. Guessed they had sat on cargo ships but it was after the cargo situation so who knows. But with the “September” dates on tomatoes, well, you never know where it’s been hanging out.
Yes, my limit is 5 years past dates on cans in general. Rotate, rotate and if something needs used, put it out on the counter so it’s in your face to be used asap. Had some pumpkin pie mix. Can’t stand the stuff and guessing I picked the wrong product off the grocery shelf. Had a couple old cans so used them in pumpkin bread and they were pretty tasty.
Remember that mother who refused to give her teenaged son an epi-pen because it had days before expired. SMH, poor kid didn’t make it.
How about eating the WEF? Betcha they’re gamey and stringy. Stock bbq sauce to cover the taste.
/s
Dawn dishwashing soap is more watered down than store brands now days. Can’t get even halfway through a wee little bit of dirty dishes before I have to start another sink of water and detergent.
Remember that mother who refused to give her teenaged son an epi-pen because it had days before expired. SMH, poor kid didn’t make it.
And you can make something that looks less like a garden and more like a weed patch.
The liquid off beans (aquafaba) like chickpeas will make meringue candy. Learn what can be substituted. Look for odd recipes like that and those that don’t require many ingredients. Learn what can be substituted. I recently learned all varieties (sweet or hot) fresh pepper stems and be use as yogurt starter. Make yogurt as you normally would but instead of store bought starter, use about 6 pepper stems (can have caps attached but no flesh) per quart of the heated/cooled milk. I don’t care for the bell pepper flavor but do like the jalapeno slightly warm spicy flavor in the first batch. The chained batches taste like plain yogurt without any spiciness. The first jalapeno batch can be baked into a cheesecake or veggie dip. The pepper starter incubates quicker than the regular starter and produces less whey. Yes, the stems can be frozen to be used at a later date.
I’ve only had one batch of the bell pepper sort of fail but that was my fault. I set it back in to incubate a couple days later and bam! it was done a short time later so a success.
I do.
What a tragic situation. How she could not figure she had nothing to lose by trying is beyond me.
I grow potatoes very successfully in containers.
I started out with those white plastic buckets with the bottoms cut out, so we call them bucket potatoes, but after mr. mm replaced some culvert pipe, he cut that into sections and I use them, too. They are bigger in diameter than the buckets.
Our garden happens to be pretty wet and a few years ago, a friend told me that they grew potatoes by laying them on the ground and covering them with wood chip mulch they got from the DPW. So I decided to try doing something similar with the potatoes.
First I fertilize the ground and stir it up so as not to burn the potato pieces. Then I lay the potatoes on the ground inside the bucket or pipe and cover them with a few inches of wood chips. As the potatoes grow, I add more chips to bury the stems and about halfway through the year, add a little more fertilizer.
It is important to keep the buckets watered though. In the fall when the tops have died down, I just lift and bucket or pipe sections and dig through the wood chips and pick up the potatoes, which tend to be much cleaner than those in the dirt. I have also discovered that I was having problems with potatoes in the dirt being chewed up, like the slugs got to them. That never happen ed with the bucket potatoes.
One year I also had great success with bucket carrots, using a peat moss and sand mixture, but last year, I could not get the carrots to grow at all, But it was a VERY wet year for us and a bunch of stuff did not fare well.
Onions are another good crop to grow and aside from weeding are fairly low maintenance. They, too, do better in a drier year than a wet one.
Turnips grow like weeds. I grew a few and they went to seed last summer and I found turnips growing in strange places all over the garden. They are also a very good storage root crop.
The thing I need to learn is how to properly store the carrots and turnips so they last as long as possible.
Squash and pumpkins also store fairly well. You can get several moths out of them, too, but do have to fight off squash beetles ands quash vine borers.
i read someone once said that most people would not recognize a potato plant if they tripped over it. Their suggestion was to grow crops like that in different areas around your property (if you have it) and that way if someone tries to steal food, they’ll go after the garden and miss the other stuff that looks like weeds or something.
Sweet potatoes are even better but in my climate sweet potatoes do not do very well. In the warmer climates though sweet potatoes have all the advantages and none of the disadvantages of potatoes.
Same here.
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