TEOTWAWKIAIFF

It seems the news outlets have been quieter in regards to the economy. It is as if all the bad news is out there and everyone is holding their breath waiting to see what happens.

I am still inventorying items from my preps, and surprisingly a few items are past their expiration dates.  These are items I do not normally use, or I overbought. Condensed milk, Peanuts, tomato sauce. I now have a couple of #10 cans of powdered milk so the condensed milk can be used for a dessert or chucked. (The local food bank will not take it if it is expired.) I’m eating the peanuts, and they are fine. I have another jar and I figure they will be good for at least another 6 months.

I know the expiration dates are arbitrary, and canned food lasts for years after the dates, but I can cycle through it now, so that’s what I am going to do.

I’m low on some staples, but nothing I need to panic buy. I do have to cycle the water I have stored, and that’s going to suck. I have umpteen 2L bottles to go through. On the whole,  I’m rather pleased with how balanced I have made my preps. I am rather pissed that one bottle of olive oil has a mushroom farm growing inside it, but the others are fine. Something at the packaging plant must have contaminated the bottle. So take heed and check your preps.

I plan on making my own spreadsheet to keep track of my inventory. I know others exist, but I think that tracking the carbs/protein/fat ratios in your preps is important enough to keep in the inventory. I have also found that there are a few items I need to re-package before storing them next time. I bought 2 big things of Tang, one was re-packed in mason jars, and the other left in it’s original pack. The one in the original packaging is bulging a little bit. I’m going to chuck it just to be safe. I’m out $5 from my lazyness.

I have been doing my best to avoid glassware. If I have to bug out, I can’t risk a lot of my food beig contaminated with broken glass. I’m looking into paint cans, a la Jack from the Survivalist Podcast, but so far they are either really expensive or not food safe. For the mason jars I do have, I plan on making wooden carriers for them. Once I have one planned up I’ll do a post on it. I plan on having it all built out of easily-acquired lumber. More on that in a future post.

It’s during these quiet times we can slack off on our preps. This is something we have to fight against and keep following that prepper path. Keep looking for sales on goods you need, and get ready to can or dehydrate all the good stuff from your garden!

I purchased a dehydrator, and wanted to use it a few times before writing a post about it. I bought the nine tray Excalibur, as advised by HerbalPagan, and I have to say I am impressed with the results. My idea for buying the dehydrator was to maximize the quality, quantity, and variety of the food I am storing. I bought the nine tray model so I could run large batches at once while the items were on sale. When I ordered it, I made sure to order two packs of powdered ascorbic acid ( i.e. vitamin C) to prevent some foods from turning brown from oxidation. I did not buy the special sheets to make fruit leather, as in my research I discovered you can use freezer bags taped down just as effectively.

The dehydrator itself is nice. It’s not quiet mind you, but not so loud that I can’t sleep 25′ away. The fit and finish is nice, but they have these grooves on top and a lip for the door to hang on that are a bitch to clean. Likewise getting inside to wipe up the drippings sucks, along with getting the little bits that flake off out is hard.

It works really well, however. The included book is more helpful than one I bought off of Amazon.com. It is very large and takes up a lot of room on my counter. It does noticeably warm up the  kitchen when running, and I think during the muggy summer the drying times would be too long to make it worthwhile.

My first attempt was to dehydrate frozen blueberries, frozen strawberries and frozen pineapple. It did dehydrate them, but into a sticky mess that leaked all kinds of juice down to the bottom tray that congealed into a sticky mess that took forever to clean. All the trays were coverd in the same goop. The fruit dehydrated into a raisin-like consistency. Complete failure.

Not to be dismayed my next attempt was frozen corn and frozen peas. These worked beautifully. I even reconstituted some to see how it would work, and I have to say they looked the same as they did when fresh.With this success, and extra money in the food budget I went nuts and bought a bunch of produce on sale.

Last night I cut up fresh strawberries and ran the machine all night. They came out perfect, with no juice (i.e. lost nutrition) lost. Later this week I’ll dehydrate carrots, potatoes, and onions.

The problem I am having is that the time to dehydrate does not fit well with the time it takes me to commute back and forth to work. My original idea was that I would be able to start it in the morning, and come home in time to unload it. Very few items take 12-13 hours to dehydrate, so I will have to run it overnight. Another issue is food is supposed to dry for an hour before it’s put into airtight jars to condition. Conditioning allows food to balance it’s moisture content before you vacuum seal it up for long term storage.

Another tip I found was not to touch the food with your bare hands, the food will absorb the oil from your skin and it will make it go rancid. I use some nitrile gloves I bought for working around the shop. I’ll post pics in another update, until then, keep preppin’.

You never know how much work a house is until you own one. It’s worse when your the only one living there and there is no one there to pick up after you. So I spent most of the weekend cleaning and doing chores. Bleh.

You can tell a lot about a woodworker from his workshop. You can also tell a lot about a farmer from his farm. I’ve been to farms and workshops where things are untidy, but not unorganized. I have also been to farms where the chickens shit all over the place, and then tracked all over the farm and house. Stalls are not kept reasonably clean for the animals. The milk fed to the pigs because it’s too unsanitary to make cheese.

I bring this up because if when we run into a economic collapse you want to be on a messy, but healthy farm. A farm like the one mentioned above would be a disaster. I know it’s a pain in the ass to keep all the crap we have in our homes dusted and clean. If we do not have time to dust that collection of decorative plates and spoons on the wall, then sell them and buy a painting you don’t have to dust.  Like Tyler Durden said, the crap you own winds up owning you. I need to get crackign and sell some stuff I have on ebay soon. I really want to ditch my paintball gear.

I did get outside to trim back a fuschia which is trying to take over my yard. I also picked up all the sticks and such that fell off of the trees this year, and get them into the firepit for later this week. My Town does not allow any burning, so I get away with burning brush in my “firepit” that is only used twice a year, just for that purpose. I also dump the scrap bin from the workshop in there, as it’s considered “construction waste” the garbage men won’t take it.

I finally got the trailer back from my brother “Bill” Took him six months, but it’s all fixed the way it was when he borrowed it. It’s a huge relief to have that trailer back, it’s the only way I’d be able to get my preps out of this area. I also need to get my lawnmower to the repair guy to get fixed. Yes, I could do it myself, but my time is worth more than the hourly rate he’s going to charge me. I got bigger projects to work on.

I have my dehydrator running right now. I cannot wait to see how it’s going. Mum forgot to bring the food slicer she has over this weekend. She has one in the back of a cupboard I can borrow. It’s going to make putting up a lot of food quickly a lot easier than I thought it would be. I have blueberries, sliced strawberries and pineapple dehydrating now. I started the batch at 6:30 am this morning and it should be almost done when I get home according to the books. The  I need to watch it and try it.

Next I want to do baby carrots, peas, and corn. Then a whole pile of potatoes. Then I watch for sales and go nuts on stuff I can get cheap. Soon, I will be able to go with the crops rotations, and buy in farmers markets what is in season for cheap money, dehydrate it and then put it up for 10+ years. I also want to dehydrate meat for jerky and preps, I need to research that a lot more before I try.

I also put up another 20# of white rice. I’m figuring out the last of this years tax money prep purchases. I’m looking at buying a big order with honeyville grains, but I need to see how much the lawnmower repair is going to be. I’m going to order items to “fill in” where I am weakest. Powdered eggs, butter, peanut butter, and cheese are top of my list. I also need to get going on a store of wheat and a four mill. I don’t think I can afford the six or so buckets of wheat and the mill, so I might need to buy just 1 or 2 buckets to start. I know I am paying a premium for the wheat from an internet store, but I have no other way of getting it here in New England.  If anyone does have any stores that stck hard, red winter wheat please leave a comment so we can share with other preppers!

I did get some plants in the ground last week. I got two tomato plants, a jalapeno plant, 6 heads of lettuce and 6 red cabbage. I bought them as seedlings. Yeah I know I should use heirloom seed and all that, but this year I wanted to see if these plants do any better than mine did last year. That, and I was too busy with the new job to start the seedlings from scratch this year. Look at it this way, the seeds I saved are ready for the survival garden.

Finally, I do need to start an inventory of my preps. I need to figure out how much I have stored and how long I have before it needs rotation. While doing this inventory, I want to re-package it all for easier transport if I do need to leave in a hurry.