Preparations Update

[Amish Heart]

I am still trying to talk him into a large growhouse, with wide aisles, and waist high full walls of boxes. Hey, then he can help! Right now is pathetic, really. He can scooter around, but the plants of course are on the ground. The twins went to work, so it was just me out there. I'm watering, weeding, smashing squash bugs, dripping sweat, too much watering hose in one area, and sunk my foot up to my skirt in mud...almost lost my shoe. He's scooting around asking from waaayyyyy over there in garden what variety of blah blah is this....smartphoning the info on something I planted...gets in the truck, runs over the bike, doesn't know it and I look up and he asks if something is stuck under the wheel. Yes! It used to be a bike! Ha. Meanwhile tons and tons of straw is being brought in on big wagons to the back of our property. We are a laughable sight, really. I have a couple of neighbors that do come over and say hi and wonder what on earth we are doing. We did find out why there was a big pile of fresh horse poop near our corn. The next door amish guy's horse got out the other day, guess I didn't notice.

 

[WVDragonlady]

Added more canned meats ( good until 2024)
Added more canned fruits ( tropical)
Bought more walnuts and almonds
More paper products


I'm trying to stock those things that will be effected by the drought out west.
I plan to dehydrate the canned fruits so they last longer once it gets close to their expiration dates.

 

[UrbanHunter]

I never thought of the, dehydrating the canned fruit before they expire and extending their shelf life... cool!

 

[Amish Heart]

I always have problems with "sticky fruits", and wonder if that's why commercially produced dried have added stuff to them. Pineapple rings do well, but apricots and peaches seem too sticky. What kind are you drying, WVDragonlady.
I have dried many canned tomato products and powdered them when they get to expiration and they've turned out ok. They look darker than fresh, but I'm thinking it's because they were cooked in the canning process.

 

[WVDragonlady]

I always have problems with "sticky fruits", and wonder if that's why commercially produced dried have added stuff to them. Pineapple rings do well, but apricots and peaches seem too sticky. What kind are you drying, WVDragonlady.
I have dried many canned tomato products and powdered them when they get to expiration and they've turned out ok. They look darker than fresh, but I'm thinking it's because they were cooked in the canning process.

Any canned fruit I plan to dry I rinse first and then let drain well. I love dried apricots and rinsing them seems to work good for me. I dry canned pineapples, mangoes and apricots. Basically what I can't grow here and canned are much cheaper than fresh

I do spaghetti sauce and tomato sauce in the dehydrator and noticed they're darker but they still taste good lol

I need to make a note for myself to start to buy frozen veggies to dry. I forgot today at the store

 

[Amish Heart]

AHA. Thanks. Maybe washing them will help.
Little granddaughter cut a huge bowl of mint for me yesterday, washed the leaves, got it going in the dehydrator. She drinks alot of mint tea with honey. I am training her to be a dehydrator helper.
Canned pineapple rings, dehydrated and half the ring dipped in melted dark chocolate, put in the freezer to set for awhile. Make yummy holiday treats and gifts. Around here, neighbors give small boxes of treats or things used around the house...a new hand towel, sponges, jar of nuts, hard candy. No one else dehydrates so I like to give something like that. The amish lady next to us was telling me she was going through alot of dried onion, and did I find a good buy on it somewhere. She was expecting and craving it at the time. I brought her over a #10 can of it dried that I did myself. Vidalias.
I've got a backlog of things to dry right now. Cans are good, nothing near expiration. But have more mint, fresh sage, and yellow summer squash rounds, shredded zucchini to do.

 

[WVDragonlady]

Too bad the Amish don't build solar dehydrators to use in the summer

I'm drying so much fruit that I've had to go old school and hang the herbs to dry. Works good just takes longer

 

[Amish Heart]

Some do, but not many. I found one of those tiered hanging dryers at the thrift store for drying herbs. Brand new, 50 cents. You hang it up and it's got four webbed shelves you can lay stuff on. The amish around here are so used to wet canning everything. They do use electric devices, though, plugged into an inverter and connected to a solar charged car battery. So they could use a dehydrator. My favorite cousin likes it when I give her dehydrated hash browns. She makes potato soup with them. Didn't get around to filling the dehydrators today. I have two. Too busy get a huge cage wired for the guinea fowl. They are now in the old milkhouse and not in my dining room. Between that and normal stuff, it was the whole day.

 

[UrbanHunter]

So I have been busy virtually prepping....

I have increased my canned goods, basic food stuffs over the last 4 weeks.
I have increased my paper goods including baby wipes, it took 4 orders but we now feel "comfortable".
After doing an assessment, I increased our stores of nuts for baking and snacks, enough to cover this year's holiday season and to cover the wife's mixed nut cravings for about 9 months... if supplies get short she will have to learn to cut back.....
We ordered a few cases of powdered milk, sugar, and flour in #10 cans to expand our long term storage.
I received the materials to make 3 ceramic water filtering systems plus extra carbon and ceramic filters. We also got one complete pre-assembled unit that is ready to go.

I now think we could support 6 people on our stores for a while.......

 

[Tootsie]

I am very blessed to be able to buy groceries at auction. It’s possible to buy cases of vegetables or coffee or anything you can imagine for so little. Even meat. Good stuff, too. There are 3 locations near me, Mennonite connected. I know one source is a warehouse near Syracuse. I believe there are salvage stores in Pennsylvania. If they can sell premium stuff for a fraction of the cost, wouldn’t this be possible all over? Has anyone ever actually heard how these folks get pallets of groceries? How do they do it? I know the Amish Mafia is real, but I don’t think they’re getting the stuff the wrong way. I suppose I should just ask them.....

 

[Amish Heart]

No, the amish mafia is not real. That's hilarious. There are companies that sell truckloads of "banana boxes" of scratch and dent or salvage. I see the ads listed in, "The Budget", the amish newspaper all the time. Our amish store is called Yoder Discount and it's stocked with this stuff, and they also sell repackaged bulk dry food, and some local produce and home canned foods. A new thing there lately is a bunch of dented canned food from Meyers. We don't have a Meyers anywhere near here. I stocked up on alot of it for about 50 cents a can. They will sell stuff a year past the expiration date there, so it's important to bring your glasses (ha ha) and check the dates on things. The owner also makes a Walmart run (about 20 miles away) and resells milk for about a buck more a gallon for convenience. She gets truckloads of particular fruits and veggies that people sign up for in advance, but it's not necessarily cheap. Some good buys I've bought lately: jumbo boxes of potato flakes for $1.29, boxes of grits for 50 cents, Instant pudding for 28 cents a box, Rice a roni weird flavors for 59 cents a box, canned dogfood slightly dented for 50 cents a can, Keebler cookies a buck a package. It's right down the street from us, about 4 miles away, and our only store in town. We have auctions, but unfortunately no food auctions. Fowl auction once a month, Horse, goat, cow auction, and tractor auction. You are lucky to get to a food auction, Tootsie.

 

[Tacitus]

Trying to figure out what to do with my dad's preps. He is moving into a senior living facility.

Alone, I figured I was 25% prepped for TEOTWAWKI. Together, I always figured we were pretty well prepared...maybe 75% prepped for full blown TEOTWAWKI. (I don't think you can be 100% prepped for such a thing where we live. I would have to move to a more rural area to reach a higher level of preparedness.)

But, the wife (my wife) is downright apoplectic when I talk about what we are going to do with his preps. You may recall from previous posts that she is an anti-prepper. That is, it is not that she dislikes prepping...it is just that she dislikes clutter and things...she is a minimalist, through and through. She likes empty shelves, empty closets, etc. She likes throwing things away. Nay...she needs to throw things away. It is a compulsion.

I will have to put in an outdoor storage shed for some of my dad's stuff, but I don't have room for anything substantial. We shall see. I've got a month or so to decide. I figure I will only be 50% prepped at best with what I can keep. Then again...that is 50% more than any of my neighbors, I dare say.

 

[Tootsie]

Yes, I am very lucky for these auctions. I just get too carried away with them.
The Amish Mafia thing on tv was hokey, but it is a real thing. A very honest local man, a friend of mine, experienced a kidnapping and was taken several states away and was dealt with. I don’t doubt what I heard. Others confirmed. One of the guys on tv lives a couple of roads over from me.

 

[CalicoKatie]

. . . Trying to figure out what to do with my dad's preps. He is moving into a senior living facility. . . . .

If we have the shortages that are being predicted, you'll be wanting those extra supplies so you might consider renting a storage unit to hold everything. You could take home a box or two at a time to replace what you use at your house. As you deplete the supplies, you could rotate down to a smaller, cheaper, unit every 3 months or so if you didn't mind the extra work involved.

Several years ago I rented a unit in a large warehouse type storage facility and my unit was inside. I would not have been worried about temperatures ruining anything if I'd put canned goods in it because there weren't any temperature extremes inside it. You can also rent climate controlled units although those seem to be bit more pricey.

Good luck.

 

[Caribou]

I rent climate controlled storage. My wife is resistant but not to the level of yours. When the China Flu hit my wife went into panic mode using Clorox wipes daily. She was going through her copious, to her, stash and could not get any more. I pulled out a Costco five pack from storage and told her she needed to replace it. Later she was getting low and as I had moved to take care of Mom I told her where to find another five pack in storage. It took 15 months for supply to return but she was finally able to replace everything. Events like this I use to move her slowly to my side.

 

[UrbanHunter]

Trying to figure out what to do with my dad's preps. He is moving into a senior living facility.

Alone, I figured I was 25% prepped for TEOTWAWKI. Together, I always figured we were pretty well prepared...maybe 75% prepped for full blown TEOTWAWKI. (I don't think you can be 100% prepped for such a thing where we live. I would have to move to a more rural area to reach a higher level of preparedness.)

But, the wife (my wife) is downright apoplectic when I talk about what we are going to do with his preps. You may recall from previous posts that she is an anti-prepper. That is, it is not that she dislikes prepping...it is just that she dislikes clutter and things...she is a minimalist, through and through. She likes empty shelves, empty closets, etc. She likes throwing things away. Nay...she needs to throw things away. It is a compulsion.

I will have to put in an outdoor storage shed for some of my dad's stuff, but I don't have room for anything substantial. We shall see. I've got a month or so to decide. I figure I will only be 50% prepped at best with what I can keep. Then again...that is 50% more than any of my neighbors, I dare say.

When I was in college we rented a climate controlled storage unit with 24 hour access, but we made a couple of mistakes. We put everything in sealed cases or bankers boxes and stacked them 4 high and we didn't have a list of what was in the boxes. As a result of our poor planing we were making trips there more often then necessary and it took much longer to find what I needed. If I was going to do it today I would still use the storage unit, but first I would make metal shelves on wheels to hold my boxes,

and then I would inventory everything as I put it in the unit. If possible I would make 2 copies of the inventory, hang one on the shelves and have the other at home. That way when you are making your grocery list you can plan on using your storage stores first to save money and eat them down. (note the dates on the cans when you are removing your dads stuff, sometimes "prepper" food stores can get aged)

As for the shelves I would go with the 18"X48" by either 60 or 72" high, anything taller is too tall to reach. Being able to roll the shelves in or out of the storage unit will allow you to go with a smaller unit and use 80% or more of the space for storage and still be able to access everything.

Then again if you have a basement with a 4'X6' clear hole you could have 3 of these units without creating a lot of clutter.

My wife was also anti-prepper, but when she has a list of what we have to shop from she is willing to use it on a regular basis.

 

[Amish Heart]

Tootsie....Amish aren't allowed to be on tv. And they don't own tv's. The amish mafia show was a joke. Amish don't even have their photos taken on purpose. Someone is pulling your leg

 

[UrbanHunter]

Dang you @Tacitus, you made me look at some of my shelves and I realized that I have some plastic shelves that are overloaded and bowing. I measured the space (its a corner 38"X 50" so I ordered 2 sets of 36"X18"metal shelves on rollers to replace them. I think I will have room for 1 more unit in that area. The result will actually be an increase in storage space for my empty canning jars and canning equipment.

While I was looking at it I thought back to our college days, our apartment had no pantry and with 5 of us in there, there was very little room. The wife hates clutter too. We ended up buying a bunch of wardrobe closets and lined the wall of the living room (it made the wall look like wood paneling), that gave us easy access to our in-house food stores and it gave us a place to put the kid's toy bins and books. They were in plane sight and you would never know it was a 6 month supply of food....

 

[Caribou]

I rented a 10'X20' storage unit. I used 48"X18" shelves and I bought a couple of corner units. I went down one side, across the back, one corner unit, up the other side 4', put in another of my corner units, 4' into the room and 4' up the wall, and another 4' into the room. I assembled the shelving so that every pair of legs held shelves on either side. This meant that I had to assemble the entire system and slowly build up from the bottom row. I then attached the shelving to the studs with deck screws and fender washers. My shelving units came with rails for the open fronts.

This system has survived a 7.1, a 7.0, and most recently a 6.1 with very little cleanup or re-stacking. Everything is locked into place and supported by the entire system. I expect that if we get another 9.2 the entire building will come down, except for my unit.

 

[Neb]

I rented a 10'X20' storage unit. I used 48"X18" shelves and I bought a couple of corner units. I went down one side, across the back, one corner unit, up the other side 4', put in another of my corner units, 4' into the room and 4' up the wall, and another 4' into the room. I assembled the shelving so that every pair of legs held shelves on either side. This meant that I had to assemble the entire system and slowly build up from the bottom row. I then attached the shelving to the studs with deck screws and fender washers. My shelving units came with rails for the open fronts.

This system has survived a 7.1, a 7.0, and most recently a 6.1 with very little cleanup or re-stacking. Everything is locked into place and supported by the entire system. I expect that if we get another 9.2 the entire building will come down, except for my unit.

That should make it easy to fine cache in the rubble.

Ben

 

[hashbrown]

I sold a new home to an old couple and while they were moving in I saw bucket after bucket of freeze dried food. They got settled in and came and brought me a big sack of freeze dried food and had a talk with me and Jake about getting prepared. I didn’t say anything just took their advice and smiled. It was a nice gesture.

 

[Aerindel]

Replanting pole beans. Only about half of the first planting came up.

I don't know why, but I always have a hard time getting beans to come up. Once they come up, they always do well, but getting to that point always seems hard. Not sure what happens but somehow a lot of my bean 'seeds' fail.

 

[Neb]

Replanting pole beans. Only about half of the first planting came up.

I don't know why, but I always have a hard time getting beans to come up. Once they come up, they always do well, but getting to that point always seems hard. Not sure what happens but somehow a lot of my bean 'seeds' fail.

That came up in the garden thread...

Birds love bean peanut ... sprouts.

Cover them until the leaves develop.

Ben

 

[Aerindel]

That came up in the garden thread...

Birds love bean peanut ... sprouts.

Cover them until the leaves develop.

Ben

I don't have bird problems, but I've had mice squirrels dig them up. I DO always cover them, otherwise NONE would come up.

 

[Neb]

I don't have bird problems, but I've had mice squirrels dig them up. I DO always cover them, otherwise NONE would come up.

So how long until you can set your kittens loose to protect your seedlings?

Ben

 

[jazzy]

you guys have such good ideas

 

[Aerindel]

I actually think its mostly a matter of too cool of soil. Every bean packet I have says something like "plant when soil temps are at 60º, preferably 70º"

This doesn't really happen where I live except for a couple weeks in late july maybe.

 

[Newbri]

Got one more can yesterday.

 

[Tank-Girl]

QR code contract tracing apps and or leaving your contact details are going to be madatory to go to any hospitality or grocery store on the 9th of July at 1 pm. Take away's and drive throughs aren't included.

If I read the app blerb on my State's health web site they are planning a roll out of this app to make it madatory at all stores eventually.

I'm doing my best to find loop holes in the system because I WILL NOT down load the app - I took my smart phone for it's first lesson in underwater basket weaving.....it didn't end well.... and I refuse to give my contact details.
I'm working on food but I found a answer to the fuel situation.
Unmanned fuel pumps have a facility to use your credit or debit card to pay for the fuel without having to check in.
They're open 24/7.
Now the nearest "land based" unmanned fuel pump is over an hour's drive from me. I was fully prepared to load up the car with jerry cans and make the trek.
BUT there is a company that runs the 24 hour unmanned fuel depo at the local marina.
This company is nation wide, the account costs $35 to open and there's a on-line safety induction that you have to pass before you get the account approved and you get your account card.
The fuel pumps are on a floating wharf so there's no vehicle access at all so I'm going to have to use jerry cans to get the fuel from the wharf to the car.
Fair enough.

If you are close to the coast chances are there'll be a marina or a wharf for pleasure and fishing boats that will have a similar facility.
Unmanned land based pumps are common at bulk fuel depo's.
It's just a matter of doing a little bit of searching and finding out what's available in your area.

 

[UrbanHunter]

If you don't take your phone in the establishment they can't contact trace it, and if you pay with cash there is no digital signature. They make envelopes that you can put your phone to block all RF signals (so they can't track you) Amazon has loads of them.
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