Tag Archives: garden

Momma Bear: Figuring Out How To Make Food Storage Work

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At our house food storage is a complicated issue. We all face obstacles to our prepping, whether it is financial, lack of family support, or just being unknowledgeable. I grew up poor, so you might say I have “food issues.” And when I say poor, I mean that I really only finished my senior year of high school because they provided low-income families two free meals a day; for me the school part was just the filler between my meals.  But what I did not realize until recently, thanks to the article: The 5 Stupidest Habits You Develop Growing Up Poor, is that growing up that way affects how I shop for food even today. After 20 years of marriage, with a much more substantial income, I was still shopping paycheck to paycheck. I had the mentality of only buying exactly what we immediately needed.  But once I became a prepper, I had to retrain myself to “buy extra.”

One obstacle of the ‘poverty cycle’ I was able to break, was my love of packaged foods. Packaged foods are cheap, have a long-shelf life, and feed more people than fresh foods do. Poor people eat lots of these, essentially training their bodies to expect high fat, high carb, and high sugar as the core of their diet. This causes their bodies crave these foods and, as a result, they tend to be frequently overweight, even obese. I was able to overcome this and have raised my children on fresh, home-made meals with plenty of vegetables. Though the flip-side of this is that it’s really hard to reconcile my love of fresh foods and wanting to stock my long-term food storage. To combat this personal conflict, we have been gardening and canning foods at home. I feel that at least then I can control exactly what ingredients are in my “canned” foods. (It has also been a great teaching tool for my children.)

I do not believe that there is only one way to have/create/do food storage. I believe that how we choose to store food needs to be a reflection of our families and who we are as preppers. Here is my take on different types of food storage:

Food Storage Theory 1: Most preppers live by the simple motto “store what you eat, eat what you store.” This is the simplest way to store food, one giant pantry that is in a constant rotation as part of your daily household diet. Most commonly you will see shelves filled with canned and packaged foods, and buckets of rice and beans. It makes prepping very easy because your goal is to store the same things in increasingly larger quantity, and you never run the risk of waste because you know you will use it. I applaud people who do this because they are able to use everything without risk of waste.  Although I have increased the amount of beans and other previously unknown foods my family eats, they will never be lovers of beans or packaged foods. This storage method simply doesn’t work for our family.

Food Storage Theory 2: This is the idea of having two separate food “pantries”, one that is for your regular rotational use and one that is exclusively long-term food storage (that you won’t eat unless the SHTF). The rotating pantry contains basic items that wouldn’t be the core of any diet, but that you do regularly eat, and could enhance the longer term food storage. At our house this is condiments, oils, canned vegetables, powdered broths, etc. The long-term food storage then consists of large quantities of beans, pasta, rice, TVP, and an assortment of canned and packaged foods that are NOT even part of our regular diet. This is a more expensive way to prep because you run the risk of possibly never using that long-term food storage and at some point you will have to decide what to do with it as it ages. This is how our family is storing food.

Food Storage Theory 3: This is a combination of the first two Theories, plus fresh foods from a garden and a renewable protein source raised at home (chickens, rabbits, goats, etc.). These are the people that are pushing for the greatest level of self-sufficiency should the SHTF. Many of us may never be able to attain this goal for a number of reasons. For instance, local ordinances restrict us from owning chickens, and although we are allowed to have rabbits, “processing” them at home is illegal. Even if we could, I’m not sure we would chose some of those options; I applaud those that can achieve this level of self-sufficiency.

My post next month will focus on specifics of food storage: container choices, canning and dehydrating, and purchasing bulk items from Costco or Sams Club. I would love to hear feedback from other preppers as to how they store food.

What We Did This Week To Prep 10/12/12

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The week started off with a drive in our new (to us) Ford F350 pickup truck to Josh’s house (Josh of Rural Relations with Josh), about two hours away. I had gotten together with him several times, but this was the first time meeting his family. We thoroughly enjoyed his wife and children and our time at their place. While there Josh taught me how to split wood (I grew up in the suburbs…), and Brynn and Alison enjoyed learning how to ride his off-road mini-bike. It was fun to see his place, “in real life”, and see what he describes in his blog posts. While there are some great aspects to his property, I also saw the disadvantages and hassles he has discussed. Again I’d encourage everyone, develop community, get to know both your neighbors and the like-minded preppers around you; take the initiative and reach out to them — I believe community will be the key to survival in the future.

Our “father” rabbit, Winston, had an ear infection this week. So we went to our favorite rabbit resource, Rise and Shine Rabbitry, and determined he had a mild/moderate case of ear mites. We’ve been treating it by putting drops of olive oil mixed with tea tree oil into his ears and massaging it in. Apparently ear mites can live up to 28 days, so we’ll treat regularly for the next month. We definitely do not want them to spread to Clover, our pregnant doe, or her future babies.

Summer here in Western Washington is pretty much over. After almost three months of sunny days, but without too hot of temperatures, it’s been one of the best summers we can remember. But now they say rain and the clouds are on the way again; possibly with very heavy rain this weekend.

We’re done with summer gardening. We picked everything still on the vine and will can some salsa this weekend. We left most of the plants themselves in place, for now, and will pick them as needed to feed the rabbits. We just received our fall/winter crop seeds in the mail. We’ll be growing a bunch of greens, mainly for the rabbits, and a compost cover crop for the garden as a whole. After most of the plants are out of the garden we’ll cover the garden with the hay and manure from under the rabbit hutches as a fertilizer-rich mulch layer.

What did you do?

Sarah’s View: Learning To Save Seeds

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When we started gardening this year I hadn’t really thought much beyond learning more and what produce we could get out of it. But, as the season continued I started thinking about next year and, being cheap, I started wondering if I could save seeds from this year’s garden instead of buying more. Turning to my good friend Google, I started researching how to save seeds for our more unique garden items.

The first I looked for was Calendula. I’m not sure why I started there exactly, except that there weren’t many seeds in the seed packet. Not only that, but the Calendula seeds had looked really odd and I couldn’t come up with where on the plant they would be. It turns out, as the petals wilt the center is surrounded by seeds. Now, these seeds don’t look like any others you might have seen, or at least not like any I’d ever seen. But, once I knew where to look they were remarkably easy to harvest. Some had dried on the plant, others I dried in the house and then stored the dried seeds in a small plastic bag. (Plastic isn’t ideal, I’d prefer to use small envelopes so as to prevent moisture building, but the coin envelopes just seemed pricey – see, I’m cheap.)

Once I figured out how to harvest Calendula seeds I was excited to see what else I could save. I next looked into radishes and garbanzo beans. These are both rather easy – they have pods which form on the mature plant and the seeds inside the pods are dried and saved for planting. Granted, we didn’t plant radishes for eating (we planned on them flowering to attract pollinators) so all our plants flowered and then formed pods. If you were growing radishes to eat and still wanted to harvest seeds, you’d need to let a couple of plants flower so they form the pods.

Next, I started researching the herbs. These are a bit trickier as their flowers, and therefore seeds, tend to be significantly smaller and not easily harvested right off the plant. From what I’ve read, the best way is to clip a few of the flowering stems and put them in a paper bag (lunch bag size) and hang to dry. The paper bag helps with moisture control, keeps out light, and prevents seeds from being lost as they fall off the drying plant. I’m still on the drying stage with my herbs, so I’m not sure how successful it will be.

With any luck I can harvest seeds from most of my plants this year. I still plan to buy seeds for spring, but hopefully they will be more for back up as well as to increase the variety in our garden.

What We Did This Week To Prep 9/7/12

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This week we headed back to the Olympic Peninsula, in and near the Sequim area, to look for a potential “homestead” property. We looked at about half a dozen places and found one that we really like. The house is small (900 square feet) but it’s in ‘ready-to-move-in’ condition, on six acres; it also has a large pole barn, the property is heavily treed (including several large oaks, which are more rare in this area), relatively flat, and in a very good location. After talking it over, first together, then with our realtor, we put in an offer. We should hear back on it in the next couple days. We’re pretty excited, but trying not to get our hopes up too much.

the coffee house where we meet

I got together again with our budding prepper group (there are now four of us). We try to get together every month, have a cup of coffee, and reassure ourselves that it’s the world that’s crazy and not us — you know how it feels sometimes when you’re a prepper. Again, if you live anywhere near the Seattle area, or are even visiting, we/I’d love to get together and meet you. We all have something to offer, we all have our individual strengths and weaknesses; sometimes you’re the one teaching, sometimes you’re the one learning — most of the time both. Community is so important; I believe it is the number one thing that will allow us to survive well if times get bad.

Western Washington is having a very atypical summer–I know, I know the rest of the country is too. August here was the driest month on record (ever), and as of today we are 48 days without rain (the all-time record, set back in 1951 was 51 days). Fortunately there was plenty of rain and snowfall last winter and we are not experiencing drought conditions. And our garden has been loving all this sunshine! Everything is growing well. We are bringing in tomatoes, beans (multiple kinds), snap peas, carrots, and herbs every afternoon; it’s nice to feel that our gardening has been successful. Ironically, with all the sunshine our strawberries, which produced in early July, have started producing again. It’s amazing what happens to your garden when you add sunshine to good soil, mulch, and water!

What did you do?

(Monday: One Year Blog Anniversary)

What We Did This Week To Prep 8/24/12

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We are now truck owners! Sorta. We have a friend who attends the car dealer auctions in Colorado and we recently arranged with him to find us a truck. Yesterday he found one and bought it. Of course, we still need to pay him and pick up the truck from Colorado, but we’re much closer than we were. It’s a ’04 Ford F350 Diesel, 4×4, crew cab, long bed — exactly what we asked for. Originally we were going to Colorado to pick it up over Columbus Day weekend in October, but now we’re looking at going sooner (I try to be patient, but it’d be hard to wait that long). I’ve wanted a truck for years, but had never been able to really justify one. But since we’ve been so involved in our prepping, gardening, and building projects there have been more times we’ve needed one; I get tired of asking a friend to either use theirs or to help me out. It’s kind of a big deal too because we’ve been saving for it for over a year (so we could pay cash for it), it was also one of our goals for 2012. If we decide to go forward with the purchase of a 5th wheel travel trailer we now have the truck to pull it. And, if we ever have to bug-out, we have the space to bring a lot more stuff, and a vehicle that’ll have the best chance of getting us there safely.

In the garden, the cucumbers, squash, and tomatoes are finally producing and the other plants continue doing well. If the sun lasts a few more weeks I think we’ll be able to call it a successful gardening year. Either way, we’ve learned a lot and continue to improve.

Under the category of: There’s Not An App For That, this week we played a game of bocce ball with the kids and their friends. When I was young, playing outside was nothing worth mentioning–everyone did it–not so much now. We’re very informal with our bocce ball game, we don’t have a court, we just roll it through the grass. We played a mini-three way tournament; it was good to see the kids having fun with an activity that didn’t involve any electricity. If we ever do have a collapse–big or small–or even a power outage that lasts several days, lack of a normal routine and activities can cause additional anxiety. Plan ahead and incorporate board games, card games, and outdoor games into your daily life. This may sound trivial now, but in the future, creating a feeling of normalcy, unity, and just fun may be very important.

What did you do?

(Monday: What I Learned From Charlie In The Prepper Next Door)

What We Did This Week To Prep 8/3/12

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Still not a lot of success in the garden, though our raspberries and snap peas are doing great. The tomato plants never got very big, but finally have a lot of buds on them and a few even have small green tomatoes. The sunflowers are doing well–though we didn’t plant sunflowers–we have several of them in the back corner;  I can only guess they made the “leap” from the neighbor’s garden (they had them against the adjoining fence last year). The squash plants also have buds and a few small squash growing, but they still have a ways to go also. I try not to compare our garden to the ones I read about in other parts of the country, summer here really doesn’t start until the first week of July and typically continues through the end of September. So we’re only a month into our “summer”.  I’m still hoping for some good things from the garden.

After I butchered rabbits with Rob, he gave me some meat to take home. We do a lot of cooking in the crock pot and decided we’d try rabbit stew. We put the whole butchered rabbit into the crock pot, bones and all (per the recipe), and added fresh vegetables and let it stew. Dinner was tasty and we were pleased with the results. Once we start breeding rabbits, we’ll average about 60 rabbits a year; so we need to find good, varied ways to prepare them. I had thought about grilling it, but Rob mentioned it dries out easily. He offered to have us over for dinner and show me how he cooks it.

Having helped Rob butcher the rabbits, and sharing his skinning knives, I decided I needed to get a set of my own. I picked up a 3-piece set made by Buck that has a light-weight knife, a heavier knife, and a guthook. They come in a durable, washable soft case. I probably won’t use the guthook for the rabbits, but it’ll be there in the future for larger game.

We made our monthly trip to Costco. After being sick last week I was motivated to continue stocking up on OTC meds and vitamins. We got guaifenesin (cough expectorant), multi-vitamins, Vitamin C, and Vitamin D. (I later picked up some Sudafed at another pharmacy.) Costco also had a good price on a 50-foot ,12-gauge extension cord for $20.

What did you do?

(Monday: Sharpening Knives, Part 2)

What We Did This Week To Prep 7/6/12

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One of the goals we have this year is to learn to identify local plants. We wanted to learn not only for us, but to be able to identify plants that grow wild that we can feed the rabbits. We ordered, and received, a plant identification book this week: Plants of the Pacific Northwest Coast, by Pojar and MacKinnon. We just got it and it looks like it’ll be a great resource. Every plant has a colored picture(s), it’s well organized, and has lots of good information.

To continue working on our goal of being able to do laundry by hand we ordered a washboard and a Tin-Plated Steel Washer from Lehman’s this week. Next month we’ll budget money for the rest of the stuff needed: wash tubs and a hand-wringer.

We also ordered LifeStraws, personal water filters developed by Vestergaard Frandsen. I’ve read great reviews about them and decided to order three, one each for Sarah, Ryan, and my Get-Home Bags (GHB*). The literature states that they are designed to be used by one person and are capable of filtering 1000 liters of water (enough for one person for one year), removing 99.9% of waterborne bacteria and parasites.

We also made our monthly trip to Costco. We bought, after previously looking at and researching, a Goal Zero Portable Solar Power Pack Kit ($100). It’s designed to hang on a pack, absorbing sunlight to recharge your smart phone, camera, iPod, or anything else that can plug into a USB port, in addition to being able to charge AA and AAA rechargeable batteries. This is our first, and very minor, step into the world of photovoltaic solar power; I’m sure there’ll be a lot to learn.

It was interesting, at Costco, to find that we’re spending less on our normal purchases. Since our SWYE non-perishable food is basically complete (thus we have plenty of EVERYTHING we regularly use) we only buy replacement items when they are on sale. We love the fact that we can have our food storage and save money!

We also bought a couple of boxes of medical exam non-latex gloves; I prefer latex, but they’re getting harder to find and don’t store long-term as well (when they get old they tend to break when you put them on). And picked up some additional OTC Loperamide, they’re anti-diarrheal pills (combination of imodium and kaopectate); dysentery in a collapse is a huge risk.

As I’ve always said, buying things is easy; so look for future posts that discuss, and review, our experiences as we develop the skill-sets needed to use the above items.

The garden is about the same, though the strawberries and raspberries are starting to produce. Summer has finally started here in Western Washington, with forecasted temperatures of 70s and 80s and sunshine for the next week; so hopefully that’ll give the garden the kick it needs.

What did you do?

(Monday: 1/2 Through 2012 – Reviewing The Goals)

* For a complete list of abbreviations go to the ‘Check Here…‘ tab at the top left of the page.

Sarah’s View: Happy 4th of July

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Interesting Factoid: The colonies voted in support of independence on July 2nd, John Adams thought that that day would become the national holiday. Instead we celebrate July 4th, when the final wording of the document was approved. The document itself wasn’t signed until August 2nd.

So much has changed since those fateful days in 1776. Our world is faster and smaller. There is very little that can’t be understood, or at least explored, with a mouse and a modem. Funny, even the word mouse to one of the Founding Fathers would have a very different meaning. I doubt they would recognize much of “America” today. We are, in many ways, an isolationist, thoughtless, and polarized society.

Jefferson participated in an annual pea contest – the neighborhood farmer who produced the first pea of the season won! He hosted regular dinners for his neighbors; today we barely know our neighbors well enough to nod and smile as they drive by. Adams grew his own food and celebrated the manure on his farm as being better than that which he found in London. Most modern Americans rely on the grocery store for their food and, if they grow anything pour petroleum fertilizers on top to “help” them grow. Adams and Jefferson are also remembered for their correspondence. Not only did they write “real” letters, but they explored ideas; they conversed in person and in writing about everything – politics, history, books, gardening, philosophy, and more. Quite often they disagreed, however, they were part of a generation who understood civil discourse. Today we frequently have arguments, if we converse at all. There is very little true conversation going on in our country today. Everything now becomes a dichotomy; you either agree with me or you’re against me, there is no middle ground in which to explore alternative ideas.

As I look back over the last 10 months of blogging, and 20 months of prepping, I like to think that what Trace and I are doing is bringing a bit of the Founding Fathers’ ideals back into our world. I’m not talking about politics. I’m talking about understanding and appreciating where our food comes from, and the amount of energy it takes to grow one tomato plant. I’m talking about the ability to converse with, and even appreciate, people who disagree with us. I’m talking about the value of slowing our world down just a bit and being conscious of life, of our world, and of our impact on it.

As we celebrate a milestone in the lives of our Founding Fathers, find a moment to take stock, appreciate the good, and recognize what can be improved. And, if you’re lucky, see if there’s anything ripe in the garden that you can have with dinner.

Have a safe and happy 4th!

(Friday: What We Did This Week To Prep)

What We Did This Week To Prep 6/29/12

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We’ve started pasturing our rabbits. We spent the first few weeks we had the rabbits slowly/progressively getting them used to fresh grass and clover. They adapted well as evidenced by their continued solid poops and healthy growth. We’ve now started taking them out of the rabbitry daily and putting them under a movable “rabbit tractor’ in the backyard. We have a good growth of clover and the white clover we planted in the spring is finally starting to come up, so the rabbits should have plenty to eat; hopefully they’ll eat enough to make up over half of their diet. We’re still feeding them rabbit pellets and dried grass hay, but they have been eating progressively less.

Even though the rabbits are still several months away from breeding and producing litters we are already benefiting from their manure. Rabbit manure is the most concentrated fresh animal manure available (NPK), it can be put straight onto the plants, it breaks down relatively quickly, and has no smell. The chart below shows how it compares with other livestock manure (the others all need to be composted before adding to the garden, and many have a strong odor).

Material Nitrogen (N) % Phosphorus (P) % Potassium (K) %
Chicken Manure 1.6 1.5 0.9
Cow Manure 0.3 0.2 0.1
Horse Manure 0.7 0.3 0.6
Pig Manure 0.5 0.3 0.5
Rabbit Manure 2.4 1.4 0.6
Sheep Manure 0.7 0.3 0.9

Since we don’t have enough to manure yet to cover all the plants, we’re maximizing what we have by making rabbit compost tea. We mixed a couple of large scoops of manure into a 5-gallon bucket of rain water (from our rain barrels); it’s been sitting for a couple of days and this weekend I’ll go around and water each one of the plants with it. We’ll especially get some extra on the tomatoes because their leaves are yellowing a little and I understand that means they’re low on nitrogen.

Unlike most of the country, Western Washington had cooler than normal temperatures in June. Our average high temperature for the month was 65.1 degrees, and we’ve only had six days that have reached over 70 degrees. We’ve also had 27 days with partly cloudy or cloudy conditions. Because of our cooler temperatures and lack of sunshine our garden hasn’t done much yet. It hasn’t suffered but it certainly hasn’t “bloomed” either. Most of the plants are about the same size as when we put them in the ground, with the snap peas and potatoes being the exception. This week we put more plants into the ground from the greenhouse, but we still have half of our tomatoes in there and the ones in the greenhouse are doing better. While we know much of the country is suffering from hot temperatures we’re jealous of their garden productions and early harvests. We’re ready for summer to start here, July should be warmer and more sunny; it typically is, with a monthly average high of 75.3 degrees.

What did you do?

Momma Bear’s June Preps

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My June preps have kept me busy with my beginner’s garden. My family has been wonderful taking turns watering and weeding! My tomatoes got over their initial aphid romance — no more picking off bugs by hand; now I just go out to talk to them, tie them to the stakes as they continue to grow skyward, and sucker them off as they blossom. The first tomatoes (the two determinant plants) were almost ready to harvest when the squirrels started eating them. I am now covering them, and the blueberry bush, with ‘bird netting’ and hoping that will be sufficient to keep away the squirrels. We also had our first harvest of FIVE blueberries! We did not actually anticipate any fruit from the blueberry or blackberry bushes this first year, but they seem to be doing well since they are putting off a few handfuls of berries. Quite a pleasant surprise to be eating berries this year!

This month we have been doing some research and are thinking about buying a used boat. Although we live close to the interstate, and not too far from Washington D.C.–imagine the gridlock in an emergency–we are also only a walk from the Potomac River (and exactly 10 miles from our marina located on a secure military installation). We have been boating with various friends, learning, and considering the many different types of boats available. A boat would serve as both a recreational and bug out vehicle. There are many great deals out there on used boats due to the poor economy, but we are taking our time before we find just the right one. Has anyone else opted for a boat as a bug out vehicle/home?

Lastly this month, I have hit a turning point on the food storage program. While I have a big storage room in my basement, my food storage has reached a size that requires me to start reducing my other “stuff” to keep meeting my food storage goals. This is both a happy and sad occasion since it means I will be downsizing in some ways, while still building my food security. At the same time, I do not want to become a hoarder that can’t stop keeping/saving things (food included). The other difficulty with food storage, for us, is that we try to eat fresh rather than canned/packaged foods; so every item I store is not necessarily part of my household food rotation. How do YOU decide exactly what foods to store? Has anyone else had to make space compromises to continue storing food? At what point do we ever have enough food stored? When is one area of “prepping” ever complete or enough? I am sure these are all issues we share in common. I would love to hear some feedback about it.

What did you do?