Tag Archives: SWYE

Nuts & Bolts by Nick: I’m Eating My Preps!

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by Nick Romaniello

I’m sure there are plenty of preppers out there that wouldn’t break into their mylar pouches full of grain for anything short of total Armageddon, but the truth is that emergencies can be varied and subjective. The world of a self-employed home improvement contractor is sometimes one of feast or empty-pocketsfamine especially during the initial years of building a business. The last few months have been financially tricky for me and Mighty Oak Homecraft. Large jobs have run long, delaying the income from final payments. Taxes were due, materials need purchased, yearly renewals of licenses and websites have all converged into a financial super-storm; the result is a cartoon-like escape of moths and dust when I open my wallet.

There is relief on the horizon as more jobs fill the schedule, but when the bank account hovers near the red it‘s nice to have a backup plan so that “feast or famine“ remains only a metaphor. Luckily there isn’t any panic about the financial burden of buying groceries. While I am not yet set up to last for months without resupply, having a reasonable store of food on hand to help stretch out limited resources is a big help. A lean month or two may not be the dramatic type of disaster scenario that many preppers are fortifying themselves against, but in reality (especially in my business) it’s a fairly likely scenario. Even for those with more predictable paychecks, financial emergencies can strike without warning. Unexpected car problems, a layoff, or an injury can put a serious dent in your cash flow. Emergency funds and savings accounts can be an ideal stopgap, but it can be difficult to squirrel away cash if you are living paycheck to paycheck. Being prepared should not be an exclusive hobby for those who can afford to stack gold bars up in their bunker. Even us penny pinchers can pick up a few extra cans each time we shop and before you know it, you have a food cache. Same goes for every gallon of gas you put away. An extra tank full when the chips are down could keep you operational when you might otherwise be thumbing rides.

foodshelfFull scale financial collapse will always be a hot topic in prepping circles and forums, but the commonality of family level tough periods exemplifies the purpose of prepping. It’s not always about the big things that might happen, but more about the small things that probably will happen. Don’t allow yourself to develop a mindset that your preps are only for “the big one”. They are your way of providing help to yourself in the future. Just like any other type of insurance policy, you aren’t required to wait for total loss to make a claim. There are preps that we acquire with the hope and intent that we never need to use them such as a fire ladder, gun, or suture kit. However, some items that we store such as food, gas, or toiletries don’t need to be viewed as such a last resort — plus they need to be rotated anyway! If you are hungry, eat. There is no shame in using your preps for small, short-lived emergencies. Things will get better and you can stock up again. That’s what it’s there for.

 

What We Did This Week To Prep 10/19/12

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We started off the week making salsa. After picking all the remaining tomatoes from our garden (red and green), digging up a couple of onions, and picking the last of the cucumbers (because they were there), we set to work cutting everything up. Last year was our first salsa making experience and though it came out pretty good, I wanted to try a new recipe this year. A couple of months ago I had seen a post on The Homestead Fritz – How To Make Great Salsa; there he mentioned that his coworkers described it as, “the best salsa they have ever eaten.” With that recommendation, I decided we’d give it a try. With all six of us cutting stuff up: tomatoes, onions, pepper, jalepenos, garlic, cilantro, and cucumbers (again because we had them, figured it’d make it more chunky) the process went fairly quickly. After everything was mixed together and cooked up, Sarah and I spooned the salsa into the canning jars (we didn’t have pint size so we used quart jars — but with the size of our family those will go quickly). Since Fritz didn’t mention it, we weren’t sure how much it’d make. We followed his recipe (our only addition was the extra cup of cucumbers) and we came out with three quarts of salsa, plus one 1/2 pint jar (that we gave as a gift to friends). Next year we’ll double it (or even triple, we like salsa), and use the pint size jars so we can share more with friends and neighbors.

My good friend, and fellow prepper, Mike recently gave us the book, So Easy To Preserve put out by the Cooperative Extension of The University of Georgia. Since we have very limited canning experience (blackberry jam and salsa last year) it came in handy reminding us of the steps involved in the water bath method. It’s a good reference book that thoroughly covers: canning, pickling, jellies, freezing, and drying.

Inadvertently, you could also call it busy or lazy, we had a small test of our store what your eat (SWYE) food storage. We normally shop every two weeks. Well life got busy, we missed a shopping trip, and we went a full month without grocery shopping. It’s interesting that with our food storage we really didn’t notice it all that much. Sure we were missing the items that have shorter shelf lives: fresh fruit, most fresh vegetables (though we were able to add some from our garden), and milk. Since we’re not big milk drinkers we’d just mix up some of the powdered stuff when we needed to add it to a recipe. Another item we would have been out of is eggs, but we have a local farm source that we get them from regularly so we didn’t go without. It was interesting how uninterrupted our daily food supply was; between our SWYE pantry and our deep freezer we had plenty. It’s nice to know that if we HAD to go that long it wouldn’t be an issue at all; that alone gives us a certain feeling of safety and confidence.

I’m happy to announce our fourth (and most likely final) regular blog contributor, Nick. Nick is a general contractor and a prepper who specializes in “Sustainable Improvements, Repairs, and Installations“. He will be posting the fourth Wednesday of each month (starting next week, October 24th), focusing on what we can do to make our homes more sustainable and keep them in good repair — from a prepper perspective. I’ve now completed one of my goals for my second year of blogging, to have a guest contributor for each week:

  • Week 1 – Rural Relations with Josh
  • Week 2 – Sarah’s View
  • Week 3 – Momma Bear
  • Week 4 – Nick

These four share really good, and varied, perspectives–different than I’m able to provide–that I believe will add value to both my blog and the prepper community. For more information about each of them, and a list of the posts they’ve written, there’s a link to Guest Contributors in the top right hand portion of the Home page.

Finally, I want to congratulate two of my closest prepper friends on additions to their families. From our prepper coffee group, both Mike and Rick had newborn sons this month! They’re both great dads who I know will raise their kids up to be “properly” educated, self-sufficient, and independent.

What did you do?

 

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.

Bug Out Short List

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Quick, Grab Everything Important!

You’ve got less than an hour to get your family out of the house, possibly forever. The “why” really doesn’t matter; it could be a hurricane, violent civil unrest, a forest fire, flooding… But you have to get your family (including pets), some basic necessities, as many preps as possible, and GO!

This scenario can be chaotic, scary, and very stressful; you’re practically guaranteed to pack inefficiently and forget important things in the rush. And what if you’re not there to do the packing? If you’re away from the house, and your spouse and/or kids have to get things packed up and you’ll meet them somewhere?

Having your family’s own Bug Out Short List would be invaluable. Sure that scenario will still be scary and stressful, but having a prioritized, check-list in your (or their) hand will make things go much smoother and provide much needed direction and focus.

Our list is based on having a well-stocked BOB** in each vehicle already (people define and keep their BOBs in different places – we keep one in each vehicle, at all times). We own three vehicles and have three drivers; our plan (best case scenario, if all vehicles and drivers are home) is to take two of the vehicles putting half of the supplies, divided relatively evenly, in each vehicle (Repetitive & Redundant).

Our Short List

  • Locked Document Box, containing: Important Papers Notebook (including an extra copy of the Evacuation Plan), extra cash, passports, and back-up hard drive (place in primary vehicle, under driver’s seat)
  • Red Buckets (2)*
  • open Large Blue Bin and remove the MURS radios and chargers (2) (place on passenger seats). Verify the Bin contains: Volcano Stove (with propane attachments), Buddy Propane Heater, small propane bottles (4).
  • open Black Box #1: inside are several large duffle bags for packing. It also contains the soft-sided cat carrier, load Oscar (the cat) as soon as he’s found, and load cat food.
  • Blue Duffle Bag containing sleeping bags (if two vehicles: place half in another duffle bag, add extra blankets and pillows to both)
  • Bin containing tents and sleeping mats (if two vehicles: half in each)
  • Berkey Water Filter
  • Large Red First-Aid Kit
  • MRE boxes (2)
  • Tools: axe, shovels, saws, gloves, extension cords, 550 cord, drills, bolt cutters, bucket
  • OD Military Duffle #1: fill with clothes from bedroom dressers
  • OD Military Duffle #2: fill with shoes and coats
  • Car Camping Bin
  • Backpacking Bin
  • (consider Cold Weather Bin depending on time of year)
  • Black Military Boxes (2) fill with non-perishable foods from pantry, SWYE, and extra hygiene items
  • Dutch Oven and cast iron pan
  • Black Plastic Tubs (2) fill with food for travel: include sandwich stuff, snacks, fruit, yogurt, cheese, boiled eggs
  • Coolers (2) fill with meat from freezers, top with ice in zip-lock bags
  • Extra Water: 5-gallon jugs (2), extra 2-liter as space permits
  • Extra Fuel: 5-gallon jerry cans (4) and super syphons (top off vehicles with red 5-gallon cans)
  • 5-pound propane tanks (4)
  • Charcoal and lighter fluid
  • Folding chairs (6)

Is it ambitious? Yes. Does it include everything needed? We hope so. Is it too much? Not if it all fits. Does it all fit? Hard to say–no we haven’t fully tested it (yes, I know we need to – but what a pain in the butt…). If we get a truck in the coming year that’ll help a lot, but we don’t have one yet; we’ve also talked about getting a trailer, but again don’t have one.

Make a Short List for your family. It doesn’t cost anything, just some time. Take that time now so you’ll be more prepared for that situation where you don’t have much time. It won’t be perfect, but at least you’ll have a place to start.

(Friday: What We Did This Week To Prep)

* In my post Out With The Old… – Our Annual Rotation I mentioned our Red Buckets, they are two 5-gallon red buckets with orange gamma lids (I wanted something that would stand out). They are each stocked with non-perishable foods, eating utensils, a mess kit, and some hygiene supplies. Our goal is to use them in conjunction with the BOBs to add additional survival time (in terms of more food equals more days).

**For my list of abbreviations and other information, open the above ‘Check Here…’ page tab.

How Much Do You Need = Math

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Figuring Out How Much To Store
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In our preps we store XYZ (food or non-food, doesn’t matter). We want to store enough of it to last 30 days (or 60, or 90, or a year…); how do we know when we’ve reached our goal? Do you know how much of XYZ you use a day, a week, a month? How do you figure it out? What variables need to be accounted for? Most of us just go with the ‘buy a bunch and hope it’s enough’ approach. But some things we’ll use faster than expected, and others will go bad before we’re able to use them. To determine these amounts is more of a hassle than it should be, but here are some ideas.

To start with, most packaged food items have a Serving Size (included in the Nutrition Facts). Sure this number will vary for different people, but it’ll work for a rough estimate. For items bought in bulk, it’s easy to look up the nutritional info online. Also, for food items–if you run out of one source of protein or carbs, you can typically use another–you don’t have to figure out each one exactly.

But other things that we have in our preps aren’t as easy to determine. What about items that don’t have a serving size or the amount used varies by person? Items like: toothpaste, feminine hygiene products, gasoline, shampoo, even pet food, or coffee? The answers are found through our old friend (or nemesis) math.

I’m going to use coffee as an example. How much coffee you use per day is dependent on how strong you like your coffee, and how much you drink each day. I wanted to figure out how much coffee we’d need for Sarah, Ryan, and I (the coffee drinkers in our family) to have one mug of coffee (16 fl oz) per day for one year (we’re assuming the SHTF* and we need to stretch it as long as possible).

We buy (and store) whole bean coffee in 2-pound bags. We figured out that:

  • 2-pound bag = 12 cups of coffee beans (8 oz cups, not mugs)
  • 1/8 cup (our scoop size) of  beans = 1 mug of coffee
  • 12-cup bag of beans = 96 mugs of coffee
  • 96 mugs / 3 people = 32 days of one mug each
  • 2-pound bag of coffee beans = one mug, per person (for 3 people), per day, for a month
  • ANSWER: twelve 2-pound bags = 1 mug, per person (for 3 people), per day, for 1 year

Another consideration is how long the stored item will last. And even though many food (or non-food) expiration dates don’t necessarily mean you can’t eat (or use) them after that–especially in a collapse–we should at least note them and if we think they will last longer understand how and/or why. With coffee, our example, the expiration date is 14 months from the time of purchase – so storing a year isn’t an issue.

It’s important to have our stored preps, but it’s only a start. We need to store them properly, rotate them regularly, know how to use them, and know how much we need of each.

(Friday: What I Did This Week To Prep)

*For my list of abbreviations and other information, open the above ‘Check Here…’ page tab.

Store What You Eat (Food Part 1)

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The storage system we have now (panoramic view)

five basic needs: 1) FOOD, 2) water, 3) shelter, 4) security, and 5) energy

We know that we’re going to eat, multiple times, everyday. We know that if we go more than three to four weeks without food we’ll die. We know that food costs keep going up. We know that food today is readily available and relatively inexpensive. We know that there are multiple systems involved in getting food to the stores each day, and if one of those systems fail it doesn’t arrive. Those, and more, are the reasons to store food.

Food storage is discussed in two categories: short-term or Store What You Eat (SWYE) and Long Term Storage (LTS).

SWYE is as simple as it sounds: stock up on the non-perishable foods you eat on a regular basis. When you first begin–unless you have the extra money to go buy cases at a time–follow the “copy can” method. Each time you go shopping, if you need one can of say, tuna, buy two (or three or four…) instead. Put one can in your kitchen pantry, take the others and write the date on them and put on your SWYE shelf. Your SWYE food can be stored in any cool, dry area. Racks can be purchased to make food rotation easier. Then, when you need a can of tuna, use the one in your pantry and replace it with the oldest one (you dated them remember?) from your SWYE (add that item to your shopping list!). Rinse & repeat.

In a short period of time you’ll have your initial goal of two weeks food storage complete. From there build your SWYE to 30, 60, then 90 days. Remember, food storage’s biggest enemies are: light, heat, moisture, and air. Most SWYE items are canned or well packaged so light and air aren’t a big concern. But heat and moisture can be, so plan accordingly. I should also mention rodents, of course they won’t get into cans, but that mac ‘n cheese box…

Non-perishables are the easiest to store, but if you have the freezer space (I highly recommend a deep freezer) you can also add meat and other frozen items to more fully round out your food preps. Yes freezers are vulnerable to power outages, so have a plan. Know how long your freezer will stay ‘cold enough’ without running, and prepare to either provide auxiliary power, or to use the items if needed.

Storage system we want to get

I’ve been asked, “what do you store?”. My response is along the lines of store what YOU eat, develop YOUR own plan, blah, blah, blah. But I do understand the usefulness of someone helping you get started. The irony is that I’m also, relatively speaking, getting started myself. That being said, here’s an overview of our family’s SWYE: canned beans, vegetables, fruits, meats, soups; summer sausage, cereals, man ‘n cheese, tortillas, oatmeal, mashed potatoes, condiments, peanut butter, jelly, baking staples, cooking oil, spices, bouillon, coffee, hot chocolate, power and granola bars, and crackers. Again just a list to get you started and thinking about what would be good for you – your plan has to be your own.

(Monday: “Long Term Storage (Food Part 2)”)