Survival4Chicks

How do you feel about eating boiled food for every meal?  If you’re not storing oil, that’s what you may end up eating every day, meal after meal.  Quite a nightmare!  Oil is tricky to store long-term, however.

Polyunsaturated oils can turn rancid before they actually smells that way, and rancid oils lose much of their nutritional value.  There’s evidence that rancid oils contain free radicals, which can be a health threat.  What’s a fried food lover to do??

olive oil image by fdecomite

Oil can be stored safely but will never have the long shelf lives of our other long-term storage foods.  Keep in mind the four main factors that affect shelf life:  light, oxygen, temperature, and time and apply them to the oils you store.

Keep oil in the dark.

Light is one of the main enemies of oil  Store oil away from any light, even if that means keeping the bottles inside a box.

Read more…

I have a saying; those who prepare to survive deserve to survive. If you have the foresight to plan ahead for a possible end of the world as we know it situation, by learning needed survival skills and laying back supplies against the day of need, you deserve to survive.

The thing is, a lot of people know of the likely possibility of society breaking down, but are turned off by the cost of putting back a years supple of of non perishable foods. Should one die simply because of being poor? I think not. I am at the bottom of the economic ladder, in fact some of the best people I have ever met are in the same financial condition.

My own food storage is based on the Mormon plan. The Mormon plan for stockpiling consists primarily of four basic food items: wheat, sugar and or honey, powdered milk and salt. From these four basic ingredients, a wide variety of foods can be prepared.

Read more…

Using basic Austrian Economics an impending economic collapse is imminent in the United States. With horrible debt, inflation, national debt, and multiplying debt to GDP ratio an economic collapse WILL happen. I’m writing this article to all Americans or people of the world to help you survive the economic collapse.

The first thing one must do is learn what they will do in food shortages or in cases of hyper inflated food prices. This requires somebody to well in advance start putting away non-perishable goods. There are many sites on the internet which detail how to safely store foods. There are also many videos on youtube which describe how to store foods for long term. You will need many beans, grains, rice, powdered milk, sugar, and yeast. Collect many staples that are eaten around the world. Store dehydrated fruits and vegetables as well.

Read more…

Check out all of our training courses here.

Check out all of our training courses here.

Oh the possibilities!

Canned/jarred goods:  Obviously, just leave them in the cans and jars – there’s nothing more to do with them than that.

Dry goods:  Anything that is dried and comes in something other than a sealed can or jar (powdered milk, pastas, flour, wheat, rice, lentils, split peas, oats, oatmeal, sugar, beans, baking powder, baking soda, and on and on and on!) needs to be transferred to another container for longer term storage.  Here are some ideas:

Buckets:  Be sure the buckets you use are food-grade.  The buckets you’d pick up in the hardware section of most stores are NOT food-grade and could contaminate your foods.  The best advice I can offer here is to check them and then double-check them before putting your food stuffs in them.

Bucket sources:

Grocery store:  Check your local grocery store’s deli and bakery departments.  Most receive frosting and other items in 5-gallon buckets, which are of course food-grade.  Most stores are glad to have someone come along and take them off their hands.  Some stores will give them away, others will charge a nominal fee.

Five Star Preparedness:  I’ve checked all over the internet to find reasonably priced buckets.  Prices range anywhere from $5.00 per bucket to $17.00 per bucket depending on the supplier.  I finally settled on Five Star’s $2.00 buckets.  They need to be washed when they arrive but they were by far the best deal I found.  But look around on your own.  You may find a better deal.

Tubs and non-food-grade buckets:   You can find large storage bins, buckets, and trash cans in most big-box stores.  However, these non-food-grade containers MUST be lined with food-grade material (Mylar bags or food-grade plastic bags) to avoid contamination of your food.  I don’t have a great source for either the Mylar or food-grade plastic bags so you’ll want to search around for them.

Packing your buckets or bags inside buckets:  It’s important to make sure you add one of several things to your repackaged food to keep out bugs and oxygen.  Both will be detrimental to your stores.  Common “additives”:

Dry Ice: Dry ice works great to seal your buckets.  To do so, place the dry ice (about 2 ounces per 5 gallon pail) in the bottom of the bucket, cover with a paper towel, add your food stuffs, snap on the lid.  As the dry ice dissipates, it will suck the oxygen out of the bucket, and as long as you have a good seal (rubber gasket or even a layer of plastic wrap draped over the top of the bucket will do) on the bucket, will seal it for you.  Drawbacks to dry ice:  it can be hard to find depending on where you live and it doesn’t kill insects.

Oxygen absorber packets:  These work similarly to dry ice and can be found online.  Check manufacturer’s instructions for use.

Diatomaceous Earth:  I prefer diatomaceous earth over the other options because it sucks out the oxygen AND kills any bugs or eggs that might be in your food now and it will deter any future bugs from entering.  To pack with diatomaceous earth, simply put a spoonful (about a tablespoon) into the bucket with your goods.  I sprinkle about 1/2 tablespoondiatomaceous earth on the bottom of the bucket, add about 1/2 of my food, sprinkle a little more diatomaceous earth then add the remainder of my food and snap on the lid.  There are likely more sources for diatomaceous earth but the one I prefer is Five Star Preparedness.   Diatomaceous earth is edible so there is no need to try to keep it separate from your food.

Whichever method you use, be sure to fill your bucket (or bag that goes into the bucket) up as close to the top as you can, leaving just enough head space to snap it shut.  Oxygen will ruin your food in the long run so you want to get as much of it out as possible.

One year’s worth of food for the entire family is the general rule of thumb for emergency/hard times food storage.  I guess you could say I took a roundabout approach to figuring out how much we needed to stock.  But I like the results of our stores.

First, I took the following into consideration:

1)  Did we want to live on rice and beans alone or did we want variety as much as possible.  We wanted variety!

2)  Was it worth the extra space and money to have a few “just for special” items on hand for when everyone  is sick of the same-old and crabby?  In my opinion…YES!!!  By special items I’m talking about chocolate chips, some chocolate milk drink mix, some candies, and so on.

The LDS folks have got some great info on how much food and what kind of foods to store.  We used the calculator provided by the LDS and then we went one step farther.

First, we got everything that the LDS calculator suggested.  Then we sat down and looked at our family’s typical meal during non-emergency times.  Our meals usually look about like this:

1 serving of protein

2 servings of fruits and vegetables

1 serving of carbohydrates

If you have a family of four that eats similarly, to calculate one year’s supply of those items you multiply:

4 (family members)

x 3 (meals a day)

x 7 (days per week)

x 52 (weeks in the year)

So in the above example, for a family of four for one year, you would need:

4,368 servings of proteins

8,736 servings of fruits and/or vegetables

4,368 servings of proteins

Of course some of the items from the LDS calculator will fill in some of these needs (for example, beans and rice eaten together gives you a complete protein and the flours and grains count for carbohydrates).

For our stores, after calculating what our family truly eats and how many servings we truly needed for one year, we subtracted out the items we’d already gotten from the LDS-calculated list.  Finally, we went about filling in with a variety of canned fruits, vegetables, and meats.

It’s important to only store what you eat (what you are willing to eat) and eat what you store.   Let’s look at this another way.  If you store things you won’t eat, they do you no good so you might as well not bother stocking them.  Plus, if you don’t eat from your food stores, they will eventually spoil.  You need to rotate those food stores while keeping stocked for TEOTWAWKI.

Here’s what I do:  I have several shelves in an out-of-the-way-place, which are devoted to our food stores.  Everything is neatly organized by type (grains, proteins, fats, etc.) and then within those main categories is each variety.  So within the grains area I keep wheat, flour, lentils, split peas, and so on.  Within the proteins category I keep all of my canned turkey, beef, chicken, and tuna.  All of the tuna is kept together, all of the flour together, etc.

I make one trip per month to a bulk foods store (I shop Modern Country Supply) for wheat, whole dried corn, gluten, and other grains.  I make one trip per month to a warehouse store like Costco or Sam’s Club for canned goods, flours, fats, and fruits and vegetables.  During the month I “shop” from my food stores, noting what I’ve used that month so I can replace it on my next trip.  Our food stores also include extra quantities of EVERYTHING.  This way if I’ve used tomato juice from our stores and then the SHTF before next month’s trip, I still have a year’s supply of everything when it hits.

I do also fill in with perishables once a week at the regular grocery store.  These trips bring back things like milk, eggs, cheese, and other fresh items that I can’t get in bulk or that we can’t eat fast enough if bought in bulk.  I don’t count on having these items once the SHTF though.

It’s also extremely important to keep an inventory of your food stores so you know what you have and what you need more of.  This is very easy to do by setting up a simple grid or spreadsheet.  You’ll want to track the following (at a minimum):   Item, size of container, and quantity of each item.  Your inventory might look something like this:

You can even take your inventory sheet one step farther and add your purchasing source and price. Be sure to keep a copy of your inventory near your supplies and make it a house rule that anyone taking from the supplies must subtract what they used.  This way your inventory is always accurate.

Over the weekend a friend asked me how they could possibly inventory the goats and chickens they keep and should they count toward their food stores.  My answer…ABSOLUTELY they should!  Many of us wish we had room for livestock because they very much count toward how long we can survive after an economic or societal collapse.  So how so you inventory the livestock?

Here’s what I suggest.  Calculate how much milk the goats produce in a week, how many eggs the chickens produce in a week, calculate that out by 52 weeks in the year, and you have your milk and egg inventory for a year.  This method will work for whatever livestock you have that offers reproducible goods.  So if you come up with 90 gallons of milk per year produced by the goats, you can subtract this amount of milk from your needs list.  Or, add it on anyway and you’ll have an even greater stock of supplies.

Don’t let the volume of food stores needed scare you though.  Just chip off a little at a time depending on what you can do financially.  If you need one can of green beans, buy two and set the second one aside.

Here are some of my favorite places for finding some of the harder to find items:

Sam’s Club (will need to be a member to view pricing in your area)

Walton Feed

Alison’s Pantry

Amazon

Emergency Essentials

Five Star Preparedness

Modern Country Supply

In another post we’ll talk about how to store all of your supplies.

By CPPM

Yesterday I promised more info on how to keep your preps discrete so here goes

First, let me say that even though we’re prepping for the worst (years-long power outages, lack of law enforcement, foreign troops on U.S. soil, etc.) we are still living our lives quite normally in the meantime.  We still have jobs.  We still have income.  We still go buy groceries every week.  Our kids are still in school.  We still get together with friends.

AND we don’t look like preppers.  Awe, come on, you can relate to the image that comes to mind when you think “survivalists”, “preppers”, etc.  Wife missing a few teeth (and hubby too), the kids with greasy hair, guns and ammo scattered everywhere, hound dogs on the porch, dirt on the floor, chew spit on the walls.  LOL!  It doesn’t have to be that way.  You CAN live normally and still prepare for whatever might come your way.

So how do you hide or disguise your preps?

Antiques

Lots of folks collect antiques and so what if you do too.  It’s just that your antiques will actually be put to use when the SHTF.  You may opt for an old-fashioned butter churn rather than an old chest of drawers but hey, it’s still an antique and can be used as a “decoration” in your home. What about an old meat grinder “because it reminds you of Granny”?  You get the idea.

Inventory what you need to get to get by when there’s no electricity and no gas to run the stove.  Make your antiques shopping list around that.  You might also check out Lehman’s non-electric store.  They cater to the Amish.  What don’t the Amish have?  Electricity and modern gadgets!

Clever storage

Not enough room for all those bags of rice and beans and other goodies?  What’s all that dead space under the couch, under the beds, in the back of the closet, in that decorative basket, in that antique chest of drawers, in Granny’s old sewing cabinet, in a decorative bread box on top of your kitchen cabinets, inside the ottoman, and so on.  Take a look around and do a little rearranging, I’ll bet you can find a whole lotta space you didn’t even know you had.

Keep the main areas of your house looking “normal” – normally decorated, normally furnished, and normally occupied by humans and pets.  Use areas of the house that guests typically don’t frequent for preps storage and then be clever about disguising your preps and even your closest friends will be none the wiser – unless you want them to know.